We headed out to Coney Island for an off-season adventure. Obviously, our first stop was Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand.

Coney Island has served as a summer, seaside destination for New York City since the early 19th century. The amusement park rides that have created the neighborhood’s iconic culture first started appearing at the end of that century with places like the Sea Lion Park that opened in 1895, and the original Luna Park opening in 1903. The early parks dazzled with electric lights and mechanical rides. Seasonal visitors arrived by steam trains. But the modern Coney Island was really born in the second and third decade of the 20th century.

The BMT arrived in 1918, and the massive Coney Island Stillwell Avenue station, the gateway to Coney Island, opened in 1920, as did the Wonder Wheel. Other iconic skyline pieces followed like the Boardwalk (1923), Cyclone roller coaster (1927), and Parachute Jump (1941).

In hindsight, Nathan Handwerker’s decision to open a hot dog stand on Surf Avenue in 1916 was a brilliant business play.

An immigrant from Poland, Nathan Handwerker gave up a steady job to operate the new hot dog stand. He secured the corner lot with a loan, and buitl an empire.

His success though was more than just a good location. For instance, unlike other businesses on Coney Island, the Nathan’s stand operated all year long, so even after the summer day trippers left, Nathan was still there selling hot dogs.

Nathan’s also innovated in marketing. He undercut the nearby Feltman’s, which sold 10 cent dogs. Nathan sold his for 5 cents, earning less on the hot dogs but driving business to items like fresh lemonade. He also reduced waste by investing in ice and then refrigeration to prevent the dogs from spoiling.

Another significant choice was to commit to high quality hot dogs. Nathan’s serves an all beef hot dog and created a custom blend of higher quality cuts. Feltman’s, on the other hand, served a pork dog.

Nathan’s hot dogs were also wrapped in natural casings. Meanwhile, in Chicago, hot dogs without casings were introduced in 1922 and were cheaper to produce. The different production methods have remained regionally significant ever since.

And because Nathan’s custom ordered their meat, Handwerker was able to deploy other marketing strategies like serving bigger dogs on Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekend, the opening of the season, and creating the belief that the Nathan’s dogs were larger all summer long.

Perhaps the best known marketing ploy created by Nathan’s Famous is the annual hot dog eating contest, first launched in 1972. The televised eating contest draws contestants from around the world, building brand awareness for the Nathan’s empire.

After the success of Nathan’s Coney Island location, the Handwerker family launched several other restaurants. Nathan’s son, Murray, pushed for a Long Island location in the 1950s following their customers into the suburbs. They opened another location in Yonkers that struggled, in part because it was not a destination for tourists. The company went public in the 1960s, and opened a Times Square flagship store.

The trouble was that by the 1960s, Nathan’s was competing in a fast food market, and even though competitors were relatively new compared to the 50-year-old Nathan’s, they were also more efficient serving cheap, fast food. To address the issue, Nathan’s began offering franchises hoping to capture that fast food market.

The move toward a fast food model was solidified during a merger with Wetson’s, a fast food burger chain. The 1975 stock swap deal saw the Wetson’s stores converted to Nathan’s brand, and Nathan’s locations that were less favorable to the fast food model shuttered. In the years since, Nathan’s franchises have seen ups and downs, particularly as shopping malls where many franchises were located, have closed down.

In January, Smithfield Foods announced a total acquisition of Nathan’s. Smithfield had been manufacturing Nathan’s hot dogs for grocery store customers under license since 2014. While that license was set to expire in a few years, Smithfield’s $450m acquisition ensures brand access in perpetuity.

Ever since the announcement, I’ve worried that the new management team would gut Nathan’s classic store. Whenever new investors buy up a storied brand, they usually want to see changes made that cut costs or increase profits, none of which is ever good for consumers or product enthusiasts.

The Coney Island location has always served up a much larger menu than can be found at Nathan’s franchise locations. The franchise focuses on traditional fast food sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, and the famous crinkle cut fries. But the Coney Island location has much more, including a seafood menu. The addition of seafood was another innovation Nathan Handwerker had made back before his restaurant would have been considered fast food.

The menu on Coney Island still includes clam chowder and lobster bisque and fried seafood platters with flounder fillets, clams, and shrimp, and fish sandwiches. But one of my favorite snacks from Nathan’s are the corn dog nuggets. These tiny corn dogs are bite-sized versions of the carnival treat.

It was too cold and windy to eat at the outside tables leading up to the beach, and despite the chilly afternoon, the inside seating at Nathan’s was nearly full. Later I realized patrons were being bused in as part of a tour, but still, it was surprising to see a full dining room off season.

Believe it or not, there are actually two books about the history of Nathan’s, both co-written by grandsons of the Handwerker family. Lloyd Handwerker’s memoir Famous Nathan and Wiliam Handwerker’s cultural history, Nathan’s Famous, offer two perspectives on the rise and fall and rise again of the restaurant, the offshoots, franchises, and grocery store hot dogs.

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The Gordon Ramsay cooking competition show Hell’s Kitchen premiered in May of 2005, at the height of turning everything into a reality show. In the opening challenge, Ramsay’s sous chefs task the contestants with cooking their signature dish, “A dish that says something about who you are.” The contestants had 45 minutes.

“This is something that should reflect you,” the second sous chef calls out.

Hell’s Kitchen was powered by personality clashes and interpersonal dramas with the food coming second to the manufactured conflicts. Ramsay’s public persona twenty years ago was built around cruelty in the kitchen, particularly as the loud, abusive chef on the competition show. He held nothing back, spitting out most of the dishes presented to him.

This first challenge is one that is repeated in subsequent seasons. Surprisingly, few, if anyone, seems to have learned a lesson from earlier seasons and repeat the same mistakes, and make new ones, like attempting fresh pasta with too little time (a frequent problem for chefs across competition shows like Chopped and Top Chef as well).

All this is a long way of getting around to saying obviously I’ve fantasized about what kind of dish represents me, and what would I cook with for chef Ramsay in an opening challenge of Hell’s Kitchen.

The conclusion I came to many years ago is that I could make a simple macaroni with chickpeas, pasta e ceci.

Chickpeas are an ancient food, with some suggestions humans have been eating them as far back as 10,000 years. Wild versions of the plant likely originated in southern Turkey and Syria, where it was eventually domesticated. The legume then spread across the Mediterranean and became a staple crop across the region.

Pasta e ceci is a dish with many variations across southern Italy. Some form of pasta and chickpeas have likely been around since the Roman era. Regionally, recipes vary in Italy, but a common version from the Basilicata region is known as the “Brigand’s dish,” a piatto del brigante.

In Calabria, Lagane e ceci is associated with St. Joseph’s Day, and shared among neighbors. Lagane are a broad flat pasta shape like taglietelle. In Puglia, the dish is known as ciceri e tria. Tria derives from the Arabic Itriyah and the Greek Itriom, indicating threads of pasta.

It’s also one of the first dishes I have a memory of eating. My mother would make it with tiny farfalle, little egg noodle bowties that have in recent years become more difficult to find in the grocery store.

I’ve also made = variations of the dish over the years. The base dish begins with garlic, olive oil, and chickpeas cooked with parsley and black pepper before mixing in the pasta. But I’ve versions where I’ve mixed in medallions of carrot, or wilted spinach, or green peas. If you’re desperate for meat, starting off with a bit of pancetta never hurt anyone. Some people turn this into a tomato-y dish too, but I don’t go in that direction.

My preference is cooking down the liquid and mixing in the pasta to absorb all that flavor, but also there’s nothing wrong with adding extra broth and making a soup. One key ingredient though is finishing it off with a bit of parmesan.

I recently cooked up a version for lunch. My wife was skeptical at first, which is unexpected given that she’s a proponent of the mantra, “daily beans!” I must have done a decent job, but because earlier this week when I cooked up another batch at lunch, she wanted in.

Pasta e Ceci (Ian's Version)

INGREDIENTS

• Large can of chickpeas (when did the 32 oz become 19 oz?)

• Two big splashes of olive oil

• 3 to 5 cloves of garlic

• 1 tablespoon butter

• A few tablespoons parmesan

• Dash of dried parsley (or fresh Italian Parsley finely chopped)

• A few shakes of black pepper

• Pinch of crushed red pepper

• ½ lb of Mini egg bowties (mini shells, mini elbows, or ditalini also works)

INSTRUCTIONS

• Boil water for pasta

• Finely dice garlic

• Saute in oil

• Drain chickpeas reserving a tablespoon of x

• Add chickpeas to the garlic and oil

• Add butter

• Add aquafaba

• Add tablespoon or two of water

• Season with salt, pepper, red pepper, and parsley

• Simmer

• Cook chickpeas until tender

• When most but not all of the liquid has evaporated add in the pasta

• Stir in grated parmesan so that it melts into the oil and coats the pasta and chickpeas

• Serve with additional parmesan

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The Best Artichokes

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Sometimes you are just going to eat mediocre pizza. It happens. And while I don’t totally believe the phrase, “there’s no such thing as bad pizza,” if there is one place that holds up, its in New York City.

First, here’s what I didn’t like about this slice:

• Low structural integrity

• Too, too crispy bottom

• Bland tomato sauce

A great slice of pizza must stand up to the fold. This one didn’t. One fold and the whole crust had cracked into pieces making it a sloppy mess to eat. Once it collapsed, the cheese started sliding off.

That brings me to the crust being too crispy. The bottom of the pie was simply too crisp — not burned, but hard and fragile. I suspect this comes from over heating the slice on reheat, especially in an oven that is too hot. Either way, you want a slice to have tension but not shatter into sharp little pieces.

Finally, the sauce here is a bit bland, and lacks much in the way of flavor beyond a general oregano. It wasn’t too sweet, it wasn’t spicy or too salty, it was just kind of bland.

But also it was totally fine, or at least, good enough. I find fault in this slice not because it was bad, but because it was good. There was plenty of cheese, and it melted nicely. Although this cheese made a mess once the crust broke apart, it was still good to eat, but I’m glad I sat down to eat it.

There was a big selection of pizza types available, including a white pie and a ziti slice. Had I the time and appetite to sample these, I would have loved to take a closer look at these, and I suspect overall, I would have been happier with one of these options.

What is interesting to me is just how many pizzerias were on the block, including a Patsy’s franchise and Little Italy Pizzeria. The preponderance of cheap foods might have something to do with the large number of hospitals in the area, which often attract low cost quick foods like pizza. For me, it was a conscious choice stopping here, because I knew what to expect at Little Italy Pizza — its slightly above average. But also if I’m in the area again I’m more likely to grab a snack from Pizza Park, one block down, simply because different might be better than average.

Ultimately this slice is everything that’s great about New York City pizza. It was good enough, at a pizzeria surrounded by other pizzerias. I chose it, more or less at random, and still had a decent slice.

Famous Famiglia Pizzeria

• 1284 1st Ave

• Manhattan, NY

Last week was spring break for NYC school children, so naturally we fled the city for grandma daycare. And then I cooked up some chicken parmigiana.

“Who else is coming for dinner?” my mother-in-law asked. I had two trays of chicken, a bowl of eggplant parm, and a big plate of fried cutlets that simply didn’t fit in any of the stoneware.

Chicken parm is one of those foods Americans ask for in Italy and are disappointed to find out actually comes from America. Chicken parmigiana, or Chicken Parmesan if you prefer, isn’t something that comes out of nowhere though.

In Sicily and the Islands around Naples, eggplant are a big part of the flavor profile, like Spaghetti Syracuse style. Melanzane alla Parmigiana is a historic dish, although the earliest iteration, bianca, was simply layers of eggplant and cheese cooked together. The tomato sauce was a later addition, but both the white and red version arrived with immigrants to the United States.

One common misconception is that the term parmigiana is not a reference to the cheese, Parmigiana-Reggiano. While you might make melanzana alla parmigiana with grated hard cheese, caciocavallo was more commonly used, and fresh cheese like mozzarella or fior di latte. However, the phrase parmigiana is phonetically similar to the word for shutter. The Italian word “persiana,” dates back to the 18th century, and in dialect, allegedly sounds even more like parmigiana. Slice eggplants lengthwise, and they begin to take on the appearance of the heavy wooden shutters used to keep out the hot sun.

Eggplant in the style of the window shutters arrived with Italian immigrants, and in the early 20th century in New York City, the eggplant was switched with veal. There are probably a few reasons for this. First, America was the land of abundance, especially compared to rural southern Italy where many people were starving. Meat was a delicious substitute.

Second, German food, especially schnitzel, fried pork and veal cutlets, had become a trendy food in New York City by teh 1920s. And third, Italian American cooks served up beef braised in tomato sauce, known as steak pizzaiola, which became much less common as veal parmigiana grew in popularity, suggesting it was displaced by the newer dish.

