Homemade gnocchi is the epitome of comfort food. Warm, fluffy, airy clouds of potatoes tossed in butter and Parmesan? Um, yes, please.

As we spend more time at home cooking meals, I encourage everyone to add more plant-based recipes to their menu by substituting meat and dairy.

Epicurious' 4 Levels series features an amateur and home cook preparing a crowd favorite dish alongside a professional chef from the Institute of Culinary Education. In the latest episode, Chef Penny Stankiewicz elevates a three-tiered chocolate cake with a complex Swiss meringue buttercream and professional cake decorating.

We're inspired every day by all the ICE alumni who are positively impacting the restaurant industry and our communities amid the coronavirus crisis. Paras Shah (Culinary, ‘07) and his business partner Jeffrey Weiss have reshaped the menu at Valencian Gold, their fast-casual paella operation in Las Vegas, to donate food to essential workers.

Proteins are crucial to the body’s development, stabilization and recovery. Ensuring your diet is high in protein is important for the mechanics of the body and finding a suitable source of protein is critical, especially with plant-based diets.

If you’re into pasta, it’s likely you’ve seen Meryl Feinstein’s (Culinary, '18) Instagram account, Pasta Social Club. Beyond a gorgeous array of cavatelli with meatless ragu, crispy-bottomed roasted garlic mashed potato cappelletti and pink peppercorn-speckled golden beet casunziei, the photos are a landing page to promote Feinstein’s in-person events, where she teaches classes on making regional pasta styles, shapes and sauces, and gathers people to eat pasta.

Within the culinary community, questions are always raised regarding the “next big thing,” the upcoming trend which will inescapably filter down through the industry and bubble up among restaurants. I hesitate to provide a one-word answer. The one I want to use is “fermentation.” It is not that the answer is inadequate, rather that fermentation deserves a bigger stage when evaluating its impact on the culinary world and in society at large. It is a piece of a larger puzzle when discussing our habits in food production, agriculture, waste, sustainability, health and flavor.

Each week we're sheltering in place, students are participating in a voluntary virtual market basket competition on Instagram. This week's challenge had a must-use ingredient — hot sauce — and Nandini shares how she was inspired to prepare the winning dish using hot sauce four ways.

As someone who highlighted the unsung food heroes of New York on his blog Midtown Lunch, Zach Brooks sought out a similar community upon relocating to Los Angeles more than a decade ago. When Brooklyn’s food vendor collective, Smorgasburg, set out to open a market in downtown L.A., Zach was the person tapped to curate the vendors. Now in its fourth year, the West Coast Smorgasburg that Zach cultivated is thriving, with more than 10,000 weekly visitors to the open-air food market at Row DTLA on Sundays.

There’s no shortage of industries impacted by the coronavirus crisis, and hotels are walking a fine line of trying to save business while helping. Here’s how some hospitality brands are adapting as the pandemic evolves, finding ways to make use of hundreds of thousands of rooms and staff.