Last month, one of the top 25 search phrases on foodandwine.com, along with (Top Chef contestant) "Richard Blais" and "appetizers," was "lard." Animal fats have gilded restaurant menus for the better part of the last decade, but the interest in using them at home seems to have migrated from the rarefied air of the New York Times Op Ed page to the rest of us. In September Ten Speed will release an awesome-looking book on the subject by Toronto-based Australian food writer Jennifer McLagan. And just last week Steve McCarthy of the Prather Ranch Meat Company in San Francisco's Ferry Building was telling me how strong the response has been to their new leaf lard, rendered from the kidney fat of their heritage Range Brothers pork: it's flying off their shelves. Granted, this is San Francisco, but McCarthy insisted the most surprising part of the success is how few food geeks are a part of it. "Our lard customers are way more mainstream than the guys who come in here looking for belly to make their own bacon, I'm telling you," McCarthy said. So what accounts for its wider popularity? "I think it's just skipped a generation," McCarthy said. "People remember the biscuits and other foods their grandparents used to make with it, and don't want to use the margerine and vegetable shortening their parents used."

My Blueberry Nights, the latest from Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, is many things: a road movie, a meditation on love and selfhood, and an excuse for some serious food-porn imagery. One thing it isn't: a good film. It probably should've been obvious that casting Jude Law, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman and Chan Marshall (aka the talented but mercurial Cat Power) in the same movie would result in more sap, more preening egos, and more questionable acting skills than one screen can handle. Throw in superficial screenwriting—and gauzy, lingering frames that encourage each actor to pout and mug to maximum effect—and the result borders on unwatchable...except, well, for the gauzy, lingering shots of warm blueberry pie swirling around in pools of vanilla ice cream. (Law's diner-owner character pushes the pie like Prozac on the lovelorn customer played by Jones.)

The movie should have made me hate blueberry pie forever, but I left the theater badly wanting a slice. Food shots in film have a way of doing that. So I've been doing what I always do when a craving kicks in for a specific food: go to all lengths to track it down—or if I'm feeling ambitious, make it myself. I wasn't feeling ambitious, so I went in search of blueberry pie in Manhattan. I couldn't find a single one. My favorite pie source, Little Pie Company, doesn't make one. Neither do City Bakery, Balthazar Bakery, Ceci Cela, Black Hound or Once Upon a Tart. This can't be just because blueberries aren't in season yet; that hasn't stopped some of these places from serving other blueberry desserts (muffins, scones, Danish, etc), or pies made with other unseasonal berries. In summer, Little Pie Company does sell an apple-blueberry pie—and a Threeberry Pie is available year-round—but that's not what I wanted.

The fiercer my craving got, the more I struck out. I kept thinking about the beginning of the film, when Law's character tells Jones's that none of his customers ever orders the blueberry pie, so every night he's left with a full uneaten one (which raises the question of why he keeps the pie in stock, but that's the least of the film's screenwriting problems). Maybe that's the reason no real-life bakeries seem to carry blueberry pie on a regular basis. And I don't know of any classic diners in the city that have an old-fashioned selection of pies behind the counter, but once I find one I'm there.
 
I'm puzzled why there isn't more blueberry pie around. The stuff is heaven: a little sweet, a little tangy, and delightfully...blue. Nothing beats making a homemade one in summer with freshly picked blueberries, which I've done in the past on lazy weekends crashing with friends in berry-riddled Cape Cod and Maine and elsewhere around the Northeast. Fortuitously, I went to a rooftop barbecue this past Saturday, where the host served some of his great homemade pies—including a lovely blueberry one, which went only half-eaten (maybe Law was right). But by yesterday afternoon, I wanted more. My search continued, and I kept striking out—then I finally settled on Little Pie Company's Threeberry pie: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries. A tasty compromise, and with some vanilla ice cream—hold the Norah Jones—it made for an almost-right blueberry night.

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I've only ever come across one person who doesn't like cupcakes, not entirely unexpected since that person also doesn't much care for sweets, kids or parties (all of a piece). I, on the other hand, am obsessed with the little darlings (cupcakes, that is). I search them (as well as products, tools and storage related to them) out in print, in bakeries, online, on TV...you name it. Which is why May's Tasting & Testing was so much fun for me to work on. I created two cake batters, a yellow and a chocolate—both using butter and vegetable oil to keep them ultra-moist—and three frostings—marshmallow, chocolate, and vanilla buttercream. Plus, there are a host of toppings and add-ins to create dozens and dozens of mix-and-match variations. I can't wait for the next birthday!

