Downton Abbey fans need no introduction to Mrs. Patmore, the puffing, no-nonsense cook with a heart of gold. LA Weekly recently sat down with Lesley Nicol, the British actress who plays Mrs. Patmore, to get a little behind-the-scenes look at her cooking life, in real life and on the show:Many of the scenes with Mrs. Patmore take place in the kitchen, unsurprisingly, as she and her team of kitchenmaids cook, fume, and fret their way through elaborate courses for Lord Grantham and his family.

Chicken soup may be good for the soul, but it’s also good for the sick body. Not surprisingly, soup is a favorite sickness remedy among chefs. Chef Michael Solomonov (of Zahav and Federal Donuts in Philadelphia) relies on his homemade matzo-ball soup when he’s sick. As he tells Bon Appetit, “The chicken fat-schmaltz-in matzo-ball soup is supposedly great from your bronchial passages.

Did you know that there are more than 350 shapes of Italian pasta? We kid you not. You’re likely to only find only a fraction of that number at your supermarket or specialty grocery store, but even that can be overwhelming. How does cavatelli differ from cappellini? Which sauce goes best with which pasta? Thankfully, CHOW has a visual guide to pasta to help you sort it all out.

Who: Antonio Ramos and Caroline MakWhat: Founders and head juice makers of Brooklyn Soda WorksWhere: Brooklyn, New York It all started on a whim.

Who: Charlie and Helen Robb of Robb Farm Sugar House What: Makers of pure Vermont maple syrup Where: Brattleboro, Vermont Early April is mud season in Vermont, as I discovered when I drove up there last week. Powering through the wet, muddy roads (yay for all-wheel drive!) and seriously questioning Apple’s GPS navigation, I’d almost given up when I saw the plume of smoke rising from a wooded house in the distance. Wood burning fire?

Yesterday I showed you how maple syrup is made on the Robb family farm in Brattleboro, Vermont. While I was touring the farm, I learned a few surprising things about maple syrup. Did you know, for example, that you don’t have to throw away maple syrup if it gets a little mold on it? Here’s what you should do instead, and other surprising facts about this sweet syrup. If you’re wondering why pure maple syrup is pricey, here’s your answer.

Who: Mary Ting Hyatt What: Bagelsaurus, a twice-a-week micro bagel-bakery currently selling out of sandwich shop Cutty’s in Brookline Where: Boston, Massachusetts Ask Mary Ting Hyatt what makes a good bagel, and she’ll give you a very specific answer: “A shiny, crisp, crackly crust that has great chew, but not necessarily dense.

Who cooks and eats here: Ed Cotton, Executive Chef at Sotto 13 in New York, Top Chef Season 7 runner-up, and former sous chef for Cat Cora on Iron Chef America Where: Long Island City, Queens, New York Read the series: Part One, Part Two While visiting Ed Cotton at his home kitchen in Queens a few weeks ago, we couldn’t help but notice his range. It’s a gas stove, but the oven controls are in the front, next to the burner knobs, instead of at the back, which is more standard.

If you don’t already know about Zalatimo, you probably won’t be able to find it—or so my local tour guide tells me as we walk into this tiny hole-in-a-wall pastry shop. (Literally – the shop is nestled within the ancient Roman walls surrounding the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City.) There are no menus, because Zalatimo only serves one dish: a savory/sweet pastry called mutabak, which is handmade-to-order from a 150-year-old family recipe.

Do you have a friend or loved one on active duty overseas? If you’d like to send them a holiday food package this season, go right ahead! But here are a few rules to keep in mind when shipping edible goodies to troops overseas: DON’T • Don’t send homemade goods to soldiers you don’t personally know. If you plan to send homemade cookies or treats, you MUST have the name and address of an individual soldier.

If you’ve been in a cocktail rut, we’re about to bust you out of it. In what just happened to be perfectly timed with The Kitchn’s Cocktail Week, yesterday New York Magazine unveiled 50 cocktail recipes, one from every state (plus D.

Ok, I’m going to be frank: there is really nothing quite so uncomfortable and embarrassing — for you and the people around you — as having digestion issues when you’re on a plane. You can pop a Gas-X, but I hate those chalky, chewable tablets. This is why I was really intrigued to hear of another remedy: bitters!Apparently some people take a small bottle of bitters with them when they fly to relieve any gas or bloating issues they may have.

The key to a good flight, in my experience, is to have snacks on hand so you’re always prepared to feed yourself. (Plane travel isn’t my favorite thing in the world, but I like it even less when I’m hungry and cranky!) I asked my fellow Kitchn editors to share what snacks they like to bring on a plane, and here’s what they said. “I like clementines, peeled and packed in a light plastic container,” says Faith.

The Site Corot factory in Limoges, France was once famous for its eclectic, avant-garde porcelain dinnerware, but it hasn’t produced anything in over a decade. Now it’s back, under new creative direction, and issuing both new and classic designs, like the Florida pattern seen above.The Florida porcelain dinnerware collection, from 1986, is colorful and graphic, with patterns that are meant to be mixed and matched.

A good knife is any cook’s most important tool. We’ve shared our favorites, but it’s always cool to see what the pros use. Six rockstar chefs recently shared their top knife picks with Details magazine, and interestingly enough, they all had one thing in common: They’re all Japanese knives!

As Pollan tells Bittman, “Cooking is probably the most important thing you can do to improve your diet. What matters most is not any particular nutrient, or even any particular food: it’s the act of cooking itself.”When you cook, Pollan says, you choose the ingredients, so the quality of the food will automatically be better. So why don’t more people cook?

This week we peeked into the Boston kitchen of Eva Katz — writer, food editor, and recipe developer extraordinaire. Eva had a wealth of kitchen advice to share with us this week, including her kitchen essentials and her favorite measuring spoons, not to mention her most important kitchen habit and opinion on slow cookers. So there’s only one question left to ask: Eva, what’s cooking this weekend? I have a couple things in mind.

I honestly don’t think it’s possible to look at photos of Julia Child cracking up in the kitchen and not feel better about life. Her enthusiasm was — is! — infectious, and these photos prove it. Whether wielding a large knife over a row of chickens, or gleefully cutting into a fish the size of her torso, you know in those moments there was nowhere else she’d rather be. Cooking is supposed to be fun, people! And Julia would never want us to forget it.