FLAVORS + kNOWLEDGE

Today, we’re talking about a food that doesn’t just belong to a place—it is the place. It’s a culinary tradition so fiercely local, so stubbornly secret, that if you haven’t grown up with it, the name won’t just confuse you; it will actively mislead you. We’re talking about the Rhode Island pizza strip. Depending on who you ask, it goes by different names. Pizza strip. Red strip. Bakery pizza. Par...

The Champion's Pantry How to stock your kitchen like an athlete — and why everything on that shelf matters Let me tell you something that took me a long time to understand, even after decades of cooking professionally and working with athletes at every level of sport. The most important meal you will ever eat is not the one you have the night before a big game. It is not the recovery shake you...

Food Around the World — How Different Cultures Eat Smart Every Culture I Have Ever Cooked With Has Taught Me Something I Couldn't Have Learned Any Other Way Sometime in the 1990s, I started keeping a list. Every time I traveled — and I traveled a great deal, following food the way other people follow art or music — I wrote down the single most important thing I learned about how the people of...

Chapter 5 — Kitchen Science — Cooking Is Chemistry The Kitchen Is the Greatest Laboratory I Have Ever Worked In I have had the privilege, over a long career, of working alongside some extraordinary minds. Farmers who understood soil science with an intuitive depth that rivaled any academic. Fishermen who read weather and water with almost supernatural precision. Winemakers who could taste a barrel...

Chapter 4 — Where Does Food Come From? I Once Spent a Week on a farm, and It Changed Everything I thought I Knew About Cooking. In the summer of 2001, at the insistence of a farmer friend who had grown tired of my asking him questions about produce over the phone, I spent a week working on his farm in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts. I was not a young man — I was in my early fifties,...

Chapter 3 — Food Detectives — Know What's in Your Food The Day I Read a Label and Couldn't Recognize Half the Ingredients I remember exactly where I was the first time I carefully read a processed food label. It was 1994. I was standing in a supermarket aisle in suburban Rhode Island, holding a jar of pasta sauce — the kind marketed directly at children, with a cartoon character on the fro...

Chapter 2 — The Color Game — Eating the Rainbow The Most Important Lesson I Ever Learned Came From a Market in Florence, Not a Classroom In the autumn of 1987, I took a sabbatical from my restaurant and traveled to Tuscany. I had been cooking professionally for nearly two decades by then, and I thought I knew quite a lot about food. Florence humbled me within forty-eight hours. Not the restaurants...

You Are What You Eat: My Fifty Years of Feeding People — and What I Learned About Food and the Human Body I was seventeen years old the first time I stood at a professional stove. It was a small trattoria in Providence, Rhode Island — barely twelve tables, a kitchen the size of a large closet, and a chef named Marco who communicated almost entirely through grunts and hand gestures. I spoke Italian...

Friends: If cooking is your passion, you may want to read this article and hopefully take some suggestions on how to use various fats in your kitchen. Fats play a central role in shaping flavors, textures, and the nutritional profile of meals. Beyond serving as cooking mediums, they embody historical significance, chemical diversity, and ongoing debates regarding health. Understanding the producti...

Understanding Shojin Cuisine Once, in the quiet dawn of Japan's ancient temples, a way of eating took shape that turned every meal into a silent prayer. It was the sixth century when Buddhism crossed the sea from China and Korea, carrying with it a gentle vow to refrain from taking life. Monks set aside meat and fish, choosing the humble gifts of the fields and forests instead. Centuries later...

The Day Rhode Island Gasped Columbus Day 1910, the Fabre Line, and the Italian immigrants who transformed Natick and Pontiac. If you had stood along the main road through the villages of Natick and Pontiac in the early 1900s, you would have heard a medley of accents and languages. The British, the Irish, the Swedes, and the French-Canadians had all come before, each group finding its place in the...

How Federal Hill, Providence, Got Its Name. The Battle Over an Ox Roast In 1788, a makeshift army of angry farmers stormed into Providence, Rhode Island, and broke up a Fourth of July ox roast at the base of a hill. That hill, thanks to the chaos, would later become known as Federal Hill. But to understand how a celebration turned into a riot—and how a hill got its name—we need to go back long bef...

