Richard Garcia is the Executive Chef of Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel (606 Congress). Not only did he demonstrate his Trash Fish recipe at the Taste of WGBH Food and Wine Festival, he also talked about his work to support practices for a more sustainable seafood market.
 

Potage Parmentier
(Leek or Onion and Potato Soup)

In this busy, can-opener world, a homemade soup often seems like a new taste sensation. The old French standby, leek and potato soup, tastes so good you cannot believe it is nothing but vegetables, water and salt simmered together. It is also versatile: add watercress and you have a potage au cresson, or chill it, lace it with cream and you have vichyssoise. Another delicious soup is cream of watercress with its final enrichment of egg yolks. Hot or cold, most French soups are very easy, and can be made ready hours before serving time.

Preliminary Cooking

Either simmer the vegetables, water, and salt together, partially covered, for 40 to 50 minutes until vegetables are tender; or cook under 15 pounds pressure for 5 minutes, release pressure, and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes to develop the flavor.
Mash the vegetables in the soup with a fork, or pass the soup through a food mill. Correct seasoning. Set aside uncovered until just before serving, then reheat to the simmer.

Final Enrichment 1/3 cup heavy cream or 2 to 3 Tb softened butter 2 to 3 Tb minced parsley or chives

remove from heat just before serving, and stir in the cream or butter spoonfuls. Pour into a teen or soup cups and decorate with herbs.

Makes about 2 quarts, serving 6 to 8

In 1961, as a recent graduate of the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, Julia Child co-authored the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking and launched her career of educating Americans in delicious ways with food. In 1963 she began her own cooking show The French Chef, produced at WGBH. This recipe was published in The French Chef Cookbook*.

*THE FRENCH CHEF COOKBOOK by Julia Child, copyright © 1968 by Julia Child. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. For online information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet Web Site at http://www.randomhouse.com.

3/4 oz Dry Yeast
1/2 cup whole milk
2 cups warm filtered water
2 oz unsalted butter (melted)
1 tsp Granulated sugar
2 TB squid ink
2 lbs AP Flour
2 tsp kosher salt

3 tbsp EVOO
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 lb cleaned fresh squid tubes & tentacles
1 TB chopped FRESH oregano
1 TB chopped flat leaf parsley
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 cup finely ground panko bread crumbs
AP Flour for coating  meatballs
Red Sauce of Your choice (see below)

1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
10 lb of your farmers over ripe tomatoes, halved lengthwise, cored, and coarsely chopped
10 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly smashed
1 red onion sliced thinly
1 cup SPANISH extra-virgin olive oil (sorry I can never resist saying that)
1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves

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Richard Garcia is the Executive Chef of the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel. He is one of the many chefs who will be at the Taste of WGBH Food and Wine Festival on September 13-15, 2012. Be sure to check out his Chef Demo on Saturday.
 

Manju (MAHN-jew) are Japanese dough buns — often sweet — made from pounded rice flour dough and flavored fillings. In Japanese culture, a box of manju is what you'd take to someone's house on a special occasion, like Children's Day. Or you might simply snack on it with a cup of tea. But manju have to be eaten fresh, and they're pretty labor intensive, so nowadays, they can be hard to find.

On Saturdays, Art Oki's mom used to take him to the local sweets shop in Seattle's Nihonmachi, or Japantown. He was 6 years old and the perfect height to stare right into the display case. But that place closed in the 1970s.

Today Oki has his own shop called Umai Do on a street that used to cut through the old Japantown. In his shop, the manju sit in tidy rows. They look like dumplings in all different colors — bubblegum pink; green tea green; shiny white. They're steamed or baked. I pick one that looks like a potato, called imogashi.

It's got "cinnamon on the outside, cake covering, with white lima bean paste in the middle. I call that my Japanese version of a snickerdoodle," Oki says.

You read that right: white lima bean paste. It's surprisingly sweet. There are also manju filled with red azuki beans, and if this makes you leery, Oki will slip into manju sales mode. Beans have been a common ingredient in Asian desserts for centuries.

"When I talk to people who are new to Japanese sweets, I remind them it's a little softer than gummy bears," he says.

I say it's like gooey rice but a better consistency. It's like getting to eat a really good Play-Doh.

After the sweets shop from Oki's childhood closed, the nearest place to get manju was in Vancouver, B.C. And when that one closed, anyone traveling to California or Hawaii would get manju requests.

"At times I would have to bring back, like, six-dozen, so that was, like, half my carry-on," Oki recalls.

These chewy morsels speak to Japanese tradition and nostalgia, as our colleagues over at KQED have reported.

"My mother would say, 'Oh, I think you'd like this one.' I went with the plain white one, and I liked the anko, the bean paste, and got hooked," Oki says.

But getting hooked on the taste didn't mean he started baking then and there. For 30 years, Oki worked in local government as an accountant. Then he started at the bottom, apprenticing at a manju shop in Los Angeles where he learned the basics. He opened his store in Seattle only last year, and takes his sweets to cultural festivals, growing his customer base beyond those of Japanese descent. And, he says, he is learning from customers.

