Cooking

As soon as the last envelope is opened and the curtain falls on Sunday's Oscars, it's showtime for Wolfgang Puck. The celebrity chef behind the multi-course meal served to 1,600 at the Governors Ball immediately following the awards faces a pantry full of potential problems. Puck and his kitchen staff of 350 not only have to turn out thousands of appetizers, small dinner plates and desserts in a matter of minutes, but also must please picky Hollywood diners - from hard-core vegans (look for the kale salad with grilled artichokes)

When UC Davis scientists collected air pollution particles in Fresno and then exposed laboratory mice to them, they found that one of the most toxic sources was the backyard grill. Along with particles from vehicle and wood-burning emissions, particulates from residential cooking had the greatest measurable impacts on mice lung function.   “That was like, wow!,” said Anthony Wexler, the study's coauthor and director of the Air Quality Research Center at UC Davis. “It's not that you're cooking; it's how you're cooking.

Indulge your inner chef on a sunny beach in Tulum, Mexico , this spring during a farm-to-table culinary seminar.  The Oh! Food Workshop May 24-29 at Casa de las Olas hotel is aimed at foodies, aspiring chefs and environmentalists. Cooking classes will offer a combination of strategies on sustainable cooking and development alternatives.  Participants will join Tulum chefs Eric Werner of  Hartwood Restaurant  and Claudia Perez of  Cetli Restaurant at a three-day Yucatan-inspired cooking seminar that includes five nights' beachfront accommodation at Casa de las Olas.

Every time I saw a preview for the Food Network's "Worst Cooks in America," I changed the channel. I wrote it off as just another reality TV competition loosely based on cooking and didn't think twice about it. But Sunday night, I found myself sitting at home watching TV and stumbled upon the new season. I laughed so hard I started crying and found myself professing out loud, on more than one occasion, "Best show ever, best show ever. " The show's premise involves Bobby Flay and Anne Burrell competing to turn the worst cooks in America into decent cooks.

Perhaps the next time you see your doctor, he might finish the visit with a reminder to take a medication and a conversation about cooking salmon. In a “teach the teachers” experiment, healthcare professionals have been learning to cook as well as learning nutritional science at a conference that has been presented eight times in the last few years by Harvard University and the Culinary Institute of America. The idea behind “Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives - Caring for Our Patients and Ourselves” is that doctors and other healthcare professionals who know how to cook healthfully might be more likely to get patients to do the same.

In most cases, I'm a terribly traditional cook. If there is a longer, slower, more manual way to do something, almost invariably I will prefer it. But even I push tradition aside when I find an alternative that is not only easier but also tastes as good or better. Which brings me to polenta, a dish that is about as traditional as Italian cooking gets (I know one terrific cook in the Piedmont who keeps a wood-burning stove in her very modern kitchen that is used only for its preparation)

Have you ever watched “Downton Abbey” and wondered just what it would have been like to be Mrs. Patmore? I mean, all those gleaming copper pans and all that wonderful game for cooking. Kind of a sweet deal, no? Well, no, at least not in real life. At least, not according to Florence Wadlow, a real-life cook in big houses between the wars who died recently and was memorialized in a wonderful obituary in the Telegraph newspaper. Work was hard and the life was even harder.

Post & Beam: The debonair Ethiopian-Swedish New York chef Marcus Samuelsson, proprietor of the Lenox Avenue restaurant Red Rooster in Harlem, will alight on Govind Armstrong's Post & Beam in Baldwin Hills for one night only. On Feb. 26. "Red Rooster at Post & Beam: A Taste of Harlem in Baldwin Hills" celebrates Black History Month with dishes such as injera bread and tartare, braised oxtail with fried plantains and crawfish beignets with honey-beet tartar sauce. Tickets are $140.

Looking for a wonderfully romantic dinner idea without any dramatic fuss? You might just try cooking en papillote . A traditional French technique, cooking en papillote refers to food that is cooked or baked while tightly sealed in greased parchment paper. The food typically cooks up in minutes, the sealed parchment literally puffing up as the food gently steams inside. Serve the parchment packet tableside, breaking it open in front of the eager diner. It's wonderfully entertaining.

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook criticized a rebellious investor for creating a "silly sideshow" by filing a lawsuit a few weeks before the company's annual shareholder conference. "Frankly, I find it bizarre that we find ourselves being sued for doing something that's good for shareholders," Cook said. "It's a silly sideshow, honestly. My preference would be that everyone take the money they are spending on this and donate it to a worthy cause. " Cook made his remarks during an interview at a Goldman Sachs technology conference Tuesday.