By the 1930s, Pietro’s, an Italian American restaurant in New York City was serving up a simple veal parmigiana. Diane Ashley’s Where to Dine in ‘39 highlights the recipe from the East 45th Street restaurant. In this version, fried cutlets have are topped with parmesan cheese and butter, before baked golden brown.

The Pietro’s version has more in common with the German-style schnitzel, but it’s also similar to the traditional Sicilian dish, melanzane alla Parmigiana bianca, the white version of eggplant parm baked without any tomato.

Veal was initially the most popular protein, and by the 1950s, common at red sauce joints. Other versions include shrimp, chicken, and zucchini. Yet today, chicken parm is far more prevalent as an entree, sandwich, and even pizza topping.

At least one version of chicken parm was invented in 1945 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Pasquale Bamonte, who founded the namesake restaurant in 1900, claimed to have been cooking eggplant parm for high school baseball players one evening when he ran out of the vegetable and swapped in chicken in its place. From there, chicken parm spread. How much truth is in this fairy tale is unproven, but also unprovable. More likely, as happened with Chicken Francese, more than one person developed a similar dish independently and now the recipe is a ubiquitous part of American culture.

Today chicken parm is undergoing a new evolution once again with the substitute of vodka sauce for tomato sauce. One version that has become famous is served on the FDNY hero from Anthony & Son Panini Shoppe. The sandwich is made from vodka sauce, chicken culet, and mozzarella cheese. But just up the street at Carmine and Sons, a pizzeria and red sauce restaurant, you can find chicken parmesan in vodka sauce under their specialty dishes.

When I set out to cook the chicken parm, I debated gathering the ingredients for a vodka sauce base. At one point I even had a bottle of heavy cream in the cart. Was this too much change? Would we survive this unexpected recipe plot twist? At the last minute I decided to error on the side of caution and keep it traditional, or at least traditionally Italian American.

To make the above chicken parm, I pan fried cutlets battered with flour, egg, and panko bread crumbs, and then combined them with a simple tomato sauce and low moisture mozzarella cheese before baking them at 350F for about 20 minutes. It’s important to bake them in stoneware as glass dishes like Pyrex are more likely to burn the underside of the chicken.

There isn’t much to the recipe, though it is labor intensive. If you’re feeling historical, try this vintage recipe adapted from the Diane Ashley book, Where to Dine in ‘39.

Pietro’s 1930s Veal Parmigiana

INGREDIENTS

• Veal cutlets

• Flour

• Egg

• Breadcrumbs

• Parmesan Cheese

• Butter

INSTRUCTIONS

• Pound the veal flat

• Cover in flour

• Coat in egg

• Cover in breadcrumbs

• Fry in olive oil

• Sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese

• Add bits of butter

• Bake until brownPound the veal flat

• Cover in flour

• Coat in egg

• Cover in breadcrumbs

• Fry in olive oil

• Sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese

• Add butter

• Bake until brown

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Americans typically think of quiche as a brunch food. But a slice of quiche with a light salad is actually a wonderful lunch or dinner, especially when you’re looking to use up extra milk and eggs.

Quiche is an ancient foods with origins as far back as ancient Rome, though back then it was closer to cheesecake. But eggy cakes persisted, and Medieval European cooking methods saw those dishes evolve into something more recognizable to modern, with more egg, less cheese.

Across Europe, variations on these egg cakes came into existence. Italians have the Frittata, crustless quiche fried in a pan. In Spain, the Tortilla Española is a crustless egg omelette with potatoes. Germans have a Badischer-Zwiebelkuchen, an onion and egg tart.

Perhaps the best known style of quiche in the United States is Quiche Lorraine, which comes from the historical region in eastern France. But until the 20th century, few people outside of Lorraine had ever even heard of the Quiche Lorraine, a basic recipe of egg custard baked with bacon lardons.

But then America was re-introduced to the quiche in 1962 during season 1 of The French Chef, Julia Child’s first show on PBS. Child helped make quiche a trendy dish beginning in the 1960s.

I taught myself to make quiche a few decades back while I was cooking through Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I only got through a few recipes when I realized Julie Powell had started a similar project and was much farther along. It really burned me up that Powell sold a book based on cooking every recipe in the book within a year, although she was almost finished before I had even gotten past sauces. I suppose Ian & Julia isn’t nearly as witty a title as Julie and Julia.

By the 1970s, quiche was a trendy food, and it wasn’t long before the simple Quiche Lorraine recipe was becoming Americanized. “Why Leave French Quiche Alone?“ asks a 1968 newspaper, “Will Americans’ penchant for changing quiche Lorraine spoil it? You Decide.” Some of the suggestions that follow include Corny Quiche filled with corned beef hash, and Crab Quiche with Alaskan King Crab. So yes, you decide.

By the mid-1970s, quiche was on trend, and American cooks couldn’t stop American-ing adding all sorts of unhinged fillings. For instnace, there’s even a Quiche Americaine, with flaked tuna in place of chicken. (Yes, adding chicken to an egg custard was another American innovation of the 1970s).

All this might be why quiche’s popularity began fading in the 1980s. Sure, you could find it on the brunch menu of a baby shower, and maybe even as a frozen Hors d’oeuvre at a fancy party. But it ceased to be a symbol of trendiness. The world was moving on.

But back in Europe though, it’s common to find sensible varieties of quiche on lunch and dinner menus. Served with a side salad, it’s a delicious, light meal.

With spring break approaching, I was looking to use up things that would spoil in the refrigerator while we were gone, including the milk, eggs, and the opened package of bacon. In addition to the bacon lardons, I add to my quiche a bit of cheese, onions, and spinach.

My wife volunteered to make the pie crust, but I’m also perfectly happy to cheat on this and use a store-bought frozen crust for the sake of expediency.

I ended up rolling out the pie dough and stuffing it in a cake pan. Julia Child uses a shallow pie dish, but this has always left me with a mess and an over baked crust edge. She also suggests a spring form pan to easily pop the quiche out of the pan, but this can leak, particularly if your quiche crust is imperfect.

Quiche Trés Américain

INGREDIENTS

• 6 to 8 strips of leftover bacon

• 4 eggs

• 1 cup of milk

• 1 onion

• 1 big bundle of spinach

• 1 pie crust

• Salt, pepper, onion powder

INSTRUCTIONS

• Dice the bacon into fine pieces and cook until crispy

• Reserve bacon, allowing to cool

• Cook down the spinach and onion in the bacon grease

• Reserve and cool

• Shred the cheese

• Par bake your crust

• Combine eggs, milk, salt, pepper, onion powder and whip it, whip it good.

• Layer the bacon and and cheese on the partly baked crust (the fat helps protect the bottom layer from moisture)

• Spread out the spinach and onion and last bit of cheese

• Pour egg over everything, keeping in mind it will expand

• Bake at 375F for 30 to 45 minutes

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Back in February, I made some jalapeño poppers, and ended up talking about how their culinary cousin is a dish known as Chile Relleno. So naturally I decided to cook some.

Chile Relleno translates to literally, stuffed pepper. Peppers were, after all, a new world crop, and have a long history with the people of Mexico who no doubt stuffed them with tasty fillings for centuries.

The pepper is a natural bowl for holding food, so it’s not surprising to find stuffed peppers in the Mediterranean basin, (not unlike this Greek-inspired stuffed pepper I cooked up a few months back). A lot is owed to the Ottoman Empire in this regard, but we aren’t digressing that far afield tonight.

Stuffed peppers in Medico typically use a poblano pepper, a dark green pepper 4 to 6 inches long and about 2 or so inches in diameter near the stem and coming coming to a point that reminds me of the hats that gnomes wear. The Poblano originates in the Puebla state in Mexico, (also known for mole poblano, one of the best known mole sauces).

Puebla has several traditional stuffed pepper dishes, such as Chiles en nogada, a dish where the pepper is stuffed with ground meat, fruits, spices, and has a walnut-based cream sauce on top with pomegranate seeds. However, certainly in the United States, a chile relleno is a recipe with a poblano pepper stuffed with cheese, battered with flour and egg, deep-fried, and served with a sauce made from roasted tomato and onion. A Tex-Mex variation is often topped with cheese and placed under a salamander broiler to make that melty gooey goodness, and served with rice and beans to become a complete meal.

Much to the surprise of my wife, I wasn’t attempting to recreate the Tex-Mex version that’s fairly common as the go-to vegetarian item in taco shops around the city. Instead, I was going for what is typical in the southwest. new Mexico, for instance, takes the dish so seriously they even invented a New Mexican chile just for the task (I was using old fashioned poblanos). Instead of a big pile of cheese with a pepper hidden underneath, I was looking to highlight the pepper itself and the roasted salsa underneath it.

The traditional stuffing for Chile Rellenos is just cheese, but since I had ground pork leftover from making the epic dumpling lasagna, and also because I was following this recipe that included ground pork, we stuffed up the peppers with a mixture that included cheese and meat.

I actually just followed the recipe from J. Kenji López-Alt this week, so I don’t have an original variation to go alongside this. However, in the post-mortem, I can acknowledge two mistakes.

First, I didn’t see the bit about adding water or broth to the sauce, so mine never really sauced up. It stayed a bit chunkier, which was totally fine and also makes a great salsa. I would probably modify this sauce to bring out more umami flavors and add some acid. Winter tomatoes! What can you do.

The second mistake I made was in mixing the batter. I didn’t realize I needed to separate the eggs. So I didn’t end up making stiff peaks out of the whites, which would have obviously changed the consistency of the batter significantly while frying. My batter just didn’t stick well enough.

Despite these foibles, they tasted absolutely amazing. I definitely want to replicate this again, maybe correctly following the instructions. I’d also love to try the cheese-only filling some time. And of course, we served it with a side of Rancho Gordo beans.

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Opening day means one thing: new abominations to eat at the baseball stadium. I went through all the newly announce stadium dishes and compiled a big long list of what to eat, and what not to eat.

Tomato Season

launched a new food-focused web magazine, Tomato Tomato, featuring food stories. There’s a great mix of topics, food related of course, and I happen to know some of the authors with bylines. My friend examines food writers writing fiction, and Layla Schlack, (who commissioned my piece on San Gennaro) comes to the defense of 30-minute meals. There’s a bunch of other great pieces, like a nod to the Williamsburg sandwich shop Saltie and tomato martinis.

…And Speaking of Alicia Kennedy

Now is good time to mention that Kennedy has a new book, On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, an exploration of her journey “from eater to cook.” I previously reviewed her debut, No Meat Required: A Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating, which looks back at how Americans came to fall in (and sometimes out of) love with vegan cuisine.

Big Pancake Season

The latest diner food trend is apparently extra fat pancakes. Bettina Makalintal looks into why puffy pancakes are suddenly on the rise.

Hot Chocolate

A batch of chocolate has been recalled because it has undisclosed amounts of a pharmaceutical common in sex enhancement drugs.

KitKat Heist Marketing

12 tons of KitKat’s official F1 chocolate bars were stolen in Italy. Now, all the cool brands are putting out social media content to exploit the theft.

A New Pies-N-Thighs

New York’s Pies-N-Thighs is opening a second location, reports Melissa McCart at Eater. The petite restaurant on the Williamsburg waterfront has played an outsized roll in New York’s culinary history. Not only was it instrumental in fried chicken fad that swept the city in the aughts, but was where the famed started out baking biscuits. We stopped in last year and the original spot was still humming.

Is Froyo Back?

The Infatuation claims froyo is going trend this year. Sure, that’s what I was saying back in 2024 when I was pitching out the history of Tasti-D-Lite. After a few rejections, I wrote the article anyway and posted it on blog. 29,000 pageviews later, I think I can say I was right.

Inflation Comes for Iceland’s Hot Dogs

As a hot dog enthusiast, I can say the small island nation has some excellent choices. But apparently this long inexpensive food has seen prices rise quickly, but its a still a cheaper alternative to proper sit-down restaurants.

Take me out to the ballgame, just don’t buy me any Cracker Jacks. And why would you want a box of stale caramel-covered popcorn when America’s baseball stadiums are now a gourmand’s delight?

Stadium food has advanced quite a bit since 1901 when the first hot dogs were sold at a New York Giants game. According to Christopher Cumo in Foods That Changed History, the April game was chilly, and fans bought the “hot” dogs to stay warm. Now the Giants play in San Francisco, and baseball stadium hot dogs cost much more than $0.05.

The hot new scam this year is a 9-9-9 challenge where fans are dared to sit through nine innings of gameplay, eat nine hot dogs, and drink nine beers before driving home. Competitive food eater Joey Chestnut teamed up with Aramark, the food conglomerate responsible for many of the abominations you’ll find below, to offer a big box of hot dogs and mini beers in commemorative glasses. A better challenge is to grab one of these before beer sales are cut off in the 7th Inning. Of course, if MLB really wanted a challenge, I dare them to bring back the 10 Cent Beer Night.

