Author: Jawdah Hannad Basara

Every grandmother in Italy knows how to make a dish that almost no one outside of Italy looks up to enough. Nothing is in a jar or canned, not even cream. You only need good olive oil, a few garlic cloves, a pot of salted water that is boiling, and the quiet confidence that comes from being older. Pasta aglio e olio, which means spaghetti with garlic and oil, is without a doubt the most honest pasta sauce there is. And getting the hang of making a light pasta sauce with olive oil right is one of those kitchen moments…

You’ll notice something if you walk down any grocery store dairy aisle these days: the Greek yogurt section has taken over. Millions of people swear by it for breakfast, recovery after a workout, or just a quick snack. It started as a niche product because it was thicker, tangier, and more expensive. But there is a question that keeps coming up, especially among people who have stomach problems: does Greek yogurt really have lactose in it? If so, how much? Yes, Greek yogurt does have lactose. There’s no getting around the fact that it’s a dairy product made from milk.…

Something about a good basil pasta dish is almost too simple to be honest. You heat water. You warm up oil. A handful of green leaves does most of the work. Still, people keep trying to find it, making changes, and arguing over things like whether the tomatoes should be charred or raw and whether the cheese should be grated or blended. That tension—between keeping things simple and fiddling around a lot—is what makes this dish so interesting to think about. The version that is being talked about the most right now in the food world is Ali Slagle’s creamy…

Around 2007, a container of Chobani Greek yogurt appeared on a Stop & Shop shelf in the northeastern United States for the first time. Not many people paid attention. This part of the story isn’t given enough attention: the dull start in a closed Kraft Foods plant in South Edmeston, a small town in upstate New York that most people wouldn’t be able to find on a map. An immigrant from Turkey named Hamdi Ulukaya came to the United States in 1994 with little more than a desire to raise sheep. He got a loan from the Small Business Administration…

Any mid-sized gym on a Tuesday night will have something different going on. In the 2010s, boot camp classes used to fill studios to the brim. These days, it’s not as busy. But the squat racks are full. A woman in her early twenties is doing Romanian deadlifts with the calm focus that used to only be seen in powerlifters with a lot of experience. Someone is filming a set next to her, not for vanity’s sake, but because this is how fitness is shared these days: it’s recorded and shared before the sweat has dried. The fitness business has…

Feta receives a lot of recognition that it doesn’t always merit. It has become practically a given in orzo salads in particular, with the white crumble strewn on top as if the dish wouldn’t be possible without it. But when you take it out, an interesting thing happens: the dressing gets more attention, the other ingredients have to work harder, and the end product is frequently a cleaner, more adaptable salad that travels better, keeps longer, and doesn’t turn off anyone at the table who has a dairy intolerance. Feta may have been handling a lot of the heavy lifting…

Chimichurri lost some of its geographical identity and evolved into something more akin to a universal sauce somewhere between Buenos Aires parrillas and suburban garden barbecues. It’s not a critique. Spreading this sauce is worthwhile. It enhances almost anything it touches, from a bowl of roasted vegetables that needed something to bring them together to a resting flank steak. It is garlicky, sharp with red wine vinegar, slightly herbal, and just warm enough from the chilli flakes to register without overpowering. It turns out that the debate over whether to use dried or fresh herbs is more contentious than it…

Making something in a hotel dining room in the 1890s and having it continue to appear on menus, in recipe columns, and in home kitchens well into the next century is a peculiar form of immortality. Oscar Tschirky, the renowned maître d’hôtel of the Waldorf-Astoria, most likely did not expect that. Using what was on hand and what would look good in a large dining room, he was putting together a salad for a charity ball. Mayonnaise, celery, and apples. That was the entire situation. So far, no walnuts. Not a single grape. There were just three ingredients, but they…

The Deliciously Ella Nutty Granola is hard to miss when browsing the free-from section of any reasonably stocked British supermarket. The branding conveys a calm confidence that many wellness food companies strive for but only a few truly attain, and the packaging is tidy and the font is not hurried. In most cases, the contents of the bag are actually better than what the packaging implies, though this isn’t always the case. The granola’s recipe, which can be summed up in one sentence, consists of 60% gluten-free rolled oats, a revolving cast of cashews, flaked almonds, and crushed hazelnut pieces,…

When you open the refrigerator on a Monday morning and see a row of well-assembled jars that have already been sorted, layered, and completed, you feel a certain kind of satisfaction. Granola and yogurt pots provide just that—not in the sense of an aspirational lifestyle, but rather in the subtle, pragmatic sense of a choice made the night before that pays off when your mind isn’t completely focused. It’s not the kind of breakfast that’s photographed in golden hour light with a linen napkin next to it; rather, it’s designed for actual mornings. Thick yoghurt at the bottom, a spoonful…