It took a Tasting & Testing assignment (just wait for the May issue!!)  for me to find the perfect cupcake carrier—one that transports enough cupcakes to feed a New York City-public-school size class (more than 24). After years of digging out shirt boxes or aluminum roasting pans, always at 8:00 in the morning, just as my kids are heading out the door, I've most thankfully found the ideal solution.
The carrier is a little bulky, but is the most efficient  (and pretty and relatively inexpensive) way of hauling  36 standard-size cupcakes—even ones with an oversize pile of butter cream—without  them teetering or toppling over.  Plus the cupcake tiers are removable, making room for a large 3-layer birthday cake (with candles)  or 9 x 13 inch sheet cake.  I figure that after two more birthdays (for each of my two kids)  and a picnic or two,  the carrier will pay for itself. 

The cover article of a recent House & Home section of the New York Times declared that the Slow Food movement—which aims to preserve traditional regional foods—is spreading over to the rest of the home. The once-old-but-new-again approach is known as Slow Design, and one of its more vocal proponents is Natalie Chanin of the housewares and clothing company Alabama Chanin, whose Alabama Stitch Book: Projects and Stories Celebrating Hand-Sewing, Quilting, and Embroidery for Contemporary Sustainable Design is being published in March by Stewart, Tabori & Chang.

But as Natalie and her friend Angie Mosier, known for her decadent Southern cakes, have shown in our pages, Slow Design and Slow Food intermingle nicely. In March, the duo will be joining their talents again in two weekend workshops together at the GAS Studio in Tuscumbia, Alabama—one will center on stitching corsets and creating fabric flowers, the other, on demystifying some of the most iconic Southern dishes, like deviled eggs, pan-fried chicken, skillet cornbread and fried pies. And of course, they'll be showcasing their Southern hospitality: The weekend will include a brunch, lunch, two cocktail sessions, and a dinner with, yes, a number of Southern cakes. Space is limited, and four scholarships are available.

 

 

I’ve long been a fan of whoopie pies, those luscious handpies made by sandwiching fluffy, marshmallow-like filling in between two chocolate-cake disks. A good whoopie pie is a cross between a Devil Dog (always too dry for my taste) and a Suzy Q, if you’ve ever tried those before. I don’t see whoopie pies too much, but I was reminded of how much I like them when I ate at Hook in Washington, DC. The pastry chef there, Heather Chittum, makes a dessert called Tic Tac Toe. She creates the board with chocolate sauce on a plate, then places two mini pies strategically on the board for the O’s. The X is a crispy vanilla shortbread cookie. How fun for me! I wish, however, that she had given me and my date each several X’s and O’s, so we could actually play the game...and get a little bit more dessert, too (sharing one of my tiny little whoopie pies was a bit of a downer).

We’ve tested some awesome whoopie pies from cookbooks in the last few years, so if you’re itching to make whoopie pies (or maybe play a winner-eat-all game of tic-tac-toe), our favorite recipes come from The Weekend Baker, by Abigail Johnson Dodge, and from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion.

The Ultimate Gifts, Period.

As my astute colleague Kate Heddings has noted, magazines and newspapers have been bombarding us all with gift suggestions. To simplify matters, here are the only 12 gifts you'll really need, also known as the Food & Wine Editors' Edible Gift Guide in our December issue. We polled the staff for their biggest successes and came up with our list of the most delicious, most failsafe, most irresistable crowd pleasers ever. A few highlights:

1. Need to win over your kids' teachers? Go with Tina Ujlaki's Best Ever Nut Brittle.
2. Overstaying your welcome with the relatives? Give them Kate's Cardamom-Spiced Crumb Cake. Present it in the porcelain casserole you bake it in, along with a bag of fresh-ground coffee and some rich cream, and you'll be sure to get invited back next year.
3. Just dropping by for drinks? Take along Melissa Rubel's addictive Rosemary-Maple Cashews; they’ll disappear before you leave the party.
4. Want to bring the drinks? Put together Nick Fauchald's Mock Gin and Marcia Kiesel's Pickled Pearl Onions, and you've got a glorious evening of Gibsons.
5. Got an overproductive Meyer lemon tree? (not a common predicament, but one I once enjoyed) Make this simplest Meyer Lemon Marmalade. It’s ok if you find it’s too good to give away; consider it a gift to yourself.

Many years ago, I remember thumbing through my mother's Christmas  cookie recipe file and seeing all these wonderful recipes from women's magazines—think lots of green and red glaced cherries.  It was (along with my mother's jewelry box) my favorite thing to rifle through. (It's something my 10-year-old daughter, Pia,  likes to do as well.)