Here’s a guide of what to eat when you’re getting hungry at a Major League Baseballs stadium this year.

The 2026 Baseball Stadium Food Guide

The Mets / Citi Field

This year Citi Field has some new vendors like Napoli Pizza Co and Eat in the Cave, a Puerto Rican food truck from… New Jersey? Eater has a run down of the new and best foods in Queens, including a rotating selection of food Trucks. has a good look at this year’s new foods. He’s a fan of the the Chiddy Cheesesteak Square (steak, onions, wiz, mozzarella, provolone), Chopped Cheese (Romaine, tomato, house sauce) and Loaded Cornbread (pulled pork, cheddar cheese sauce, BBQ sauce). Altogether, there are 37 new items being added to the Citi Field Menus.

Brewers / American Family Field

There’s a new concession called Fair Foods featuring what Wisconsin is best known for, which is state fair-style dishes. There will be deep-fried kringle, corn dogs, and nachos on a stick. (If you’re wondering, a Kringle is a Nordic pastry popular in the midwest). There’s also an al Pastor topped hot dog.

Los Angeles Angels / Angels Stadium

The Chomp Stop at Angels Stadium is a PAC-MAN themed treat stop next to the arcade, and will feature Dole Whip in plastic PAC-MAN ball hats. Elsewhere, new menu items include pork chile mac and cheese and a Dubai chocolate strawberry waffle, plus there are plans for bespoke menu items inspired by visiting teams, but those aren’t available yet.

St. Louis Cardinals / Busch Stadium

Local eateries are being featured in the stadium this year and for landlocked St. Louis, it appears cuisines of the Pacific are a popular addition with Hawaiian, the Philippines, and Korean getting added to the lineup. There will also be an all-you-can-eat experience known as Coca-Cola Unlimited where customers can dine on more ordinary ballpark foods and sip Coca Cola in unlimited quantities.

Arizona Diamondbacks / Chase Field

The stadium here is known for a “churro dog” which is a play on hot dogs where the dog is replaced with a churro. While this might sound like a carb-on-carb crime, they’re doubling down this year with the introduction of an Oreo Explosion Churro Dog. Meanwhile, in less sugar-focused dishes, the Big Bella Sandwich combines pistachio cream with savory mortadella and mozzarella. And if that isn’t enough, there are foot-long corn dogs and burnt ends mac and cheese. Why is everyone in baseball so obsessed at hot dog length?

Phillies / Citizens Bank Park

The Phillies are naming food for players. The new items include Sánchez Sliders (chicken sliders with honey and hot spice served on potatoes rolls), Kyle Schwarbomb Sundae (vanilla ice cream, funnel cake, deep-fried strawberry uncrustable), Jesús Luzardo’s special cheesesteak (ribeye, pizza sauce, provolone, and provolone). The Schwarbomb Sundae has been enjoying a tremendous amount of publicity, presumably because the colorful crispy crunches are great in social media photos.

Detroit Tigers / Comerica Park

Detroit fans will get to sample an unlikely fusion — pierogi nachos. Served in a baseball cap bowl, the Polish dumplings are topped with queso, kielbasa, sauerkraut and caramelized onions. There’s also a foot-long corn dog, giant turkey leg, and a short rib sandwich.

Rockies / Coors Field

Lots of stadiums have foot-long hot dogs, but not many measure their dogs in pounds. Coors Field has a one-pound hot dog, a Glizzilla, topped with mac and cheese. There’s also a new abomination known as a pizza donut. The picture shows donuts topped with red sauce, cheese, and presumably a dash of pesto sauce, but the ad copy only describes this as “two donuts served together.” Literally nobody is talking about how these things taste, which makes me think they taste exactly how you imagine it does.

Red Sox / Fenway

The hot new dish this year in Bean town is Lobstah Poutine, and it comes in a little paper boat (meanwhile, Lobster rolls are pushing $50 a piece). There’s also an over priced surf and turf hot dog featuring Kobe Beef, and you might have guessed, lobster meat.

Houston Astro / Daikin Park

I hope you like onions. Onion Station will offer onion rings three different ways. Are they even trying in Houston? Well, yes. There’s also a brisket doughnut topped with macaroni and cheese and barbecue sauce that would have been the perfect candidate for the mid-2000s blog, This Is Why You’re Fat. The Texas kolache gets remade as a special “Crawlache”: a pepper jack sausage wrapped in puff pastry. And since no baseball game would be complete without a hot dog, there’s a Banh Mi Dog topped with daikon, bacon, cilantro, and Sriracha aioli.

Los Angeles Dodgers / Dodger Stadium

The new food offerings in Los Angeles feel like a marketing word salad, like introducing a cochinita pibil bone marrow taco and Char siu pork loaded fries. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with building a taco out of slow roasted, Yucatán-style pork and topping it with bone marrow, only that it feels like someone really just wanted to create an SEO menu item. The other options, like a Chow Mein Burrito and a “lunch box burger” with peanut butter, jelly, candied sriracha bacon, and pepper jack cheese, are catering to adults with a child-like palate. On the other hand, who doesn’t want tin koala-themed lunch box?

Texas Rangers / Globe Life Field

Fifty years ago, the Texas Rangers helped introduce the world to ballpark nachos. Amy McCarthy at Texas Monthly looks into the history of stadium snack, introduced in 1976 at Arlington Stadium. Despite that important piece of food history, the Texas Rangers current home isn’t as enthusiastic about food. Last year they introduced Arlington Alley, a food court, and new for 2026 is a London-style pub and a Tex-Mex restaurant. This is all so uninspiring I really have no way to jazz it up. I guess people attend Rangers games for the actual baseball?

Cincinnati Reds / Great American Ball Park

Donuts seem to be on trend this year, and Cincinnati is no exception with a “DoublePlay Donut Parfait” featuring banana pudding, vanilla wafers, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and whipped cream. There’s some meaty BBQ options too like the Stadium Burnt Ends (fried sausage chunks, with BBQ sauce, pickled onions), Brisket Street Corn Bowl (brisket, street corn, pickled onions, Cotija cheese and BBQ sauce), and Cincy Heat (smoked sausage, onions and peppers). Vegetarians are getting some options here as well like the Frito Cili Fry Box (vegetarian chili, cheese sauce, Fritos) and Tofuego Tacos (tofu, jalapeno aioli, cotija cheese, pickled onions).

KC Royals / Kauffman Stadium

The big news is a S’mores Quesadilla made with Nutella, fluff, graham crackers and strawberry and coconut pico, which is a made up name for pico de gallo. Personally I always thought the defining characteristic of a quesadilla was the cheese, but what do I know? And while some people might say a corn dog already is a hot dog Wellington, the folks in Kansas City are classing up the old fashioned hot dog by making it into an actual Wellington inspired by Gordon Ramsay’s traditional recipe: prosciutto, mushrooms, a foot long hot dog, wrapped in a pastry. Other new items include chicken bits in a waffle cone, pork katsu sandwich, and loaded corn dogs. The loaded corn dog options include elotes style, pepperoni pizza, and a beef short served on top of truffle mac and cheese.

Marlins / LoanDepot Park

They “hit it out of the park” with the new food according to Jason Carter at the local nightly news. New items include mac and cheese, tuna and salmon poke bowls, and vegan seaweed salad. To be honest, his news report really illustrates why he’s a minor league reporter (I thought we were into puns, Jason?). Apparently there are also some new hot dogs too. Jason’s reporting was a bit light on information, and somehow the local news missed the two-foot long “Machete,” an enormous taco-like dish filled with carne asada, pepper sauce, salsa verde, Oaxaca and mozzarella. It’s so big it needs its own customized box.

Nationals / Nationals Park

Eater has a rundown of the new vendors, which is surprising since I didn’t think Eater still had any writers working for the publication. Some of the highlights are Churros from Don Churro and a crab mac and cheese hot dog. The big news is cheaper beer, but at $9 its not exactly cheap. At least there is a bigger kid’s zone where you can drop the kids while you get buzzed.

Giants / Oracle Park

Miniaturized water coolers are all the rage in California. The Dodgers have a water cooler filled with watermelon habanero margaritas, while in San Francisco, cocktails at the Promenade Club come in a a black and orange mini cooler. There’s also a hot dog served with black and orange sauerkraut. I’m getting the impression the Giants are color coded black and orange? Anyway, there’s also a grilled cheese filled with Birria taco meat served on sourdough and a char siu hot dog.

Orioles / Camden Yards

The richy riches who fork over $15,000 for 40 games will be treated to a special complimentary dining experience, but apparently that’s still being workshopped. Meanwhile, the plebs will be able to try a handful of new dishes like the blue crab smash tacos and the Big Scrap Burger. The Big Scrap is a double patty burger with cheese and fried scrapple, though I suggest pre-booking an appointment at the Hopkins Heart and Vascular Institute first. The B’More Yak (Stir fried Udon, Shrimp, Onions, soy sauce, hard boiled egg, and green onions and a hot dog) is apparently a swing and a miss because of that hot dog.

San Diego Padres / Petco Park

It’s funny how some stadiums just don’t seem to understand food can be an important part of the baseball experience. The Padres are introducing Pretzels with buffalo honey mustard. Wow. There’s also a the Shortstop (braised short rib with Boursin) served with chips. Perhaps the most interesting menu item is a Japanese curry with rice and cheese fries. The Gelati and Peccati’s Mortadella sandwich does look halfway decent.

Pittsburgh Pirates / PNC Park

Everyone is talking about the Nutella filled beignets. I’m not entirely sure what a New Orleans donut has to do with Pittsburgh, but these are topped with caramel and whipped cream. Some of the other new foods are more Pittsburgh-y, like the deconstructed chipped ham sandwich served as loaded French fries (fries topped with chipped ham, cheese sauce, and garlic butter) and the cold pierogi salad (green onion, bacon, sour cream, shredded cheese, garlic powder). You can’t spell baseball without hot dog. There’s a Boricua dog (mustard, ketchup sofrito beef, onions, sauerkraut, potato sticks) and a corn dog topped with pico de gallo.

Cleveland Guardians / Progressive Field

There’s plenty of articles touting Cleveland as having some of the best ballpark food, but not much actually talking about it. The big concern this year is the home opener falls on a Friday during Lent, which theoretically rules out eating a hot dog. If they have any food items this year, they forgot to tell anybody.

White Sox / Rate Field

Two years ago, the stadium introduced a viral milkshake. The Campfire Milkshake (White Sox mug, chocolate sauce rim, chocolate ice cream, chocolate syrup, Graham crackers dust, malted milk powder, whole milk, chocolate chips, marshmallows, whipped cream, Hershey’s bars), returns for a third season, but this time is bigger and comes with two straws. The Chicago Tribune reports there is a Tonkatsu dog (hot dog, panko Japanese mayo, teriyaki sauce, and bonita flakes) and Italian Scallion (pepperoni prosciutto, and ham sandwich). But wait, there’s more! You’ll of course be able to find the traditional Chicago style hot dog, but also a The Fajita Dog (onions, peppers, and avocado cream) and Arepa Burger (Arepas, pork belly, coleslaw).

Blue Jays / Rogers Centre

Nothing here seems particularly inspiring here, but BlueJaysNation has a run down of the what’s coming to the stadium. The most noteworthy might be the Uncrustables French Toast (cinnamon, whipped cream). It’s a new branded item that seems like an odd collab for a baseball stadium. Another dish of interest is the Bulgogi french fries. These are loaded fries topped with Korean beef, which says more about the growing interest in Korean cuisine across North America than anything else. There’s two hot dogs on offer, an Al Pastor Dog (pork, pineapple, and chili peppers) and the mascot’s Ace Dog (nacho cheese, chips, onions and something red). And what looks like anti-Italian discrimination, there’s a bowl of garlic knots and a meatball panini.

Athletics / Las Vegas

The Athletics are playing the majority of their home games at Sutter Health Park while awaiting their new $2b facility in Las Vegas. But before that is finished, they’ll play 6 games of the 2026 season at the minor league stadium ordinarily home to the Las Vegas Aviators. So what can fans expect? It’s not a Major League Stadium, but the usual hot dogs, Dippin’ Dots, and Snow cones are available. There’s also BBQ Mexicana with burned ends burritos and a custom collection of hot dogs which sounds like something you trade on Ebay.

