ArcaMax

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh is a city of cookie lovers.

As evidenced by the popular Facebook group The Wedding Cookie Table Community (which counts more than 325,000 members) and the dozens of entries to the Post-Gazette's 2024 Holiday Cookie Challenge, Western Pennsylvanians also like to bake the sweet treats — especially during the holidays �...Read more

Sweet potatoes present certain advantages over regular potatoes when it comes to mashing: They contain more moisture, less starch, and smaller starch granules, so they cook up smooth and creamy. The only problem is that their looser structure absorbs more moisture during a boil, waterlogging the potatoes and diluting their flavor. We cooked the ...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

P Is for Party

I was reading a design magazine recently and saw a party planning feature. The woman was talking about how you don’t need to know how to cook (even a lick), but you can still have a cocktail party.

She said all you need are the 3 Ps.

Parmesan, potato chips and prosecco.

That’s it.

Her idea was that you go out and ...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

LOS ANGELES -- The condiment shelf in my refrigerator is a chaotic place. I am no Marie Kondo, but I could argue that each jar, squeeze bottle and tube sparks real joy.

My bottle of Kewpie shares real estate with a 64-ounce jar of Best Foods. There are about eight bottles of chili crisp at any given time, plus Fly by Jing's chili crisp ...Read more

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree.

So naturally I made a pan-roasted partridge — pan-roasted, so I could baste it in butter while it cooked — with a light salad of sliced pears (from the pear tree) with endive and a simple lemon vinaigrette.

I’ve never actually eaten partridge, but the ...Read more