Food & Cooking

After wrapping up his book about the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, author Michael Pollan turned his attention to a drug that's hidden "in plain sight" in many people's lives: caffeine.

This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. In 2016, Dave Davies spoke with Bourdain, the chef-turned-travel-show-host who died in 2018.

Bastianich grew up eating farm-to-table meals with her Italian family. After they fled Europe as refugees, she drew on those meals in opening her first restaurant. Originally broadcast May 7, 2018.

Nosrat says there are four elements in cooking, and if you understand how they work, you can make delicious food. She travels the world to learn more about those elements in her new four-part show.

James Beard Award winning chef and humanitarian Jose Andres talks about his relief work in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, serving as many as 100,000 meals a day, and he'll talk about some of his cooking innovations.

Bourdain, who died at 61, traveled the world, sampling local cuisine and meeting people along the way. He told Fresh Air in 2016: "I'm happiest experiencing food in the most purely emotional way."

In her new memoir chef Lidia Bastianich recalls growing up on a family farm, escaping the communists, becoming a refugee and immigrating to the U.S., starting her own restaurant in Queens, and getting her own cooking show.

Chef and sustainable seafood advocate Barton Seaver works to get people excited about fish. He says there are lots of species that are not endangered that we should be eating, like Hake.

The chicken for sale at your local grocery store isn't like the chicken your grandparents used to eat. They're bigger and more "breasty," says public health journalist Maryn McKenna — and that's by design.