Food

This summer, diners in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles will get their hands on a hamburger that has been five years in the making.

The burger looks, tastes and smells like beef — except it's made entirely from plants. It sizzles on the grill and even browns and oozes fat when it cooks. It's the brainchild of former Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown and his research team at Northern California-based Impossible Foods.

The startup's goal is like many in Silicon Valley — to create a product that will change the world.

Serves 2-4

The dressing

· 2 tablespoons lemon juice
· 1 tablespoon rice vinegar or cider vinegar
· 1 teaspoon sugar
· 3/4 teaspoon ground coriander
· 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
· Sea salt

The salad

On virtually every other street corner, in every city or town or village in India, there is a chai wallah — a tea vendor who supplies the piping hot, milky brew that fuels the country.

And because everybody — politicians, rickshaw drivers, schoolteachers — needs a daily cuppa, chai wallahs get to meet people from every walk of life.

Some people may be dimly aware that Thailand's chilies and Italy's tomatoes — despite being central to their respective local cuisines — originated in South America. Now, for the first time, a new study reveals the full extent of globalization in our food supply. More than two-thirds of the crops that underpin national diets originally came from somewhere else — often far away. And that trend has accelerated over the past 50 years.

Late spring is swarm season — the time of year when bees reproduce and find new places to build hives. Swarms of bees leave the nest and zoom through the air, hovering on trees, fences and houses, searching for a new home.

While a new neighborhood beehive can be stressful for homeowners, it's an exciting time for beekeepers, who see it as an opportunity.

Serves 4

· 1 cup basmati rice, preferably imported
· 2 tablespoons ghee or coconut oil
· 3 whole cloves
· 3 green or white cardamom pods
· 1 bay leaf
· 1 cinnamon stick
· 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
· 1 can (13.5 ounces) coconut milk (about 1 3/4 cups)
· About 1/4 cup water
· 1 teaspoon coarse salt, or to taste

Cilantro Sauce

· 1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
· 1/2 cup packed coarsely chopped fresh cilantro, leaves and tender stems
· 1 to 2 teaspoons minced jalapeño, to taste 

Where do you draw the line between inspiration and straight-up imitation when it comes to food?

A few years ago, we brought you the story of Caitlin Freeman, a pastry chef baking innovative, art-inspired cakes at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Using modern art as her muse, Freeman translated what she saw in the museum into edible form at the SFMOMA's upstairs café.

A weathered wooden shed that holds wheelbarrows, hoes and other basic tools is the beacon of the Student Organic Farm, a two-acre swath within the larger horticultural research farm at Iowa State University.

On a warm spring evening, a half-dozen students gather here, put on work gloves and begin pulling up weeds from the perennial beds where chives, strawberries, rhubarb and sage are in various stages of growth.

"I didn't know how passionate I [would] become for physical work," says culinary science major Heidi Engelhardt.

· 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
· 1/2 cup pesto, store-bought or homemade
· 4 sprigs fresh tarragon
· 1 shallot
· 2 cups sugar snap peas
· 1 lemon
· 4 scallions
· 1/2 tablespoon honey
· 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
· 2 cups chicken stock or water
· 2 cups shelled fresh peas
· 2 cups pea shoots
· 1/4 cup ricotta cheese
· Store-bought or homemade kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 

1. Heat a grill to high or a grill pan over high heat.

Serves 6

Brunch at this Jamaican-themed restaurant would make a Marley proud. Riotous colors, cannabis-inspired design, and Jamaican music add up to a party every time. If you’ve got the brunch munchies for any reason, these tropical pancakes will hit the spot.

Between December and March, beekeepers send millions of hives to California to pollinate almond trees. Not all of the hives make it back home.

"The number of beehive thefts is increasing," explains Jay Freeman, a detective with the Butte County Sheriff's Office.

In California, 1,734 hives were stolen during peak almond pollination season in 2016. In Butte County alone, the number of stolen hives jumped from 200 in 2015 to 400 this year, according to Freeman.

Kale is cool. For foodies, anyway. It's everywhere these days — in salads, smoothies, chips and even ice cream. Someone decided to create National Kale Day — it's Oct. 3 this year.

Top supporters of an audacious Belgian pipeline will get a bottle of beer every day for the rest of their lives. That's in return for putting more than $8,000 toward bringing a pipe dream to life, and helping a brewery remain in the historic town of Bruges.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of eating tomatoes. We picked them in the garden and ate them in sandwiches, sitting on a picnic table under the trees outside our house. That juicy, acidic taste is forever lodged in the pleasure centers of my brain.

For anyone with similar memories, supermarket tomatoes are bound to disappoint. Indeed, the classic supermarket tomato — hard, tasteless, sometimes mealy — has inspired countless bitter complaints.

Take a closer look at the tomato display in your local grocery store, though, and you'll notice some big changes.

It was a cool morning in the spring of 2004 when Charles McGonegal, owner of AEppeltreow Winery in Burlington, Wis., bit into his first "perry" pear. Crunching into the tough, tannin-suffused fruit, he was smacked with such astringency that he instantly spit it out, letting the juice dribble down his chin. "Later that day, my lips were peeling and my throat was sore," he recalls. "There's a reason why medieval folks thought perry pears were poisonous — they're full of acids and tannins. They are not for eating.

It was the tasting that revolutionized the wine world.

Forty years ago today, the crème de la crème of the French wine establishment sat in judgment for a blind tasting that pitted some of the finest wines in France against unknown California bottles. Only one journalist bothered to show up — the outcome was considered a foregone conclusion.

"Obviously, the French wines were going to win," says George Taber, who was then a correspondent for Time magazine in Paris. He says everyone thought "it's going to be a nonstory."

A 5,000-year-old brewery has been unearthed in China.

Archaeologists uncovered ancient "beer-making tool kits" in underground rooms built between 3400 and 2900 B.C. Discovered at a dig site in the Central Plain of China, the kits included funnels, pots and specialized jugs. The shapes of the objects suggest they could be used for brewing, filtration and storage.

It's the oldest beer-making facility ever discovered in China — and the evidence indicates that these early brewers were already using specialized tools and advanced beer-making techniques.

We're facing a kind of food revolution, and my generation is driving it.

Not so long ago, when fast-food giants reigned supreme, takeout meant cheap, quick, greasy meals. But a recent Goldman Sachs report found that people under 35 are now demanding food that's fresh and healthful — as well as fast.