Ligaya Mishan

New York

Writer at The New York Times

rhymes with papaya丨writer, @nytimes + @tmagazine丨rep @aragiauthors

Articles

This Quick Vegetarian Rag├╣ Is a Shortcut to Glory

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

Image Credit... Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Heather Greene. Only around 100 people live in Acone, a village high on a mountain in Tuscany first settled in the sixth century and mentioned in passing in Dante's "Divine Comedy," as the poet wanders through heaven. Ixta Belfrage thinks of that mountain as home, though she spent just a few years there as a child.
Brunch Is Best With Some Surprises. Try This Edamame and Yuzu Dip.

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

Image Credit... Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Prop Stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas When Ravinder Bhogal was growing up in Kenya, as "Daughter No. 4" (as she wryly puts it) in a family with Punjabi roots, the avocados in her backyard were the size of coconuts. She'd crush sugar right into the flesh and spoon it out. No such luck in England, where she moved with her family at age 7 on a day of icy rain, to a dark, damp flat without central heating.
This Four-Ingredient Recipe, Passed Down for Generations, Will Change the Game

Dec 31, 2024 | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

If I were to make a list, in the manner of the medieval Japanese writer Sei Shonagon, of "Things That Make One's Heart Beat Faster" - like a hint of cloud inside a mirror or raindrops chiming against the shutters - cabbage would not be top of mind. Yet here it is, this hardy vegetable that I have largely ignored my whole life, gently torn and given a simple anointing of sesame oil, garlic, black pepper and a fingerprint's worth of salt.
French Toast Gets a Polynesian Pick Me Up

Nov 26, 2024 | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

Ipo, Tahitian coconut bread, takes the place of toasty French bread, merging long histories. Image Credit... Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas. In Fiji, when breadfruit trees bear more fruit than usual, it is at once a gift and a warning sign: Hurricane season will be dire. As a child, Robert Oliver watched people bury the fruit in pits lined with banana leaves.
How to get ahead for Thanksgiving with Dan Souza

Nov 18, 2024 | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Angela Dimayuga |Ligaya Mishan |Maggie Hoffman

“Thanksgiving day, you shouldn’t be doing a lot of cooking,” says this week’s podcast guest, Dan Souza. Instead, he says, “clear off your Tuesday and your Wednesday and get to work.”Dan’s worked at America’s Test Kitchen for 16 years—including as the editor in chief of Cook’s Illustrated. He currently holds the title of chief content officer, working across ATK’s books, magazines, TV, and podcasts, and he also appears on the Youtube series What’s Eating Dan?
A Rich, Gingery Tea Cake With Restorative Powers

Aug 27, 2024 | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

Image Credit... Chris Simpson for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas. It is a quirk of the English language that to do something gingerly is to be dainty, delicate, circumspect, when ginger itself is none of these things. (In fact, the two words have no etymological kinship.) Ginger is a smack: Wake up. It has the capacity to burn, not frankly like chile but low and steady, evoking not a wanton blaze but a scouring, as focused as a laser.
Move Over Hot Chicken, There's a Hotter Chicken in Town

Jul 30, 2024 | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

To be fair, Panda Express never pretended that Sichuan hot chicken was a Sichuan dish. In posts online, the company described it as "an authentic Chinese twist on an American comfort classic" - a homage to Nashville hot chicken, whose origins go back to the city's segregated Black neighborhoods of the 1930s.
The Secret Behind a Beloved Palestinian Dessert

Jul 2, 2024 | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

Mastic sap, also known as tears, enhance this light, creamy dessert. Image Credit... Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas. Take a handful of tears. This is not an attempt at poetry: They are, in fact, called tears, these tiny, translucent fragments of resin, glittering like sugar and giving off the scent of high, sweet pine. The fragrance is the flavor.
How a 'Strange,' 'Evil' Fruit Came to Define Italy's Cuisine

May 13, 2024 | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan |Anthony Cotsifas

T's May 19 Travel issue is dedicated to pasta in Italy, diving deep into the culinary traditions, regional variations and complicated history of the country's national symbol. ON THE COUNTER sits a bucket of tomatoes just picked from a tumble of fields halfway up a mountain in southern Italy. Concetta D'Aniello hands me an apron and we begin. I follow her lead, breaking into each tomato with my thumb, the flesh giving way. The smell of minerals fills the kitchen.
Make a Great Taco Even Better With Jackfruit

Apr 30, 2024 | nytimes.com | Ligaya Mishan

Often amenable in flavor with a texture like pork, the fruit has become a recent favorite among vegetarians. Credit... Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Sue Li. Prop stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas. In the middle of the 14th century, on a journey through India, the Florence-born friar Giovanni de' Marignolli came across a fruit he'd never seen. It was "as big as a great lamb, or a child of 3 years old," he wrote.