Seattle Mariners / T-Mobile Park

The Mariners are serving food in a commemorative ferry but bowl. If the food matters to you (its a commemorative ferry!), there are several options: Crab nachos, cheese and artichoke nachos, crab fries, Old Bay fries, chicken tenders, garlic fries, fish and chips, sidewinder fries, and regular fries. Basically if its something that you can fry, you can probably get it in a ferry. Inspired by the Pike Place Market, Russian bakery Piroshky Piroshky has pastries (beef and cheese, potato and cheese, bacon cheeseburger, chocolate and hazelnut, smoked salmon, Japapeno sausage). Hawaiian-inspired restaurant Marination is serving up purple, Ube Coconut Rice Krispy treats. Other highlights include brisket and pulled pork mac and cheese, and Sumo Dogs, Japanese-inspired hot dogs. The Mariners might just have the best looking food options in the entire MLB.

Minnesota Twins / Target Field

The Twins will have $2 pregame beers, which isn’t quite as good as ten cent beers— but almost. Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly 50 cents in 1976 dollars. If they have new food items this year, they’re keeping quiet.

Tampa Bay Rays / Tropicana Field

There are a few new items arriving in Tampa, like Korean corn dog (corn dog, crunchy potato, fontina cheese), pretzel pork Reuben sandwich (pork pastrami, pretzel bun, sauerkraut), and Short rib nachos (short rib, tortilla chips). Pretzels are the in thing with a foot-long hot dog encased in a pretzel, and pretzel bites with a sweet dipping sauce.

Atlanta Braves / Truist Park

Atlanta has fast become a food destination incorporating different cuisines and styles, and the ballpark situation is no different. This year the Braves are bringing some new treats to the menu, like peach cobbler egg rolls. The big news, literally, is the Bat Flip, a burger made with two pounds of meat, braised short ribs, pulled pork, and topped with a fried egg. There’s also a few different kinds of upscale hot pockets, like The Baffle, a sandwich made in a waffle press and filled with brisket, or The Walkoff, a hot pocket filled with marinara, braised pork, meatballs, and cheese. Speaking of abominations, there’s a Blooperito (a burrito filled with chipotle beef and deep fried).

Cubs / Wrigley Field

Most of what is happening in Chicago at least looks like people are having fun. The Bao Wow Dog (hot dog, bao bun, tempura peppers) for instance comes across as whimsical. The Tostada Stack (Hatch green chile, refried beans, ques fresco, pico de Gallo, crema, fried egg) seems entirely impractical to eat while seated in a stadium. But who cares about practicality? We’re watching grown men hit balls with a bat. And to give the sweet and savory crowd a run for their money, there’s chicken and churros. I actually can’t believe this doesn’t already exist. For a more practical snack, the Double Diamond Waffle Fries have braised short ribs and fontina cheese, topped with bacon, fried onions and scallions, but are served in a little paper bowl.

Yankees / Yankee Stadium (UPDATED)

Are the Yankees putting out new food this year? Maybe. Or perhaps they’ll just serve some cold McDonalds. The Yankees have at last unveiled their food abominations, like their dessert fried chicken. It looks like fried chicken, but is actually ice cream. For something more savory, the stadium unveiled dumplings — mac and cheese, chicken parm, bacon cheeseburger, and for the sweet tooth, Apple pie (at a certain point, isn’t that just a pie pocket?). The pastrami fries topped with pickles and pastrami look pretty good too.

“I was skeptical but it’s actually really good,” my wife said. We were in the middle of eating my version of the viral dumpling lasagna.

I’m no stranger to internet-famous lasagna. A few years back I cooked up my own version of Don Angie’s Spiral Lasagna, a three-day odyssey where I tamed the epic monument to Italian American excess. So naturally when I heard about a new viral TikTok fad that involved “lasagna” and “dumpling,” I wanted to give it a go.

I’ll admit, I first came across a version of this served to me while doomscrolling on Instagram. I shared the video with my wife, and then this version with whole dumplings and a curry peanut butter sauce.

This latter video set off the debate: layered lasagna or whole dumplings? My wife wanted to go with a recipe that used whole dumplings layered together in a lasagna tray. I wanted to layer in meat and wonton wrappers. Since I was the one headed to the grocery store, I won. Besides, I spent the morning reading through recipes for the viral dumpling lasagna, like this one at All Recipes, but also this one, this other one, and still another one. Just about everyone agreed: meat, wonton wrappers, repeat.

That’s an excellent segue to talk about wontons. In Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, Andrew Coe explains wontons as a type of bing, a dumpling popular in China since the medieval era, and Coe notes, “in Cantonese, the word wantan is written out as “cloud-swallowing”.” He also explained that during the Tang Dynasty (608-907 CE), there was an evolution of bing, where a distinction between dumplings and noodles (mian) became defined as distinctive foods.

Fast forward a few centuries and multiple empires, and Chinese cuisine began to spread across the United States. Especially during the post-war period, wonton wrappers became integrated into new Americanized dishes like cheesesteak egg rolls around Philadelphia and crab rangoon. Chinese cuisine, as Jennifer 8 Lee succinctly sums up in The Fortune Cooke Chronicles, “is not a set of dishes. It is a philosophy that serves local tastes and ingredients.”

It was inevitable, too, that Chinese and Italian cuisine should meet, which is why in places like Boston Chinese restaurants serve Peking Ravioli (similar to a fried wonton). And elsewhere, one of the nation’s greatest culinary achievements: the pizza egg roll. It was so good, it was invented twice. First, a Minnesota man who returned from the war and had built a business producing canned Chinese Food developed a pizza egg roll using his wonton wrapper machine. His company was eventually sold and the product became known as Totino’s Pizza Rolls. Meanwhile, in Buffalo, America’s finger food capital, one family has been manufacturing pizza logs, another pizza-filled egg roll treat, for decades.

Considering how intertwined Chinese and Italian cuisines have become in America, it’s surprising that it has taken this long for a dumpling-lasagana collab. Baked Italian lasagna and Italian dumplings are culinary siblings afterall, both using sheets of fresh lasagna in their creation. Baked lasagna is one of the oldest preparations for Italian pasta, and as for Ravioli, they were widely consumed by the Renaissance era. Antonio Latini, author of the 17th century Italian cookery book, Lo Scalco alla Moderna, mentions that by his time, regional Ravioli styles were popular across the peninsula.

So how did these two delicious foods merge in a TikTok sensation? It all started with April Liang posting to her Instagram and TikTok late last year a recipe she created to turn her favorite soup dumpling flavors into a lasagna. In her video, she makes individualized portions in a personal-sized ramekin. Her version also includes steaming the dish in a pot of water.

In the weeks that followed, she racked up tens of thousands of views, and spawned dozens of imitations. The recipe began to evolve. Chile crisp started becoming a big part of the recipe, and then full pan lasagna’s developed. Perhaps not unexpectedly, a few weeks ago, the almighty algorithm began feeding me videos of people making variations on the dumpling lasagna, and that’s when I sent the videos to my wife.

Making the dumpling lasagna was actually a very easy task (much easier than the three days I spent making Don Angie’s Spiral Lasagna). After tasting it, we agreed it was the kind of dish that might show up once or twice a year. The ease of cooking and cleanup certainly helped.

The only problem now is figuring out what to do with the leftover wonton wrappers.

Viral Dumpling Lasagna (Ian's Version)

INGREDIENTS

• 1lb ground pork

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 3 garlic gloves ground

• 2 teaspoons ground ginger

• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

• 2 teaspoons sesame oil

• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce

• 1-2 cups shredded cabbage

• 18 scallions

• Wonton wrappers (8 to 12 depending on size)

• ½ cup water

• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

• Chile Crisp

INSTRUCTIONS

• Chop scallions, reserving ⅓

• Combine pork, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, oil, oyster sauce, cabbage, scallions

• Season with salt, pepper, (sichuon pepper, too)

• Mix ingredients well

• Layer half of mixture into a baking dish

• Layer wonton wrappers over it evenly

• Add another layer of meat

• Top with wontons

• Pour ½ cup of water over the dish

• Bake at 350F for 20 to 30 minutes (until meat hist 160 degrees and wontons are golden)

• Remove from oven and rest for 5 minutes

• Top with chile crisp, toasted sesame seeds, and reserved scallions

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Maple Season

Spring is when the maple sap begins to flow. Harvested from trees in New England, Canada, and upstate New York, the sugary tree juice doesn’t become syrup until processed in sugar houses. Kathleen M Mangan tours around Vermont checking in on the process for Food & Wine.

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The Enduring Cookbook

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Hannah Montana Doesn’t Like Raspberries

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Last week, everyone was talking about meatballs, so I went ahead and cooked up some Polpettone di melanzane, meatless eggplant meatballs.

My wife announced she saw a controversy on the interwebs: meatballs were complicated; meatballs were gross; nobody can cook a meatball without it falling apart. She wanted to prove them wrong, so she suggested we cook meatballs.

All the meatball discourse originated with ’s latest piece in Slate. (I swear I’m not stalking Palumbo, even if this is the second time I mentioned him this month). One of his readers was having trouble making ’s Goodbye Meatballs, and failed, in part because of the not-so-descriptive description for mixing the meaty mixture. The people were confused.

We decided we want to challenge the idea that meatballs are difficult to make.

Since we make a lot of meatballs with tomato sauce, I spent a few minutes researching other types of meatballs, like Greek-style lamb meatballs, or one of my favorite, Dutch Bitterballen, a deep fried delicacy often prepared with horsemeat. Unfortunately, minced horsemeat isn’t so eay to come by in Brooklyn, so I opted for a Danish Meatball recipe instead.

Danish meatballs, frikadeller, are pretty much just Swedish meatballs, köttbullar. These Nordics take their balls seriously though, and both Sweden and Denmark provide official recipes on their national websites. I didn’t give too much scrutiny to the differences, but one poster on Reddit says the main variation is the Swedes use breadcrumbs while the Danes prefer flour. Amazingly the recipe I referenced called for both.

The actual meatball mix itself isn’t all that different from an Italian American style meatball, combining pork and beef and a similar spice profile. Apparently this part is confusing to people. I’ll admit I don’t write instructions that are very detailed, so to avoid any confusion, you should squeeze the meat between your fingers over and over again until the different ingredients are evenly spread out. Let that meat ooze between your fingers like children’s slime.

Here’s my hot tip: use a cheese grater for your onions. Chopping up the onion will leave many pieces a bit thick, but running the onion over the grater will produce a fine oniony paste that combines will with the meat.

Meanwhile, the real difference between frikadeller and red sauce meatballs, is in in prepping the sauce. The Danish recipe calls for building a creamy, brownish sauce with a roux and pan drippings, with a flavor similar to what you find in the cafeteria of Swedish furniture maker IKEA. (After cooking this up, I’m convinced a bit of mustard integrated into the cream sauce would greatly improve overall flavor).

Don’t worry, I know what you were thinking: this was supposed to be about eggplant meatballs. And we’re getting to them.

We started cooking dinner with the whole premise proving how wrong everyone was about the difficulty of cooking meatballs. So I decided to double down and cook a vegetable ball alongside the meaty ones.

Polpettone di melanzane is a typical dish from the area around Genoa, although I also came across recipes citing Catalan cuisine, and similar dishes across the Mediterranean. After reviewing a few recipes, I settled on Mangia with Michelle’s as a primary reference point.

The recipe requires roasting the eggplants in their skins and then peeling out the soft flesh, creating a softer paste. I put our four-year-old to work poking them with a fork which seemed like a safe activity until he nearly stabbed my hand. The holes help the steam escape and prevents them from exploding. I don’t recommend letting them explode unless you enjoying peeling charred pieces off the inside of your oven.

My eggplant was wetter inside than I wanted, and I probably should have done a better job of straining them after cooking. I had to add extra starch to thicken the paste enough to form into a shape. If I was hoping to demonstrate how easy meatballs were by making meatless meatballs, I was failing.

My eggplant balls turned out to be more like croquettes. Pan frying them they lost a bit of the spherical shape. Ultimately I served these with a bit of quickly assembled tomato sauce.

Sort of Easy-To-Make Meatless Meatballs Made of Eggplant.

