It's spring in New York, and we're all about asparagus. Fat, thick and sweet or slender and tender, there's no better time of year to get it than right now. In this simple, one-skillet warm salad, pancetta is cooked until crisp, then the asparagus is sautéed in the rendered fat along with leeks (luckily, spring is when leeks are at their sweetest and tenderest as well), citrus zest, toasted pine nuts, and parsley. It's a dish that comes together in just a few minutes, yet is packed with flavor—one of the greatest things about the season. More

Beets get their fair share of criticism from children and adults alike, and it's easy to see why if you, like me, were exposed to the canned variety as a kid. Those things are not easy to like. A freshly roasted beet, on the other hand, is something quite different. Sweet as candy, rich and earthy, with a great sorta-soft-sorta-crisp texture, they're one of my favorite vegetables to work with. I make some variation of this salad a few times a year and it's one of my wife's favorites. Just like her, it's pretty, colorful, and best served at room temperature. More

Think of a recipe that includes pine nuts as a key ingredient. Pesto probably comes to mind first but after that, it's hard to come up with another. As far as culinary nuts go, the pine nut, or pignoli, is somewhat underappreciated. But there's a lot to love about it. The pignoli has a mild, nutty flavor and a high oil content which gives it a smooth, silky texture. For some reason, though, the pine nut seems to get less play in baked goods than say, the walnut or pecan. There is one major exception: Italian pine nut cookies. More

[Flickr: gadl] An email we received in the Serious Eats inbox today: Have you ever written about "Pine Mouth"...it happened to me and now I never want to eat anything that has pine nuts in it again! - Chris As no one in the Serious Eats office had heard of pine mouth before, I searched on Google and found out that the term describes the bitter/metallic taste in one's mouth after eating pine nuts that makes it unpleasant to eat or drink anything else. This Daily Mail article from last May has more to say about it, along with this earlier blog post from October 2008 and other afflicted bloggers. While multiple studies have been done to learn more... More

From April 13 to 19, I traveled around Chile with two other American food journalists on a culinary media trip. Here's another snapshot from that week. —Robyn Lee One of my new favorite ingredients that I had never come across before visiting Chile is the piñone, or pine nut. But it's not the same kind of pine nut you find in North America; these pine nuts come from the native Chilean Araucaria araucana, or monkey puzzle tree. As you can see in the photo above, taken at a small Mapuche restaurant run by Anita Epulef in the southern town of Curarrehue, these pine nuts are huge, resembling large, pointy elongated beans more than the little Tic-Tac-sized seed I'm used to.... More