"The Hawaii folks actually suggested my newest item, the chi chi dango — coconut milk infused into the mochi. It tastes just like Hawaii," he says.

And for many people in Seattle, it tastes like home.

Copyright 2012 KPLU-FM. To see more, visit http://www.kplu.org.

I'm clearly missing something, because many summer communities have doughnut shops, often open just for the season. Critical summer doughnut mass seems to be concentrated in the north and east — maybe because it's always summer in California, where they have their own different doughnut culture.

The summer shops usually are simple shacks with awnings and screen windows, no inside seating and a picnic table outside in the hot sun.

And each one has the world's best doughnuts.

In Grand Marais, Minn., near the entrance to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, there's a place that even changed its name from the Grand Marais Donut Shop to World's Best Donuts.

Like many others, World's Best is a family business — fourth generation in this case. When they opened in 1969, they used a tackle box under the counter as a cash register. The business grew and moved to a bigger building. But they're still open only in summer.

Britt's in Carolina Beach, N.C., has a fanatic following. Bloggers post the day and hour for the season opening. Since 1939, doughnut eaters have lined up for Britt's only doughnut offering: glazed. No sprinkles, jam, fruit or surprising colors.

Just the opposite is the Fractured Prune in Ocean City, Md., where you can get blueberry, creamsicle, lemonade and peanut butter cup doughnuts.

The Downyflake in Nantucket is believed to be the only one left of a chain that started in the 1930s. For years, my friend David got up early to beat the crowds and bring home a dozen doughnuts for his family. He won a family contest by eating eight at one sitting.

Much doughnut baking starts in the wee small hours of the morning, and the lines of barefoot, shorts-clad customers starts early and is always long.

At the Back Door of Martha's Vineyard Gourmet Cafe and Bakery, though, people line up between 7:30 at night and 1 a.m. for doughnuts. One regular says, yes, these are the world's best doughnuts.

I still don't quite get it. To me, summer is more snow cones and popsicles than doughnuts. But maybe Homer Simpson was right when he said, "Doughnuts. Is there anything they can't do?"

Bonny Wolf is the author of Talking with My Mouth Full and contributing editor of NPR's Kitchen Window.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

They won't be hard to find. Originally just a convenient boxed lunch for Japanese field workers, bentos today can be high art, with flower-petal carrots, hard-boiled eggs shaped into bunnies, broccoli sculpted into trees. The moms who make them — because they're mostly moms, and not necessarily Japanese — are eager to share their edible masterpieces.

Confession: I have a problem with food that is cute. I even pick the buttons off gingerbread men. I'm also against expending that much effort just to coax my kid to eat. (Yes, my daughter thinks I'm "mean.") That said, I truly believe that we eat first with our eyes. And because of that, there is much to learn from the art of the bento.

Bento boxes go back to at least the 5th century A.D., when Japanese field workers, hunters and fishermen would pack dried rice into boxes. Somewhere around the 19th century, makunouchi, or "intermission," bentos emerged, packed with side dishes and treats for theatergoers to munch between acts. When the railroads arrived, ekiben — station boxes — filled with local specialties became popular. Today, many Japanese men and women carry bentos to work, and schoolchildren tote colorful arrangements of checkerboard-carved apples and rice balls shaped like Hello Kitty.

Of course, these Japanese lunches will have Japanese food: rice balls (onigiri) stuffed with pickled apricot or baked cod roe, deep-fried pork cutlets, vegetables simmered in sweet soy sauce. But you don't have to cook Japanese food — or make cute cutouts — to reap the benefits of the bento.

Cookbook author and Japan expert Debra Samuels says the five main elements of a bento are color, texture, seasonality, presentation and nutrition (and let's not forget portion control — how much can you cram into those little compartments?). She says many Japanese believe that including five colors on your plate — red, yellow, green, white and black — means you have a balanced meal.

Many cultures — including our own — carry lunch in a box. In India, children and workers take tiffins — stacked stainless steel boxes filled with rice or bread, curry and vegetables. Korean dosirak offer jubilant heaps of bibimbap or perhaps sushi-like rolls called kimbap. Many American parents pack those Buzz Lightyear lunchboxes with organic, whole grain, gluten-, antibiotic- or trans fat-free foods. But all of these lack what are perhaps the most distinctive features of the bento: organization and an appetizing aesthetic.

Face it, PB&J wrapped in plastic — whether it's organic or not — just isn't that appealing. Maybe that's why my kid-size containers — bought especially for school lunches — still come back half-full of the snap peas, blueberries or tabbouleh I put in them. What if you could make that food fun and appetizing, though? Even without the hearts and flowers?