INGREDIENTS

• Two Italian Eggplants

• One onion

• 4 - 5 oz grated parmesan

• 2 eggs

• 1 Cup breadcrumbs

• ½ to 1 cup flour to feel

• Pinch of garlic powder

• Pinch of crushed red pepper

• Salt and pepper

• Olive oil for frying

INSTRUCTIONS

• Poke holes in the eggplants

• Roast eggplants for 30 to 40 minutes at 400F

• Remove skins

• Drain in a strainer

• Chop onion

• Pulverize in eggplant and onion in food processor until smooth

• Season salt, pepper, garlic powder, crushed red pepper

• Blitz in processor

• Add breadcrumbs and a bit of flour

• Blitz

• Add a bit more flour until the mixture holds its shape

• Fry in olive oil

• Serve with a quick spicy tomato sauce

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The War on Foie Gras

A New York court has decided decimating the Hudson Valley’s economy and depriving New York City diners of the pleasures of foie gras is legal, clearing a court challenge to a controversial city law banning one of the world’s greatest delicacies. I am of course talking about the city’s 2019 foie gras ban. The delicious liver product was banned by the city council after intense lobbying from special interest groups. Producers upstate challenged the law fearing a collapse of one of the nation’s largest markets for Hudson Valley Foie Gras. Around the same time NYC Democrats were banning foie gras, Republicans like Sebastian Gorka were saying Democrats want to take away people’s hamburgers. The city council played right into Gorka’s hand. Just because fewer people eat foie gras than hamburgers doesn’t make it good policy to ban one and not the other. Industrial beef is less humane, and less healthy, than feeding ducks a lot of corn. More to the point, if Democrats can ban foie gras, nothing stops them banning hamburgers. Its the slippery slope of the nanny state. Luckily, there remains one more case protecting us from the tyranny of vegans.

Hot Tickets for Hot Dogs

Feltman: World’s First Hot Dog, a one-man showing starring Michael Quinn and directed by Peter Michael Marino has a limited run this week in Manhattan. As an avid hot dog enthusiast, I think we need more one-person shows about hot dogs.

Eating at The Red Flame

The Red Flame Diner in midtown was a regular stop when I worked across the street. Then the pandemic closed the office, and the restaurant almost shut down. We recently went back on a Saturday for lunch.

Best Roast Chicken

Food & Wine compares some famous roasted chicken recipes. I’ve done two of these. Twenty years ago I followed Julia Child’s recipe during my Julie and Julia phase. And more recently I attempted Marcella Hazan’s chicken and two lemons after watching Peter Miller’s documentary, Marcella (I interviewed him about the project). I have to admit that I didn’t get the chicken cooked all the way through and had to return it to the oven (I suspect since I also was roasting cauliflower).

Last Chance for Zeppole

If you’re looking to chow down on Zeppole di San Giuseppe, the fried (and baked) pastries filled with cream and topped with candied fruit, St. Joseph’s Day is on Thursday. The pastries are made in honor of “Italian father’s day”, March 19th. Most pastry shops only make them in the spring through Easter, so if you want to grab one, you better do it soon.

Irish Potatoes, Philly Style

Irish potatoes have popped up a few times across the social medias over the last few weeks. If you’re thinking its a kind of starchy spud, you’re wrong. In Philadelphia, the city best known for greasing light polls in anticipation of sports events, Irish potatoes are candies made from cream cheese, sugar, and coconut. Francesca Giangiulo over at Salon takes a look at where they came from and how to make them.

Starch Madness

Serious Eats is launching a bracket competition for baked goods with categories for cakes, pies and pastries.

Celebrity Soda

Gone are the simpler days of celebrities launching a line of alcoholic beverages. Now everyone’s drinking soda.

Green Foods

St. Patrick’s day brings out everyone’s desire to see their favorite foods turned green like Skyline Chili, bagels, and donuts.

I had leftover grilled chicken and rigatoni sitting in the refrigerator so I decided to whip up an American-style Alfredo sauce for lunch.

The grilled chicken had been seasoned for fajitas the night before. Cumin, in Alfredo sauce? That’s crazy.

If you spend any amount of time on social media talking about food, you’re bound to come across two things: British people angry about Americans using the term “noodles” for pasta; Italians insisting Alfredo sauce is American. These two issues are oddly connected.

The original Fettuccine Alfredo was in fact created in Rome by a chef, Alfredo Di Lelio, around 1908. The simple dish of fresh egg pasta, butter, and cheese was an embellishment of one of the most basic pasta dishes served in Italy. Di Lelio was a showman though, and served his version tableside accompanied by music. But even with this touch of flare, Di Lelio’s dish doesn’t resemble the over-the-top Americanized sauce.

What Americans think of as Alfredo sauce – a creamy, gooey mess of cheese and milk, and cream – was a product of the convenience food movement in the post-war period. What made Di Lelio’s creamy texture was emulsifying the butter and cheese with the starch from the pasta. The dish lends itself to tableside service since it should be served immediately.

But post-war Americans wanted dishes that were easy. It was the dawn of frozen dinners and TV trays. It was an era of better living through the miracle of science and chemistry.

By the 1960s, the simple butter and cheese dish had been transformed. Perhaps the earliest version comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch Noodle company provided as a promotion for their egg noodles. The Alfredo sauce included processed cheese and heavy cream. Among other dishes in their promotion were recipes including chicken and dumplings and even lasagna. These added ingredients created a dish that had more volume, and was easier for unskilled home cooks to make.

And it is with this that we can see the reason Americans refer to pasta as a noodle. German immigrants – the Pennsylvania Dutch – settled in America joining the great melting pot of culinary influences. And the Germans were quite familiar with noodles, known in German as a nudel. How the British, with their German king missed this bit of linguistic history is a curiosity.

Meanwhile, American Alfredo sauce continued its evolution as processed foods became ever more popular. Soon there were frozen pasta dishes with alfredo sauce, packages of powdered sauce, and jars of creamy Alfredo. The term Alfredo came to signify creamy, like a béchamel.

I made this “Alfredo” sauce from scratch. I also knew my leftover fajita chicken would bring all sorts of extra flavor to this creamy dish — and that’s when I realized what the world needed as an in-depth look at the how and why this creamy mess had taken on the name Alfredo.

If I’ve piqued your interest in this history, I wrote up the longer form article over at Red Sauce America.

Fajita Chicken Alfredo And Rigatoni

(serves 1-2)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 Tablespoons butter

• 2 tablespoons flour

• ¾ cup milk

• Dash Onion powder

• Dash Garlic powder

• 4 oz white sharp cheddar

• ¼ cup fresh grate parm

• 1 cup fajita chicken

• Leftover Rigatoni

INSTRUCTIONS

• Melt the butter

• Stir in the flour

• Add the milk and simmer

• Add spices, salt, and black pepper

• Slowly stir in cheddar and parmesan cheese

• When the sauce is smooth, add chicken and pasta

• Stir until chicken and pasta are warmed through.

• Serve immediately before the sauce turns into concrete

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What is “Gamey” Meat Anyway?

The first time I ate elk meat, the menu described it as “gamey.” It was a fine dining establishment with a delicate sauce, and to be honest I’ve had goat meat tacos with a stronger “gamey” flavor. But what the heck is that flavor anyway? Mark Hay at Popular Science examines why, and what the flavor actually is.

Alligator Okay for Lent

If you’re having a hard time giving up meat for Lent, even if its only Fridays, nows a good time to chow down on some alligator because the Church considers it seafood.

The Rise & Fall & Rise Again of Mel’s Diner

Concluding our mid-winter break in Southwest Florida, we ate at Mel’s Diner, a family-owned chain of diners along the west coast that has hosted both Joe Biden and Pete Hegseth. Today just four locations remaining, but at its peak, Mel’s boasted 11 locations across 120 miles. Here’s what happened.

Restaurant Voyeurs

It’s dinner and a show with the food prep as the entertainment. Over at Taste, Stephen Bradley examines how open-plan restaurant kitchens are changing the way things are done. I’ll say that I absolutely enjoy watching chefs cook dinner. The best experience was the Chef’s table at Beluga Loves You in Maastricht where we literally were in the kitchen.

The Prepping Pantry

With the specter of World War III on the horizon, more people are prepping for survival. Frida Garza suggests packing up a little treat, too, because who wants to live life with nothing by tinned fish?

Alison Roman’s Meatballs

Alison Roman went on the Today show to talk about her Goodbye Meatballs, which is a whole thing if you’re a follower of the Alison Roman universe, but the real story here is she’s friends with Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls fame. Daytime TV is almost unwatchable, but Graham and Roman are charming.

High Food Prices Going Higher

If you thought food was expensive now, just wait until the rapidly rising cost of oil pushes them further. Bombing Iran doesn’t just mean higher gasoline prices. Petroleum is important to all sorts of products used in the food supply chain. Al Jazeera has a explainer.

Is Cottage Cheese Worth The Hype?

TikTok has been going wild for cottage cheese. The viral videos are even leading to shortages. But is it actually healthy? The Independent takes a look at some of those claims. Personally I never touch the stuff. A good ricotta on the other hand, and I’ll be eating by the spoonful.

Last week everyone was talking about French Onion soup, so I decided to turn it into a pasta sauce.

I day started out the contemplating a dish that was as easy as red sauce but a totally different flavor profile. What about onions, I thought to myself, surely these lowly root vegetables could be easy to make. I was thinking about a variation of Alison Roman’s shallot pasta dish, but different. That’s when it struck me. If I could soupify Cavatelli and Broccoli, surely I could pasta-fy a soup.

Turning French Onion soup into a pasta wasn’t an original idea. A quick Yahoo! (jk, I used Google) of the web revealed a few recipes, and I looked over this one for ingredient inspiration. Off to the grocery store I went.

Onion soup dates date back to ancient Greece and Rome, though of bread and melted cheese is probably a Medieval era addition. What really helped make this a popular, inexpensive dish was the development beef bouillon cubes.

There are early English cookbooks with recipes for dehydrated soups as early as 1694. These aren’t exactly bouillon cubes we use today, which came later. Napoleon Bonaparte relied on a version of bouillon to his armies fed, and by the middle of the 19th century, industrialization had created an inexpensive product available to everyone.

French Onion Soup gained traction in post-war America with a reputation as a low cost, delicious, and filling dish. For example this 1947 article from an Oklahoma newspaper describing it as “stimulating, satisfying, and easily digested.” By the 1960s it was becoming a standard both in restaurants and home cooks. It helped too that Julia Child taught America how to make it on her PBS show, and the simple soup added a bit of European exoticism to the otherwise pre-made American diet.

The actual soup version of French Onion Soup isn’t hard to make and we’ve done it before. It’s better with Gruyère cheese cheese and an oven safe ramekin. We use vintage pyrex bowls.

I didn’t want soup. I wanted a pasta dish. The temperature had dropped outside again. (De Blasio was right about that Groundhog).

Pasta-fying French Onion Soup proved to be a true one-pot meal making clean up easy, and since the savory dish proved delicious, we agreed it deserved a spot in the semi-regular rotation.

Pastafied French Onion Soup

INGREDIENTS

• 4 onions

• 2 cloves garlic

• 8 oz white mushrooms

• 8 oz baby Bella

• 2 tablespoons butter (swap for more olive oil for a vegan alternative)

• Dash onion powder

• Dash garlic powder

• Splash lemon juice

• 33 oz beef stock (Swap for mushroom stock for a vegetarian alternative)

• Pasta

INSTRUCTIONS

• Thinly slice the onions lengthwise

• Slowly Caramelize onions (this will take longer than any recipe suggests unless you use a mandolin to make paper thin onion)

• Finely chop garlic

• Slice mushrooms

• When onions have caramelized, add butter, mushrooms and garlic

• Season with onion powder, garlic, salt, and pepper

• Splash in lemon juice

• Add beef stock and simmer for a minute or two until it comes back to temperature

• Add pasta and cook

• Add a splash of water if the moisture level gets too dry before pasta is cooked

• Serve with Parmigiano cheese.

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McDonald’s Claws At Relevancy With Viral Video

To promote the new Big Arch burger, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski posted a now viral video of himself eating a the new “product.” Kempczinski unfortunately has all the charisma of an undercooked French fry. Add to that the way he nibbles at the big burger, holds the thing with two hands like Donald Trump drinks water, and referrs to the product as “the product,” and you might be tempted into thinking the entire comms team was soon fired for this gaff. And then you realize its the first time in decades anyone is talking about eating McDonald’s, like BuzzFeed Editor Tom Gara and New Yorker food writer Helen Rosner. We can sit around debating whether debasing your brand and CEO for a hot second promoting a new product thing burger is worthwhile, but you can bet people will be eating it because of dumb video. Even McDonald’s is having fun with how bad the video was. Meanwhile, the social team at rival Burger King posted a video of an actual human eating an actual BK burger.

Men Eat Manly Meats

The Gen Z boys are apparently chowing down on ground beef as easy to suck down gobs of protein. These proteinmaxxing body builders are chasing the dream of big muscles and lean fat. It’s never a bad idea to remind everyone the human brain doesn’t full mature until your late 20s. I was going to make a joke about how this trend is somehow better than eating Soylent (It’s people!), but apparently, the little boys are still sucking down meal replacement drinks, too. As a middle-aged man, I’ve come to realize proteinmaxxing is a young man’s. Besides, any creeping past 40 should be focused on fibermaxxing.

