Last Chance Foods

For the rest of the year, we’ll be revisiting previous episodes of Last Chance Foods. 

When Great Performances CEO Liz Neumark started a farm seven years ago, she asked her farmer not to grow kale. Even back then, she’d grown tired of the all-reigning queen of superfoods. While farmer Bob Walker ignored her request and planted kale anyway, Neumark notes that there are plenty of other greens in the fields that are both fascinating and worthy of the spotlight — tatsoi and mizuna are two prime examples. 

Look, let’s be honest: Some of us are not ready to get into canning. We might live in Brooklyn, obsess about pickles, and splurge on artisanal cheese, but the prospect of mason jars and hot water baths is just too much, okay? Great. Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about a method of preserving that’s easier than canning.

For those of us unaccustomed to cooking with tomatillos, they can be a bit of a mystery. The obvious facts are these: They kind of look like tomatoes, but are not, and they’re a key ingredient in salsa verde.

There are a few straightforward rules to follow when hanging out with celebrity chefs, according to the fictional character Ruth Bourdain. For instance, “Do: Rub Tom Colicchio’s head with the finest extra virgin olive oil. Don’t: Put barrettes in his soul patch.”

The next time you see a leaf of shiso sitting under your sashimi, wrap it around the fish, and put it in your mouth. It’s not there just for aesthetics. “Shiso has an antiseptic property so it is safe to eat with raw fish,” said Hiroko Shimbo, the author of Hiroko’s American Kitchen and a well-known expert on Japanese cuisine.

Put away those pink, blue, and yellow packets of artificial sweeteners. You can now get a sugar substitute that wasn’t born in a lab: stevia. It is a leafy green plant, and it’s 20 times sweeter than sugar, says farmer Ron Binaghi III, who grows it at Stokes Farm in Old Tappan, N.J.

Clear skies, full bellies, can’t lose — maybe that should be the Friday Night Lights–inspired motto for panther edamame, a variety of soybean that’s currently growing at the Hudson Valley Seed Library in Ulster County, N.Y.

The phrase “miracle food” smacks of low-budget internet ads that promise easy solutions to diabetes and belly fat. Recently, though, it’s been used to describe moringa oleifera, a tropical plant that native to the Himalayas.

A wilted sprig of curly parsley often feels like the worst insult to a plate of food. Instead of being treated like a sad garnish, parsley at its best has the ability to enhance a wide variety of dishes.

Step into any hot sauce emporium, and you’ll likely be surrounded by labels bearing words like “pain,” “death,” and any number of expletives. But the world of hot sauce goes far beyond mere Scoville units, and plenty of hot sauces focus instead on flavor, rather than pure capsaicin.