Good Food

With only a week left until PieFest, baker Nicole Rucker shows us how to make a scrumptrilescent apple pie. From Baghdad and Buenos Aires to Montreal and Mexico City, Naama Shefi taps the Jewish diaspora to fill her holiday table. When Karla Vasquez couldn't find an English-language Salvadoran cookbook that she loved, she created her own. After writing a book on Northern Thai food, Austin Bush explores the spicy, colorful cuisine o...

Journalist, activist, and founder of the blog Gaza Mom, Laila El-Haddad discusses how she keeps the cuisine of Gaza alive as she tries to find solace during Ramadan. After struggling with drugs and addiction, Toriano Gordon hit reset and became a chef, opening two vegan barbecue and soul food trucks. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison knows where you should stop and eat on your way to Coachella. Pie judge and cooking instructo...

Author and illustrator Mark Kurlansky peels back the cultural, historical, and gastronomical layers of onions. Journalist Shane Mitchell won two James Beard Awards for shining a light on the exploitation in America's onion fields. Pastry chef Sherry Yard has tips on how to make award-winning hand pies. Dina Begum navigates the six seasons of Bangladesh, sharing traditional recipes and childhood memories. Bill Addison heads to an up...

Marian Bull weighs in on the popularity of orange egg yolks. Chef Ludo Lefebvre details what goes into his famous omelet, which is on the menu at Petit Trois. Lisa Steele is a fifth-generation chicken keeper and the founder of Fresh Eggs Daily, a blog that has been viewed more than 50 million times. Tove Danovich loves raising backyard chickens, a tradition that dates back to her great-grandmother. Margaret Magat describes eating b...

Life is driven by flavor. The seductress that is flavor often leads us down the rabbit hole of food studies. If you run a restaurant or you're in the food business, you know that flavor is power and it needs to hit in the first few bites. But what exactly is flavor? And how do we create it in our own heads? We've been following the interests of Arielle Johnson for years. Her new book is Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and S...

Explaining how taste and smell interact, why smell is related to emotion, and the patterns of flavor, Arielle Johnson chases deliciousness by taking science and making it fashion. Christy Spackman tracks how municipal water systems have spent billions eliminating taste from our tap water. Flexitarian Pamelia Chia canvases Asian chefs for show-stopping vegetarian recipes. Baker Rose Wilde shows us how to bring edible flowers onto ou...

Sous chef Kamran Gill discusses the challenges he faces while fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Laura Strange develops recipes and travel guides for those living a gluten-free life in a gluten-centric world. Reporter Susanne Rust explains why California's plastic bag ban created more waste. Dr. Alex Ketchum showcases feminist restaurants and the essential role they played in multiple social justice movements. A springtime d...

Crystal Wilkinson recounts stories and recipes from five generations of Black Appalachian cooks. Poised to open a restaurant complex in Los Angeles, Rose Previte traveled spice trade routes to see how cooking traditions informed each other. Food writer Bill Esparza shows us where to find Dominican food. Sommelier Courtney Kaplan explains shochu, Japan's indigenous distilled spirit. At the farmer's market, chef Daniel Matho shops fo...

Dr. Lauren Crossland-Marr explains how the gene editing technology CRISPR is impacting our food chain. Scholar and editor Darra Goldstein detonates the flavor bombs of preserved condiments. Kevin Wilson, aka the CEO of Chai, describes how a simple cup of tea can bring solace amid our mad world. Food and ag journalist Tom Philpott debunks the pro-ethanol POV. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison visits Yess, a new Japanese restau...

Saba Alemayoh shares her mother's story of civil war, migration, and divorce — all of it bound up with Tigray culture and food. What happens to food reality show contestants once the cameras stop rolling? Derek Corsino weighs in after his time on the Spring Baking Championship while journalist Victoria Namkung focuses on the bigger picture. Journalist Sarah Larson profiles Spencer Sheehan, a lawyer who sues food companies for false...

What does the Tulare Lake Basin water crisis mean for the future of farming in California? Carolyn Quick Tillery celebrates the 25th anniversary of a cookbook that pays homage to the Tuskegee Institute. Memo Torres has ideas about where to eat this weekend with his latest recommendations for Apple Maps. Eat!, a digital delivery program, gives customers access to farmers' markets across Los Angeles. Proposed budget cuts threaten Mar...

Director Tran Anh Hung and actress Juliette Binoche discuss the recipe for subtle seduction in The Taste of Things. Foley artist Olivier Thys reveals which foods he uses to simulate the on-screen sounds of bones breaking and vampires biting necks. Journalist Ada Tseng visits Costco twice a week — for gas, deals, and hidden Asian treasures. Chocolatier Christine Sarioz taps into her art background to create sculptural chocolates. Ca...

With restaurants dedicated to global rice dishes, JJ Johnson explores 28 varieties in his latest cookbook. Chef Eric Adjepong explores assimilation, culture and home in a new children's book. Reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich unravels issues with the global food chain in the case of cinnamon applesauce pouches tainted with lead. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison visits Victor Heights for Korean banchan and dosirak. Barbecue e...

Zarghuna Adel learns classic recipes from older Afghans living abroad and reintroduces them to a younger generation living in the country. LA Times reporter Stephanie Breijo reflects on the closure of some of the city's most cherished dining destinations. Yazeed "Chef Yaz" Soudani of Miya Miya brings Jordanian-style shawarma to Smorgasburg LA. Lisa Hamilton looks at one Hmong woman's struggle to survive war, loss and displacement w...

Journalist and author George Monbiot has a radical idea for fixing farming's environmental devastation — but can a post-agricultural world feed the planet? Once a social scientist and now a farmer, Chris Smaje offers a defense of small-scale farming and a robust critique of industrialized food production. The Ecology Center is a blue dot in a red sea. How did Evan Marks come to run this 28-acre regenerative farm in Orange County? R...

Journalist Laura Tillman phoned Máximo Bistrot, a restaurant riding the wave of Mexico City's popularity as a fine dining destination, in hopes of interviewing its chef, Eduardo "Lalo" García Guzmán. Tillman had covered immigration for the past 10 years and she was interested in speaking with dishwashers, cooks, waiters, and purveyors working in high-end restaurants, where economic inequalities are pronounced. It was 2016, and as t...

Terrified of the ocean in her youth, Valentine Thomas is now a champion spearfisherwoman. Maggie Harrison describes the "maniacal rigor" with which she seeks out beauty through winemaking. "The McSatan" and "The Bruja" are on the menu at Evil Cooks, where Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta are on a mission to "Make Tacos Great Again." Kate Reid was a successful Formula 1 engineer who designed race cars before shifting gears to make crois...

Fuchsia Dunlop distills the history of Chinese food through a menu of 30 dishes. Kevin and Jeffrey Pang cook up some father-son bonding over plates of Mongolian beef and General Tso's chicken. Marc Rose and Med Abrous prepare for Christmas Eve, the busiest night of the year at Chinese restaurant Genghis Cohen. Using their respective lenses as an anthropologist and a historian, mother and son Merry White and Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft e...