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“Processing and preservatives kill flavor. We restore the flavor with fresh vegetables.”

Meet Masaki & Yukimi Momose, the husband and wife team behind MOMO Dressing, a small-batch, Japanese dressing company based in New York City. MOMO Dressing isn’t big, but it should be. I’ve never had a dressing that altered the way I eat. Usually, a bottle of dressing takes me a month or two to finish. MOMO’s roasted sesame dressing takes me a few days. Or less. I find myself buying more salad ingredients just to eat more dressing. I now crave salads at every meal. I know it might sound crazy, but is that really a bad thing?

When I explain this to the Momoses, they laugh. Apparently, this is something they hear all the time from customers — especially moms who claim MOMO Dressing is their secret to getting their kids to eat more vegetables. So, it’s kid tested. Adult approved. And there’s a reason for it. It has something to do with the freshness. Their particular flair for Japanese ingredients. The creaminess. The perfect balance of salty & sweet. It’s fantastic. Just like them.

Right now, they produce 3 dressings: Roasted Sesame, Non-Oil Shiso and Ginger Carrot. In addition to finding them at Smorgasburg & local farmers markets, you can buy their products online at Good Eggs, a Brooklyn delivery start-up that delivers farm-fresh groceries and local artisan products to your door. This is first in a series of videos in which I’ll be collaborating with their artisans. I’ve used their service a ton. It’s certainly a friendly way to guarantee real food made from real farmers/fishermen/artisans make it to your kitchens every week. I hope you enjoy their story.

Thanks so much for watching food. curated.! Happy Eating!

You may have found yourself at a restaurant where the waiter tries selling you on the cheek of the whole roasted fish he has just brought to your table, or at a butcher shop where the butcher tries convincing you of the merits of the beef cheek. Next time this happens, don’t be alarmed, be thankful. The cheek meat really is some of the best meat on the animal — be it halibut or a pig. An often overlooked cut, cheeks are where it’s at.

Cheek meat, the small cut of meat in the hollow of an animal’s cheek (if that wasn’t already obvious enough) is uniquely lean and tender. While most cuts can often be one or the other — lean but dry or tender but fatty — those little cuts of cheek are both. As fans of “nose-to-tail” eating here, we at HuffPost Taste are strong proponents of the cheek.

If you’re hesitant, chef, photographer and food personality Marc Matsumoto breaks down the merits of cheek meat in a recipe for Japanese Chashu, a slow-cooked pork that often appears over ramen:

Pork cheek is porcine perfection, taking the best qualities of a tasty cut like shoulder and marbling in a lattice of fat between the pink strands meat. When braised, the pieces of meat are almost imperceptibly suspended in a mesh of fat, that instantly liquefies when it enters your warm mouth.

Or you can explore cheeks for yourself in a variety of other ways, from beef cheek poutine to pork cheek ragù and Sichuan braised pork cheeks. You could try halibut cheeks with ginger-orange sauce or cod cheeks with mussels, chorizo and chickpeas. Guanciale, pork jowl or cheek, is a staple in Italian cooking, appearing in dishes like spaghetti carbonara.

If you need any more inspiration, here are 15 recipes that will convince you that it’s time to start eating more cheeks.

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Of all the trendy foods right now, ramen stands out as one that pleases just about everyone. From highbrow ramen joints to lowbrow instant ramen, this Japanese noodle soup is popular everywhere. It would stand to reason, then, that ramen can do no wrong. That would be a hasty assumption, however. Every bright star has a dark side, and ramen is no exception.

Restaurant chefs and home cooks alike have been co-opting ramen in the worst way — taking it out of its natural habitat of hot, steamy broth, and forming it into shapes that are at best unappetizing and at worst grotesque. It started last summer with the infamous ramen burger — the food trend everyone thought might overtake the Cronut™ — which soon proved to be just another gimmicky mashup. Today, we’re seeing ramen foods everywhere, threatening the integrity of this once irreverently cool and impossibly delicious food.

Here are five ways that we never, ever want to eat ramen:

The Ramen Burger

When Keizo Shimamoto unveiled the original Ramen Burger at Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg last summer, the world almost forgot about the Cronut™ — for a second. Then everyone realized that ramen noodles are not a tastier replacement for a fluffy, buttery bun, and everyone went back to fawning over Umami Burger. It was just the beginning of ramen’s shapeshifting, however.

Ramen Pizza

Then came the ramen pizza. Nobody liked the look of it, yet no one wanted to give up on ramen outside the bowl. Serious Eats’ J. Kenji Lopez-Alt was responsible for this ramen pizza (for which the noodles are cooked in a cast iron skillet) and it wouldn’t be the last ramen pizza. California-based pizzeria Marco Polo Pizza has just started selling its own version. What’s wrong with traditional, slightly chewy, slightly charred and crunch crust?

Ramen Tacos

Then came the Ramen Taco, from New England based food blog The Vulgar Chef. After the bacon weave taco and the bacon weave choco taco, it was just a matter of time that someone would make a taco shell out of ramen.

The Ramenerrito

It’s happening: Ramen + Burrito = The Ramenrrito – http://t.co/LfnaTVHzQA

— Thrillist New York (@ThrillistNYC) June 10, 2014

As the folks over at Thrillist point out, it’s simple math. Ramen + Burrito = Ramenerrito. West Village restaurant Presstea™ is responsible for this new beast, which is made to order and filled with noodles prepared in a pork broth with cilantro, garlic, and house spices, according to FoodBeast.

The Ramen Corn Dog

A Ramen Corn Dog Hits Jersey City http://t.co/nrN1uUetHq pic.twitter.com/cgAj8ahfsI

— The Village Voice (@villagevoice) June 16, 2014

And just when you thought ramen couldn’t get any lower, someone went and invented the ramen corn dog — in New Jersey no less. (Please note, the author is from New Jersey and says this in jest, with pride.) The monstrosity comes from Jersey City-based restaurant Union Republic and consists of a beef sausage battered in cornmeal and surrounded by fried ramen noodles.

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From now on, let it be known that is is the ONLY way you should be buttering your movie theater popcorn. Life hacks Tumblr List of Life Hacks posted this genius trick, and we’re so glad it did. We’ll never butter our popcorn the same way again.

A st…

There’s a common misconception that eggs are easy to make. Let us set the record straight: they are not. While anyone can make eggs cook in a pan, and most can do so in a matter of minutes, that does not mean they’ve mastered the art of cooking eggs. I…