It may sound like nothing much, but smoked black pepper is the best thing since sliced bread. Actually, it’s better than sliced bread. It imparts a hint of campfires, summer barbecues, and bacon to anything you are cooking…hard to imagine a more tantalizing effect. I’m late to the smoked black pepper party (Regina Schrambling discovered it for herself in 2004), but I’ve started religiously adding it to roasted vegetables (especially sweet potato fries), pan-seared steaks, black beans, and all manner of soups. A dash of this stuff and you won’t miss the ham hocks, or the charcoal grill…

Q: What does a sesame seed grow into? I don’t know–we never give them a chance. What the &!$@ is a sesame?! –Comedian Mitch Hedberg (RIP)

This Ask Spooning began not as a query from a curious reader, but a straight-up hysterical rant about sesame seeds by the dearly departed comedian Mitch Hedberg (**Rated R** for adult language and drug references: Sesame Seeds). Blank buns notwithstanding, it’s a good question: What IS a sesame? Obviously, like the poppy, sunflower, and pumpkin that give us tasty seeds, the sesame is some kind of flowering plant. But we’ve all seen poppies, sunflowers and pumpkins. Have you ever seen a sesame? Would you even know if you did? Read on… »

Where oh where are the best peas in Spain?! I know I was. Thank you Iberia Airlines in-flight magazine!

May 14-18 brings what organizers are calling “New York City’s first-ever multi-day celebration of all things cocktail-related.” More than just an excuse to remain tipsy for days on end, it’s an educational experience for serious tipplers. Events include seminars at Astor Center (such as “Bar Myth Busters,” “Drink Punch & Be Merry” and “The Agave Session”); a Friday Night Gala for 1,000 revelers at the NY Public Library; and, most intriguingly, a slew of homegrown events. Per the organizers, “the Manhattan Cocktail Classic is exploring the ‘Google approach to festival planning’– effectively allowing anyone or any company to conceive of and produce their own off-site event.” Should be a boozy blast!

What: The Manhattan Cocktail Classic

When: May 14-18, 2010

Where: Various Locations

Tickets for seminar sessions and off-site events are $50 per ticket; tickets to the Gala are $100.

Much as I love pintxos (and I do love pintxos), sometimes you need to just sit down and eat. And sometimes you need a salad. We ate two tablecloth-and-silverware set-price meals in San Sebastian, at Bodegón Alejandro and ni neu, which, we later discovered, share the same owners. (They also claim the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Michelin-starred but recently burned-down Mugaritz). We had three memorable dishes at Bodegón Alejandro, a small cozy place we stumbled into in the Parte Vieja (given my blood sugar level, the stumbling was literal): inky arroz negro (black rice) topped with a roasted tomato stuffed with squid and swirled with some creamy sheep cheese; a bowl of plain-looking penne, scallops, shrimp and asparagus that got a whole new personality from a clear bacon broth; and a post-modern millefeuille deconstruction made of lacy sugar crisps, raisin cream and armagnac ice cream. It was like rum raisin Haagen Dazs Platinum edition. Read on… »