"GreenBeanCasserole" news and stories

• Trevor Corson, the author of "The Story of Sushi," says to step away from the chopsticks -- the proper way to eat sushi is with your fingers.
• Joaquin Baca of the Brooklyn Star only serves up food he likes to eat -- including the Americana classic green bean casserole, updated with homemade mushroom soup and onion rings.
• White House chef Sam Kass stirs pots and policy. When he's not preparing meals for the first family, he gathers with senior policy advisers to figure out how to improve the health of the country's children.
• First Lady Michelle Obama makes a cameo on the Jan. 3 episode of "Iron Chef America" to raise awareness for the Healthy Kids Initiative -- and revealing that the secret ingredient is anything from the White House garden.
• From Momofuku to Marco Canora, the roundup of this season's best new cookbooks is sure to take readers on an "edible adventure."
• Sam Sifton's latest reviews Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecôte, the Parisian import to Midtown that relies on "the simplicity of salad, steak and fries, heavy on the salt and butter, rich as a cardiologist," and waitresses in what resemble French maid outfits.
• The Minimalist, Mark Bittman, takes meatball madness to the Middle East with lamb, cumin, mint and bulgur.
• Nostalgic for wine from their Vienna upbringing, Carlo Huber and Paul Darcy made it their mission to bring Viennese wines and wine culture to the United States.
• Saltie, a tiny sandwich shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, serves up sandwiches "the Earl would approve."

There are few holiday dishes so polarizing as green bean casserole. If it was part of your usual Yuletide feast growing up, the stuff is sacrosanct and utterly essential to holiday joy. The bulk of it -- the french-cut green beans, cream of mushroom soup and French-fried onion strings -- must come blopping and clattering from cans and be baked in a casserole until it resembles a roiling green bog topped with a dry moss of frizzled onion straws. There are always seconds, and there's hardly ever any left over for a midnight refrigerator picnic.

If you didn't grow up with it skulking on the holiday table, good gravy, does that stuff look ten-foot-pole nasty.