SLNYT: John Besh’s Apron Supports a Cause & other tidbits

John Besh’s Apron Supports a Cause


 John Besh, the New Orleans chef, has created a sturdy and practical apron in collaboration with Billy Reid, a Southern clothing designer. It’s made of lightweight denim and has two front pockets, copper rivets and a slim leather tie; it’s roomy enough to provide good coverage. On the inside, a cotton placket is printed with a recipe for the Sazerac cocktail: John Besh apron, $95, from billyreid.com, with 22 percent of the price donated to the John Besh Foundation, which supports New Orleans food producers and culinary education. To Bake: A New Squash of Good Lineage Chubby little bell-shaped winter squashes, called Honey Nut, are a new cross between kabocha and butternut. The seed cavity is small and easily scooped out, and the bright orange flesh is quite dense. Though the squash is easily sliced and bakes in about 40 minutes at 350 degrees, the rust-colored skin remains pretty chewy. I’d recommend roasting halves or quarters with seasonings or a stuffing, as you would acorn squash: Organic Honey Nut squash, $1.89 a pound at Union Market stores and $1.99 at Eli’s Manhattan. To Appreciate: African-Americans and Food in Florida Photo Zora Neale Hurston Credit Library of Congress Zora Neale Hurston, the influential African-American writer of the mid-20th century, is best known for her fiction. But she also wrote about African-American food in Florida, where she lived, and that is what Frederick Douglass Opie will discuss at a lecture hosted by Culinary Historians of New York. Dr. Opie is a professor of history and foodways at Babson College in Massachusetts; his book “Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food” was published earlier this year: Oct. 28, reception with food at 6:30 p.m.; lecture at 7 p.m., Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, 85 South Oxford Street (Lafayette Avenue), Fort Greene, Brooklyn, $25 for members of Culinary Historians, $40 for nonmembers, $22 for members who are seniors, $10 for students, culinaryhistoriansny.org. To Sample: Sushi in Guises Both Classic and New Photo Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times A bright minimalist storefront is a new stop for sushi made to order or packaged and ready to take out or eat at a small counter. The owners, Alex and Roman Volland, hired Roy Handoko, who worked at Momoya in Chelsea, to create classic sushi (nigiri) and sashimi, along with inventive items like the dynamite roll with spicy tuna, crab meat, avocado and chile, and even some vegan rolls. Noodle dishes and salads are also available: Sushi Star, 462 Ninth Avenue (West 36th Street), 212-279-1010, sushistar.com. To Consult: A Drinks Manual From Two Masters Photo Credit Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times Long before they had a place to hang a sign, Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry, barmen from Belfast, Northern Ireland, had the name for their bar in Lower Manhattan: the Dead Rabbit. And in their new book, the story of these two men, who have become admired cocktail-makers, makes a good read. So do the recipes and their lively explanations. Classics like martinis and margaritas, which Mr. Muldoon and Mr. McGarry say can be found anywhere, are absent. Instead, you will learn the history of fixes, fizzes, cups, slings and possets, and how each category is defined by an essential ingredient. Many of the drinks call for concocting arcane tinctures and syrups, but with holiday entertaining on the horizon, the collection of punches may come in handy: “The Dead Rabbit Drinks Manual: Secret Recipes and Barroom Tales from Two Belfast Boys Who Conquered the Cocktail World,” by Sean Muldoon, Jack McGarry and Ben Schaffer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27).

A version of this article appears in print on October 14, 2015, on page D3 of the New York edition.