Cooking

Making something out of seemingly nothing is one of the best kitchen tricks imaginable. It’s a skill that can save you time, money and ingredients, helping you take care of yourself and the environment. Not all dishes lend themselves especially well to improvisation. Soup, however, does.

Here are two ways to make a maple bar, one using premade biscuit dough, the other making yeast dough from scratch. Both work well; the yeast dough is easy – it just takes a bit of extra effort. The cooking and glazing are mostly the same. We defer to Kevin Lee Jacob’s real maple syrup-based glaze.

What I want to eat at any given moment depends on the weather, my mood, how hungry I am, how much time I have or even a random craving. But with alcoholic drinks, most of the time my answer will be some sort of whiskey-based beverage. I love the notes of wood and spice that the spirit carries. Naturally, my go-to cocktail is an old-fashioned. It’s got a lovely mix of the spirit’s inherent flavors alongside sugar, fruit and a touch of bitterness for complexity.

Fall has arrived, and the temperatures are rapidly dropping. It’s time to dust off the large cooking pots, plug in the slow cooker, and heat the oven for some hefty, hearty, bone-warming dishes. When it comes to main-dish soups, stews, beans, and casseroles in wintertime, I lean toward the big-batch recipes. It’s a lazy guy’s “cook once and eat for several days” philosophy.

Ask Jamie Roberts what she does for a living and she’ll summarize her work as “I get to essentially draw and color all day.”

A friend once said there’s no such thing as soup season – it should be enjoyed year-round. As someone who just happily ordered a cup of chicken wild rice soup on a 90-degree day, I agree.

What happens when something you used to love is no longer good for you? Rachel Riggs found out the hard way. Her medical journey and its relation to her diet are what led to Riggs’s debut cookbook, “In Good Health.”

The pasta universe here on planet Earth is vast. Galaxies of pasta shapes and pasta dishes can be found around the world. It’s still unknown whether aliens on other planets share humankind’s passion for pasta; I’ll wager they do. Are pasta-seeking space aliens the cause of so many unexplained UAPs (UFOs)? Here’s a small selection of American and Italian pasta dishes that I’ve always enjoyed and invite you to enjoy as well.

There was a time when canned chow mein, three canned Asian vegetables, chow mein noodles, a box of fortune cookies, and basic soy sauce were the only Asian foods available in grocery stores. There were also a couple of frozen chow mein TV dinners, long since discontinued. Our Asian culinary experiences were mostly limited to these and an occasional outing to a Chinese American restaurant. We’ve since become more informed and sophisticated in our consumption of Asian foods.

When visiting her home country of Malaysia, Alice Koh and her husband Shane Sorey like to explore other areas during the trip.

The popularity of plant-based dishes, boosted by the internet, has been remarkable over the last several decades. Meatless dishes are often delicious and colorful, and many are developed with an eye on nutrition and healthfulness. Today’s column isn’t about meat versus vegetarian dishes, or even necessarily about nutrition and healthfulness.

Eastern Washington University is bringing a tailgate party to a kitchen near you, but first it needs your help.

The comfort of a bowl of slow-simmered chicken soup.

Eating seafood, and fish specifically, can have numerous health benefits. Seafood generally offers high-quality protein rich in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals – essential nutrients for brain and heart health. Many of us might be a little healthier if we increased our seafood consumption (use sustainable seafood, please).

Smiling through the overwhelm of the huge late-season harvest, gardeners often deploy the genial phrase, “dealing with abundance.” Although mounds of produce is a gift like no other, it comes with a lot of chores.

When life feels heavy and overwhelming, I do something that might sound like a cliché, but it works for me. I close my eyes, and imagine myself in my happy place.

Take a look at cuisines from around the world, and you’re guaranteed to find dishes with a particular superpower: They let you throw in whatever food you’ve got. Stews that accommodate this and that. Egg ensembles into which you can stir nearly anything. A dough or pastry that disappears meats and veggies. These flexible recipes fight food waste and save money, one half-eaten onion at a time.

Do you consider instant ramen to be a “superhero in the pantry”? Food entrepreneur Peter Kim does, so much so that he wrote a whole cookbook about it. Why? “It’s cheap, it’s accessible, it takes no time to make. The seasoning sachet all but ensures a baseline level of deliciousness,” Kim said over a video call. “And then the noodles give you enough heft to the meal that you don’t have to worry about, say, making a side of rice or making potatoes or whatever. ... All you really have to think about as a home cook using instant ramen is where do I want to take the flavor?”