Rhode Island. The brief story of the gem state. Welcome, traveler, to the enchanting shores of Rhode Island—a place so small it can be crossed in under an hour, yet so rich in story that it feels boundless. Tucked into the heart of New England, this coastal gem shimmers with history, whispers of rebellion, and the quiet hum of the Atlantic against its rocky shores. Here, every street, every harbor...

The President and the Pasta Thomas Jefferson's Macaroni Machine. How America's third president brought a revolutionary kitchen tool home from Europe and changed the way the nation ate. It's a curious detail in American history that the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase is also remembered, at least among food lovers, for his deep love of...

This episode is titled: THE SECRETS OF PASSOVER Imagine the gentle hum of a family gathering, the clink of glasses, and the soft turning of pages as stories older than time itself are retold. Today's episode is all about Passover—a holiday rich with memory, meaning, and food that tells a story all its own. Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, traces back over 3,000 years to the biblical account of the I...

The Secret and the Saffron A history of the Druze people and their cuisine. The Druze are a unique and often misunderstood community in the Middle East. Their history is more than just religious debates and politics; it is a living story shaped by family, faith, and food. To understand the Druze, you have to imagine traveling from the secret meetings of 11th-century Cairo to the bright kitchens of...

When Monks Fed Body and Soul: The Story of the Pretzel and Its Holy Companions In the quiet hills of early medieval Europe, around the year one thousand six hundred twenty, a humble monk in a secluded monastery—perhaps in the north of Italy or along the edges of France—faced the long, lean days of Lent. With eggs, milk, and fats forbidden by the strict rules of fasting, he worked with what the ear...

This episode is titled: America makes it easy to gain weight. This topic has been at the center of our main concern: the inability to have a uniform message, especially in school lunch programs. Over the past few decades, gaining weight has become increasingly common in the United States. Evidence of this trend is visible in larger clothing sizes and expanded seating in public spaces. These change...

This episode is titled: The mystery of Korean Cuisine Once, long ago in the misty mountains of the Korean Peninsula, Buddhist monks carried their simple bowls into quiet temples carved from stone and cedar. It was the fourth century when Buddhism first took root during the Three Kingdoms era, bringing with it a gentle vow: to live without causing harm. The monks listened to that vow carefully, and...

The story of Sfratto. How a Jewish pastry shaped like an eviction rod became Tuscany's most poetic symbol of resilience and honeyed hope. In the ancient hilltop town of Pitigliano, where steep tuff stone cliffs overlook a green Tuscan valley, a quiet revolution began in the kitchens of Jewish families who had lived there for centuries. They called their town Little Jerusalem, because it looked...

This episode is titled: The Story of Sack Wine in Early Modern Europe. Imagine walking into the lively taverns and candlelit theaters of early modern Europe, where one drink stood out among both the fashionable and the literary: sack. Think of Sir John Falstaff, the unforgettable character from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II, delivering his famous speech. With great enthusiasm, he says that if he...

This episode is titled "Eating in season in March." As March arrived, the first tentative signs of spring emerged—longer days, melting snow, and the promise of renewal after winter's grip. The vernal equinox heralds a shift, and with it, the produce world begins to awaken. While hearty winter roots and storage crops still linger, early spring arrivals like asparagus and artichokes ma...

The Historical Role of Women in the Kitchen. Exploring the Social and Cultural Roots of Gendered Culinary Traditions. March 8, celebrated around the world as International Women’s Day, is a time to recognize the achievements, resilience, and contributions of women in every sphere of life. From leadership and education to science, art, and family life, women continue to shape societies and inspire...

This segment is titled: The Plant-Based Revolution Imagine sitting down at a table laden with vibrant colors and intoxicating aromas—no steak or chicken in sight, yet the plate feels abundant, satisfying, and alive. That’s the essence of plant-based cuisine, a way of eating that has quietly sustained civilizations for thousands of years and is now stepping into the spotlight with fresh energy. It...

This segment is titled: The Hidden Dangers Lurking on Your Kitchen Cutting Board It’s a busy weeknight, and you're making a quick stir-fry. You cut raw chicken on your cutting board, rinse it quickly, then chop fresh vegetables on the same surface. While this might seem efficient, it can let bacteria sneak into your meal, turning a healthy dinner into a problem. Cutting boards, whether wood or...