It’s stew season. I’m not going to give you a recipe - I assume you’ve got dozens of good ones at your fingertips. Instead, here are a few tips for making an ordinary stew into something rich and silky, something that will perfume your house with promise—and fill your friends with joy.
Read moreWith all due respect to James Beard and Julia Child, America’s first celebrity chef actually predated them by nearly 200 years. Hercules was lauded by the glitterati that ate at his table as an “artiste;” he was notorious in the kitchen for demanding perfection and equally notorious outside of it for his love of lavish clothing, theater and the other entertainments of high society. He knew the President well. He was, in fact, George Washington’s chef, a master of both high French culinary art and simple frontier cooking—and he was a slave.
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