Try this exercise. Calculate how much it costs your employer to employ you — your salary, plus a mixture of taxes, social security, medical, bonus or stock options — depending on your location and seniority.

When you have that number, ask yourself one candid question…

Is my value to my employer more or less than my cost?

If the answer is “more”, then you are allowing your employer to benefit inequitably from your skill, talent and work. You are worth more than you are receiving. For some people, that’s OK. The security of the paycheck, the enjoyment of the work…

In Miami, nobody calls it “8th Street”. It’s “Calle Ocho” to Spanish-, English-, Spanglish- and Creole-speaking residents alike. Running from downtown Miami west towards the Everglades, it transforms from a standard American city scenes with strip malls, pharmacies and billboards into a stereotype of Cuban culture as soon as it hits the boundary of “Little Havana”. This area became a temporary home of Cuban exiles in the 1960s as they fled the Castro regime — the hope of a short stay in South Florida waiting for Fidel to be overthrown turned into a more permanent stay in the 1970s as…

Not only great and inspiring content, but surely one of the most stylish covers of any recipe book.

In 2019, the format feels familiar to us, but in 1994, the layout of ingredient-led recipe books was not well known. Split into 40 chapters, called “Cod”, Garlic” or “Olive Oil”, the book gives a short introduction to the ingredient and then follows in up with a handful of recipes with the item as the star — sometimes only 2, sometimes 5 or 6.

Hopkinson isn’t particularly well-known as a chef. His career was relatively short-lived; after a classical apprenticeship, he became…

Few dishes stir the “authenticity” debate more than carbonara sauce, but whether it’s Nonna’s version or yours, it’s undeniably tasty. Here is how to make your version even better.

I’m always suspicious of the recipes which claim “real”, “classic”, “authentic” for their version. “Jamie’s Genuine Bolognese Sauce” and the like have me clicking away in no time. The idea that any dish is somehow frozen in time and method, like a culinary Holy Grail, for we mortals to aspire to is frankly arrogant and ridiculous. …

McGee on Food and Cooking

“Never before has so much information been made so approachable. For anyone remotely interested in food Harold McGee’s brilliant reworking of his original masterpiece must go down as one of the greatest cookery books ever written” Heston Blumenthal

It’s extremely hard to explain to somebody who does not regard themselves as food-obsessed why one of the most useful cookbooks on the shelf contains no recipes. Isn’t that what cookbooks are — collections of recipes? they say. It’s hard to argue. Most kitchens are full of recipe books. And most of those recipes are very useful and great for most cooks.

…

Food home delivery is here to stay. Even here in Spain, with its culture of family meals, long lunches and savoring the meal, kamikaze cyclists buzz the city with cubic backpacks brimming with hot take-away food for hungry consumers.

We own a small restaurant, which has been open for a little over a year. “I guess you are signing up with (insert delivery company name here)?” — has become a common question from neighbors and friends. The aggressive sales representatives of these companies are also presenting this option as inevitable; if we don’t do it, there is a huge opportunity…

At the end of November 2017, Chef Leandro Carreira opened a Portuguese restaurant, Londrino, in London, his first solo venture. He had a long and extensive career in some of the best kitchens in the world, working with some of the most well-known chefs including Andoni Luis Aduriz at Mugaritz.

At the time of opening, he said “The restaurants I’ve worked in London, they helped shape me and taught me that you should not give up straight away, because London is a really competitive market and it’s just very easy for you to get off your main track and all of those places always stick to their guns and that’s why they are so successful.”

The restaurant sadly closed in February 2019 having been open for only 15 months. In that time, the restaurant divided critics; some loved it, some didn’t.

This week, Carreira gave a candid interview to Observador…

1. Make your WiFi free and open. You are paying for it anyway and your neighbors probably aren’t going to use your network to watch Netflix. Give the network a name that makes people smile or remember you and let them use it. Who cares if the passerby logs on to check the weather tomorrow without buying anything? They may return tomorrow with a table for 6. (Oh, and if you insist on a password, change it from the default router one and don’t hand it to people on a coffee stained Post-It Note.)
2. Nobody wants to be added to your…