Wire Food & Wine

In the love triangle that is "The Great Gatsby," Champagne is like the hypotenuse, a thread that runs long and strong opposite the namesake star of the new movie. Bottles upon bottles of Moet & Chandon are swilled and spilled at the movie's Jazz Age soirees from Long Island to Manhattan.

Pho (say: fuh), that mesmerizing Vietnamese beef soup, takes time. Even Nancie McDermott's superb recipe in her "Quick & Easy Vietnamese" (Chronicle) - itself an express version - requires first making a broth with a pound of round steak.

Ada Boni's cookbook "Il Talismano della Felicita" is considered to be the Italian "Joy of Cooking."

Q: I hope you can track down a favorite recipe I lost for meat-stuffed cabbage leaves called kohlruladen. I haven't had any luck finding it online.

Steve Frazer from Reisterstown was looking for the recipe for the chocolate chip cake that used to be sold at Miller's Delicatessen in Northwest Baltimore in the 1970s. He remembers that it was a very dense cake and most likely made with sour cream with an abundance of tiny chocolate chips and a sugary crunchy topping.

Wine of the Week: 2008 Tenuta di Trinoro Rosso Toscano "Le Cupole"

With spring lettuce and all variety of greens enjoying their salad days now, it's a good time to think about how to dress them up right.

Perigord, France, many years ago:

These veggie burgers draw their flavor from vegetables, and that's the way it should be.

Where can they do up Sunday dinner better than in the South?

In this tough world of ours, try a little tenderness. Try kale. It's the leafy green everyone's talking about but no one seems to eat. Often dismissed as fibrous and bitter, kale turns supple and sweet with a little hands-on participation.

Dear SOS: My husband and I are completely in love with the LGO Chopped Salad at the Luggage Room in Pasadena, Calif. We moved an hour away from the restaurant and dream about it. Is there any way you could get the recipe?

Make this quick Roasted Chicken Pasta Salad and enjoy a family meal at home. It uses only one pot, won't heat up your kitchen and takes only 20 minutes to make.

Use this quick diabetes-friendly meal to make a quick lunch or simple dinner. Vinaigrette dressing makes this popular Italian salad a nice change from tuna salad with a mayonnaise base. The Tomato Salad is a colorful complement.

Q: In a recent question on cutting lettuce, you mentioned that we don't have to wipe mushrooms one by one. Could you elaborate? I thought we weren't supposed to put mushrooms in water.

Savvy as Starbucks is about coffee, it has not had much luck with food.

When I came of restaurant-cooking age in the late 1980s, "sauce" had started to become a dirty word. In restaurant reviews, the word was often associated with the adjective "heavy" and the noun "to mask." A typical sentence would go like this: "The chef uses heavy sauces to mask inferior ingredients."

Observe the care with which the American backyard grill jockey shifts and turns that New York strip over that 2,000-degree gas flame to give it the perfect crosshatch of grill marks, and you'll sense there's something primal going on.

There already were nine flavors of Totino's Pizza Rolls (perhaps, like Mr. Tidbit, you were surprised to notice that they aren't still Jeno's Pizza Rolls, but the name change happened in 1993, so we both need to get over it). Anyway, what might be simply three more flavors of Totino's Pizza Rolls are instead three offerings from new label Totino's Pizzeria: cheesy garlic rolls, chicken Parmesan rolls and meatball marinara rolls.

These dainty little tarts are as easy to make as they are beautiful. These diminutive desserts are perfect vessels for sliced fresh fruit, a guilty shot of ganache, pastry cream or canned pie filling. They'll easily accommodate instant pudding (just use a little less milk when making it) or a dollop of ice cream.

Time to stock your shelves with a new cookbook or two. The James Beard Foundation announced its winners May 3 for its annual competition. The International Association of Culinary Professionals also announced their winners recently. Note that there are several overlapping winners from both groups, a sure sign of a must-have for your library.

On a typical June day last year, 3-year-old Jolan Jackson was sitting at the dining room table in his booster chair waiting for his meal.

After its creation was announced via nationwide broadcast, people lined up to buy the very first versions. It's lightweight, has been the subject of fierce patent battles and is so addictive you can't put it down, even when you know you should.

CHICAGO - In the face of troublingly high childhood obesity rates and what it sees as troublingly low milk consumption rates, the dairy industry says it has a solution: Offer kids flavored milk that uses low-calorie artificial sweeteners.

Years ago a California winemaker came to Miami touting his latest creation - a single, complex, expensive wine made by blending four or five well-known individual red grapes.

I use every opportunity I can to exercise, and if you are anything like me, you're in the midst of "Spring Cleaning Fever."

Rhubarb is one of the great pleasures of spring, with its rosy color and earthy tang. It is found in most supermarkets this time of year, although it is available frozen anytime. Also known as "pieplant," rhubarb is a perennial that is native to central and northern Asia, where it has been grown for thousands of years for medicinal purposes. It was brought to Europe by Marco Polo and has been eaten as a food since the 18th century.

Stanley Levy from Baltimore was in search of the recipe for the cheesy potato casserole that he enjoyed at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Pennsylvania. He said it reminded him of macaroni and cheese but instead of pasta it was made with potatoes.

Diane Friedberg of Miami Beach, Fla., asked if anyone had the recipe for brownies called Fudgies that her mother used to make from a Woman's Home Companion cookbook she received as a wedding present in 1941. She remembered they were made with evaporated milk and had powdered sugar on top.

The simple, elegant words of Michael Pollan, that first appeared within "In Defense of Food," have become a manifesto for many who are concerned about what appears on their dinner plates: