​Drum roll please. March’s most popular recipe was…Chocolate Guinness Cake! Maybe you made it for St. Patrick’s Day, or perhaps you just love chocolate cake (same). This one is ultra tender and already has a devoted following. As one reader instructs, “Drop everything you’re doing and make this asap.” I sat down with senior Test Kitchen editor Jesse Szewczyk, the recipe’s creator, to talk all things cake—and play a baking edition of FMK.. Nina Moskowitz: Another month that BA Bake Club reigned supreme. Why do you think that is?. Jesse Szewczyk: Because our audience has great taste. And who doesn’t love a good chocolate cake?. NM: Why did you develop this recipe?. JS: We thought Chocolate Guinness Cake makes sense for March because of St. Patrick’s Day. Sometimes for Bake Club, we identify beloved classics we don’t already have on site, and find ways to put our own spin on them.. NM: What’s the spin here?. JS: The cake utilizes a technique called reverse creaming to make the crumb exceptionally tender. Usually it’s done with a stand mixer, but in this recipe, you use your hands—kind of like you would making pie crust. I wanted it to be a laid-back affair.. NM: How many tests did this recipe take you?. JS: The cake came to me quickly, but the frosting proved to be a challenge. That took me at least 10 tries. My colleagues wanted the frosting to be tan, resembling a pint, so I ended up using brown butter and a splash of Guinness for good measure.. NM: Do you cook or bake with Guinness a lot?. JS: Not Guinness specifically, but I bake with alcohol a lot. It’s a note I call upon often.. NM: When was the last time you successfully split the G?. JS: Not recently, Nina. I’m 34 years old.. NM: Fuck Mary Kill these cake mixing methods: blender, reverse cream, cream.. JS: I prefer to keep my relationship to cakes open.  

​This is Starter Kit, a series where our editors share the food, drink, and kitchen essentials they recommend when you’re setting up from scratch. Here, Alaina Chou writes about everything you need to stock a pantry—whether you’re a first-time cook, just moved, or finally did that long-overdue cleanout…. Believe it or not, before my pantry shelves devolved into a sprawling mess composed of seemingly every consumer packaged good known to man (which is what happens when you write about said goods for a living), there was a time when they were entirely empty. That time was nearly four years ago, when I first moved into my current apartment and had nary a spice jar or condiment to my name.. Building a pantry from the ground up may feel like a daunting task—it certainly did to me. But while I’m admittedly a sucker for stuffing my cupboard with niche olive oils and seasoned salts I never end up using, curating a highly effective starter pantry requires just a few key products and guiding principles.. If you’re currently building out a pantry from scratch (maybe you moved, maybe you’re getting into cooking for the first time, or maybe you just did a massive spring cleanout?), consider this your checklist-slash-guidebook. Add all of the following products to cart, and I guarantee your pantry, fridge, and freezer will be stocked with a well-rounded selection of essentials to help get dinner (or breakfast, or lunch, or dessert) on the table.. For some expert input on pantry must-haves, I turned to cookbook author, Substack writer, and weeknight cooking whiz Caroline Chambers (whose new book, What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast, comes out in August), as well as our Test Kitchen editors. Read on for their tips (as well as some of my own) for how to fill your pantry with everything you need—and nothing you don’t.. How to customize this list for you. This list is by no means exhaustive (hence the “starter” in “starter kit”), but rather a suggestion of things to stock up on in an initial grocery run that will serve you well in your everyday cooking routine. Even so, my ideal pantry starter kit will look different from yours, or your neighbor’s, or your best friend’s, its contents dependent on your flavor and cuisine preferences and lifestyle choices.. When deciding what to stock up on, Chambers recommends you “look to your family’s favorite five recipes. Chances are, if you stock your pantry with those items, every week you’re only going to have to buy meat and fresh produce, because you already have the pantry goods (rice, pasta, beans, spices) that you need to make all of your favorite things.” She recommends keeping those five favorite recipes in a notes app, with each of their ingredient lists bulleted below.. Similarly, if you gravitate towards certain cuisines, that will invariably influence which pantry items you should keep stocked. For instance: I cook a lot of Chinese food at home, so I keep a  