Eating In Florida

We spent mid-winter break in southwest Florida where we did some eating, like Wayan Miami, an Indonesian restaurant from Cédric Vongerichten and his wife, Ochi. We also had some gas station tacos while on the way to Miami.

The History of American Alfredo Sauce

I was getting tired of arguing with Americans that Alfredo sauce has anything but butter and cheese, and with Italians that Alfredo sauce doesn’t come from Italy. So I wrote up a history of American Alfredo sauce, the story of how it went from a basic sauce in Rome to the foundational flavor of everything creamy.

Is Alfredo Sauce Dead?

Meanwhile, over at Slate, , took a look at why Fettuccine Alfredo is suddenly hard to find in Italian American red sauce restaurants.

Chefs Wanting Work Life Balance Bring Good Food To Small Towns

One of the tragedies of small town life is typically the lack of good dining options. But Bon Appétit has found some exceptions as younger chefs are trading in the high stress of operating in New York City for small town life — and bringing their talents with them were lower overhead means less stress.

Whole Foods Finally Opens

The Whole Foods Daily Shop that I’ve been waiting eagerly to open for the last 12 weeks finally swung open their doors last Wednesday. I snagged myself a collectible tote bag and a free lemon poppy cake. The store adds another option to the neighborhood, but like every other supermarket, lacks a handful of items deemed essential, so we’ll still continue alternating between different stores based on what we need in the moment.

With NYC schools on a mid-winter break, we headed to southwest Florida where my in-laws could watch our four-year-old, so naturally we entered the local HOA’s chili cookoff contest.

The winter population of southwest Florida heavily skews towards retirees from the midwest who consider black pepper spicy and garlic some kind of ethnic food. Despite these limitations, I decided to cook up an Asian-inspired chili flavored with hot peppers and Chinese five spice.

The earliest cooking contests aren’t anything new. I’ve seen references to imperial cooks competing in ancient Rome and during the renaissance. One interesting contest dates to Medieval Iraq where the Caliphs, or local regional rulers, had a fondness for flavorful foods. In the 9th century, caliph al-Maʾmūn faced off against his brother, Muʿtaṣim, in what historian Nawal Nasrallah described as an “Iron Chef of Medieval Times.

Muʿtaṣim dish smelled delicious, at least until al-Maʾmūn’s cooking assistant Ibāda convinced Muʿtaṣim to add some additional ingredients, resulting in something unpleasant. Muʿtaṣim ended up with the last laugh however, when he became Caliph and exiled the assistant, Ibāda.

Chefs have long been the purview of kings and queens, and while these high level cooks have competed with each other to produce unique treats for their patrons, modern cooking competitions are more rooted in the pedestrian efforts of homecooks.

If you have ever wondered why The Great British Bake Off is retitled for broadcast in the United States as The Great British Baking Show, the reason is Pillsbury had already owned the trademark for “Bake-off.”

Pillsbury’s contests date back to the 20th century. To celebrate the company’s 80th anniversary, and promote its brand of flour, Pillsbury hosted the first Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest in 1949. The 100 semi-finalists were brought to the Waldorf Astoria hotel to prepare their recipe. The contest was eventually rechristened as a “bake-off” with themes, like the 1966 Busy Lady Bake-Off. The company trademarked the term in 1971.

The national competition had a big financial award, from $50,000 the first year to as high as million in later years, making it a significant milestone in cooking contests. The prizes and national stage helped supersize it, but baking contests, especially of pies, were long part of state fairs and 4H agricultural competitions.

In Colonial America, The Fredericksburg Agricultural Fair held in Virginia in 1738 is considered the oldest but the oldest state fair was held in Syracuse, New York in 1841. The shows highlighted new agricultural techniques, animal husbandry, and domestic cooking.

Food preparation contests grew in popularity by the 1920s when pies, breads, biscuits, and cookies were commonly awarded prizes. And perhaps, unsurprisingly, Pillsbury leaned into these contests to promote their flour. In a common newspaper ad published in 1925, a letter allegedly written by a Mrs. Ed P Carl extols the virtues of Pillsbury flour used in a fair’s winning recipes.

Chili cook-offs are obviously not the same as a pie contest (although the 2012 Texas State Fair did have the world’s largest Frito Pie made from 1,300 pounds of Fritos, chili and cheese). Looking back, the earliest reference to chili cooking dates t the 1920s, but these were for making chili sauce, not the chili con carne that has since become the state dish of Texas.

Chili cook-offs are relative newcomers in the food preparation category. Numerous sources have cited the 1967 Terlingua, Texas Chili Cook-Off as the first such contest. However, according to Texas Cooking, a Chili Cook-Off in 1952 pre-dates the contest in Teringua. This first cook-off was allegedly a promotional event cooked up by Joe E. Cooper, author of the With or Without Beans, an iconic history that explores the origins of chili.

Cooper died a few months later, but his obituary chronicled his ambitious search for the source of Texas chili. He spent months talking to people in Texas and piecing together the story. And thinking there might be something to find in Mexico, he crossed the border in search of answers. Once there, according to his obit, he finally found a restaurant willing to serve him chili – poured from a can manufactured in Texas.

Cooper’s contest featured 55 variations on Chili. Both the first place and second place winners had comparatively simple recipes, and neither included beans.

I was facing off against just 7 other competitors, including my mother-in-law.

The cook-off would be judged by everyone in attendance, about forty people who live in the homeowners association for the neighborhood (an association within a larger gated community). My wife and I were the youngest people in attendance, and almost certainly with a palette that preferred much spicier dishes.

I bought the Thai chilies anyway.

We had decided to replicate a recipe I had cooked up last year that had been based on a recipe for Vietnamese chili. I couldn’t find the recipe that inspired it, but my wife found a recipe to reference as a suggestion for spices. I didn’t even look it over.

At Whole Foods, we almost couldn’t find any Chinese Five Spice, only finding some hidden amongst a specialty spice rack. We also regretted not bringing some of our own Sichuan pepper, since apparently Whole Foods doesn’t stock it. But with Thai chilies and Serrano peppers, we certainly had enough heat to play with.

The cooking took about 90 minutes, and then it was showtime.

The event was held at a small parklet a few houses down from my in-laws. Two plastic flamingos guard the patch of grass. Golf carts lined the curb, and everyone had brought folding chairs arranged in a circle around an unlit fire pit. There were tables for cornbread and another for desserts. The eight pots of chili were lined up with numbered bowls. I sized up the competition.

Most of the chilis included beans. One was made with chicken, and another with turkey, and yet another was made with a refrigerator. A few had accouterments like cheese – I offered chopped scallions to finish each bowl.

The crowd set to eating. I sampled each one, ate some cornbread, and then a few brownies. (Our four-year-old enjoyed a slice of cornbread, but otherwise abstained from chili).

Each cup was marked with a number making it easy to keep track of which one we liked. I felt guilty voting for my own.

With the votes tallied, the winning chili went to a couple who had cooked up a rich beef brisket dish filled with umami flavor (top row, second column). There was no second place winner announced, but since my pot was the only one empty by the end of the night, I like to think I was the runner-up.

Porky Pacific Spice Cook-Off Chili Recipe

INGREDIENTS

• 1 onion

• 6 cloves garlic

• 1-2 tablespoon fresh ginger

• 5 Thai chilies

• 2 Serrano peppers

• 2 lbs ground pork

• 32 oz beef broth

• 6 oz tomato paste

• 1 teaspoon Chinese Five spice

• 1 teaspoon chili powder

• 1 teaspoon cumin

• 2 tablespoons mirin

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 12 scallions

• 26 oz kidney beans

INSTRUCTIONS

• Finely chop the onion, garlic, and ginger

• Cook in olive oil until onions are translucent

• Add finely diced Thai chili peppers

• Cut Serrano’s into medallions and add

• Push vegetables to side of pan and add pork

• Brown the meat (add oil if necessary)

• When meat is cooked through, deglaze with stock

• Stir vegetables and meat together

• Add tomato paste, stirring until combined

• Add spices, including soy sauce

• Stir and taste

• Add dash of salt if necessary

• Simmer until chili thickens

• Drain beans

• Add beans when chili is thick, but some liquid remains

• Chop scallions and add half to the pot

• Reserve the remaining scallions as garnish

• Stir and taste (add salt if necessary)

• Serve hot, garnishing with scallions

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Olympic-Sized Pizza

Athletes at the Winter Olympics in Milan consumed 2 wheels of Grana Padano cheese every day along with 800lbs of pasta and 12,000 slices of pizza.

Pecorino Romano, the Other White Cheese

Business Insider looks at the production of Pecorino Romano, an hard Italian sheep cheese. It’s saltier and not quite as expensive as Parmigiana, but often used as a substitute on pasta (at leaset in the United States). Meanwhile, much of the Pecorino Romano in the US is now under recall.

Does Popularity Make Rare Drinks Less Good?

Plenty of hard-to-find spirits have been making their way to the United States (at least, pre-tariff). But when those rarities arrive on our shores, do they suddenly not taste as good? Brad Thomas Parsons looks at “suitcase bottles” — those wines and liquors that are only available abroad — at least until they find an importer.

Has Enshittification Come For Reese’s? Probably.

The grandson of the man who invented Peanut Cups claims Hershey has started cutting corners which explains why the candy tastes bad.

Archestratus Set to Close

Brooklyn’s best cookbook store is set to close this spring as a slumping economy caused sales to take a hit while the wild and chaotic tariffs made many products more expensive.

Before Chips and Salsa

Chips and salsa are a pretty standard starter these days at Tex-Mex restaurants, often complimentary. But that wasn’t always the case. José Ralat looks back at some of the different little snacks handed out to restaurant patrons, including buttered tortillas and soda crackers.

French Onion Soup Is So Hot Right Now

Did Big French Onion Soup hire a PR firm? Everyone is writing about the beefy onion soup topped with bread and melty cheese: Serious Eats; Wall Street Journal; Food & Wine; Better Homes & Garden. If I was a conspiracy theorist, this would be more than enough to go down a rabbit hole.

Dumpling Lasagna

Jessica Wrubel experiments with making a lasagna from dumplings, just like all the kids on TikTok.

Today is a big day, culinarily speaking. As Katie on Bluesky points out, with Ramadan, Lunar New Year, Mardis Gras, and Rosh Chodesh Adar, there’s a lot of fried food happening in the world right now.

The intersection of all these holidays seemed like a great opportunity to celebrate General Tso’s chicken, a fusion of Chinese, Taiwanese, and American cuisine, served up by Baumgart’s Cafe, a fusion of Chinese American and New Jersey diner cuisine.

The first Baumgart’s opened in Englewood, Bergen County, New Jersey in 1944 as a soda fountain and ice cream parlor. The menu featured classics like a New York Egg Cream – chocolate milk mixed with carbonated soda. Egg creams are synonymous with diners in the tri-state area, and while there’s no definitive origin, they emerged from Yiddish-speaking New York City during the Great Depression.

The original Baumgart’s ice cream parlor evolved to include diner dishes like burgers and salads. But the big changes happened in 1988 when Steve Wu, an immigrant from Taiwan, bought the restaurant.

Wu had previously operated a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan and decided to bring those dishes to Baumgart’s. Eighteen months of renovations and a new Taiwanese chef reinvented the restaurant. Wu retained the Art Deco soda fountain bar and many of the diner classics, but introduced a variety of Chinese American dishes.

Wu also expanded the restaurant into a chain, opening a Ridgewood location ten years later, and by 2010 another in Livingston. At its peak, there were five restaurants including Nyack, New York and Edgewater, New Jersey, each serving a mix of east Asian cuisines including sushi and Chinese American favorites, as well as diner classics, and soda-fountain style ice cream.

The pandemic was unkind to the chain with the Englewood location closing in 2022 after the building was sold. The chain is down to two locations today, one in Ridgewood and the newest in Fairview.

During Christmas break, my wife and I headed over to the Fairview location for a quick lunch. Here the Chinese and Japanese dishes dominate the menu, though there remains a few diner classics like burgers and fries, and an emphasis on ice cream. I ordered a General Tso’s chicken lunch box.

The real general Tso (General Zuo) was born in mainland China in Hunan around 1812. Jennifer 8 Lee, in her book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, compares him favorably to Colonel Sanders in that they are both military men best known for chicken dishes that they are questionably connected to.

According to Lee, General Tso’s chicken only arrived in Hunan province in the 1990s by Chef Peng – years after the dish debuted and conquered the United States. The Chinese version of the Chinese American dish doesn’t exactly resemble what Americans have come to expect in General Tso’s chicken.

Chef Peng was part of a new wave of Chinese chefs who transformed American Chinese cuisine. These chefs were trained in Communist China before fleeing to the Republic of China, the island nation better known as Taiwan. These chefs then opened restaurants in New York city in the 1960s and 1970s, changing the way Americans thought about the cuisine.

