LUSCIOUS / TENDER / JUICY

Moist. It's one of the most cringeworthy words of the 21st century. Say it in front of preteens and they giggle hysterically. Utter it at a party and friends groan. In the past, though, it simply was the term used to describe something containing moisture, as in, “Boy, that cake/fried chicken/meatloaf sure is moist!” Even today, while most won't own up to it, we still want the majority of our foods to be moist.
Lusciou/Tender/Juicy explores both familiar and exotic dishes that entice us with their luscious texture. These foods are, in a word, moist. The 70-recipe cookbook begins with an introductory chapter discussing the current perception and past use of this term. It also explains what moisture contributes to cooking and how it gets added to a dish. A list of inherently moist ingredients appears in this section. Also included are easy tricks for keeping food that lovely, plush consistency.

Kathy Hunt is a journalist, food writer, and cooking instructor based in New York. She is the author of Fish Market: A Cookbook for Selecting and Preparing Seafood (Running Press, 2013) and Herring: A Global History (Reaktion Press, 2017). She writes regularly about food and travel for newspapers and websites, and blogs about her food and travel adventures at KitchenKat.com.