Tom Harte
Host - Caffé ConcertoTom Harte is a retired faculty member from Southeast Missouri State University where he was an award-winning teacher, a nationally recognized debate coach, and chair of the department of Speech Communication and Theatre.
A founder of “My Daddy’s Cheesecake,” a bakery/café in Cape Girardeau, a food columnist for The Southeast Missourian, and a cookbook author, he blends his passion for food with his passion for classical music in his daily program, The Caffe Concerto.
An inveterate traveler as well as a connoisseur of food and classical music, Tom has been to the five major continents and sailed the seven seas in search of great music and great cuisine, delicacies which he enjoys most when consumed simultaneously. He also hosts A Harte Appetite.
-
Chocolate made just for drinking has a noble heritage. In fact, chocolate was being enjoyed as a beverage for centuries before anybody ever thought of actually eating it. -
The Instant Pot is fundamentally a pressure cooker, a device invented way back in 1679 by the French physicist Denis Papin.
-
A mug cake is a single serving of cake made by quickly stirring up batter in a mug and nuking it in the microwave. It apparently came to widespread public attention in a YouTube video back in 2009.
-
In the culinary world one letter can make a big difference. Take, for example, the distinction between macaroon and macaron. Though identical words except for one extra letter "o," the confections they refer to couldn't be more dissimilar
-
Ever looked closely at an Oreo, the world’s best selling cookie? If you carefully inspect an Oreo you will notice something interesting. Though the confection is described on the package as a “chocolate sandwich cookie” an Oreo is not chocolate colored. It is, in fact, black. That's because of a process called “Dutching.”
-
It turns out, that the question "what is a sugar plum?" is not that easy to answer. I found at least eight distinctly different definitions of the term. Some citing chocolate, some fondant, and others coriander as a chief ingredient.
-
Over seventy-five years ago Irving Berlin wrote what has become the most recorded song of all time: "White Christmas." It’s easy to understand how Berlin, born in a town near Siberia, could feel nostalgic about a winter snowfall.
-
Just about every country has a special dessert to mark the holidays. But none is as iconic as the classic French Yule log or Bûche de Noël.
-
German lebkuchen the Cadillac, or the Mercedes Benz of spice cookies, was probably the first cookie traditionally associated with Christmas. Lebkuchen may also very well be the oldest form of cookie know to human kind.
-
Contrary to conventional wisdom, putting together a Thanksgiving Day menu is not particularly challenging. After all, the fundamentals of the holiday meal are hardly open to debate.
