Good Food

Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard think the worldwide appeal of K-pop and Korean cinema has boosted modern Korean food. Operating out of a gas station, how does Arezou Appel make some of LA's best cookies? Jennifer Yee of Baker's Bench talks about the joys and pitfalls of vegan pies. Dan Pashman dives into the global pantry to develop innovative pasta recipes. Sweet spring strawberries arrive at SoCal farmers markets.

With only a week left until PieFest, baker Nicole Rucker shows us how to make a scrumptrilescent apple pie. From Baghdad and Buenos Aires to Montreal and Mexico City, Naama Shefi taps the Jewish diaspora to fill her holiday table. When Karla Vasquez couldn't find an English-language Salvadoran cookbook that she loved, she created her own. After writing a book on Northern Thai food, Austin Bush explores the spicy, colorful cuisine of Southern Thailand. When soulful Southern restaurant Joyce opened in DTLA, LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison had to check it out. Michael McCarty reflects on 45 years of success at his eponymous Santa Monica restaurant.

Journalist, activist, and founder of the blog Gaza Mom, Laila El-Haddad discusses how she keeps the cuisine of Gaza alive as she tries to find solace during Ramadan. After struggling with drugs and addiction, Toriano Gordon hit reset and became a chef, opening two vegan barbecue and soul food trucks. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison knows where you should stop and eat on your way to Coachella. Pie judge and cooking instructor Clémence De Lutz tells us how to master berry pies for this year's Pie Contest. Finally, what do you do with the green almonds that are at farmers markets right now?

Author and illustrator Mark Kurlansky peels back the cultural, historical, and gastronomical layers of onions. Journalist Shane Mitchell won two James Beard Awards for shining a light on the exploitation in America's onion fields. Pastry chef Sherry Yard has tips on how to make award-winning hand pies. Dina Begum navigates the six seasons of Bangladesh, sharing traditional recipes and childhood memories. Bill Addison heads to an upscale Chinese restaurant where the roast duck comes with a fire show.

Marian Bull weighs in on the popularity of orange egg yolks. Chef Ludo Lefebvre details what goes into his famous omelet, which is on the menu at Petit Trois. Lisa Steele is a fifth-generation chicken keeper and the founder of Fresh Eggs Daily, a blog that has been viewed more than 50 million times. Tove Danovich loves raising backyard chickens, a tradition that dates back to her great-grandmother. Margaret Magat describes eating balut, an embryonic egg delicacy enjoyed across the Philippines. Lizzie Stark hatches stories exploring the cultural history and uses of eggs while sharing her personal story.

Life is driven by flavor. The seductress that is flavor often leads us down the rabbit hole of food studies. If you run a restaurant or you're in the food business, you know that flavor is power and it needs to hit in the first few bites. But what exactly is flavor? And how do we create it in our own heads? We've been following the interests of Arielle Johnson for years. Her new book is Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor. Evan Kleiman: When I hear the term "flavor scientist," my mind goes to the industrialized food world. I think of someone working for a big company, like Kraft or Kellogg, who's trying to create the next viral snack or food trend. But that is not what you do. How does your work differ from that of most other flavor scientists? Arielle Johnson: Most food scientists and most flavor scientists are employed by large food companies, largely because that is who hires people like that and pays for the field to exist. I'm at a little bit of a right angle to what they do. [What I do] intersects in the chemistry and in the sensory science but I'm much more interested in understanding flavor as an everyday experience, as an expression of biology, culture and ecology, and as something to use in the kitchen. So I do apply it but in a different way than it is typically applied. Are you often contacted by chefs who are trying to create something or push something further, and they need science to help them take a leap? Often, they don't necessarily know what science they need but they know that I am good at solving problems using science. Often, a chef has been working in one direction or another, maybe trying to do a fermentation project or get a flavored ice to behave a certain way. When I can, which is a lot of the time, actually, I like to step in and try to cherry pick what area — is it biology? is it chemistry? is it molecules reacting? is it volatility or something like that? — and set them on the right path to get what they want. That must be eminently satisfying. Incredibly. That's my favorite thing. What intrigues me about flavor is how personal it can be. I sat across from noted restaurant critic Jonathan Gold each week for a couple of decades, listening to him describe flavor. I would always ask myself, is that how I perceive what he's talking about? Often, in my own mind, it was no, I'm perceiving it differently but how interesting it is, what he's perceiving. Could you speak a little bit about that, the personal nature of flavor? One of the things I find most exciting and attractive about flavor is that it sits at this intersection of the extremely concrete — it's based on molecules, which we can measure, real matter — and the personal. Flavor doesn't happen until you put something in your mouth and the signals get sent to your brain and then from there, all bets are off. But one important piece to the connection between flavor and the personal, is that flavor is not just taste, it is also smell. Smell is a huge, essential part of flavor. Smell, more than any of our other senses, is deeply tied in a physical, neurological way to our emotions and memories. Once we gather smell molecules and build a smell signal and pass it to the rest of the brain, the first place that it goes is the limbic system in places like the amygdala, places where we keep our most emotional, personal memories and associations. So with smell, and therefore with flavor, we'll often have our personal history, our emotional reaction to it, come up before we can even recognize or articulate what it is that we are smelling and tasting. Chefs and restaurants around the globe enlist the help of flavor scientist Arielle Johnson to give them a leg up on deliciousness. Photo by Nicholas Coleman. It's so interesting to me that these days, on social media in particular, where people are constantly giving their takes on whatever they're eating or the latest restaurant thing, it's always within these parameters...

