Around the world, beekeepers are bringing to market exciting new honeys, experimenting with single-varietals, micro-climates and  sometimes partnering with chefs and meaderies to hone just the right flavor profile necessary for a specific preparation.  Chefs have heard the call and are experimenting more and more with honey in savory as well as sweet preparations.  For those who love honey, this is a sweet time indeed.

Mead is probably the oldest alcoholic beverage known to Man.  Just about every ancient culture was known to make it, and prior to beer and wine, it was what everyone drank with dinner.  If you’ve heard of mead, chances are it was while reading middle-English texts in college such as Chaucer or Beowulf.  But mead making has come a long way since then, and a fresh crop of new mead makers want to change the way you think about this ancient beverage. 

The windswept marsh lands of the northern French coastline are home to some of the France's most sought after culinary products, both from the sea and the land. Scallops, oyster, mussels and lobster for partaking of the sea and potatoes, apples, butter and the exquisite pré salé lamb, "pre-salted" from grazing on salty sea-brush around Mont Saint-Michel during low tide. But don't go looking outside of Brittany or Normandy for this delicate, tasty lamb raised on salt sprayed grasses, since the majority of the production is ony shared with locals.

Regarded as the "king of cheeses" in Italy, parmigiano reggiano is nonetheless a monarch of the people, frequenting dinner tables across Italy each day. But the crown has slipped under pressure from oversupply, falling prices and an international identity crisis.

Did I hear that right?  Did that mustached man from Parma just profess his love for pear-shaped rumps?  Ah, before you get any wild ideas you should know that he was likely referring to the “king” of Parma’s prestigious cured meat traditions, Culatello di Zibello.  Culatello, which means “little butt” in Italian, is a pear-shaped, air-cured salume which is rarer and more precious than even the famous Prosciutto di Parma.  Salty, meaty, with just the right amont of fat that literally (and wonderfully) melts on your tongue, it's worth a trip to the villages of the Po Valley to taste the real thing.

It takes over one year for parmigiano reggiano to make it from cow to cheese board.  The best-known of the grana-style cheeses, parmigiano reggiano has inspired many copies, but there is only one true reggiano.  It takes the sun and soil of the Po Valley, and the accumulation of generations of how-to knowledge to make the world’s favorite cheese.   Louisa Cass walks you thought the process with master cheesemaker Bruno Monica.

The last time I met Lina, proprietor of Le Charm, a French bistro in San Francisco, it was Feb 15th dinner at her restaurant. She flitted from table to table, serving up food as well as serious gossip, oozing professional charm. "You are. So. Thin." She always knew the right thing to say to each of her diners. And that was always the right thing to say. Unlike most times Lina saw me - in my Chef jacket and dirty from the rigors of the kitchen - on this post V-Day, I was all cleaned up and appropriately dressed.  We chatted and set a rendezvous to make dumplings. The humble dumpling, to Lina, is filled with not only meat and vegetables but nostalgia of growing up in Taipei.