Kim Sunée was born in South Korea, adopted, and raised in New Orleans. Her bestselling book Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home is out in paperback today. She lived in Europe for more than 10 years, was founding food editor of Cottage Living, has been a judge on Iron Chef America and is the host of Local Flavor with Kim Sunée for myrecipes.com. Find some of Kim’s recipes here. Or read more about her at her website.

Sweet or salty?

Salty and then semi-sweet.

Which ingredient(s) do you use most?

Fleur de sel, extra-virgin olive oil, fresh orange, juice and zest, and an addictive spicy piment d’oiseau hot pepper paste from Cameroon.

What’s the cooking sound you most love?

Anything hitting a hot skillet with oil and butter.

What are the qualities you most admire in a dish?

Balance and the desire to satisfy but leaving you wanting more…

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Hair of the Dog is Cookthink’s Monday morning cocktail column by Rob Chirico, the author of the Field Guide to Cocktails. Read more about Rob here.

If the proponents of the stalwart Prohibition believed they had planted the seeds of virtue and salubriousness, they reaped lawlessness and countless victims of alcohol poisoning. Also, in lieu of eliminating alcoholic beverages, they helped spawn a renaissance of cocktail innovations.

Gin, being easy to make, but not so easy in the gullet, was at the center. Masking the vitriolic home brew with honey or orange juice produced curiosities like the Bees Knees and the Orange Blossom. Blending gin with maraschino liqueur, however, resulted in the much more appealing Aviation Cocktail, or should I say “cocktails”?

The Aviation was once regarded as the Prince of Cocktails, but now it is something of a schizophrenic.

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A collaboration between Andrew Schloss and Cookthink, the Sunday Dinners project is designed to help those of us who love to cook but have trouble finding the time. Each week, we bring you recipes for a leisurely weekend meal — and show you how to spin the leftovers into brand new, easy weeknight dinners. (For more on this, read Andy’s introduction to the project.) 

There are chickens in every pot and skillet and oven in this country almost every night. But the ubiquity of chicken has made us hungry for quick, easy, delicious ways to turn our favorite bird into a memorable meal.

Well, have I got a recipe for you.

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I came home from Christmas dinner at a friend’s in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with a doggy bag full of foie gras. The controversial overstuffed duck liver is highly perishable, and the next day as I prepared to make the sushi lunch I’d planned to compensate for the previous night’s excesses, I had an idea.

Parisian sushi restaurants are disappointingly lackluster and overpriced on the low end, and impossibly exorbitant on the high end. So I have gotten into the habit of buying fresh fish from the farmers market and Japanese rice in Paris’ Chinatown, and making my own, including a spicy tuna roll I channeled from memories of Little Tokyo lunches during my days in Los Angeles. I ate my share of California rolls in those days, a regional twist on the sushi roll that has become standard on sushi menus around the world.

But I have always felt a bit judgmental about the ubiquitous Franco-Japanese dish that is foie gras sushi. It always seemed to me an awkward and unnecessary cross-cultural meeting of the culinary minds, like the gimmicky Nutella dessert sushi I’ve also seen on Parisian menus and dismissed as a humorless French joke.

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All of us at Cookthink want to wish you a spirited end to 2008, with good food and company to match. We’re taking a break until after the New Year to recharge and look forward to seeing you in 2009.

In the meantime, remember that Cookthink.com is here to help you satisfy your cravings 24/7 — just tap your favorite ingredients, cuisine, dish type — or even mood — into our unique search tool to find last-minute Christmas recipes, cocktail ideas for New Years Eve and plenty of suggestions for every meal in between.

Happy Holidays!

When my husband and I host Thanksgiving or Christmas for friends or relatives (something rarer than we’d like it to be) we dedicate the whole day to food.

We begin with a breakfast of cured meat and sausages, fruits and cheeses. Lunch is a hearty soup and salad course. Dinner, when it finally arrives, is a 6-dish treat.

Guests have at first thought we’re a little crazy, but by the end of the day we’ve often made converts of them. After all, a holiday — a word that traces back to Old English halig meaning “holy” and daeg meaning “day” — is supposed to be accompanied by a feast.

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Hair of the Dog is Cookthink’s Monday morning cocktail column by Rob Chirico, the author of the Field Guide to Cocktails. Read more about Rob here. 

The basic Champagne Cocktail is a simple mixture of Champagne and a sugar cube soaked in Angostura bitters.

Dating back to the Civil War era, when it appeared in Jerry Thomas’s 1887 Bartender’s Guide, it seemed to reach its peak in popularity by 1934 when Esquire magazine selected it as one of the top 10 cocktails. This hardly comes as a surprise since that was barely a year after the end of prohibition, and congenial topers had no doubt experimented with ways of making inferior bubbly palatable.

The integral sugar cube aside, the Champagne Cocktail and its progeny have taken some serious lumps over time. Although some detractors would tell you to look for a recipe under the word “travesty” in the dictionary, it has unflagging adherents who deem it the perfect sophisticated cocktail to launch a social occasion. The inherent beauty of the Champagne Cocktail goes beyond its suave appearance and silken palate: it can also be 4 to 20 times cheaper than Champagne.
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A collaboration between Andrew Schloss and Cookthink, the Sunday Dinners project is designed to help those of us who love to cook but have trouble finding the time. Each week, we bring you recipes for a leisurely weekend meal — and show you how to spin the leftovers into easy weeknight dinners. (For more on this, read Andy’s introduction to the project.) 

A good curry can seduce the senses to the point of overload.

Starting with a floral fragrance of coriander and cardamom, it fast reveals an earthy heart of turmeric and the honest musk of asafoetida.

There’s the sweetness of onion and a numbing scent of clove. Black pepper perks along the tongue, as pin pricks of cayenne stab at the back of the throat, waiting for a balm of yogurt to bring relief.

Even after you swallow, flavors continue to spark and jostle: an afterglow of chili is fanned by a cool breeze of mint. An acid-sweet glint of lemon cuts through the salty fat crunch of toasted cashews.

The cacophony of curry is the inspiration for this week’s Sunday Dinners.

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Don’t wait until you need one. Have a Bloody Mary because you just want one. Seventy-five years after its creation, the Bloody Mary continues to evolve; as Rob wrote in a recent Hair of the Dog, “everyone who makes a Bloody Mary claims to make the best Bloody Mary.”

Do you have a best Bloody Mary recipe? A secret ingredient? Let us know. In the meantime, consider these:

1. A friend who once worked as a bartender in Hong Kong taught Nigella Lawson this trick: add a splash of dry sherry to your Bloody Mary mix.

2. Given Mario Batali’s fabled excesses, you’d think the man would know a killer Bloody Mary recipe. His secret ingredient? Balsamic vinegar.

3. At Married with Dinner, Cameron and Anita come by their base juice by pureeing a 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes.

4. Your favorite neighborhood bar serves it in its Bloody Mary. What’s to stop you from making bacon-infused vodka at home?

5. If you can tolerate a little heat, the Hungry Cat’s Bloody Mary may be for you. The Hollywood seafood/brunch restaurant adds jalapeño and Fresno peppers to its mix.

A sexy alternative to plain old broccoli, raab is a dark and leafy green with a pungent bite. Raab’s bitterness can be tempered by blanching and shocking the greens before using them; a nice slow braise sweetens the stalks.

Want to know more? Read this week’s Root Source: Broccoli Raab. (If you’re not yet signed up for the Root Source, subscribe today — it’s free!)

This is the last Root Source of 2008. Look for it again on January 8!