It doesn't have to be complicated. Just think of naturally hand-held foods. A wrap filled with meat and crunchy, colorful vegetables becomes a lunch cone. Slice it sideways, and it's pinwheels. Farmers markets, supermarkets and even some big-box stores are filled with gorgeous and delicious kid-size vegetables like mini zucchini and summer squash, fingerling potatoes, clementines, bell-shaped yellow and red cherry tomatoes, slender Persian cucumbers, tiny sweet peppers, and yellow, orange and purple baby carrots (real ones — not the ones lathed into bullets at the factory). Eggs provide easy, affordable, colorful protein — "cheap and cheerful," as a British friend says. You can boil them, turn them into an omelet or an herb-stuffed patty, all of which are delicious cold. Cheese comes in single-serving sticks and rounds, with varieties from mozzarella to cheddar and even chevre.

And then there's the box itself. Like the food, the boxes in Japan can be works of art. Delicate cedar vessels and boxes of wicker and willow evolved from the simple wrapping of bamboo leaves and falconers' feed bags that are thought to be among the original bento boxes. The boxes can be slickly lacquered and painted with scenes. But today, a Japanese office worker is more likely to carry a sleek aluminum container with built-in gel packs or vacuum-insulated boxes. For children, there are boxes in the shape of frogs and pandas, boxes decorated with their favorite cartoon figures, even boxes that look like stacked Legos.

Through the miracle of the Internet, many of these items are available online. One company even makes a bento — and that's what they call it — with colorful insert containers. Sleek, clean, the ultimate green lunch.

A little color. Some crisp, beautiful vegetables. Just a few minutes of attention to feeding your eyes before your stomach, and lunch suddenly becomes a whole new experience. Just remember to say itadakimasu — "I humbly receive."

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

So when I decided to overcome my fear, I did it the right way. I hopped on a train to the Culinary Institute of America, the nation's premier cooking school, in Hyde Park, N.Y. There I learned the foolproof pie crust formula that chef George Higgins teaches his students. "It starts with 3, 2, 1" he explains.

That's 3 parts flour, 2 parts fat (butter), 1 part liquid. We've laid it out for you in pictures here, to make it easy. And we also share his family's impossible-to-resist blueberry pie recipe that's made with a flaky crust.

But it takes just a bit more than that.

Higgins says a successful baker likes precision. So be sure to measure accurately. Then, of course, there's the technique.

The biggest mistake I made — and this is a pitfall for lots of newbies — was overworking the dough. Chef Higgins made me toss out my first attempt and start over! Less is more. Higgins taught me to handle it just enough to form the dough into a ball. (Kneading is for bread, not pie crust!) It's supposed to look like it's barely holding together.

Here are some other pastry chefs' tips to avoid disaster:

Your butter should be firm, cold and chunky. Ryan Westover, the pastry chef at Poste in Washington, D.C. explains the chunks of cold butter will slowly release steam as the pie bakes. And this is important:

"By releasing steam incrementally, you give the starches and gluten time to form a lattice, or a sort of balloon" he says. And this holds the steam in.

This is how a good pie crust develops it's rich, delicate layers of of wonderful texture and flavor Westover says.

Additional temperature tips come from Theresa Souther, a pastry chef and Head of the Professional Pastry Arts Program at L'Academie de Cuisine, a culinary school in Bethesda, Md.

She recommends putting ingredients, including the flour, in the fridge or freezer for 30 to 60 minutes before you begin.

And be sure to use ice water to mix the dough. "Cold temperatures help minimize gluten development," she explains. And if you have too much gluten, you end up with a chewy, rubbery crust.

Also, she says, let the dough rest in the fridge after you mix it and before you try to roll it and shape the pie. Cold dough is usually easier to roll and handle.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The entries are arranged by flavor, cuisine, and type of food, making it easy to find whatever kind of snack you desire. And for foods with more than one ingredient, the components are cross-listed to reveal connections between foods (e.g. Spaghetti & Meatballs - see also: Spaghetti, Meatball).

As an art project, Snack Data has a primal, throw-back feel. Accompanying the pixelated images are bits of questionable trivia and highly subjective tasting notes  kind of like a clever middle school kid's book report on foods from around the world, not an authoritative reference.

Johnson creates the illustrations using Photoshop, in the blocky style of early-1990s computer games like King's Quest. But Johnson, 27, says it wasn't meant to be retro.

"I know it has those associations," he says. It's also meant as a departure from the food photography that saturates the Internet, he adds.

For the text, Johnson pulls facts from Wikipedia or simply invents his own, like "the hot dog bun can be thought of as an edible glove" and "taco salad is something that happened when people in the United States got tired of eating regular taco."

"I try to give a little bit of real background," Johnson says, but admits, "I don't spend too long researching them." Johnson has added to the database regularly since its creation in mid-April. He's almost done with the primary entries, and he takes requests through email.

None of the entries are brand-name products, although some do resemble well-known brands. Johnson felt it was important to focus on the foods themselves. "If you're writing about an orange or an apple or a scallop, there's no one to answer for it," he says. "You're just kind of commenting on this thing that's always been there."

We've selected a few of Johnson's favorites to feature in our Snack Data slideshow above, as well as a few of our own. Naturally, we've included the entry on salt. To explore the entire collection, visit snackdata.com.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.