Finger foods, starters, appetizers, hors d'oeuvres: call them what you will, but in the days leading up to yet another New Year's Eve celebration, they've been the talk of every media outlet food section. In reading them all and planning my own Saturday festivities, I've come to wonder: is there a difference between appetizers and hors d'oeuvres? Although both are meant to foster an appetite and Read more

If there's one ingredient that may be able to oust bacon as the prized protein of the moment, it's porchetta. It's been appearing everywhere in farmers markets, Italian restaurants, and sandwich shops around San Francisco. Pronounced "por-ketta," porchetta is an Italian specialty of slow-roasted suckling pig. A young, milk-fed piglet is gutted, deboned, stuffed with a mixture of garlic, herbs, Read more

If you love shore food like I do, then chances are, you're familiar with Old Bay seasoning. But what exactly is it, and how did it attain the cult status that it has today? Old Bay Seasoning is a proprietary spice mix that's become a seafood staple. The blend, which was named after the Chesapeake Bay, was first created in the 1940s by a Baltimore spice merchant, and soon became a popular Read more

Despite my love of Jewish food, I must confess I've never held a deep understanding of gefilte fish. Growing up, I'd stare at jars of those cloudy, floating Manischewitz members with a mixture of intrigue and disgust. What, exactly, was gefilte fish? I wondered. Did people actually eat that? Now that I have the palate of an adult, I'm no longer disgusted, but as someone who's never tried gefilte Read more

It's all too easy, I realized, to cook game hens but truly have no idea what they are. I discovered this after losing an argument to a fellow editor, who claimed that game hens are just baby white meat-only chickens. She's right: a game hen — also known as a poussin or Cornish game hen — is pretty much that. It came about in the 1950s when two different bird breeds were crossbred to create a Read more

If you found the term adobo to be a confusing catchall, then wait until you learn about sofrito. Generally speaking, the word describes a combination of aromatics that have been sautéed slowly in cooking oil to make a flavorful sauce. This is used to enhance everything from soups to meat dishes. But despite the fact that the cooking term is widely employed in Latin and Caribbean countries, its Read more

Compared to its European counterparts, Grenache doesn't get much love in the American wine landscape, but at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic, wine expert Anthony Giglio lobbied to change that. Giglio hosted a seminar titled "The Great Grenache Smackdown!" that encouraged attendees to taste the difference between various Grenache wines from around the world. During the course of our education, I Read more

Though the terms "smoked salmon" and "lox" are used interchangeably, they're in fact, not quite the same thing. Real lox (also called belly lox) refers to the midsection of a salmon that's simply been cured in a salt brine; consequently, it possesses a saltier flavor than what many of us associate with smoked salmon. Part of the confusion arises from the use of the term "Nova lox" or "Nova Read more

American farm-raised catfish is seeing a pretty dismal season, but luckily, the same won't be said for salmon. Last week, fish and wildlife officials announced that Pacific salmon season will kick off May 1 and likely run through September — a breath of fresh air after a shortened schedule in 2010 and no season to speak of at all in 2009 and 2008. While most of the season's salmon buzz Read more