Cooking

Every year around this time millions of eggs are hard-boiled, artistically decorated and then thrown into the garbage. Frankly, that's probably just as well. Because most hard-boiled eggs are pretty terrible. The whites are rubbery, the yolks are pale and mealy and, even worse, surrounded by that sulfur-green ring of shame. Cooking hard-boiled eggs is easy; cooking them right is not. Unless you know what you're doing. Then it's as close to a foolproof no-brainer as you can get in the kitchen.

The butcher is back. After decades of laboring in obscurity, seeing their craft slip away to the point it was practically extinct, butchers — real meat cutters, not guys who repackage steaks from Cryovac bags — are regaining their respected place in the food chain. You can see it in the crowds at Lindy & Grundy on Fairfax Avenue and at McCall's Meat & Fish Co. in Los Feliz, where customers line up outside when word comes in that a whole pig has been delivered. Southern California meat market standbys, including the Huntington Meats and Marconda's Meats in the original Farmers Market, high-end supermarket chains Bristol Farms, Gelson's and Whole Foods, are seeing business pick up. There's even a MEAT club at UCLA — the Meat Education and Appreciation Team — that sponsors meat cooking events, including trips to butcher shops for private lessons.

Some good buys for your health and your pocketbook: Buy fresh fruits and vegetables in season. Buy frozen otherwise. Frozen is cheaper and may even be better for you than fresh. That's because produce is usually frozen at its ripest, which is usually when it maxes out in nutrient content too. Some nutrients do break down or leach out in the freezing process, but most make it through.

The Cookbook Library Four Centuries of the Cooks, Writers, and Recipes that Made the Modern Cookbook Anne Willan with Mark Cherniavsky and Kyri Claflin University of California Press: 333 pp., $50 What is a cookbook? More than simply a collection of recipes, a cookbook can be a window to the larger world beyond the confines of the kitchen, as La Varenne Cooking School founder and award-winning cookbook author Anne Willan and her co-authors illustrate in the excellent new book "The Cookbook Library.

EVERY fall, when braising season begins in earnest, we pull out our favorite heavyweight: a 5.5-quart round Le Creuset enameled cast-iron pot. It's perfect for slow-cooking meat until it's meltingly tender, turning the braising liquid into a deeply flavorful sauce. We love everything about this pot -- from its heavy-duty cast iron construction to its pale enamel interior, which makes it easy to judge browning (it's also easy to clean).

Who knew chefs see macarons in Christian Louboutin colors? Who knew restaurant plates and saucers are sold like hot dogs and buns, in mismatching quantities? And who would ever expect chefs to be as proficient with a keyboard as they are with a knife? The answer: Anyone who has noticed chefs are suddenly taking to blogging as if it were the foam of 2008. In the last few months some of the bigger names in food across the country have joined the online chattering class, posting their innermost thoughts, with photos and recipes, just as home cooks have been doing for years.

The grill is sizzling by the time Clarita Trujillo of Tacos Clarita steps onto the sidewalk. She's got her apron on, her lips painted red, and she's ready to cook. " Orale, muchachos !" she tells a few boys who roll past on skateboards. "Behave yourself. Or what's your mom going to say? "Come here and taste my enchiladas. They're good for you. " Trujillo will talk to anyone along Huntington Drive in El Sereno — to Doña Ana, Doña Juanita and Doña Lupita, to the bakers, the shop owners and the street sweepers.

Across the town of San Fernando, in kitchens where pigs' feet hang from clothespins and caldrons bubble with murky soup, families are gearing up for a historic event that may put this city on the culinary map: a menudo cook-off. The soup made from cow's stomach, pigs' feet and hominy is quintessentially Mexican, and this Sunday San Fernando will sponsor its first menudo festival to celebrate its Mexican American heritage.

STRIPED, polished, painted in custom shades. Airbrushed to look wrapped in Old Glory, or covered with swirling, multicolored flames. Done up in camouflage splotches or WWII fighter plane patterns. Street legal? No, these beauties are countertop kitchen mixers. Not racy Italian espresso machines or imposing German slicer-shredder-blenders, but KitchenAid mixers, the workhorses -- the John Deere tractors -- of American kitchens for more than 80 years.

There is a certain poetry about the knives crafted by Tokifusa Iizuka, one of the most revered smiths in a land that holds hocho--kitchen knives--sacred. His knives are simple and rustic yet, at the same time, elegant. Light dances upon smooth blades and the delicate, wavelike pattern of steel folded many times within. Wedges of black buffalo horn connect the rounded, unvarnished wood handles to the polished blade in a sensuous mix of textures.

