The free cooking sessions take place every Friday with a rotating cast of local chefs.

Local chefs who stopped or scaled down business are taking to Instagram to walk home chefs through recipes.

An overlooked way to take advantage of D.C.’s culinary talent is to have local chefs teach you how to become a great cook too.

The Carlos Rosario Charter School teaches 2,500 students a year how to operate in a professional kitchen.

The life of a food truck operator isn’t an easy one. There’s only a limited amount of space to operate in — and the name of the game is producing food in bulk and with expedience. Unfortunately, that combination can lead to injuries like the ones suffered by Pedro and Vinny’s cart owner John Rider.

Strawberries are the harbinger that soon we’ll have a bounty of wonderful summer fruits like cherries, peaches, and plums. We checked in with local chefs on how to take advantage of this sweet little gem.

Back in December, I was obsessed with SweetGreen’s salad of the month. It was a mix of mesclun, butternut squash, cauliflower, sunflower seeds, roasted turkey and a cranberry vinaigrette. But what really kept me coming back was that it was topped with crispy spicy kale. Even though the kale was the last and least abundant ingredient in the salad, it’s delicately crunchy texture and salty, spicy flavor was my favorite part. While kale can be a complement to a salad, it can just as easily be the featured part of a dish, or a main side. With this in mind, we reached out to those in the D.C. restaurant scene to explore the many ways you can cook up this seasonal green.

Many of the best parts of the holidays revolve around food: baking crinkle tops to give away as gifts, joining family around the table to share a big meal or waking up to full stockings and stacks of pancakes.

When we wrote to D.C. chefs this month asking them to share their holiday dishes and traditions, we expected responses about holiday feasts. And while many of the responses were food-related (latkes with toppings, gingerbread men, Yorkshire puddings, homemade lasagna, mincemeat pie complete with a recipe), we were surprised at the number of chefs who look forward to not cooking at all during the holidays. Instead, they’re content to let someone else put on the apron.

Carbonara is one of those fatty, delicious preparations of pasta that most people love. What could be better than a rich, unctuous sauce that contains garlic, Parmesan, and cracked black pepper that is studded with bacon? Rustico‘s Steve Mannino was kind enough to share his approach to carbonara and how he applies it to Israeli couscous. The results are fantastic. Read on for the full instructions.

There should be no surprise that this year’s D.C. VegFest, which took place this past Saturday on the campus of George Washington University, was a success — after all, D.C. was recently ranked as the most veg-friendly city in North America. Organizers Compassion Over Killing and the Vegetarian Society of D.C. estimate over 5,000 visitors came to the festival to celebrate and revel in vegetarian delights, including speakers, cooking demos, food vendors and exhibits. Oh, and don’t forget the life-size man-carrot. Who said vegetarians don’t have a sense of humor?