Mouthing Off

© Stephanie Meyer

I am happy to share my favorite simple dessert, a classic that every cook should learn to make. The process is simple: You essentially boil a broken caramel and it re-emulsifies, thanks to all of the juice that comes from the apples during cooking. The pectin in the fruit binds it all together, so by the time the pan is nearly dry, the apples are cooked through and the caramel has thickened.

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© Stephanie Meyer

Scallops are so delicious this time of year and this Thai green curry is a superb way to do something a little special with them. This is Saturday night food in my house, not Tuesday night fare.

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© Stephanie Meyer

In Sicily in fall 2009, I had a chance to eat, hang out and get some private instruction from the queen of Sicilian cuisine, Eleonora Consoli. She is a force of nature and a champion of Sicilian melting pot cuisine. Her stunning villa in the shadow of Mount Etna is filled with lemon trees, herb pots, a collection of copper dessert molds, cassata forms (pans) and the types of photos in silver frames that are jaw dropping (El, is that you with Onassis and Jackie?). She is a feisty and strong-minded lady and things are done her way in her kitchen. Read more >

© Stephanie Meyer

There is no better midnight dinner than this one. Period. End of discussion.

© Stephanie Meyer

Twenty-four years ago I had a meal at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, and met the chef, Jamie Shannon. He was an amazing chef and a brilliant talent. Despite his New Jersey origins, he reinvented himself as a son of the South. His Commander’s Palace cookbook is one of my favorites. Read more >

© Stephanie Meyer

I love Vietnamese food. I have eaten it my whole life, but I got really passionate about it a couple decades ago, when I had the opportunity to cook with Nicole Routhier. She is a French-Vietnamese woman who wrote some great cookbooks many years back, including a superb primer on Vietnamese food called The Foods of Vietnam. When I met her, in 1989, she was consulting on some recipes for an über-hip restaurant that was way ahead of its time called Indochine... Read more >

© Stephanie Meyer

All good recipes have stories. Some even have amazing stories, and this is one of them. So: I was in Charleston, South Carolina, shooting Bizarre Foods, and we got a terrible spate of weather. Several of the people we’d planned to shoot for the show disappeared faster than Lindsay Lohan’s alibis... Read more >

© Stephanie Meyer

I adore cold soups. When I was young, my mother started her first vegetable garden just so she could make this dish, and she grew everything it required. I was impressed. So were our friends. My mom’s gazpacho was one of those recipes that everyone requested. It’s crucial to refrigerate the gazpacho for several hours before serving—not only does it need to chill, but you also need to let the flavors come together. Read more >

© Stephanie Meyer

In the Zimmern house, when the weather turns steamy in Minneapolis, we always keep a glass pitcher of cold soup in the fridge. We alternate between my gazpacho recipe and this cucumber yogurt soup of Turkish origin. While everyone thinks of cukes as an American farmhouse staple, Turkey is the third-largest producer of cukes in the world.

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© Stephanie Meyer

In the early days of my travel life, I fell in love with Malay food and with the island of Penang. Pound for pound, this little island may have some of the best food in the world. On Kimberley Street or New Lane in the central city of Georgetown, the hawker stalls come alive at night and they serve some of the best chow in town.

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