Blog Posts by Epicurious.com

As a single person I mostly cook for one, and while I'm capable of broiling a pork chop and searing a piece of fish, I seem to eat typical "for one" meals like soup or salad for far too many lunches and dinners. Somehow, despite my skills and my own preferences (I don't even like salad that much), I hardly ever make a decent (or well-rounded) meal for myself.

But, once I started reading Suzanne Pirret's new book, The Pleasure is All Mine, I have to admit, I'm inspired to get back to the kitchen and treat myself to more home-cooked meals. Pirret's book is part memoir, part cookbook: It features 100 recipes (most with wine pairings from Colum Sheehan of New York 's Babbo) as well as short essays about her culinary experiences in New York , Los Angeles , Paris , and London . I see it as the type of book one can curl up with and read as well as take to the kitchen and actually use.

Pirret's goal is for you to put down the takeout menu and learn to cook for yourself. Not only

Plus: The Best Chicago Small Plates

This is a moral question that I keep puzzling over, so I'm genuinely interested in an answer, from both diners and restaurateurs. Is it ethical, in these grim times, when restaurants are closing every week and our wallets are deflated, to dine out only on cheaper appetizers, instead of the entrees?

A few years ago, when things were flush, this wouldn't have been just an irrelevant question but a stupid one. Why would anyone bother? But increasingly restaurants have made it easy to dine out, and dine out well, on starters. In fact many of the best menus now, taking their lead from the tapas-inspired taste for grazing (more pigs-in-a-blanket than pig), have exploding appetizer sections. They're called various things: starters, small plates, smaller plates, small bites, first plates, snacks, antipasti, dim sum. They all mean the same thing, though, and they're often the most exciting part of the menu. Starters, more and more, allow chefs to

Next weekend I'm having people over (again) for an annual dinner party that combines two of my favorite holidays: St. Patrick's Day, the time-honored rite whereby Irish-Americans gather their loved ones together to stuff them senseless with beef and beer, and Pi Day, the observance of which involves eating pie and watching so-bad-they're-awesome movies. In my house, anyway.

Yesterday, while emailing with a friend about the menu, I felt excited but weirdly defiant. Like I was about to do something rebellious and risky, and never mind the consequences. Which of course, is pretty much what I'm planning to do as far as my non-diet diet goes: Nothing on the menu (which will include CB&C with soda bread, but also this, this, and this) is what you could call a diet superfood. In fact, a lot of it is a flat-out fat-and-salt A-bomb.

But I love to cook for company, and I love the food traditions of these holidays. In fact, the food is the whole point, the entire reason I'm having people

As an editor at Epicurious I am frequently asked about food trends. Whether it's a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance, or a stranger, just about everyone is curious about the next big thing. And at Epicurious, we naturally try to keep on top of what's hot; we even publish a yearly round up of the year's biggest trends. It's with this in mind that I started looking at crEATe.: Eating, Design and Future Food by the British trend-forecasting firm, the Future Laboratory (Gestalten).

crEATe examines "how, where, and why food is gaining new meaning in our lives and in top-notch contemporary design." It's divided into seven chapters: Food Activists looks at food costs and food's place in political and environmental discussions; Wholehearted is about the return to grandma's way of cooking and living; Smart Food explores the idea of food as medicine; Packaging looks at the way we wrap, brand, and market food; Food Spaces features kitchens, restaurants, and other places where we eat;

When someone says "cupcake," I'm transported back in time to elementary school fundraisers where cupcakes were sold in shoeboxes and given away as prizes in cakewalks. But as I grew up, cupcakes and I parted ways until several years ago when the huge cupcake craze began, and then I couldn't escape them no matter how hard I tried. The cupcakes were usually dry and crumbly, and forget the frosting, which was usually piled on too high and was all butter and/or sugar.

Since that time, I've made my peace with cupcakes and just stick to baking cookies and other delectable baked goods. But when I received the Cupcake Kit by Elinor Klivans (Chronicle Books), I was won over by the cute-and thoughtful-packaging and decided to give it a go for a birthday celebration.

For cupcake-making beginners like myself, the Cupcake Kit is perfect. In it are 250 colorful cupcake liners (two sizes: medium and small), a reusable pastry bag with piping tips, plus a booklet by Klivans filled with choice

You make a lot of decisions if you're the wine master behind the nation's best-selling Chardonnay. Kendall-Jackson's Randy Ullom oversees the harvest, blending, aging, and bottling of millions of cases every year. And this is no plonk: The company's flagship product, the Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay, earned 90 points from Robert Parker late last year (and was famously spotted on President Obama's kitchen counter). We talked to the legendary oenophile about the evolution of the signature Chardonnay flavor, the distinctions between organic and sustainable farming, and the launch of the new K-J Pinot Gris.

Epi-Log: How did you become wine master of such an esteemed winery?
Randy Ullom: I always enjoyed wine, even when I was younger than legally allowed to drink.

When I graduated from high school, I was going to study mining engineering with a minor in skiing. So I went to the University of Utah , because they had both there. Then I went down to Chile , just to go skiing, and

After tasting 20 pies, we found a winner and 3 others we'd gladly eat again

Pizza lovers have very particular tastes. Some folks want the crust to be thick and chewy, others like it cracker-crisp. Some demand abundant amounts of gooey cheese, while others prefer plenty of tomato sauce. To each their own. But we think there are a few key factors on which we can all agree.

The ultimate pie cannot be soggy. It needs some structure and resilience. The tomato sauce must not be one-dimensional, too salty, or watery: It should show some sweetness, and be reasonably thick and full of body. The cheese needs to have elasticity, but not be rubbery. Finally, we gravitate towards pies that don't require a stack of paper napkins to absorb grease.

To find this king of pies, we tasted a total of 20 frozen cheese pizzas (no other toppings allowed). The variations were nearly endless. Some were marketed as having a blend of three cheeses or more, several as healthy, a few were deep-dish

I'm not a kitchen-gadget guy, generally. I don't see the need for a tiny Le Creuset just to melt butter, think it's kind of ridiculous to have a thousand different kinds of knives, and my default position is that the essentials that have been around for centuries are the only ones you really need. (Except for standing mixers, food processors and Microplanes: They rock.)

But I was pretty wowed at the New York Wine Expo this weekend when I saw a product that seemed to finally justify all those years spent in chem class.

(Also, the ice-cream maker. That's fun. I'm adding that to the list of cool modern kitchen gadgets.)

It's a much cooler way than a vacuum stopper to preserve your unfinished wine.

So here's how you use it: When you can't finish off a bottle of wine, you take the VineyardFresh canister, stick the nozzle in the bottle, and give it one or two squirts. Then cork it and store the bottle upright until you want to drink the wine again.

The canister