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March 2006
March 4 - March 11 - March 18 - March 25
(How to listen)
March 4: Wine Style | Listen
This week Mary Ewing-Mulligan puts wine where she thinks it belongs: it's all about taste. Mary claims quality is second to flavor, geography is more important than the grape, and a number on the bottle can help us match a wine to a menu. Mary's new book is Wine Style: Earthy Whites to Powerful Reds: Using Your Senses to Explore and Enjoy Wine.
The Sterns have found the ultimate babka and bagels of their dreams in Montreal. Who knew?
Vegetable gardening expert Jack Staub shares new ideas for gardeners and mail order seed sources. How about sweet little pocket melons, super lush tomatoes and day-glo lettuce for your garden this year? Jack is the author of 75 Exciting Vegetables for Your Garden.
Julie Hauserman fills us in on the Florida tomato fight that's all about appearance over flavor.
Our very popular refrigerator game, Stump the Cook, is back with Lynne and Stump Master Christopher Kimball!
We return to the MIT Media Lab for dinner plates you toss when you're finished eating ... and make new ones whenever you want.
Lynne takes your phone calls and shares her recipe for Big Tomato Sweet-Sour Salad that's delicious even with winter tomatoes.
March 11: Molecular Gastronomy | Listen
This week we take a look at the new kitchen science that has haute restaurant chefs rethinking everything, taking foods apart and putting them back together in ways we can't imagine. The instigator is our guest, chemist Hervé This, author of Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History.)
The Sterns report from Eddie's Supper Club in Great Falls, Montana, where the secret marinade is key to their renowned steaks. Then Lynne shares her Guide to Marinades, including several delicious recipes.
Cheese expert Steve Jenkins shares his latest artisan cheese finds, the ones he calls "adult candy."
Mike Colamecco, our go-to guy for good eats in the Big Apple, tells us where to find the city's best hot dogs.
Reporter Peter Aronson tells of the Mexican scientist who sees edible bugs saving the world's poor; and we celebrate National Potato Chip Day with the chief flavor architect of Kettle brand potato chips.
March 18: Queenan Country | Listen
Joe Queenan, that quirky observer of the human comedy, takes us his England this week. It's a place of people driven by good-natured insanity, where home cooking thrives, and the steak and kidney pie requires a pneumatic drill. His book is Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country.
Remember creamed chipped beef on toast? The Sterns tuck into the old-fashioned dish and more classic New England fare at the Blue Benn Diner in Bennington, Vermont.
Wine maverick Josh Wesson talks cans, boxes and sippy straws, the next new things for serving wine.
Sally Schneider returns with ideas for easy suppers starring cornbread, including her recipe for Parmigiano Cornbread.
Health authority Nina Simonds advises saying no to Botox and yes to the spice cupboard for fighting those pesky signs of aging. She shares her recipe for Fragrant Cinnamon Pork with Sweet Potatoes is from her new book Spices of Life: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Great Health.
Finally, in the second half of the show we'll open the phone lines for your calls.
March 25: Umami | Listen
If you've always suspected that taste goes beyond science's big four of sweet, sour, salt and bitter your instincts are right. This week we're looking at umami. It's what food types call the "fifth taste." Our guest, David Kasabian, tells us how to use this wunderkind to make everything we eat taste better. Coq au Vin Nouveau, from The Fifth Taste: Cooking with Umami by David and Anna Kasabian, demonstrates the principle.
For the Sterns it's retro burgers, fabulous hand-cut fries and malts at one of Lynne's favorite haunts: Convention Grill in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina.
Anya Von Bremzen talks Spain's surprise national dish and it's not paella. It's Cocido from her latest book, The New Spanish Table.
Wine critic Matt Kramer, author of Matt Kramer's New California Wine answers the controversial question: can you actually get cheap good wines?
We go to Mexico for vanilla—the most labor intensive food in the hemisphere—and stop by Cake Man Raven Confectionery, a bakery in Brooklyn that claims to be the official home of the classic Southern Red Velvet Cake—and so much more.
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