Saveur

TO THE SIDE OF AN EMPTY ROAD ON THE ISLAND OF Lanzarote, the northeasternmost of Spain’s Canary Islands, a landscape of dark volcanic mountains and craters rolls out into the distance. The black rock is so arid, and the vientos alisios (trade winds)

MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART Active: 45 min. Total: 8 hr. 45 min. The nutrient-dense moringa plant is native to the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, and Africa. Its dried and powdered form (available online or in Asian or natural-food markets) gives a brigh

MY SUMMER MORNINGS ALL START the same way: with a walk in our backyard garden. So far, it’s just a few raised beds—not much more than a tomato plant here and some herbs and chiles there—and yet harvesting as little as two or three ripe strawberries,

ON A COOL MORNING IN PAMPORE, India, the fields have become a purpledotted canvas. Haji Ghulam Hassan Bhat, 65, walks toward his farm carrying a small willow basket, called a zaen, that his grandfather had gifted him when he plucked his first saffron

IT CAN BE EASY TO GET LOST IN the labyrinthine trails of Nopalito Farm and Hopyard in northeast San Diego County. Hop farms are strangely evocative of oceanic kelp forests: fields filled with gently waving, upward-reaching verdant plants that can tow

THE SLENDER, YELLOW-GREEN kapitsiriwi pepper is named after a blowpipe dart. Then there’s dzaka inapa, resembling a jaguar’s tooth, and kawathsidalipe, extremely hot and shaped like a clay pot. Spanning from orange to green to yellow to purple, 80 di

IN VIENNA’S 10TH DISTRICT, ONE OF LUSH PARKS AND SIMPLE red-brick buildings, Andreas Gugumuck tends his rows of low wood paddocks, the shadowy spaces he created in his sprawling urban garden for his snails to breed in. “It’s a paradise for them,” Gug

EVERY SPRING, THE SUGAR SNAP PEAS AT MAGIC SEED farm in Twin Falls, Idaho, burst from the dirt like an alarm clock, signaling the upcoming summer bounty. For owner Rod Lamborn, these snap peas are a living tribute to his father, Dr. Calvin Lamborn, t

IN A WATERCOLOR PAINTING TITLED SIMPLY Saecham, 18th-century Korean artist Kim Hongdo portrays shirtless men seated on the ground, sinking chopsticks into huge bowls of rice and tipping back cups of makkoli, a fermented, lightly effervescent rice dri

THE MOST EXCITING glacerie in Paris, La Tropicale, didn’t start out selling ice cream. It was opened more than 50 years ago as a grocery store specializing in tropical fruit by Khanh and Cam-Hong Dang, a couple who had recently immigrated from Vietna

MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART Active: 45 min. Total: 5 hr. 45 min. Stone fruits that are extra-ripe lend much more flavor and fragrance to a sorbet and are easier to reduce to a smooth puree. While Thai-Thanh’s peach sorbet calls for lemon verbena, using fresh

Thai-Thanh Dang works her sorbets into impressive cakes. The assembly is tricky, but encasing frozen treats in meringue is simpler than you might think. For more, see “Whip It Good,” p. 94. MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART Active: 45 min. Total: 4 hr. 45 min. Cha

MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART Active: 45 min. Total: 5 hr. 45 min. At La Tropicale, Thai-Thanh infuses this sorbet with dried African hibiscus blossoms and young fresh ginger. Her simple, fruit-free formula is great for beginners: Because you can completely co

AT ITS VERY BEST, VEGETABLE tempura is piping hot and airy crisp, without a hint of heaviness or oiliness. And at its worst, it is a questionable soggy fry-up strewn atop a bowl of rice. While there are plenty of examples of the latter to be found in

Theories abound on how to achieve a lacy, feather light tempura shell. For Tokyo-style tempura, use a 1-to-1 ratio of flour to water, forgo gimmicks, and employ these simple steps. Sift the flour.Chefs Yokota and Kondo suggest using cake flour for th

Chances are you already have most of what you need to fry tempura at home—you can use standard kitchen equipment (a spider skimmer, a deep-fry thermometer, and a wide, deep skillet, for example). But having the proper traditional tools—like two kinds

SERVES 4 Total: 1 hr. 45 min. This recipe is for classic tempura and kakiage, a fritterlike dish with a slightly thinner batter. Never chill tempura batter or its components—it will cool down the frying oil and disturb the process. Skim out errant pi

IN THE WEEKS LEADING UP TO the season, a buzz begins to form around the farmers market stalls. Come June in New York, I’m one of a flock of people waiting—fiending—for summer’s most fleeting food: sour cherries. The bracingly tart, more brightly colo

Sprinkling sour cherries with sugar before baking helps render them more palatable and juicy in pie fillings and other desserts. Add vanilla, lemon zest, and a little cinnamon for more flavor. SERVES 8 Active: 1 hr. Total: 1 hr. 45 min. (plus cooling

FEW CARIBBEAN DISHES ARE AS well-traveled, or as beloved, as Jamaican jerk, a humble meal of bone-in chicken or pork parts doused in a blend of spices and hot peppers, and cooked slowly over smoldering pimento wood branches. Peppered across the islan

