Food, Anyone?

[lsanderson]

Summer Stretches Into Fall, Held by a Crab Claw
By JOHN WILLOUGHBY and CHRIS SCHLESINGER
WESTPORT, Mass.

NOW is the time of the crab.

By “now,” we mean this moment when corn and tomatoes are in their delicious twilight. And when we say “crab” we’re talking not about Jonah or stone or Dungeness, but about Atlantic blue crab, the aptly named Callinectes sapidus, or “tasty beautiful swimmer.”

Recipes: Tomato Steaks With Crab-Corn Relish, Hush Puppies With Crab and Bacon, Malaysian-Style Ginger-Chile Crab

Making Vegan a New Normal
By JEFF GORDINIER
LOS ANGELES

IT was a warm California evening in the city of West Hollywood, and Kathy Freston was sipping a martini.

“Just because you’re a vegan doesn’t mean you don’t want to have fun,” she said, sitting in a booth at a restaurant called Craig’s. “I’m a decadent gal. I want to drink. I want to feel full at the end of a meal. I just don’t want it to have any animals in it, for a variety of reasons.”

Don’t Be Afraid of the Eggplant

By JULIA MOSKIN

BACK in the 1970s, when the vegetarian movement began growing like wheat grass, eggplant moved into the mainstream. Casseroles of eggplant Parmesan and moussaka adorned numerous potlucks, mostly because the eggplant’s mild taste and chew — especially when breaded and fried — managed to imitate cutlets of veal and chicken.

Recipes: Roasted Eggplant With Spiced Chickpeas (Moussaq’a) , Roasted Eggplant Salad With Leeks and Cilantro Leaves

Gentle Soul in a World of Bold Fruit
By ERIC ASIMOV
Published: September 21, 2012

ONLY a few years ago, some Spanish wine experts were suggesting that the gran reserva style of Rioja would fade to extinction in a decade or so. Their rationale seemed clear. The worldwide consumer swoon in the last 20 years for plush, dark, bountiful flavors had marginalized these smooth, pale, harmonious wines, which are aged for years in barrels and convey their complexities more through finesse and shimmering textures than bold fruit flavors. Moar

Taking an Ordinary Dish and Making It Heavenly
By DAVID TANIS

IN France, the creamy salt cod dish called brandade de morue (creamed salt cod), despite its elegant-sounding name, is considered ordinary. Good, but fairly ordinary. As familiar as shepherd’s pie or tuna casserole in North America. Moar

Recipe: French Salt Cod and Potato Brandade

A Little Zucchini for Your Grated Cheese

Recipe: Zucchini Frico

Food of the Ancients
By MARK BITTMAN

I’ve traveled to the Yucatán Peninsula a dozen times looking for “real” Mayan cuisine, driving through the center and up and down both (or is it all three?) coasts, but the food that’s at the soul of the Yucatán is not easily discovered. What you get as an outsider is feast food like cochinita pibil — a sometimes-wonderful chili-marinated pork buried and cooked in an earthen pit — which is not enough to have you rush down there and start eating. Moar