Nothing offers a taste of nostalgia like cooking a favorite childhood meal for your own family.

Take chicken and biscuits. Many of us grew up with this classic comfort food that allowed budget-minded cooks to stretch yet another dinner out of a roast chicken, or this time of year, turkey.

You don't need much meat to give some heft to the ...Read more

Curly endive, or frisee, is my go-to salad green through winter. The frizzy emerald leaves and creamy interior are lightly bitter and sturdy, and add oomph to rich, hearty cold-weather dishes.

Best known for its role in the French bistro salad Lyonnaise, made of tossed frisee, lardons of bacon and topped with a poached egg, this endive is open ...Read more

These Reese’s Frozen Fruit Banana Slices taste like a decadent snack, but they really aren’t that bad for you.

That’s because hidden inside a layer of milk chocolate and a thin ring of peanut butter is a full banana slice. They taste as good as they sound, and two pieces are just 90 calories.

You’ll have to store these in the freezer...Read more

Steve Hoffman was living a very ordinary life in a very ordinary suburb of Shoreview, Minnesota, when he decided to do something quite extraordinary in 2012 — take a six-month hiatus from his job and move his family to the rural French countryside.

The father of two insists it's not as crazy as it sounds. A lifelong Francophile who speaks ...Read more

PITTSBURGH -- The best meals are also often the simplest meals made with just a handful of everyday, easy-to-find ingredients.

And if they're both fresh and local, even better.

The pasta with clams in white sauce that Steve Hoffman perfected while living with his family in the small village of Autignac, France, is a classic example.

As ...Read more

ST. LOUIS — I recently had the best doughnut of my life — a life happily spent looking for the best doughnut.

It cost six dollars. It was a doughnut, and it cost six dollars.

And I’m pretty sure that it was worth every penny.

It was a brown butter-glazed cake doughnut from Damn Fine Hand Pies in St. Louis, and it was so good that my ...Read more

It’s that time of year, when a food writer looks back on a sea of empty plates and thinks about what was once on them.

In my case, as food editor at Bloomberg Pursuits, the big and small plates represent hundreds of meals across the globe and more calories than anyone wants to think about.

A best dish retrospective is also a good opportunity...Read more

Serve these rich and tender mushrooms filled with panko breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese alone as an appetizer or alongside anything from pork to fish. To ensure even cooking, look for mushrooms that are similar in size.

Panko-and-Parmesan-Crusted Mushrooms

Serves 10

Active Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 55 minutes

1 1/2 pounds white or ...Read more

The holidays are the season for gathering, giving, sharing meals, and, yes, shopping. Lots of shopping to make it all happen. This year, as you plan menus, decorations, and gifts, consider shopping locally and supporting local farmers and artisans.

There’s a cache of unexpected treasures in the offerings to be discovered in your community. ...Read more

Coffee cakes seem like a blast from the past. I don’t see them in bakeries much, even though they are a great choice for serving a group. The following cake has two layers: The bottom cake is enriched with sour cream for a fluffy interior, and the second layer is a crumbly sweet layer of crispy streusel.

This moist sour cream coffee cake is ...Read more

On the last day of our family vacation, we dined at Last Chair Kitchen & Bar, a charming, rustic restaurant at the edge of Whitefish, Montana. We love their rendition of oysters Rockefeller made with oyster mushrooms rather than the slippery bivalve. Their local bison ragu over roasted spaghetti squash made it to our wish list of recipes to ...Read more

Beefy brisket is the king of Texas barbecue. Yes, Texas has smoked ribs and homeandleisure/recipes/varietymenu/s-3523397">Read more

French toast is a breakfast classic— serve it with a platter of crispy bacon ...Read more

Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are fast approaching, which means a whole lot of home cooks are going to be wrist deep in flour, sugar and butter to craft their favorites cakes, cookies, muffins, yeasted breads and pastries for the holidays.

Since most grocery stores have a dizzying number of flours to choose from, you might be wondering: Which...Read more

Starbucks Egg Bites are all the rage right now. And why not? Eggs, whipped with your choice of flavors (sausage, bacon, gruyere, spinach) and baked in a muffin pan are healthy and delicious.

The are also expensive and require a trip to a Starbucks.

Jimmy Dean has created something similar in these frittatas. We tried the ham, broccoli and ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Most people have pretty strong opinions on the foods they love, and are just as vocal about the ones they hate.

My husband, for instance, cannot stand black licorice while I would never eat an anchovy. (At least we agree on cilantro and blue cheese.)

When it comes to the most polarizing foods, one that heads the list is the ...Read more

Generally speaking, I'm a chunky chicken soup kind of person.

I like the hearty, stick-to-the-ribs quality of a good rough-hewn soup, and the contrast of textures and flavors of the broth and hunks of vegetable or meat or pasta. This extends to ramen or Korean hot pots, where the non-liquid elements outweigh the broth (though the broth is of ...Read more

To say that entertaining can be stressful isn’t breaking news. There are so many decisions to make, starting long before the day of the event. At first, you’ll probably have a lot more questions than answers.

Those questions usually begin with the obvious: What’s the occasion? Who gets an invite? When and where will it happen? Will it be ...Read more

Beets are divisive. To some, their earthy depth and sly sweetness are irresistible; to others, the root vegetable tastes like dirt.

"The beet is the most intense of vegetables," Tom Robbins writes in "Jitterbug Perfume."

"The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion...Read more