Explaining how taste and smell interact, why smell is related to emotion, and the patterns of flavor, Arielle Johnson chases deliciousness by taking science and making it fashion. Christy Spackman tracks how municipal water systems have spent billions eliminating taste from our tap water. Flexitarian Pamelia Chia canvases Asian chefs for show-stopping vegetarian recipes. Baker Rose Wilde shows us how to bring edible flowers onto our plates.

Sous chef Kamran Gill discusses the challenges he faces while fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Laura Strange develops recipes and travel guides for those living a gluten-free life in a gluten-centric world. Reporter Susanne Rust explains why California's plastic bag ban created more waste. Dr. Alex Ketchum showcases feminist restaurants and the essential role they played in multiple social justice movements. A springtime delicacy, sugar snap peas are in season at the farmer's market.

Crystal Wilkinson recounts stories and recipes from five generations of Black Appalachian cooks. Poised to open a restaurant complex in Los Angeles, Rose Previte traveled spice trade routes to see how cooking traditions informed each other. Food writer Bill Esparza shows us where to find Dominican food. Sommelier Courtney Kaplan explains shochu, Japan's indigenous distilled spirit. At the farmer's market, chef Daniel Matho shops for butternut squash while Lettie Garcia talks grapefruit.

Dr. Lauren Crossland-Marr explains how the gene editing technology CRISPR is impacting our food chain. Scholar and editor Darra Goldstein detonates the flavor bombs of preserved condiments. Kevin Wilson, aka the CEO of Chai, describes how a simple cup of tea can bring solace amid our mad world. Food and ag journalist Tom Philpott debunks the pro-ethanol POV. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison visits Yess, a new Japanese restaurant in the Arts District. At the farmer's market, chef Deau Arpapornnopparat shops for Holy Basil, his Atwater Village Thai restaurant.

Saba Alemayoh shares her mother's story of civil war, migration, and divorce — all of it bound up with Tigray culture and food. What happens to food reality show contestants once the cameras stop rolling? Derek Corsino weighs in after his time on the Spring Baking Championship while journalist Victoria Namkung focuses on the bigger picture. Journalist Sarah Larson profiles Spencer Sheehan, a lawyer who sues food companies for false advertising. Andrew Friedman documents the life of ingredients and how they make it from the farm to the plate at one Chicago restaurant. At the farmers market, citrus continues to shine.

What does the Tulare Lake Basin water crisis mean for the future of farming in California? Carolyn Quick Tillery celebrates the 25th anniversary of a cookbook that pays homage to the Tuskegee Institute. Memo Torres has ideas about where to eat this weekend with his latest recommendations for Apple Maps. Eat!, a digital delivery program, gives customers access to farmers' markets across Los Angeles. Proposed budget cuts threaten Market Match, a program that gives low-income Californians additional savings on fruits and vegetables at farmers' markets.

