It's 2023, people. This is the year we're all going to start actually taking care of our knives instead of saying nonsense like "I use my Wüsthof 24/7 without ever sharpening it and it's feels sharp as a razor 15 years later!".

That can only be true if you don't use it. We don't play those games anymore.

Here's what you need — and what you need to know — to whip your knives back into shape.

Zen and The Art of Kitchen Knife Maintenance

Full disclosure: I think Hedley & Bennett overcharges for everything they make. A super basic apron made of super generic materials shouldn't cost $80-100.

When they introduced a chef's knife, however, I was intrigued. It's got a sleek, but classic design and better yet — it pairs it with my favorite low-cost steel: AUS-10.

So, I ordered one. And... it's pretty good. Nothing mind-blowing, but it's kinda like a lighter-weight version of the Misen chef's knife with a little nicer aesthetics. 

I still think Misen is my top pick for a budget knife because it's hard to recommend spending 30% more on a knife that's essentially the same in all the ways that actually matter.

Hedley & Bennett

Super easy to clean, sharpen, and maintain.

Some nice aesthetic touches, but essentially your typical Eastern-style knife.

Not really this knife's strong point — it's just not a standout. Pretty nice though, so I gave it a little bump from dead center.

Love AUS-10 steel for the compromises it makes. It's a low-cost steel that is quite a bit harder than most other steels at its price point which means it holds its edge a bit longer between sharpening.

Because this is so close in form and material to the Misen chef's knife which is $35 cheaper, it does feel a bit overpriced at $115. But, on the other hand, the Misen actually feels underpriced.

This is a little bit nicer to work with too, so I think the perfect price point for this knife would be right around $100 even.

Just like the Kramer by Zwilling, I initially expected this knife to be all flash and no filler. I was wrong again.

In fact, I only really have two complaints against it whatsoever: 1. it's a little too big for some people's hands, and 2. the metal reverberates like sheet metal when it's tapped against something. That's not really a problem per se — I was actually super impressed with its balance of lightness and edge retention — but it feels a little too cheap for a knife at this price point.

But other than those couple of nits that I couldn't help but pick at, I've actually grown quite fond of this big, goofy knife. It's friendly in a way that a lot of kitchen tools aren't — just like its big, goofy namesake.

Lamson

Easy peasy. The blade is so wide and flat with a handle that gets completely out of the way. The beautiful walnut handle is well worth the effort of oiling it every 2 months as the manufacturer recommends.

Sharpening is actually dead simple too, because the blade's height keeps the handle out of the way of your whetstone.

Ergonomics isn't really this knife's strong point — especially if you don't have long fingers. But the design is still a high point for this knife in terms of usefulness and it's minimalist, traditional design.

I reach for this knife far more than I expected because it just feels so approachable — even though it's big. The only thing that's not fun is that weird, sheet metal-y ring of stamped steel which kinda throws me off.

Definitely the low point of this knife. I think it's helpful to think of it as essentially the West Elm of knives. Kinda pretty in a midcentury modern way, but with a little cheaper materials than you'd hope for.

I do think it's just slightly overpriced for the materials and manufacturing costs, but this knife is greater than the sum of its parts. At least, I think so.

The most uncommon tools this book asks it's readers to use are a blender, mandoline and blowtorch (but that last one was optional)

The most difficult skills asked to perform are julienning and butterflying some shrimp, and maybe charring onions.

The most difficult ingredients to find were Piri Piri seasoning, ‘nduja, scotch bonnet chilies, dried habanero chiles, and pul biber, but Ixta and her team did a great job of offering alternatives for almost all of these - with the exception of ’nduja (which I don’t think there are really good alts for anyway). I suspect most of these are much easier to find in London than they are where we're located, in LA.

I'd first learned about Ixta through Instagram, and between her infectious smile, vibrant dishes, and background working alongside Yotam Ottelenghi - I had to review her solo cookbook when it came out. 

Cracking open the book and reading about Ixta's experience living in Italy and Brazil combined with frequent visits to family in Mexico made me all the more excited to jump in and test drive some of these fusion recipes.

Because the book is divided into two sections - "Everyday" and "Entertaining" — I split my week up to cover at least 5 from each section. I kicked everything off with the "Piri Piri tofu over crispy rice", and with the exception of needing to google around for a Piri Piri seasoning recipe, and breaking my silken tofu, the process was quick and easy. The outcome, however, tasted pretty bitter, and left me thinking of ways to improve it. Mostly in the form of using a firmer tofu, or at least cooking everything longer so the flavors had more of a chance to meld. 

That feeling continued through the rest of the "Everyday" dishes. I wanted to cook most of the ingredients separately, and then combine and let them simmer for much longer than written. 

Her "Entertaining" dishes on the flip side were just as easy to make, but took a little more time. The outcomes in this section were flavorful, bright, and balanced. The hit of this entire week being the "Mole short ribs com agrião" paired with "Creamy yuca gratin with onion and caraway farofa" AND, hear me out... "Sweet and sour celery salad". Sounds wild, but it was the perfect counterbalance to the hearty mole and yuca. 

All-in-all, the recipes in this book are creative, exciting, easy to follow, and more than half of what we tested were a smash. 

If you're interested in making Brazilian-, Italian-, or Mexican-inspired dishes at home and need a place to start, I recommend getting a copy of this book. 

P.s. The best recipes are the uglier looking ones

Bookshop.org

Amazon

We had two main gripes: 1. the text is set in a very small, thin font which can make reading the prose a little difficult, and 2. the recipe layout itself deprioritizes some of the helpful sidenotes — occasionally moving them to the bottom of the second page of a recipe. Those placements are especially disappointing because she hides really good tips in the side-notes and prefaces for her recipes! Photos — as expected if you’re familiar with Ixta’s Instagram — are bright, punchy and very aesthetic.

