Can your significant other’s food preferences become a nonstarter when searching for marital bliss? Reporter Emily Thomas of “The Food Chain” introduces us to three couples who are learning to make peace despite their domestic culinary wars. Plus, we explore kaiseki with Niki Nakayama and Carole Iida-Nakayama; Dan Pashman rails against avocado toast; and we share our recipe for Chewy Molasses Spice Cookies with Browned Butter Icing, which was inspired by a listener question.

This episode is brought to you by King Arthur Flour and Ferguson.

Questions in this Episode:

“I just started cooking and I don’t have too many pots in the kitchen. Do you have a top-five for pots and pans to use in the kitchen?”

“I make a spice cake, and I've substituted some of the sugar with granulated honey before. The flavor was much improved, and I'd like to try it with all honey, but I recently found out that granulated honey is mostly sugar, not just honey. What are the things I'll need to watch out for when converting the recipe from white sugar to (liquid) honey? Also, I'd like to make the cake for the holidays, but our family gathering has gotten very small. Halving the recipe will be necessary, but with the change to honey, what do I need to be careful of when baking the half-quantity recipe?”

“I want to start making sprouted wheat bread from scratch. I’ve done some research on the best ways to dry your wheat berries once they’d sprouted but here’s my question: Will I negate all my hard work of sprouting wheat berries by drying them in the oven instead of a countertop dehydrator?”

“Could you give me some ideas for improving my potato pancake recipe?”

“I’ve been making lemon curd for some years now. I made an attempt to can it for the first time. The portion that I canned using the boiling water process resulted in a metallic taste! Where did I go wrong?”