The act of cooking is, at its heart, a solitary one. Of course, a restaurant kitchen requires coordinated effort and teamwork — many hands executing and assembling tiny parts of a greater whole. Each brief task in isolation, however, is a personal communion of skill and ingredient. Each step of mis en place presents an opportunity to contemplate, and a challenge to refine and better understand what we do.

The largest appetite for food in America is found at our landfill sites. That is where much of the estimated 70 billion pounds of food waste in our nation goes each year. Internationally, it’s estimated that one-third of food produced worldwide, worth around US $1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.

I have a vivid memory of a bun-related conversation with my grandmother. As she walked me home from day camp, I remarked that I wanted a bun in my hair. (I never had long hair; my mother thought a pixie haircut was “just so cute!” Naturally, long hair was all I ever longed for. That and braces.) My grandmother’s retort: “You want a bun from the bakery in your hair?” Perhaps that’s when my fascination for buns, rolls and all other warm, yeasty and sometimes sweet delights began.

Chef Cara Tannenbaum’s first childhood memory of eating real chopped liver (on fresh rye bread, of course) goes back to the day her family moved to their new home on Long Island. As the years passed, healthy eating became a way of life in the Tannenbaum household and they replaced the traditional schmaltz-filled chopped liver with a vegetarian version loaded with caramelized onions, mushrooms, peas and walnuts — to add plenty of savory yumminess.

Gaby Melian (Culinary Management 05’, Culinary Arts 05’, Pastry Arts 06’) is hard to pin down with words because she’s so many things: chef, teacher, official Food Revolution ambassador and, most recently, test kitchen assistant at Bon Appétit — the holy grail for test kitchen chefs.

The food industry agrees: ICE graduates enter the workplace with an edge. But what exactly is ICE’s recipe for success? We chatted with some of NYC’s top chefs and restaurateurs to find out. Scroll down to watch Marcus Samuelsson, Alex Guarnaschelli, Daniel Boulud, Danny Meyer and more praise ICE in the video below (plus: get a peek inside ICE’s facilities).

It’s not easy to remove the intimidation factor from wine. Save for sommeliers and connoisseurs, most people get a little squirmy when it comes to talking about wine — a fact that makes wine buying a challenge. Dustin Wilson, master sommelier and co-founder of Verve Wine, wants to make wine more accessible to everyone.

I’ve been thinking about getting Julia Child’s face tattooed on my forearm for about two years now. Julia is one of my greatest inspirations. Like me, she was a late bloomer, marrying at 34 and starting her culinary career soon after. Her pure joy and passion for food was evident in everything that she did. She was an authentic voice in a world crowded with phonies, and that’s probably why she became so popular. She got the timing right.