S. Irene Virbila

You can use your iPhone or iPad to watch movies, listen to music, text and surf the Internet. But special, surprisingly inexpensive apps make them nifty environments for learning or upgrading cooking skills. I've bought or borrowed quite a few...

It’s an axiom of food writing that the only restaurant critics chefs like are the ones who've just retired. Apparently, that’s not quite true. In fact, The Times has two exceptions on its staff. Jonathan Gold and S. Irene Virbila are both in...

Once I lived in a place where winter temperatures regularly dipped below freezing, and my best friend was my goose down comforter. My downstairs neighbor was a Renaissance English scholar, and every year he did the whole Dickens Christmas feast complete...

This week's recipes from the Los Angeles Times Test Kitchen, including strawberry shortcake, panna cotta, and fried pig ears with kale....

Basically nothing more than rice cooked in a lot of water until it has a softened, almost porridge-like consistency, congee is simple meal to fix and an excellent way to use up other leftovers in the kitchen....

I’ve always loved pissaladière, the Provençal onion tart topped with slow-cooked onions, anchovies and olives, so I decided to make one to go with drinks for a dinner party last weekend....

When I first got my iPhone, I was thrilled to discover Convertbot, which made it fun and easy to convert ingredient quantities or temperatures from my British cookbooks. That app, it turned out, was just a taste of the onslaught of food and wine apps to...