​Welcome to Open Tab, a weekly roundup of food and entertainment news. Last week we covered Hillary Duff’s Diet Coke conspiracy theories.. Running a restaurant can do some weird things to your head. To be clear, I’ve never run a restaurant, but I have to assume it messes up your entire brain. Why else would these chefs be doing such terrible things? What else could make Redzepi scream at, punch, and prod his employees with kitchen tools? How else do you explain David Chang’s over the top screaming and yelling? Or the decision to serve your customers jam with mold on it?. And that’s the only way I was able to make sense of the drama that exploded out of LA’s Horses in 2023 (don’t worry, we’ll get into it). Now, after three years of rumors and hearsay, we have an account from the accused, Will Aghajanian, as reported by Kelly Loudenberg at AirMail. Finally, an answer to the question that’s been percolating in the back of my head for years: Did he really murder the cats?. Also this week, we’re talking about the investigation into all the fruit and vegetable AI slop that’s been plaguing the timeline; we simply need to discuss Zohran Mamdani’s mukbang; and we’ve found perhaps the most unexpected place for great wine in Southern California. Read on to find out where.. For the uninitiated, Horses was one of those buzzy, impossible-to-get-into, celebrity-magnet restaurants in LA. Until the allegations went public. I remember the day in late May 2023 that the news of Horses broke. It started with a few mentions in group chats, then some chatter around the office…then some more intense chatter around the office. The tea was as follows: Johnson and Aghajanian, the formerly married co-owners, filed restraining orders against each other, each alleging that the other was emotionally and physically abusive, and that they’d killed several of their pet cats.. “It was like they’d get a kitten and then like two weeks later that kitten would die. And then they adopted another kitten two weeks after that. And then that one died. And then after the third cat. We were kind of like, why are all the cats dying?” [sic] reads a quote from someone who used to work with the pair, in Ezra Marcus’ bombshell report from 2023.. Now we’re witnessing the epilogue. In this week’s Airmail article, for which Johnson refused interview requests, Loudenberg says her reporting did not uncover any cat torture or killing. Johnson did, reportedly, resort to witchcraft—a protection spell over the restaurant, and a curse on Aghajanian. The piece chronicles allegations of years of terrible behavior (restaurants lead to broken brains, see above).. Perhaps I’m the rube for thinking that the man who ran a campaign based around posting (and, yes, policy, don’t yell at me!) would stop posting when he got into office. Obviously, I was wrong. Just this week he livestreamed the first-ever mukbang in New York City’s City Hall. The stream was the Mayor’s Office’s way of celebrating a settlement  

​Unlike their beloved personal knife sets, the pans a professional chef uses at work are much more likely to be of the nameless, faceless, “whatever’s around the kitchen” sort of equipment. That’s largely for utilitarian reasons. When churning out cover after cover at the saute station you can’t exactly be picky about what’s on the shelf above the stove.. But that doesn’t mean professional chefs don’t have opinions about the pans they use every day during service. And the good news for most home cooks, is that often, the equipment on the fire in restaurant kitchens is affordable and easy to get.. Different chefs and different restaurants have different needs and different specialties, leading to very different answers to the question of “what is the pan you use most?” Which means that if you follow the advice of these 10 chefs from some of our favorite restaurants and bakeries, your kitchen will be pretty complete.. Made In. 5 Quart Saucier. $200. Made In. It’s pretty rare for a DTC cookware brand to get namechecked by a professional kitchen, but Made In has made a lot of inroads to the restaurant scene over the years. Jackie Carnesi of Kellog’s Diner loves her sizable Made In Saucier, which she got in a breakup several years ago. “It’s great for items you might have to whisk like a caramel or anything you might need a rubber spatula for” she says. “It’s also great for tossing and, because it’s relatively lightweight, easy for flipping too”  

​Step 1. Finely grate 1 large garlic clove and the zest of 1 lemon into a large bowl. Slice lemon in half and squeeze the juice into the bowl. Add ¼ cup buttermilk and 6 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil. Season dressing with kosher salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper and whisk to combine. Taste dressing and add the juice of remaining lemon to taste (dressing should be bright and tangy).. Step 2. Gently smash 1 English hothouse cucumber, ends trimmed and halved lengthwise, with a rolling pin, meat mallet, or the flat side of a chef’s knife just to break open; tear or cut into bite-size pieces and add to bowl with dressing. Add 4 scallions, thinly sliced on a diagonal, and 6 oz. sugar snap peas, trimmed, thinly sliced on a diagonal; toss well to combine. Let sit while you fry the bread and asparagus.. Step 3. Pour remaining 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil into a skillet large enough to fit two 1″-thick slices round country-style bread in a single layer. Add bread and set over medium heat. Cook, undisturbed, until golden brown and crisp underneath, about 5 minutes. Flip bread and cook to lightly fry on the other side, about 2 minutes. Season both sides of bread with kosher salt. Transfer to a plate.. Step 4. Arrange 1 bunch asparagus, trimmed, sliced on a diagonal into 2″ pieces in same skillet, season with kosher salt, and increase heat to medium-high. Cook, tossing occasionally, until bright green and blistered in some spots, but still crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Add to salad.. Step 5. Tear fried bread into 1½” pieces and add to salad. Toss to evenly coat and help bread soak up some of the dressing. Taste and season with more salt, pepper, and lemon juice as needed. Add 1 cup (packed) tender herb leaves with tender stems to salad and toss once more. Divide salad among shallow bowls, reserving any dressing and juices that pool at the bottom of bowl. Break 4 oz. feta into large pieces and nestle into salad in each bowl. Drizzle reserved dressing and juices over.