Chef Peng opened Peng Yuan on the East Side of Manhattan. T.T. Wang (along with Micheal Tong) opened Hunam Restaurant and Shun Lee Palace. And Wen Dah Tai, aka Uncle Tai, opened Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan. These influential, competitive restaurateurs began creating new dishes for Chinese American cuisine and introduced Hunan flavors to Americans in ways that were familiar to them, producing dishes like orange chicken, and others that are close relatives to General Tso’s, like General Ching’s.

Then after they were introduced in New York, reinvented, did variations of General Tso’s make their way back to mainland China.

And to settle many debates, New York City’s Chinese American restaurants are the undisputed best in the country because of these rivalries.

Jennifer 8 Lee finally met up with Chef Peng who recalled inventing the original dish behind General Tso’s around 1955 while still on the island of Taiwan, but his version of the dish would be mostly unrecognizable in America today.

The Latest

Spaghetti and Chill

Why are spaghetti and meatballs seen as a romantic dinner when it’s so messy to eat? And the garlic?! Well, there are some reasons, and I offered some possibilities to Joy Saha over at Salon who was looking into the issue.

The RFK Diet

While I still don’t think its a good idea to take health advice from someone who has admitted a worm has eaten half his brain, but here we are. So Emily Stewart at Business Insider takes on the new thrifty grocery advice for a week’s worth of meals. Besides cheating the system by using her existing butter supply, she mostly manages to eat a week’s worth of meals. I guess we should all be so lucky to come across a dead bear carcass that we can cut into steaks.

Grana Padano Goes for Gold

The Italian Olympics are the perfect opportunity to convince consumers Grana Padano is just as a good, or better, than Parmigiano-Reggiano. The hard granular cheeses from northern Italy were both commodity cheeses until branding efforts and regional food certifications began distinguishing the similarly produced products. Parmigiano has reigned supreme, but the producers of Grana Padano are hoping the Winter games held in northern Italy will provide an opportunity to get people eating the cheese. The New York Times looks at their efforts which includes giving away lots of cheese.

Can Fast Food Pizza Earn a Michelin Star?

A food guide designed to get people driving on their tires might sound like the perfect candidate to list a pizzeria best known for take out, but Papa John’s isn’t exactly gourmet. Or is it? The fast food chain has created a new recipe and a goal of earning a Michelin star.

Cabbage Is In

The Guardian calls it Cabbagecore. The Week calls it versatile. AOL calls it everywhere. Why is everyone obsessed with cabbage? Recession indicator.

Cookbook Roundup

Bon Appétit takes a look at the season’s upcoming cookbooks.

Food Porn Is Killing Good Food

Restaurants have been catering to influencers who photograph their food, and highly picturesque food is attracting customers. What does that mean for tasty, but not quite as pretty dishes? Those restaurants are falling behind.

New York City is getting another blast of frozen snow, but city schools are on mid-winter break, so we’re nowhere near there. Happy hour comes early in the Retirement State, so here we are sampling the well-stocked liquor cabinet of my in-laws.

I wanted to incorporate some of the crème di framboise and started searching the internet for recipes. There aren’t that many, and I was somehow missing key ingredients for most of the recipes. I settled on adapting this St. Germain and Raspberry cocktail, where I substituted the 6 raspberries for raspberry liqueur.

The drink was a bit more tart than I suspect the original intended to be, making this party a real tarts & liqueurs affair.

Raspberry Tart with St. Germain

INGREDIENTS

• 1 shot vodka

• 1 shot St. Germain

• 1/2 shot Drillaud raspberry crème di framboise

• 1/2 shot lemon juice

INSTRUCTIONS

• Combine and stir with ice

It was Super Bowl weekend! I didn’t watch the big game, but I did make Jalapeño Poppers.

If this sounds like something you’ve heard me talk about before, you’re absolutely right, I made poppers last year. That discussion focused on supply chain issues causing the price of cream cheese to rise and the inevitable decline of the heat in Jalapeño peppers, but we didn’t really talk much about the history of poppers. So that got me thinking—

Poppers are a relatively recent innovation, made popular around the same time mozzarella sticks entered the market in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but they evolved from a much older Mexican dish.

Snack-sized stuffed peppers first show up in the 1950s, according to Doug Mack at Saveur, but these were far from the poppers we know today. Back then, Jalapeño peppers were stuffed with cheese, but also sardines and fish.

In Food Americana, David Page explains the popper’s nearest culinary relative is a Mexican dish known as chile rellenos. These roasted and stuffed poblano peppers are fried with batter and served with a tomato and onion sauce, and generally considered a main dish rather than an appetizer.

Candolin Cook, writing in The Bite, notes that as early as the 1890s, Luna’s in San Francisco began serving “chili reinas” using bell peppers. Cook also tells the story of how the related dish, chiles en nogada are said to have been invented by nuns at a Santa Mónica convent in 1821. These meat-stuffed peppers could be a culinary cousin of the rellenos – if only the story of the nuns could be proven. Most historians discredit this account.

Either way, Mexico has been stuffing food inside peppers for centuries, but the dishes grew popular in the United States in places like New Mexico as early as the 1930s where Chili rellenos has become a big part of local cuisine. While traditional New Mexico recipes include stuffed cheese, not everyone agrees on the traditional style batter. Today, chefs in the state are mixing things up again, reinventing the dish with fillings like brisket and creamy chicken.

As for poppers, the 1960s and 1970s saw an increasing interest from American consumers for Tex-Mex cuisine. Americans began to accept spicier foods opening up new possibilities and recipes for stuffed peppers began showing up in newspapers in the 1970s, including for chile rellenos and even pablanos.

Cooks were taking risks in those days. For instance, in 1972 there’s a recipe for “Pizza Peppers,” using bell peppers and deviled ham with ketchup and mozzarella cheese.

Among the other abominations from this period, recipes for stuffed Jalapeño peppers appear, like one in the Garden City Telegram (Kansas) from 1978 that calls for stuffing the peppers with cream cheese and salmon, shrimp, or tuna.

It wasn’t until 1992 that a trademark was filed for the term popper, but by then the phrase was already in use. By 1995, poppers could be found at places like Applebee’s and TGI Friday’s, with the latter selling frozen versions in grocery store freezers. They were part of the fried finger food crave evolving in the 1980s including onion rings, the blooming onion, mozzarella sticks, buffalo wings, and various types of egg rolls.

Like most restaurant appetizers, popper prices have gone sky high in recent years. A cheaper option is looking in the freezer section of your local grocery store. Making them from scratch on the other hand, takes a lot of time and costs a lot more, but I’m not one to let efficiency stand in the way of a tasty bite.

I did a quick search for recipes and found that many people now like to wrap a strip of bacon around their popper like it’s a cheap date filled with blue cheese. Wrapping bacon around the popper seemed like it would be cumbersome to eat, so I chose instead to include cooked bacon in the filling, a choice that resulted in a truly savory flavor.

Another thing to note is that there are two ways of preparing the pepper. Either the top can be popped off and filling shoved inside, or they can be sliced lengthwise to create something more akin to the potato skin. Since I wasn’t planning on deep frying them, I went with the lengthwise slice, which overall I think creates less of a threat to molten lava burning cheese scorching the interior of your mouth.

Gourmet Baked Jalapeño Poppers

These definitely cost more than buying a box of processed frozen poppers, but who's keeping track of these things anyway.

INGREDIENTS

• 8 to 10 fat Jalapeño peppers

• 3 strips of bacon

• 6 oz cream cheese

• 4 oz cheddar cheese

• Dash of garlic powder

• Dash of onion powder

• Dash of paprika

• Splash of lemon juice

• 1 cup breadcrumbs

INSTRUTCTIONS

• Finely chop the bacon into itsy bitsy pieces

  Fry the bacon up nice and crispy

• Reserve the bacon in a bowl and set aside to cool. It must be allowed to cool down or it will melt the filling before you fill your poppers

  Shred your cheddar

• Combine the cheddar and cream cheese with a fork. It helps if you bring the cream cheese to room temperature. It’s more helpful if it is warm in your apartment.

• Squirt a splash of lemon juice to loosen

• Add spices and stir some more

• Consider using a hand mixer but think its probably not worth it at this point

• Once the bacon is cool, stir into the mixture

• Slice the peppers in half to create two equal, long peppers. Arrange the pepper to get two even sides

• Remove the innards of the pepper. Leave a few seeds for heat, with caution.

• Fill each pepper half with the cream cheese mixture

• Coat the cheese with the breadcrumbs

• Bake at 375F for about 15 to 20 minutes

• For a little extra color, raise temperature to 400F for the final few minutes

BONUS: Leftover Sour Cream Popper Dip

Since I had a little extra sour cream, I mixed up a batch of dip for the poppers, but this isn't really necessary, but I did get to serve it in this nifty tomato bowl. You might even call it my super bowl.

INGREDIENTS

• Big fat scoop of sour cream

• Dash of garlic powder

• Dash of onion powder

• Dash of paprika

• Splash of lemon juice

• Three old scallions

INSTRUCTIONS

• Combine sour cream, spices, and lemon juice

• Stir vigorously

• Finely chop the scallions and add to the sauce

• Serve alongside poppers, also good on Chili.

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BHA Could Face Ban

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I’d been meaning to make Beef Stroganoff since last winter, and I finally got around to it on the ninth consecutive day below freezing.

The golden age of Beef Stroganoff in the United States was the mid-century, post-war period. Of course there’s a version made with Campbell’s mushroom soup. There’s also a version from the Pennsylvania Dutch Noodle Company, makers of wide egg noodles, and the same company that helped popularize a version of Alfredo sauce made with cream and Swiss cheese.

But even in the 1960s, most Americans understood that pouring canned cream of mushroom soup over noodles was not some kind of authentic experience. It didn’t help matters that there are numerous variations of the dish, although in actuality, that’s part of the appeal. The key ingredient is sour cream boiled down with broth into a creamy sauce. Beyond that there are no rules. Even the strips of beef are negotiable with chicken Stroganoff a popular alternative.

I would have said mushrooms are essential, but I’ve seen a few recipes now that don’t include them. Onions are optional too, and in my case I swapped in shallots. I saw a recipe calling for red wine, and another for white. Some include tomatoes or tomato paste, but that produces a much darker sauce. Paprika and dijon mustard can contribute to the flavor, but nobody agrees on which is more authentic.

What generally most people agree on is Beef Stroganoff originated in Russia in the early 19th century, but here is where the agreement ends. The dish is likely named for Paul Stroganoff, as the mid-century newspapers in America christened him, better he is better known in Russia as Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov. Either during the reign of Alexander I or Alexander II, both have come up, a French chef who worked for the Stroganov household invented the dish, an oddity at the time because the meat was in the sauce like a stew rather than served as a condiment alongside it. Also Stroganov died in 1817, a year before Alexander II was born.

In one account I found from 2005 by Julius Pokomandy in the Chilliwack Progress, the dish was introduced by Chef Charles Briere and won first prize during a competition among the court’s household cooks. One problem with this story though is it attributes Briere’s recipe to 1891, almost a century after Stroganov’s death.

Another accounting of the origin claims the dish was created with minced meat because Stroganov, in his old age, couldn’t chew full cuts. There’s another legend, with little credibility, that Stroganoff himself created the dish while stationed in Siberia. In this bedtime story, the cold Siberian winter had frozen the beef, leading him to cut the meat into thin strips – but there’s no accounting for the sauce. And then there is the natural evolution of dishes, like as to Mike Lew at Bon Appétit explains who makes the case that the original Beef Stroganoff recipe evolved from a French recipe for beef with mustard.

There are other similar dishes in French and Russian and Jewish cuisine that might have inspired the original Stroganoff, and plenty of evidence to suggest some variation of the dish pre-dates Stroganov.

While the American version of the dish became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, the recipe in English predates the war. There’s a recipe attributed to the restaurant, Russian Kretchma, on East 14th Street in Manhattan in the collection, Where to Dine in ‘39 by Diane Ashley. This version includes julienned beef, mushrooms and onions broiled in a pan with a sauce built from cream Worcestershire sauce. As with most Americanized recipes, the popularity in the post-war period can be attributed to low-labor meals involving pouring the contents of a can on top of the contents of a box.

I would be making my Stroganoff from scratch, but I needed a few things from the grocery store. When I arrived in the pasta aisle, I was debating between the classic Pennsylvania Dutch Extra Wide Noodles and the Light’n Fluffy brand. That’s when another guy asked me which I thought were better. His mother had sent him to buy a bag so should could make “chicken pastry.” He added, “it’s like chicken Alfredo.”

