FOOD

The other day DeGroot came home with a package of Beyond Meat hamburger, a product I'd been flirting with for some time but never did get around to trying. We shaped it into patties and griddled it up just like a regular burger. I was expecting it to be one of those "OK for what it is" things, but it wasn't okay. It was way better.

Nancy Leson 's been reading Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle's column about why the Betty Crocker cookbooks of the '50s and the shopping practices they encouraged are newly relevant today in the time of the Coronavirus. Among McArdle's favorite Betty recipes was "Bohemian Braided Bread," recipe pictured in the slide show above. All very well as retro recipes go but I found one that out-retros it by almost 2,000 years.

Food for Thought listener David sent me a recipe for something he calls "Splayed Potatoes," which not only looked good to eat but fun to make. Though I have no doubt that he arrived at his method independently, he was beaten to the spud by Hasselback potatoes , basically the same thing, invented at Sweden's Hasselbacken restaurant. I sent David's recipe off to Nancy Leson for kitchen testing, results pictured above. From there we were off to the potato races.

This story originally aired June 5, 2019. While browsing recipes at the station last week, Daniel Gritzer's savory vegetable galette caught my eye. Leeks, mushrooms, asparagus and cheese open-faced in a flaky pie crust. No need to even stop at the store on my way home. I had asparagus and mushrooms still unwithered in the fridge and two thick wintered-over leeks in the garden.

Originally aired July 25, 2018. This is not a weeknight recipe. Both Nancy Leson's and my emails crossed in the cybersphere. "Let's make this!" It was J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe for Balinese Pork Saté and it was pretty complicated. In fact, three recipes in one: the spice blend for the pork marinade, the sweet soy glaze for grilling, and the hand-pounded (more on that down-blog) peanuts for the sauce.

Pre-pandemic, Stein and I went to our local supermarkets and specialty grocers on a daily basis. But with COVID-19 precautions in place we’re doing our part to “Stay Home, Stay Healthy,” which means that neither of us is spending as much time shopping for food. And yes, that makes me really grumpy . But as I told Stein this week on Food for Thought, I’ve been a lot happier lately. Why?

This week Nancy Leson and I look at some long accepted cooking rules that just don't hold up. My first entry was the prohibition against putting a certain kind of utensil into the dishwasher.

For a real New England style seafood roll, you need a New England style hot dog bun, also called a split-top. As you can see from the picture above, they look like a folded slice of thick bread. Griddle the sides and stuff them with lobster, crab or shrimp. They're great for fried clams too, or even an actual hotdog. Problem is those buns are thin on the ground around here. I've long thought about getting the special pan and making my own. Then, when DeGroot came home with a big can of crab, I

Flame away, but I'm just not a dog person. It's cats for me. They're the superior animal anyway, as our cats would tell you if they could just be bothered. It's the opposite at Chez Leson , which Nancy and husband Mac share with Doug, a Korean Jindo and Mya-Kai, a Shiba Inu. Nance reports that big bad Doug is terrified of Instant Pots. I am too, but that's for another episode. This week, Nance and I discuss the feeding and relative merits of cats vs. dogs, Mac's morning dog ritual, and my

These days when we're all staying home so much, Nancy Leson loves cookbooks that take her away. “I like the ones that make me feel like I'm traveling, even though the farthest I go these days is Bartell's. For me the recipes are secondary almost to everything else, the history, the culture.” Me, I just want the recipes. But here are some of Nancy's favorite armchair traveling cookbooks.