A COMMON MISCONCEPTION about jerk is that it refers to the blend of herbs and spices the meat is marinated in, but it’s the low-and-slow smoking method that the name actually refers to. Nonetheless, the marinade—a fragrant mixture of Jamaican Scotch

It’s finally high season in the Northeast, when the stalls at New York City’s farmers markets once again become a regular destination for our editors. Though some of us might be loyal to a favorite stone-fruit producer or stalwarts of a particular ne

Nothing is flat here. It’s all rolling hills, misty hollers, rhododendron thickets, and serpentine roads. It’s the rises and falls in the pavement that make my belly tense up as Amy Manko and her husband, Scooter, drive me around their slice of Appal

SERVES 4 Active: 45 min. Total: 3 hr. 55 min. This easy but elegant recipe is adapted from the Presidents Pub in Washington, Pennsylvania, where the chefs oven-roast a whole local lamb rack to a tender mediumrare. On the grill, the meat picks up a sm

VILLA ROMANA IS AN extra-virgin oil pressed from an previously unknown and likely ancient olive variety that grows exclusively on the shores of Lake Garda, in the northern Italian region of Lombardy. Sergio Cozzaglio, who discovered the olives on tre

SERVES 4 Active: 35 min. Total: 2 hr. 10 min. Perfect for parties, these ribs pre-roast in the oven, then crisp up under the broiler. Ask your butcher for a Denver cut: the lamb rib equivalent of St. Louis–style pork spare ribs, which is a fatty port

ON A SUNNY AFTERNOON in the last days of summer, I broke the first rule I had ever been taught about watercraft and stood up in a canoe. Mike Magney and Moon Jacobson of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe had offered to take me out onto Little Elbow Lake

IF YOU’RE DRIVING THE WINDING ROADS OF ORCAS ISLAND in late summer, you can smell the ripening fruit all around. On one such morning last year, I stopped the car at my destination and met Audra Lawlor, owner of Girl Meets Dirt, who was surveying one

SERVES 4 Active: 30 min.• Total: 1 hr. Lamb shoulder is an under utilized cut for grilling. It’s inexpensive yet juicy, and when cut into small pieces, it can easily absorb flavor from spice rubs and marinades. Made without any acid, this marinade re

SERVES 8 Active: 30 min. • Total: 1 hr. 15 min. Ask a local Ojibwe tribe member how they most like to eat wild rice, and half of them will say, “With maple sugar and dried berries.” In this riff on the sweet bowl—which can be eaten at breakfast or fo

SERVES 6–8 AS A MAIN COURSE Active: 1 hr. 40 min. • Total: 2 hr. Wild rice in northern Minnesota is often cooked with venison, which is sometimes ground with pork fat to enrich the lean meat. But fatty ground beef and lamb are more widely available s

SERVES 4 Total: 15 min. To remove the skin when preparing fresh bamboo, make a shallow cut lengthwise down the skin, then peel away and discard it. Cut off the in edible thicker end of the shoot. Never wash fresh bamboo with water, which can give it

SERVES 4 Total: 35 min. At the Marketplace at Emerald Valley in Washington, Pennsylvania, lemon zest and fresh mint go into every lamb burger patty. A tangle of sweet balsamic onions, a hint of chile, and briny feta balance the charred meat and brioc

IN A MAZE OF GREEN, XIAO ZAI HUI’S VIVID RED HAIR IS A BEACON. HER EBULLIENT LAUGH IS A GUIDE THROUGH THE DENSE, VERTICAL FOLIAGE OF 40-FOOT BAMBOO STALKS. IT’S BEEN FOUR YEARS SINCE SHE BEGAN A LIFE OF HARVESTING BAMBOO HERE—ON A PLOT OF LAND HER HU

SERVES 4 Total: 15 min. Hua jun, or “slippery mushrooms,” are foraged in the forests of Sichuan’s Bamboo Sea, but in cities and in the U.S., similar nameko or beech mushrooms are close substitutes. This dish combines the mushrooms with a local xiao m

SERVES 4 Total: 20 min. This dish—typically made with zhu maodu, or the brown tripe-like cap of the bamboo mushroom (pictured here)—can be made with morels instead, which have a similar texture and are widely used in Sichuan cooking. You can find cur

SERVES 4 Total: 15 min. You cai is the Mandarin name for a leafy, lightly bitter mustard green more widely known by its Cantonese name: you choy. Stir-fry it quickly in a smoking-hot wok so it retains some of its crunch. The purple variety is picture

SERVES 6 Active: 20 min. • Total: 1 hr. 25 min. Bamboo mushrooms—an earthy Chinese delicacy that grows at the root of bamboo stalks—are most enjoyed in Sichuan’s simple chicken soup. Harvested at their mature stage, with the lacy veil attached, dried

TASTES, TRADITIONS, AND TECHNIQUES INSPIRING US RIGHT NOW Harness summer Scotch bonnets into a DIY pepper condiment USING UP A CHILE GLUTcan be tricky. While whimsicallooking Scotch bonnets have a flavorful fruitiness, they also pack a capsaicin punc