Michael Wiley, 43, was born and raised in Spokane and got his start in the restaurant business at the Old Spaghetti Factory downtown at age 17 in 1994. Fast forward 26 years, and Wiley has since opened Wiley’s Downtown Bistro and runs a catering business, Wiley’s Catering Co.

The Steel Barrel Taproom and Genus Brewing owner Peter McArthur and chef and restaurateur Chad White are a culinary match made in heaven. After introducing McArthur to me last Thursday at Steel Barrel, White credited McArthur for allowing him to share the downtown taproom space with his Zona Blanca.

The autumnal aroma filling your kitchen as this dessert bakes will have you swooning well before it is time to dig in. It’s an anticipation that makes eating it even better, priming you for the reward of digging your spoon through the softened peel of the whole apple.

I really appreciate a recipe where the sauce is the best part of the dish. Butter chicken? Yes, please, I’ll take a bowl of sauce and a piece of naan for dipping. And the wine-infused gravy from my family’s chicken and mushrooms is basically liquid gold.

Every few years, Wine Press Northwest magazine conducts an overview of fortified wines produced in our region. Each time, the tasting provides a delicious contrast of classic Old World approaches with some eclectic angles found in the New World.

Ready to tap into your inner Pinterest? Don’t worry, this one is fail free and calls for only four ingredients and some toothpicks. These bite-size treats combine the festive flavors of a caramel apple with a juicy, booze-soaked grape. Yes, booze!

It’s fun to invest in a good knife for your home cooking arsenal as it is the primary workhorse of the kitchen. However, a good knife is nothing without its partner in crime – the cutting board. Everyone has their preference of cutting boards, but there are pros and cons to different types as well as tiers of quality.

The last few years have seen a shift in the food culture in the U.S. Fermented foods are in. What seems to be a new food trend is actually a shift back to traditional food preservation techniques.

Rene Moya and his wife, Yumi Moya, are livin’ la Lumpia Loca. Running their small business Lumpia Loca – it is just the two of them – specializing in Filipino fare favorites lumpia and pancit can certainly be described as crazy from the start.

If you’ve ever eaten a pureed soup and, after the first dozen bites or so, found yourself getting a little bored, you need to learn the following trick: Hold out some of your ingredients, before or after cooking, and add them back in the form of a garnish right before serving.

In basically every baking recipe that uses it, sugar is doing so much more than providing sweetness. It's an important component of the carefully designed chemical reactions taking place in your oven. Of course, there are dietary and health reasons people want to reduce or eliminate sugar.

At first glance, you might not think that Jacques Pépin and Haile Thomas have all that much in common. He, of course, is one of the best-known chefs in the world, an 84-year-old Frenchman whose books (including classic encyclopedias of technique) and public TV series have made him a true culinary icon.

There comes a time in every person’s life when they just need to throw in the towel, put away the quinoa and hummus and hunker down with some good, old-fashioned junk food. With the weather turning colder, the days getting shorter and a pandemic still raging, I would suggest that time is now.

As a parent and a nutritionist, I am a firm believer that “kid food” is a trap we set for ourselves. Relegating kids to mostly beige, bland foods corners adults into catering to a self-imposed special need, adding extra work and stress at meals, and it limits children’s experience with different foods.

Before making swiss steak, I hadn’t a clue what it was. During a phone call with my mom, she brought up a dish that consisted of beef that was braised in a tomato gravy with onions. The way she nostalgically raved about its rich sauce and tender meat, I was intrigued and knew I had to give it a try.

Cooking a steak dinner at home can seem intimidating, but learn the basics and you’ll fear no more. A steak entrée at a restaurant will almost always leave you out $20, so learning to cook steak has a huge financial perk. Not only that, you also get more control over the cut of steaks and its source.

For this catch-up, the “Top Chef” Season 13 cheftestant and James Beard nominee discussed the 2020 Whiskey Barrel Weekend at Coeur d’Alene Resort, his just-announced new location for Zona Blanca, his just-announced new menu for Steel Barrel, his new project with Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park and his new winter menu at Arbor Crest Wine Cellars.

Two years after it earned acclaim from the world’s most influential wine publication, the Columbia Crest 2016 H3 Cabernet Sauvignon finished atop the 2020 Washington State Wine Competition as the best of show. There were 500,000 cases produced of that $15 cab.

Lately, I’ve been craving two things, which seem to be diametrically opposed but manage to join together in this soup: familiar comfort and an element of surprise. The base of it is like minestrone, which is such a staple for me I could, as they say, make it with my eyes closed. Onion, carrot and celery are softened in a gloss of olive oil.