lsanderson | Food, Glorious Food

Honoring R.W. Apple in Words and Food
By FRANK BRUNI

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 — There were those at the Kennedy Center memorial on Tuesday for R. W. Apple Jr. who contended that he would have been touched most by what the current and former leaders of the free world had to say — or rather how many of them said it.

Of the five living American presidents, all but Gerald R. Ford, who is ill, sent letters of admiration to be read from the stage in honor of Mr. Apple, who died on Oct. 4 at 71 after an extraordinary journalistic career at The New York Times. More

Gizmos and Gadgets for the Newest Foods
By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

YOU’VE got the frother and the dehydrator. Now it’s time for the laser tattoo spoon and the Eye. The leaders of the molecular gastronomy movement are bringing the avant-garde food revolution home with flatware and serving pieces that require a new level of creative cooking — and a sense of humor.

Last year, the chef Ferran Adrià — the pioneering provocateur behind El Bulli in San Sebastian, Spain — headed a team of Spanish industrial designers to create the Faces Ferran Adrià collection. It is being sold in the United States at Le Sanctuaire in Santa Monica, Calif., (310) 581-8999. (Prices run from $48 for two ice cream spoons to $392 for a three-piece laser-tattooed place setting.) More

A Year-Round Craving for the Latkes of Yore
By ALEX WITCHEL

TIME to make the latkes, and not because it’s almost Hanukkah. These last few years I’ve made latkes in all four seasons for a friend who loves them. Arthur is 82. We first got into a latkes conversation (he pronounces it lot-kees, as he must have as a child) three years ago. He asked if I’d ever had them. Puh-leeze! Both my grandmothers were latke experts, even though in those pre-Cuisinart days the pancakes were often as pink and gray — from the oxidizing hand-grated potatoes that had sat too long in the bowl — as they were completely delicious. More

Recipe: Potato Pancakes

A Market Grows on the Lower East Side
By GINIA BELLAFANTE

FEW things can ignite a cook’s shame quite so powerfully as the realization that she doesn’t know the name and genealogy of every important purveyor of foodstuffs from here to the Maldives. I speak from my own sense of disquiet. Some months ago, a friend told me about the Essex Street Market, the 15,000-square-foot enclosed food hall on the lower East Side of Manhattan, and I felt as if I were a soprano hearing the name Donizetti for the first time. More

‘Faerie Folk’ Strike Back With Fritters
By KIM SEVERSON

New Orleans

PEOPLE here despise FEMA, insurance companies and anyone who has anything to do with levees.

But in a city with postal service so spotty that delivery of a magazine is cause for a party, a magazine writer from New York has moved to the top of the New Orleans hate list. More

Recipe: Beef Daube Glace
Recipe: Artichoke and Oyster Casserole
Recipe: Calas