December 2007
December 1 - December 8 - December 15 - December 22 - December 29

December 1: Cheese Essentials | Listen
This week it's the things nobody tells you about cheese: for instance, how to tell what a cheese will taste like, and how to know if it's perfectly ripe or over the hill. Our guest is cheese authority Laura Werlin. She shares her recipe for Brie Toasts with Chardonnay-Soaked Golden Raisins from her new user-friendly manual, Laura Werlin's Cheese Essentials: An Insider's Guide to Buying and Serving Cheese.

It's dynamite burgers and fabulous hand-cut fries for Jane and Michael Stern at the Anchor Bar in Superior, Wisconsin.

Russ Parsons of Los Angeles Times food section fame stops by with superb mail order fruit finds from the land of endless sun. He leaves us his recipe for Sweet Potato Puree with Hazelnut Soufflé Topping.

Our New York City food guy, Mike Colamecco, is back with tips for eating on the cheap at the city's tiny hole-in-the-wall joints.

We'll bring you the results of The Splendid Table's first ever blind chocolate candy tasting, and we have a report on Southern Hemisphere olive oils.

December 8: The 10th Muse| Listen
This week it's a look at the pivotal cookbooks of our time with Judith Jones, the woman who brought them to print. She didn't set out to edit cookbooks. Then she discovered Julia Child, Marcella Hazan and a clutch of other "greats." The rest is history. Judith's recipe for Frenchified Meatloaf is from her latest book, The 10th Muse: My Life in Food.

Jane and Michael Stern stop by with their report on Lupie's in Charlotte, North Carolina. They say the squash casserole is worth a trip.

Consummate cookbook author and baker Dorie Greenspan simply cannot resist testing kitchen gadgets. It's led to some great stocking stuffers.

Gail Monaghan, author of Lost Desserts, takes a look at antique desserts. Her recipe for Red Wine Jelly is a stunner no one has seen for at least a century.

We have the story of Will Scott, one of California's last African American farmers, and the chef who carries on his cultural and culinary traditions at Farmerbrown restaurant in San Francisco.

Author and photographer Melanie Dunea tells us about a perfect gift for all the chef groupies on your holiday shopping list: her book titled My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals and, as always Lynne takes your calls.

December 15: Padma Lakshmi | Listen
Our guest this week is Padma Lakshmi, host of TV's reality show, "Top Chef." Her famous line is "please pack your knives and go." Padma packed her knives, cooked her way around the world, then came home to write her new book Tangy Tart Hot Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day. Her food, including Two Hens Laughing, is some of the most alluring to come along in some time.

Great smoked fish lured Jane and Michael Stern to Duluth, Minnesota (in the winter, no less) and the Northern Waters Smokehaus.

Also in Duluth, the Damiano Center is feeding hundreds of folks every day with perfectly good food that stores, restaurants and farmers throw away. It's the kind of good-news story we love.

Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg stop by to tell us how we can make our own artisan bread in five minutes a day (no kidding). Five-Minute Artisan Bread is from their book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery that Revolutionizes Home Baking.

Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated fame is back for another round of Stump the Cook, and David Wallechinsky, author of The New Book of Lists, reveals the one he claims isn't yet complete.

December 22: Happy Holidays! | Listen
This week it's our holiday show. No matter how you mark it, this is a momentous time—the darkest time of the year, yet the brightest—and we're bringing you a line up of different takes on marking the season.

We'll talk partying with England's saucy culinary iconoclast, Nigella Lawson. She's got a collection of short cuts and wise counsel for bringing people together, including her recipes for Seafood Pot and Hokey Pokey. Nigella's new book is Nigella Express: 130 Recipes for Good Food, Fast.

Jane and Michael Stern are out to eat at the huge southern-style buffet put on by Quinet's Court in New Martinsville, West Virginia.

Food & Wine magazine's Ray Isle chimes in with the liquid side of things, including his holiday wine survival guide: cheap-but-good pours for parties, the ideal wine glass, and tips for how the clueless can gift the connoisseur.

Cheese connoisseur Steve Jenkins talks Roquefort, that most storied and romantic blue that could be the centerpiece cheese on your table.

It's a low-brow holiday for writer Julie Hauserman, and David Kamp discourses on the food snob, that specimen of humanity he claims is "part groupie, part aesthete, and part stark raving loon." David is the author of The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge.

Lynne has ideas for holiday gifts that support local agriculture and local eating, and the phone lines will be open for your calls.

December 29: Nora Ephron | Listen
Writer and Director Nora Ephron, author of the best-seller I Feel Bad About My Neck, joins us this week with observations on life and the American food scene, including a provocative take on how the duo of the birth control pill and Julia Child shaped the social history of the late 20th Century.

The Sterns report that the endangered chicken in a pot bubbles proud and free at the Chutzpah in Fairfax, Virginia.

Sally Schneider, author of The Improvisational Cook, has her usual effortless take on great hors d'oeuvres, including her recipe for Pancetta Tartines.

It's gifts for wine geeks from a master geek himself, The Wine Spectator's Matt Kramer. His latest book is Matt Kramer's Making Sense of Italian Wine.

Fred Plotkin, our pleasure activist and author of Italy for the Gourmet Traveller, talks Vienna, the perfect winter destination, and lines up the must-do coffeehouses.

We'll take a look at the new nanny nutrition dilemma, and, as always, Lynne takes your calls.

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