Bartenderly

Want a cocktail veganized? Bought a bottle of something and don’t know what to do with it? Need a cool mocktail? Want to make your own liqueur? We’ll drink to that. Bartenderly is here to make all your vegan drinking dreams come true. If you want to check on whether a specific brand of alcohol is vegan, I recommend Barnivore.

Here’s a drink to toast the monumentally exhausting year that just closed. This One-Two Punch recipe is so named because it’s equally serviceable for one or for many, with or without alcohol, as a seasonal cheer-bringer or as a Valentine’s date drink— and however you take it, the sharp and spicy combination of apple and ginger is supremely uplifting. It’s based on a punch I used to make by the giant bowlful every Friday night at the bar I ran — it helped us, being quick and easy to serve, and customers enjoyed the convivial novelty. …

Whether your Christmas this year will be spent with family, chosen family, whoever’s in your bubble, or in a more compact, cozy fashion with just yourself — everyone deserves a showstopper dessert. I know it seems outlandish to suggest making this for one person, but hear me out: eat it for breakfast, perhaps while watching comforting films or face-timing loved ones, enjoy a sugar-induced nap, rustle yourself up something savoury later on and finally reward yourself with more meringue wreath for dessert.

If you’re serving this beauty to a crowd you can be assured of their appreciative gasps — not that impressing people should be your sole motivation in cooking but I believe it’s quite reasonable at Christmas, especially when the question, “so what are you doing with your life?” tends to come up a lot. It’s useful to have this spectacular meringue wreath as either a distraction or an example of absolutely being a capable adult. …

Virtual Serotonin

There is real contentment to be found in browsing Wikipedia — learning about resolutely antisocial animals; chortling at the solemnly literal List of Lists of Lists; or streaming a television series, phone in hand, scrolling through the cast’s filmography. History is usually recorded by the most powerful, and even with Wikipedia’s egalitarian ethos of gathering information, it’s not entirely trustworthy. But it’s a solid starting point, and I consult Wikipedia so often that its presence in my browser history is as good as a diary when the days merge into one — what on earth was I doing on Tuesday? …

Aquafaba Files

The Aquafaba Files is a Tenderly recipe series by Laura Vincent, exploring the almost suspicious versatility of this ingredient that is little more than the leftover liquid from a drained can of chickpeas.

Despite the length of the ingredients list and instructions, these churros are quite simple. They’re mostly flour and water, and there is as much preparing to cook as there is actual cooking.

Churros are a fried delicacy traditional to Spain and Portugal, eaten throughout much of South America and parts of North America [Editor’s shoutout to the NYC subway station churro vendors], but as a New Zealander it was only in the last decade that I tried them for the first time. …

Bartenderly

Want a cocktail veganized? Bought a bottle of something and don’t know what to do with it? Need a cool mocktail? Want to make your own liqueur? We’ll drink to that. Bartenderly is here to make all your vegan drinking dreams come true. If you want to check on whether a specific brand of alcohol is vegan, I recommend Barnivore.

You don’t need me to tell you that this year is intense, and has been throwing literally all of us challenge after challenge on every conceivable front. What I can offer you, however, is a drink to match this energy. These three cocktails evoke a certain nihilistic chaos, while also drawing from the canon of the classics — sure, they’re a little outrageous, but they’re also outrageously good. …

The aphorism is a perceptive truism, a saying which allows us to recognize some aspect of life in a simple but meaningful way. Their success can be their downfall — many is the aphorism which started off witty and is now considered a cliche through overuse. Cliche or not, the truth at the core of many of them remains.

When I’m not writing about food, my words are used in composing poetry and writing a novel, and in order to metaphorically dunk my tired brain in ice-cold water, I wrote some aphorisms of my own as a creative exercise. …

Aquafaba Files

The Aquafaba Files is a Tenderly recipe series by Laura Vincent, exploring the almost suspicious versatility of this ingredient that is little more than the leftover liquid from a drained can of chickpeas.

This was intended to be a sorbet recipe, but the aquafaba had other plans. Traditionally, egg whites are added to sorbet, to improve its texture upon freezing. …

Fat rules. It makes food comforting, rich, balanced. Tender, crisp, caramelized, delicious. Watching Samin Nosrat’s exquisite series Salt Fat Acid Heat affirmed this long-held fixation of mine — fat is crucial to cooking.

I’m happiest when there are rivers of olive oil running through my food. A drizzle of earthy peanut oil, a toasty bead of sesame oil, a creamy spoonful of coconut oil. Dripping off sun-dried tomatoes, or the glossy coating on salad leaves. The way it pools invitingly in a jar of homemade nut butter, or emulsifies cooperatively in a cake batter.

And then there’s one of the best ways to wallow in the wonders of oil — confit. This traditional French process is a preservation method, where food is cooked submerged in fat very slowly and then stored, still submerged, until required. Although it’s generally associated with meat preservation, there’s no reason why you can’t apply the same idea to vegetables that you want to eat with relative immediacy. …