December's challenge for Tasting and Testing  was Sugar Cookies—just right for the holidays.  (Let's not forget that I worked on this story in August.) I had to create an all-purpose sugar cookie dough and then come up with 3 variations.  It's usually a challenge to come up with variations  for this column (and fit them all onto one single page) but this one was a breeze. I only wish I had another page to continue on with the variations.  From one dough, the possibilities are nearly infinite. Here are a few more:

Almond-Cardamom Cookies—in place of the powdered and crystallized ginger, add  1/2 cup ground toasted almonds and 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom, roll  out and cut or roll into a log, chill and slice. Drizzle with melted dark chocolate after baking and cooling.

Cherry-Chocolate Cookies—in place of the powdered and crystallized ginger, add  6 ounces mini chocolate chips and 1/2 cup chopped dried tart cherries. Roll out  and cut or roll into 1-inch balls and press to 1/4-inch

Green Tea-Ginger Cookies—add 1 teaspoon green tea powder (Macha) to the dough along with the crystallized and powdered ginger. Roll out and cut or roll into a log, chill and slice.

Pepper-Spice Cookies—add 1/2 teaspoon  each ground white pepper, cinnamon  and nutmeg  and 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves. Roll out and cut or roll into a log, chill and slice.

Lemon—Poppy-seed Cookies— in place of the powdered and crystallized ginger, add the finely grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 tablespoons poppy seeds. Roll out and cut, or roll into a log, chill and slice

White Chocolate-Cranberry Cookies—in place of the powdered and crystallized ginger, add  6 ounces mini white chocolate chips and 1/2 cup chopped dried cranberries. Roll out and cut or roll into a log, chill and slice.

For many, the best part about Thanksgiving is repurposing the leftovers. Not for me: I’m happiest when the dishes are done and the meal’s remnants are sent home in the hands of industrious cooks who will dream up soups, hashes, pot pies and other ingenious uses for recycled food.

So I surprised myself last night—after this year’s “Fakesgiving” dinner, my posse’s potluck warm-up to the big dance—when I chased down my friend Deana on her way out and begged from her the remains of her wicked-awesome pumpkin bars. (Had I not already known that they’d reappear in our office today, the leftover bourbon/apple/maple Jell-O shots Kristin Donnelly brought to the meal would also not have been allowed to leave the premises. I pray she gives us all the recipe tomorrow.)

This morning Deana emailed me the recipe. Like many great desserts, it's a decades-old hand-me-down—in this case, from Deana's mother, Sandy. She also gave me Sandy’s blessing to pass it on. If you make some, send me the leftovers:

Sandy’s Pumpkin Bars
Makes 16-20 bars
Crust:
One 18-ounce box yellow cake mix
1⁄2 c melted butter
1 large egg
Filling:
One 15-ounce can pumpkin puree
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 large eggs
2/3 cup 2 percent milk
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Topping:
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, diced
1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Make the crust: Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking pan with cooking spray. Measure out 1 cup of the yellow cake mix and set it aside for the topping. In a small bowl, whisk the remaining cake mix with the melted butter and the egg until combined. Press the crust into the prepared baking pan.
2. Make the filling: In a medium bowl combine the pumpkin puree, brown sugar, eggs, milk and cinnamon and stir until combined. Spread the filling on top of the crust.
3. Make the topping: In a small bowl combine the reserved 1 cup of yellow cake mix with the sugar and diced butter. Stir until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle the topping over the filling.
4. Bake the cake for 1 hour, until the crust is crispy and the filling is cooked through. Let cool in the pan, cut into bars and serve.

With Thanksgiving coming up, I’ve had whipped cream on my mind – or rather, delicious alternatives. Whipped cream is the key garnish to my father’s Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, and when I was little, it was my sister’s and my job to put the beaters and the bowl in the freezer before whipping the cream with Dad. Now when I make a pie or a cake, often without thinking I’ll chill my beaters to serve a little alongside. But now that the weather's finally chilly and perfect for baking, I’ve become preoccupied with other fluffy white accompaniments to pie: crème fraiche, mascarpone, soft fresh ricotta. To that end, I want to point you to a favorite recipe from our November issue: Octavio Becerra’s date cake, an incredibly moist concoction the Los Angeles chef serves with lebneh, Lebanese yogurt that the chef combines with crunchy pistacchios. Perfect for a chilly pre-Thanksgiving evening.