Fondue, Imma let you finish, but raclette is the best melted cheese of all time
Welcome to Cheese Week, The Takeout’s weeklong praise of cheeses.
There’s only one requirement for authentic pasta all’Amatriciana
Next time you see pasta all’Amatriciana (more often than not, it’s bucatini all’Amatriciana) on a menu, don’t order it. I’m serious. Kind of. You’re better off making it yourself so you can see that it includes its most important ingredient.
Only a real jabroni would make baked ziti and not use ziti pasta
Thus begins my open letter to a disturbing number of pizza joints and red-sauce Italian-American restaurants: If your menu says “baked ziti,” the dish had better be baked ziti. Eight out of 10 times that I order it (in my un-scientific analysis), your server delivers me a plate of baked penne. Now, I know what you’re…
How to master cacio e pepe, the deceptively difficult paragon of pasta
The first time I attempted to make cacio e pepe, I thought it had to be just about the easiest pasta dish to make, outside of the un-sauced spaghetti and butter that young kids without functioning taste buds demand. I mean, most of its ingredients are in its name: cacio is “cheese” in a number of Italian dialects and…
Pity the fool who can't love pasta fazool
If you’re like me (from New Jersey with a last name ending in a vowel), you very likely grew up eating “pasta fazool,” long before we found out that it’s actually “pasta fagioli”—technically pasta e fagioli or “pasta and beans.” Neapolitans, who have their own group of dialects, call it “fasule,” hence the…
The country’s best chili dog is New Jersey’s deep-fried Hot Texas Weiner
I may call the Washington, D.C. region home these days, but I spent the first 93 percent of my existence in northern New Jersey, and will always identify as a proud son of the Garden State. That’s why I retroactively berate my younger self for voluntarily abstaining from what is indisputably North Jersey’s greatest…
A guide to using rum, from tiki to Old Fashioneds
If there’s ever been a truly global spirit, it’s rum. No single country, island, or region can truly claim to “own” rum, as any part of the world that grows or processes sugar cane very likely has a centuries-long history of distilling the stuff. Its ubiquity, perhaps, has made it one of the most taken-for-granted…
Open up to the singular zestiness of rye whiskey
Welcome to Gateways To Drinkery, where The Takeout offers an entry-level course on our favorite libations, and some suggestions on where to start drinking them.
Ease yourself into the singular joy of sake
Welcome to Gateways To Drinkery, where The Takeout offers an entry-level course on our favorite libations, and some suggestions on where to start drinking them.