Director Tran Anh Hung and actress Juliette Binoche discuss the recipe for subtle seduction in The Taste of Things. Foley artist Olivier Thys reveals which foods he uses to simulate the on-screen sounds of bones breaking and vampires biting necks. Journalist Ada Tseng visits Costco twice a week — for gas, deals, and hidden Asian treasures. Chocolatier Christine Sarioz taps into her art background to create sculptural chocolates. Cathy Asapahu shops for berries for a dessert tasting at Ayara Tha

With restaurants dedicated to global rice dishes, JJ Johnson explores 28 varieties in his latest cookbook. Chef Eric Adjepong explores assimilation, culture and home in a new children's book. Reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich unravels issues with the global food chain in the case of cinnamon applesauce pouches tainted with lead. LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison visits Victor Heights for Korean banchan and dosirak. Barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn weighs in on the state of Texas barbecue. Austrian chef Bernhard Mairinger visits the farmers market to shop for his new restaurant, Lustig.

Zarghuna Adel learns classic recipes from older Afghans living abroad and reintroduces them to a younger generation living in the country. LA Times reporter Stephanie Breijo reflects on the closure of some of the city's most cherished dining destinations. Yazeed "Chef Yaz" Soudani of Miya Miya brings Jordanian-style shawarma to Smorgasburg LA. Lisa Hamilton looks at one Hmong woman's struggle to survive war, loss and displacement while holding onto her identity. Sheng Yang and Sami Scripter collaborate on a new edition of the first Hmong American cookbook.

Journalist and author George Monbiot has a radical idea for fixing farming's environmental devastation — but can a post-agricultural world feed the planet? Once a social scientist and now a farmer, Chris Smaje offers a defense of small-scale farming and a robust critique of industrialized food production. The Ecology Center is a blue dot in a red sea. How did Evan Marks come to run this 28-acre regenerative farm in Orange County? Reporter Alexander Sammon visits Cherán, where armed militias guard the area to prevent rogue avocado farming.

Erewhon sells an $18 dollar smoothie named after Hailey Bieber. Mary Beth Albright considers how drinking it will make us feel.

Journalist Laura Tillman phoned Máximo Bistrot, a restaurant riding the wave of Mexico City's popularity as a fine dining destination, in hopes of interviewing its chef, Eduardo "Lalo" García Guzmán. Tillman had covered immigration for the past 10 years and she was interested in speaking with dishwashers, cooks, waiters, and purveyors working in high-end restaurants, where economic inequalities are pronounced. It was 2016, and as the US presidential election made pawns of Mexican immigrants, the chef was eager to share his story. Tillman spent the next five years speaking with García, his family, and those who worked with him, following his journey from the fields as a young migrant farm worker to the kitchens of the American South then back to Mexico, where along with his wife, he has built a restaurant group that employs hundreds of people. Tillman tells his story in the book The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García — but ultimately, this is Lalo's journey. It's a singular epic, complete with a cruel twist that reveals so much about the relationship between Mexico and the United States, the two countries that shaped García.

Terrified of the ocean in her youth, Valentine Thomas is now a champion spearfisherwoman. Maggie Harrison describes the "maniacal rigor" with which she seeks out beauty through winemaking. "The McSatan" and "The Bruja" are on the menu at Evil Cooks, where Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta are on a mission to "Make Tacos Great Again." Kate Reid was a successful Formula 1 engineer who designed race cars before shifting gears to make croissants. Out of the studio and into the wild, Good Food takes on the Great Outdoors.

Fuchsia Dunlop distills the history of Chinese food through a menu of 30 dishes. Kevin and Jeffrey Pang cook up some father-son bonding over plates of Mongolian beef and General Tso's chicken. Marc Rose and Med Abrous prepare for Christmas Eve, the busiest night of the year at Chinese restaurant Genghis Cohen. Using their respective lenses as an anthropologist and a historian, mother and son Merry White and Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft examine the way the world eats.