There's going to be a whole lot of cooking going on at the 17th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the USC campus Saturday and Sunday. In fact, there's an entire stage devoted to it. Saturday will kick off with Ink's Michael Voltaggio at 10:30 a.m., followed by "Top Chef's" Gail Simmons at 12:30 p.m. Voltaggio will return to the stage at 2 p.m., along with Mozza's Nancy Silverton, to discuss the Southern California food scene with Los Angeles Times Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock.

CAIRO — They trundle like a lost parade, rolling metal cylinders through the dust beneath the broken cliffs rising above the City of the Dead. Mothers in sandaled feet hurry girls along to buy cheap propane cooking gas. Boys haul cylinders on slanted motorcycles, others balance them on their heads or fasten them to donkeys. The cylinders multiply, bobbing in the fortuneless air, which fills with ping and clatter and the angry whispers of waiting. "I have five sons. My husband is dead.

The reason this hard-boiling technique works so well is really pretty simple, but it helps to know a little bit about how eggs work. Eggs consist largely of protein — mixed with mostly water in the white, or albumen, and mixed with fat and water in the yolk. When the eggs are raw, the proteins are like strands of yarn curled up in little balls. As the eggs are heated, these strands relax and unfold. As they unfold, they bump into each other and link up. (Fun fact: This is why egg "whites," which are clear when raw, are white when cooked — the unfurled, linked-up proteins block light from passing through.)

Every year around this time millions of eggs are hard-boiled, artistically decorated and then thrown into the garbage. Frankly, that's probably just as well. Because most hard-boiled eggs are pretty terrible. The whites are rubbery, the yolks are pale and mealy and, even worse, surrounded by that sulfur-green ring of shame. Cooking hard-boiled eggs is easy; cooking them right is not. Unless you know what you're doing. Then it's as close to a foolproof no-brainer as you can get in the kitchen.

"No Kitchen Required" is a new show from BBC America in which three chefs from three corners of the English-speaking world travel to remote locations to have their way with the native cuisine, and vice versa. If the words"Top Chef" and"Survivor" were not uttered in the same sentence at some time while this series was being pitched, I will eat my own cooking. All the chefs have appeared on reality TV, but in the 21st century that is just what chefs do. Michelin-starred Michael Psilakis has been on "Iron Chef"; probably not coincidentally, he is an executive producer of this show.

Flame-bearing Prometheus may have visited humans earlier than we thought. An analysis of charred bones and plant ash in sediment from a South African cave suggests that Homo erectus was wielding fire a million years ago — and perhaps even cooking with it, according to a study released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings present the earliest clear evidence of such use of fire, experts said. The ability to control fire marks an evolutionary turning point: It would have kept our ancient relatives warm in unforgiving climes and allowed them to cook their food, releasing trapped nutrients and getting more caloric bang per bite.

VALUE IS a relative concept. Just ask the folks at Lehman Brothers. But when it comes to ingredients and kitchen tools that beckon to the enthusiastic home cook, it's important to the bottom line -- in this case, a great meal -- to take a look at what's really worth your hard-earned cash -- and what isn't. We scrutinized our kitchens and the merchandise. Our thumbs-up, thumbs-down verdicts on a couple of dozen popular or hyped cooking items follow. No apologies -- we're opinionated.

I didn't wake up one morning wanting to be a scale evangelist, honest. The urge grew gradually. But now, as America's kitchens fill with useless gadgets -- mango slicers, slider molds, cherry pitters, egg separators (what happened to hands?!) -- but still no scale in sight, I'm compelled to put on my Ernest Angley wig and spread the word. It began when I set out to write a book about ratios -- that is, learning to cook using proportions of ingredients rather than set amounts.

When Tim Cook took over the helm at Apple Inc. in August, many wondered how he would set himself apart from his predecessor, the formidable Steve Jobs. But a new study that ranks Cook as the country's top-rated chief executive suggests that he's doing just fine. Cook landed a 97% approval rating from employees, according to careers website Glassdoor -- the same rating Jobs had when he stepped down from the CEO post. In his short tenure, Cook has unveiled the new iPad and the iPhone 4S and has instituted a new quarterly dividend for shareholders.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, who has been in China this week, continued his trip with a stop at a Foxconn Technology manufacturing plant, a key supplier that has been under scrutiny for work conditions. Cook's visited Foxconn's plant in the city of Zhengzhou, which employs 120,000 people and produces iPhones, on Wednesday, according to various news reports. Foxconn is one of Apple's key suppliers. The Taiwanese company is key to the production of two of Apple's flagship products, the iPhone and iPad, and may soon get in on the production of the future Apple iTV, according to Forbes . Cook's trip to China is his first as chief executive of Apple and his first since he traveled to the country to investigate the labor conditions at Foxconn plants after a series of employee suicides back in 2010, according to PCWorld . The stop in Zhengzhou comes after Cook met with several top Chinese leaders, including Vice Premier Li Keqiang -- who is expected to be the next prime minister -- and Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong.