In Japan, where wasting food is tantamount to heresy, they’ve taken this humble upcycling of stale bread and turned it into a culinary craze. But rusk is ridiculously simple to make at home and not only does it prevent waste, it makes for a delicious teatime snack. Head over to PBS Food for the lowdown.

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I know what you’re thinking. “Peanut butter in a taco?!” It might sound a little crazy, but hopefully I’ve earned enough trust from you all over the years that you believe me when I tell you that it makes for an awesome combo. Moles(the Mexican sauce, not the burrowing rodent) traditionally use nuts and seeds to add richness and depth, so using peanut butter is not much of a stretch. Read my full post and get the recipe over at Peanut Butter & Co.

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Often found as part of a meze, this popular dish originated in Aleppo, Syria, which is known for its wondrous red chili peppers. Like most dishes that have been around since before the reign of cookbooks and measuring cups, Muhammara is made in about as many ways as there are cooks who make it. Most recipes use a base of breadcrumbs and walnuts, but some versions use bulgur, while others omit the breadcrumbs and rely solely on walnuts.

Having come from a town with a pepper named after it, it’s no surprise that the key ingredient in Muhammara is chili peppers. Both fiery and fruity, Aleppo Peppers come in at around 6,000-15,000 Scoville Heat Units putting them above Hungarian hot paprika (100-500 SHU), but below Cayenne (35,000-55,000SHU) in terms of spiciness. Some preparations call for fresh Aleppo peppers, while others use the peppers dried and ground into a powder, still others call for the peppers to be roasted.

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If you live in the northern latitudes spring tends to come a little late, but when it does finally arrive, it comes fast and furious with an onslaught of blossoms, fruit and vegetables. A recent haul of asparagus, snap peas and baby ramps inspired me to come up with a fresh take on this new American classic, returning it back to its roots as a dish that can be thrown together with odds and ends from your spring pantry. Check out the history of Pasta Primavera along with my take over at PBS Food this week.

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It’s Cinco de Mayo and you’re probably wondering why I’m sharing a Chinese dish with you on this day that General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín led a ragtag band of Mexicans to victory against a French force double it’s size. Well, I don’t have a good excuse, but I can tell you that this Huí Guō Ròu is AMAZING stuffed into a fresh corn tortilla.

Huí Guō Ròu (回锅肉), which literally means “meat returned to pot” is a dish with Sichuan roots. As the name implies, the meat is boiled once before being stir-fried. The idea is that by boiling the pork belly, it not only renders out some of the fat, it also tenderizes the meat. Because the boiling time is so short it’s debatable how tender it makes the meat, but what it does do is prime the fat for high-heat cooking.

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When it comes to Mexican cuisine, there are few things more provocative than a classic mole that involves hours of roasting, grinding, caramelizing, and braising. As delicious as it can be, not every occasion calls for a whole day spent in the kitchen, especially on a day like Cinco de Mayo, which for me, is more about drinking and eating with friends than it is about commemorating the Mexican Army’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla. That’s why I came up with these braised mushrooms tacos. They’re healthy, filling and delicious, but best of all they’re easy to make so you can spend the day tossing back margaritas and catching up with friends rather than sweating over a hot stove.

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This tuna tartare is easy to make and makes for an impressive first course for a dinner party. With a flavorful layer of tuna marinated in olive oil, soy sauce and chives, a layer of creamy avocado, and a magical gelée made with with yuzu infused dashi, it’s as visually stunning as it is orally stimulating.

The gelée has just enough gelatin to thicken the dashi into a sauce that will stay put. When you take a bite, the heat of your mouth instantly melts the dashi turning it into a pool of flavor with a vibrant flourish of yuzu and smoky umami from the dashi.

Despite looking complicated, the preparation is fairly simple. The keys to being successful are the quality of your dashi and the fish. Dashi, is the generic word for “stock” in Japanese, but unless it’s preceded by a qualifier (like chicken, shiitake, etc), it usually refers to a stock made with a combination of kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (dried bonito). While there are several ways to make dashi, I prefer using “dashi packs” which have the ingredients ground up and sealed into little tea bags. It strikes a good balance between convenience and quality. See this post for more info on the different types of dashi.

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This is what inevitably happens when I spend any amount of time in a place… I start to crave the flavors and aromas of the country long after I’ve arrived home. Earlier this month I got to spend some time in the Middle East with access to some of my favorite ingredients including tart, floral sumac and bright, fiery Aleppo chili paste. This simple stir-fry brings together those elements along with plenty of garlic, coriander and lemon juice for an intenstly delicious meal that comes together in less time than in takes to order take-out.

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Maybe I’m just weird, but I find looking through beautiful photos of food both relaxing and inspirational. I used to flip through magazines, which was replaced by RSS feeds, and now I love scrolling through pages of tantalizing food on websites that aggregate food photos. Lately though, it seems like there’s a new site coming out every week, and most of them either lack content or are simply knock-offs of another site.