The book is divided into two big sections: “Everyday Meals” and “Entertaining Meals." I ended up making 6 Everyday dishes and 5 Entertaining dishes.

The Everyday dishes were pretty quick to get to the table as you’d expect (about 45-60 minutes), but the flavors were pretty underwhelming and there was an over-reliance on using only one pan to the detriment of the dish (and, surprisingly, the cleanup). They looked beautiful, but the flavors didn’t live up to the presentation.

While the Entertaining dishes took longer (2-3.5hrs), most of that time was hands-off and the flavors were fantastic. Pretty much every recipe I’d recommend would be from this section of the book.


Regardless of section, we found that the uglier the dish was, the better it tasted — for whatever that’s worth.

Mezcla

We consider a typical cookbook like this to be worth the cover price if you can get 2-3 smashes out of it, and this week gave us 6 smashes out of the 11 recipes we tested. So, for value, we gave it a 9.

The beautiful presentation of the dishes in this book sometimes write checks their flavors can’t cash, but if you’re interested in exploring fusion cuisine in general — and love Brazilian, Italian and/or Mexican flavors — Mezcla is well worth the price of admission.

The recipes in this book are very much giving Alison Roman meets Yotam Ottolenghi vibes. They’re built around trendy ingredients with a few curveballs here and there. The prose is kept short and sweet — mostly focused on connecting dishes to personal experiences. There are some great tips and subs slipped in here and there, but the typeface honestly makes them hard to notice.

In the intro, Ixta calls out that she measures anything over 3Tbsp in grams, and that might be the most frustrating aspect of all because if it was all in grams, the recipes would be so much nicer to work from!

Due to a family emergency, we had to shorten Cookiemas from 12 days down to 9.

We all know the deal — the real reason for holiday parties is cookies. We're setting out to find the best ones in 9 different categories of cookie — from snowballs to gingerbread to some more... abstract options.

We're rating each recipe based on 4 metrics:

 From taste to texture, this category covers the basic experience of eating each recipe.

 Do you need to know lots of techniques or track down hard-to-find ingredients? Does it require extra equipment?

 Is it a showstopper or just another plate on the table?

 Is it worth the time and money spent to make it?

We'll both score every dish from 1-10, then average all of the scores out to calculate our final Cult Score. The highest score in each category is our winner.

Every weekday from Monday, December 12th until Tuesday, December 20th, we'll update this page with our winners to make them easy to track down.

Cookiemas 2022

We definitely had to knock off a point for how difficult ingredients like culantro (not a typo), yuca, yautía, or even plantains and seafood can be to find in some places. 

With that said, recipes that aren't open to improvisation are few and far between and Illyanna nearly always provided an alternate ingredient option and went out of her way to give shopping guides for ingredients. 

While she can't control global food distribution, she invested more effort than we've ever seen in a cookbook to make the recipes accessible to more people.

These are also some of the easiest recipes we've ever made. Even when there's process involved, it's clearly spelled out and nearly every tool needed is common (or she provides a common alternative).

I have almost zero experience with Puerto Rican food. Sure, I've had mofongo and tostones before, but other than that it just hasn't been part of my experience. I came into this book as an outsider looking in.

On the front cover, Illyanna says that this is "A Puerto Rican Cookbook". She's lying. 

It's actually a multi-generational, autobiographical story of "generational poverty and trauma with glimpses of pride and laughter..." that is chock full of the most gorgeous, evocative prose you've ever read.

It's also an incredibly well-researched history lesson that tells the story of Puerto Rico's indigenous people, its colonization by Spain and later the US, the way its food production has developed and even the effects that specific legislation has had on its people and the way they eat.

And yes, of course, it's a cookbook full of Puerto Rican (and not-so-Puerto Rican) recipes.

But by page 9, Illyanna will tell you herself that "this is not a Puerto Rican cookbook." and she's right. It's a love letter from a brilliant food writer to the other 5.5 million Puerto Ricans living stateside — and although maybe not her stated goal, it's a gift to the rest of us as well. 

We open the book as outsiders and close it feeling welcomed and loved; with our bellies full and smiles from ear to ear.

The photography is stunning and really lends an infectious sense of nostalgia to the book. The art design is punchy and engrossing (I want to live in the little dioramas they created for these photos).

The recipe layouts (and even the typography) are so thoughtful — they're concise and efficient without cutting anything too short. Each recipe page has an anecdote or an extra tip in the preface and often Illyanna would give extra pro tips in the footnotes to help you evolve the dish for your tastes.

The structure of the book makes searching for things by what you're in the mood for super easy and the index has reverse-lookup WITH TRANSLATIONS which is incredibly helpful.

For the tiny amount of effort we put in, the outcomes were absolutely incredible. The food was comforting and nostalgic while still being interesting and adventurous. I think Sarah described it best when she said "I feel loved when I eat this food."

Diasporican

Out of 101 recipes, we made 21 and every single one of them was a smash. 

At $33, this is an absolute steal. Go buy it.

After all that effusiveness over the flavor, I'd be remiss if I didn't say the writing was my favorite part of the book. I've read this book front-to-back a couple times now and it makes you chuckle, cry, need a snack, and everything in between.

Zen and The Art of Kitchen Knife Maintenance

Chef's Knife

8” Brad Leone Signature Series Chinese Santoku Cleaver

Mezcla

Cookiemas 2022

Diasporican