Wine plays an important role at Passover. During the reading of the Haggadah, each person is supposed to drink four glasses of kosher wine. At an informal, nontraditional dinner, I recommend pairing each course, the soup, entree, and dessert, with a different Kosher wine.
A bright, zesty Savignon Blanc works well with matzo ball soup. One worth seeking out is Hagafen Prix Reserve 2007 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc ($27). With the salmon and spinach-and-matzo pie, pour a light and juicy red like Abarbanel Pinor Noir. For dessert, offer a late harvest Zin such as Herzog's 2008 bottling.
If you insist on pouring the more classic Manischewitz, consider making it into a spritzer. What will you be drinking on Passover? Please share your suggestions below!
After porking out at Charlie Palmer's Pigs & Pinot on Friday, I did the hardest possible thing. I mustered up the energy to get out of bed the next morning and head to a 50,000-square-foot pavilion filled with nothing but chocolate at the San Francisco Chocolate Salon. From chocolate fudge to chocolate liqueur to chocolate-covered Oreos, I left practically bathing in the stuff — and I still hadn't tried everything!
To see what I did sample, read more.
The other day, a friend and I were watching Tyler's Ultimate: Pizza on Food Network. He made two amazing looking pies, and one of them had thinly sliced potatoes on top. I was shocked when my friend, a total foodie, said, "I've never had pizza with potatoes on it." Thus, it's time for her — and you! — to enjoy the delectable world of potato pizza. Usually pizzas that are topped with potatoes are not the tomato sauce kind, but more like the flatbread seen here. Combined with herbs, leeks, and Gruyère, the potatoes work surprisingly well on pizza dough. It's a simple yet satisfying meal, so get the recipe now.
The other day, I found myself making a cake that called for a nonreactive saucepan, and I wondered: What exactly does that mean, anyway? Nonreactive cookware is made from ceramic, anodized stainless steel, glass, or nonstick materials.
Often metals can chemically react to heat or various ingredients, altering a food's flavor. For instance, cast iron cookware reacts negatively with high-acid foods like citrus, wine, or tomato sauce. Copper, which is ideal for even heating but very reactive, is often lined with tin to minimize chemical reactions.
Even uncoated aluminum pans may oxidize with food, imparting a darker color or metallic taste — although most modern-day aluminum cookware has been covered with a corrosion-resistant oxide coating.
Copper cookware is coated in tin, but tin is a soft metal and scratches off easily, so be cautious when cooking anything acidic or light in color. Do you take precautions when cooking with copper or cast iron cookware?
Got a burning question? Join the Burning Question group in the YumSugar Community! It's your place to post the most pressing questions about the culinary world.
If you love spicy food and you love shrimp, you have to give this recipe a try! Made with four habanero chiles, it's the real deal and so tasty you'll be licking your fingers clean. While I thought the combination of chiles, thyme, allspice, and green onions seemed a bit unusual, the resulting shrimp is perfectly seasoned and addictively good. 
It's an exotic application that makes for a great appetizer or with rice, a scrumptious entree. Take care when handling the chiles. Once sliced, I used tongs to move them from the cutting board to the pot. Be sure to serve with a cold drink, like an icy beer or strawberry ginger caipirosca; you'll need it to wash down the heat. Check out the recipe now.
We love Slashfood so much that every Thursday we round up their most delicious stories. Here are this week's finds:
Source: Flickr User mistagregory