For a while, I enjoyed Pinterest, but now (like my Twitter feed) it’s become a firehose of imagery that’s more stressful than it is entertaining. That’s why I’m loving Foodie.com’s redesigned site. They took all the best parts of Pinterest and made them better. The interface is a soothing palette of earth-tones with clean typography and no superfluous lines. Because they only feature food, there isn’t a lot of distracting content, and the features are geared specifically towards food (like having the option to mark recipes you’ve made).

Foodie also has an iPad App that’s seasonally updated with some of the best recipes on their site. This month’s update features 40 full recipes from some awesome bloggers including Greg Henry and Stephanie Hua, not to mention 3 recipes from yours truly. Check out the app, follow me, and see you over at Foodie.com!

Full disclosure: This post was sponsored by Foodie.com.

Molokhia ( ملوخية), also known as Jute, or Jews Mallow is the name of both a plant and a dish. It has medium sized saw-toothed leaves that come to a point at the tip and have small tendrils at the base of each leaf. Nutritionally, it has three times the calcium and phospherous as Kale, and four times the amount of riboflavin. It also provides 70% of the RDA value for Vitamin C, 25% of the RDA of Vitamin A amongst a host of other minerals and vitamins. Put simply, it’s an extremely nutrient dense vegetable that’s widely eaten throughout the Middle East and Asia.

So why hasn’t it enjoyed the same kind of popularity in the US? My guess is that it has to do with the mouthfeel. Like other members of the mallow family, including Okra and Marsh Mallow, the plant has a mucilaginous texture that’s intensified by bruising and lightly cooking the leaves. While it’s a cherished consistency in many cultures, I can see how it might be a turn-off if you associate the texture with the unpleasantness that comes with a cold.

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I tend to like my breakfasts savory rather than sweet. Maybe it’s the Asian DNA, but eating a syrup drenched pancake for my first meal just doesn’t have the same appeal as an omelette. It’s also worth noting that I like my eggs runny, prefer good ham, and that nothing puts a smile on my face faster than the floral aroma of Meyer Lemons. Now that you know all of that, it’s probably no surprise that Eggs Benedict is my favorite breakfast food.

When prepared properly it’s like eating a small piece of heaven with every bite. The creamy sauce and rich egg are offset by the bright lemon and green herbs. The crusty english muffin offers crunchy and chewy textures while providing a mop to sop up the sauce. The ham brings the salt to the party with a lingering umami that dances around your tongue with the tangy Hollandaise sauce. Before you know it, you’re staring down at an empty white plate with a few golden streaks of yolk punctuated by a scattering of crumbs.

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For many, the word “pickle” conjures images of an intensely sour and salty gherkin, colors muted, and the flavors rendered musty and with age. But that’s not how they have to be. Using fresh vegetables like bell peppers, you can make a bright flavorful quick pickle that takes almost no time to make and makes for a great snack or side. For these bell peppers I pickled them in a grapefruit brine, which lends natural sweetness and a wonderful fruity flavor that will have you going back for more. Check out my full post this week over at PBS Food.

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In a world where most clam chowders would be more aptly named “clam flavored potato soup”, finding a morsel of clam is like winning a Toyota Camry. It’s a feeling of elation that’s quickly tamped down by the realization that the rubbery clam is bland and tasteless.

That’s not a problem you’ll have in my version of the New England classic, as I include nearly 5 pounds of clams! Of course the problem with fresh clams is that they live in the muck at the bottom of the ocean, and so eating clams is often synonymous with eating sand. It’s a weakness of mine. For Superman it’s kryptonite, for others it’s the sound of fingernails scraping across a chalkboard, for me it’s grit in my food. Whether it’s an errant shard of egg shell or a grain of sand in in my clams, one bite is all it takes to ruin an otherwise delicious meal.

This aversion to chewing on dirt is the main reason why I avoided eating these succulent bivalves. That is, until I figured out a series of tricks to get rid of virtually all the sand in the clams. The first thing is to soak the clams in salt water, which will trick them into thinking they’re back in the ocean. After a while, the clams will open up and peak their little necks out, squirting out murky water and taking in the fresh salt water from the bowl. This gets the clams mostly grit-free, but like children, there are always the stubborn ones.

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If you read my post on making vegan ground “meat” a few weeks ago, you’ve probably been wondering what you can make with it. Here’s one dish that I can’t stop making. Aside from being absurdly simple to make, this earth-friendly take on Basil Chicken is delicious and healthy. Head over to PBS Food to see my full post and recipe:

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My first encounter with the Sloppy Joe was at my elementary school lunch counter where giant cans of sloppy joe mix were dumped into beat-up chafing dishes before being unceremoniously ladled into a crumpled hamburger bun. It may not sound like much of a lunch, but with other options like leathery turkey smothered in mucus-like gravy, and spaghetti with meat sauce that looked more like rusty dirt with soggy worms poking out of it, the days the lunch ladies were dishing out Sloppy Joes were culinary nirvana to my six year old self.

There are various creation myths around the Sloppy Joe, but all signs point to its creation sometime in the first half of the last century. Some theories posit it’s an evolution of the Maid-Rite loose meat sandwich. Others opine it’s a product of food rationing during the war, when meat had to be stretched as far as possible.

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