“Pennsylvania Dutch helped popularize Alfredo sauce in America,” I said. I’m not sure this was actually helpful for him. He ended up with the Light’n Fluffy.

I also served the Beef Stroganoff alongside a cucumber dill salad.

The Undisputed, Most Authentic, Genuine Version of Beef Stroganoff

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pound beef sirloin

• 1 shallot

• 10 oz white mushrooms

• 1 cup sour cream

• 16 oz beef broth

• 2 green onions

• 1 bag of extra wide egg noodles

• 4 tablespoons butter

• ½ cup-ish AP flour, plus 1 tablespoon

• Two dashes Worcestershire sauce

• Two big squirts of Dijon mustard

• Dash Garlic powder

• Dash Onion powder

• Dash Paprika

INSTRUCTIONS

• Slice the beef extra thin against the grain

• Coat in flour

• Boil water for noodles

• Heat half the butter

• Toss in battered beef about 1 minute

• Remove the beef and set aside

• Add in sliced shallots

• Add more butter if necessary

• Cook shallots about 1 minute

• Add mushrooms

• Salt

• When mushrooms have lightly browned create a space at the center of the pan

• Add a tablespoon of butter and melt it

• Add a tablespoon of flour and stir with butter

• Add in the sour cream and stir together

• Add in the brother and stir together

• Add mustard and Worcestershire sauce

• Fully combine broth, sour cream, butter, and flour and increase heat

• Add dash of garlic powder, paprika, onion powder, salt and pepper to taste

• Add beef back into sauce and simmer until cooked

• When noodles are cooked, drain

• Either combine noodles in the pan or serve sauce over noodles

• Garnish with sliced green onions

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I wanted something light to pair with the beef Stroganoff, and a dill-flavored cucumber salad had just the right amount of Soviet-era flavors. Besides, other than the $3 in fresh dill, everything in his salad was an old leftover.

INGREDIENTS

• Half an English cucumber

• 4 oz leftover sour cream

• an old shallot

• half a lemon

• Fresh dill that costs too much but you need it anyway

INSTRUCTIONS

• Cut the cucumber in half and slice thinly

• Slice the shallot into thin rings

• Mix in sour cream

• Stir in lemon juice to thin the sour cream

• Salt and pepper to taste

• Strip dill from stalks and toss into salad

I was flipping through Soupified by Michele Di Pietro, and her Cavatelli with Broccoli Soup looked great. So of course I didn’t bother following the recipe.

Last week I mentioned attending the Italian American Future Leaders Conference where numerous Italian Americans were brought together to discuss the future of our shared heritage. That’s when I met Mangia with Michele creator, Michele Di Pietro.

Michele slipped me a copy of her book, Soupified: Soups Inspired by Your Favorite Dishes. Its a practical recipe collection that deconstructs dishes and turns them into soup. In the not too distant future, I plan on sitting down with Michele for a chat about Italian American food, her recipe collection, and food generally, but that’s TBD.

But I wanted to flip through the book while it was still fresh in my mind, and that’s when I landed on a recipe for Cavatelli and Broccoli Soup. Her recipe offers a soupified version of a classic dish I grew up eating — cavatelli with broccoli. The dish is similar to the broccoli pasta my wife often makes, like later tonight, and staple recipe in our household. So turning it into a thick, creamy soup seemed like an obvious good decision.

Cavatelli are pasta made by curling a flatting pasta dough forming half curled noodles (for controversial opinions on the term “noodle,” see below). According to the Encyclopedia of Pasta, it was originally made using the flour of milled fava beans, and sometimes grano arso, a wheat that is cooked or charred before milling.

Its quite possibly one of the oldest shapes of pasta, formed right after the invention of the lasagna noodle. It’s a stretched pasta, meaning the way the shape is made is by stretching it. A flat shape is placed on a textured surface, and the dough is stretched with a finger and to create the curl.

Cavatelli are known by many names across Italy. Its often served with whatever the abundant vegetable of the region is, but also with meat and.

Typically I end up buying cavatelli as fresh pasta or frozen pasta rather than as dried macaroni, though there are some brands that produce a dried version.

Cavatelli and broccoli is one of those recipes that varies greatly depending on who is making it. I’ve seen several sources cite Puglia as the origin of the dish, but these aren’t academic. Another variation often crediting Puglia is Orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage — so the simpler dish might also be home there too.

But in the United States, newspaper references to pasta recipes made with broccoli and cavatelli start showing up on a wide scale in the 1990s. That tracks too with my experience, though no doubt there are earlier examples. One such reference I found interesting was this essay about Emilia’s Deli in Newark, New Jersey. The restaurant has since closed.

The quintessential, mid-1990s version of cavatelli and broccoli combines garlic, steamed or sautéd broccoli, cavatelli, olive oil, and parmigiana cheese. Slightly more complicated versions might squeeze a bit of lemon into that to brighten the flavors, and for a spicy twist, a bit of crushed red pepper. But the essential flavor is the garlic, broccoli and olive oil. I’m especially partial to drizzling a bit of oil on the dish just before serving.

Drawing inspiration from Soupified, I made a few modifications based on the availability of ingredients (and lack of them, such as not bothering to make garlic confit, which probably would have added a nice flavor).

I ended up with a thick and hearty soup and it reheated well for lunch later in the week. My wife and I agreed though that I followed the actual recipe, it would have been a spot on replica of the pasta dish, but made as soup.

Cavatelli & Broccoli Soup alla Ignoring The Recipe

Inspired by, but altered, version of Broccoli and Cavatelli Soup from Mangia With Michele’s Soupified.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 onion

• 6 Fresh Broccoli Heads

• 2 Bulbs of garlic

• pinch red pepper

• 64 oz of Chicken stock

• 1 can cannellini beans

• 2 tablespoons white miso

• big splash of cider vinegar

• Juice of one lemon

• zest of one lemon

• 1 cup Freshly grated parmigiana cheese

• Olive oil

INSTRUCTIONS

• Finely chop onion and garlic

• Simmer garlic and onion in oil until translucent

• Add red pepper, salt, and stir

• Deglaze with splash of apple cider vinegar

• Add broccoli, drained beans, miso, zest, lemon juice, and chicken stock

• Simmer until broccoli is tender

• Blend with a stick blender (reducing the heat is advised to avoid boiling splatter burning your arms)

• Taste for seasoning

• Add cavatelli

• Cook cavatelli al dente or desired texture (but you probably want it al dente)

• Stir in cheese

• To serve, add a bit of grated cheese and drizzle of oil

I only used the florets of the Broccoli, and not wanting to waste the stems, I made this slaw with leftover red cabbage.

Bonus: A Little Bit About Noodles

Noodles is an English word derived from the German language, meaning dumpling. In American English, a noodle can refer to a single pasta, like a lasagna sheet. Its inclusive, referring to all types of pasta, not just Italian pasta, and not like macaroni, which is explicitly dried pasta.

I realize there is an entire sub community of British and Australian English speakers who have come to believe a noodle refers exclusively to Asian-style rice noodles, but if the British knew anything they wouldn’t have lost the entire British Empire in less than 50 years.

The British (derogatory) insist noodles refer to Asian noodles like ramen or udon, and that only the word pasta can be used for wheat-based pasta like that served in Italy. Here’s the thing: noodle is not a word in any Asian language.

Rice noodles, often called Vermicelli in English, each have their own names in their native languages across Asia. Vermicelli, by the way, comes from Italian and means “little worms,” and does not have anything to do with the starch. Wheat, rice, potato and legume starches can all be turned into vermicelli, a shape.

Meanwhile, in China, for instance, noodles are made from both rice and wheat (and a variety of other starches), and guess what? They don’t call them noodles, a German-inspired word in English. Chinese wheat noodles are known as “面条” (miàntiáo) and rice noodles as “米粉” (mǐ fěn).

I suspect one of the many reasons the term noodle has come to be a broad term used in American English is the Pennsylvania Dutch brand noodles. These German-ish egg noodles became popular in the mid-20the century. The brand also helped popularize American-style fettuccine Alfredo by advertising their noodles with a recipe for the dish.

Don’t let the Italians tell you otherwise: Fettuccine Alfredo is an Italian dish originating in Rome. The recipe that is well known today, however, made with cream and milk, and a variety of other ingredients, was popularized by the Pennsylvania Dutch brand as one of the recipes that could be made using their egg noodles. Their recipe requires less cooking skill. The original is essentially an emulsion made from the cheese, butter, and pasta water, while the Pennsylvania Dutch noodle recipe is a creamy sauce made with processed cheeses and dairy.

Now you might see how an American company selling German noodles with a recipe for an Italian dish might lead to some confusion, especially considering how many Americans think the Pennsylvania Dutch came from the Netherlands. In either case, using the term noodle to refer to pasta is entirely valid, and don’t let the the British (derogatory) tell you otherwise.

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I was making a Broccoli soup and the recipe called for florets. Since there grocery store only had full heads of broccoli, I was left with six extra stalks. I stashed them in the refrigerator and the following day made up this slaw using some leftover red onion and leftover red cabbage.

INGREDIENTS

• 6 broccoli stalks

• 1/4 old red cabbage

• 1/3 large old red onion

DRESSING

• Healthy pour of Apple Cider vinegar

• Two splashes of lemon juice

• Hefty squirt of grainy brown mustard

• 2 Tablespoons dijon mustard

• Olive oil (adjusted for thickness)

INSTRUCTIONS

• Peel the broccoli stalks

• Shred the broccoli stalks

• Finely chop the red cabbage and red onion

• Combine dressing ingredients and whip with a fork or whisk

• Add olive oil to taste

• Combine dressing and vegetables

I spent the weekend talking about Italian American culture. So naturally there was samples of Nudja.

I just got back from the Italian American Future Leaders conference where I attended as a Visionary — aka, I’m too old to be a future leader, but not so old that I’m on death’s door.

The conference was founded four years ago in an effort to ensure Italian American cultural and heritage organizations are able to maintain membership and have experienced leaders in the years ahead as the current senior citizens age out. The young Italian Americans attending as Fellows had plenty to talk about during the day, but also enjoyed late night revelry. The other visionaries and I complained about arthritis and wondered if they could turn the music down.

The IAFL conference is co-founded by professional Italian American, John Viola, who’s also behind Red Sauce Studio and the Italian American podcast. Back in 2022, I was a guest on a two-part episode where I spoke about my book, Red Sauce. Fast-forward to December of this year when co-host Patrick O’Boyle sends a text message suggesting I apply to the conference as a Visionary. A few days later, I had been invited to the conference.

As visionaries, we heard heard presentations from the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club about participating in the local community, Casa Belvedere on Staten Island about renovating historic buildings, new exhibitions coming to the Italian American museum, and communities with small but mighty Italian American communities like Tontitown, Arkansas where they serve fried chicken and spaghetti (more on that in the future).

At lunch one afternoon, an Nduja enthusiast came around with samples (pictured above) of the spicy, spreadable sausage meat. The package came from Nduja Bella USA, a Seattle-based distributor of the Calabrian delicacy.

Calabria is a southern Italian province on the toe of Italy where spicy peppers are a mainstay of the cuisine. Nduja is just one local specialty. Made from pork and trimmings of meat, the spreadable paste is spiced with hot peppers, and every producer will have unique combination of spices, flavors, and heat level.

Nduja is often considered a precursor to American pepperoni. If you’re keeping score, pepperoni in Italian means simply pepper and has nothing to do with the dried sausage Americans top their pizza with.

If you’re wondering, American pepperoni sausage dates back to at least the 1920s when it achieves the endorsement of the U.S. Department of agriculture. But there are earlier references, if not definitive examples, such as in the The Gateway, a cultural magazine based in Michigan even mentions pepperoni sausage as early as 1908.

Nduja has been on trend in recent years, and one of my favorite ingredients. A few months back I got a large chunk of Nduja from Anthony & Son Panini Shoppe, the Brooklyn sandwich shop where the podcast Growing Up Italian, also a sponsor of the Italian American Future Leaders conference, first started out. While Nduja is often used as a spreadable condiment on crackers and bread, I like to treat it as an ingredient for more complex dishes.

I’ve made an Nduja vodka sauce, though I didn’t write out the recipe (add a tablespoon or two of Nduja to your favorite vodka sauce recipe or jarred sauce, or replace the pancetta or bacon). We’ve also created an a Nduja and broccoli rabe pasta (and there is a recipe) that’s an easy weeknight dish.

At the conference, we spread the Nduja on crostini snatched from the conference buffet table. The spicy sample seemed to delight everyone who tried it.

For now, there aren’t many importers or producers in the United States meaning its not so easy to find in local stores. Hopefully, that begins to change. But if you can’t find a local source, both Nduja Bella and the New Jersey based 'Nduja Guys ship nationwide.

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