"[Amanda Hesser's] new food site looks kind of brilliant." -Jane Black of the Washington Post (via Twitter)

Congratulations to this week's winners!

Helen won the contest for Your Best Grilled Lamb with Grilled Blade Chops over Greek Salad

Susan won the contest for Your Best Green and/or Wax Bean Dish with Fasoolya Khadra.

We asked them both to answer a few questions about cooking and eating.

- Amanda

Before shallots and garlic became the standard aromatics for dressings, vinaigrettes and dips, onion juice was often used.

Today, we launched a new feature on the recipe form. You can now drag and drop ingredients, so if you add them in the wrong order, or if you forget one, you can just click on the ingredient and move it around -- handy, right? You can also add new ingredients wherever you need to. We hope you'll check this out and let us know your thoughts!

Also, while on the topic of new recipes, we wanted to let you know that every week or so we'll be naming "Wildcard Winners." This means that any recipe you upload to the site is eligible to go into the food52 Cookbook. We keep a close eye on any new recipes flowing into the site and every Monday, we test the ones that catch our eye. So keep on adding your favorites!

Thanks,

Amanda & Merrill

Congratulations to this week's winners!

Sara (above) won the contest for Your Best Strawberry Recipe with Strawberries with Lavender Biscuits.

naomi won the contest for Your Best Burger with Lamb Burgers with Cilantro Yogurt.

We asked them both to answer a few questions about cooking and eating.

- Merrill

Last summer my mother and I went to Scotland, where we visited some friends in Kirkcaldy, just north of Edinburgh. At lunch in their lovely dining room we were served a dessert I had never tried, and of which I had always been highly skeptical. Like Spotted Dick, Heg-Peg-Dump and Toad-in-the-Hole, Eton Mess is one of those traditional U.K. dishes with a moniker that makes you want to run for the hills. But I was happily surprised to find that what I had assumed would be a heavy, drippy English "pud" was in fact an appealing reinterpretation of one of my all-time favorite desserts: pavlova.

- Merrill

While studying at Le Cordon Bleu nearly a decade ago, I was taught lots of highly specific, and traditionally French, cooking skills. Some, like "turning" mushrooms, have not been repeated since. (This is where you use a special knife shaped like a bird's beak to carve tiny ridges around the entire cap of a mushroom so that it ends up looking like one of those round, spinning roof vents on the tops of city buildings.) Others, like a nifty trick for cutting bell peppers, have proven incredibly useful in my everyday cooking life.

I once heard that Martha Stewart's favorite baguette in New York was from Le Pain Quotidien. (This was way back when, before Pain Q had blossomed into the organic Belgian pastry empire it is today.) Now, credit where credit is due: I agree that they put out a superb French stick (as the Brits rather amusingly call it). It's tender within and crusty without, with that clean, floury-but-not-yeasty chewiness that only the best baguettes manage to pull off. But ever since I ordered my very first Baker's Basket, I've been convinced that all of Pain Q's bread exists primarily as a vehicle for the butter they serve with it.