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Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

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Bread loaf 2

Cheese + Flour + Yeast + Salt + Eggs = The Ancient Mystery of Bread

March 22, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To contemplate bread even more, please go my previous post, Panis Gravis, or, Bread, Endless Nurturer. I’ve baked bread for years and years. In fact, except for the odd hamburger bun, my family never eats “boughten bread,” as my mother-in-law called it. In a time when “carbohydrate” evokes images reminiscent of horror films, singing the merits of bread may seem like advocating for the return of feudalism. But, in spite of all the denial of bread as a food in […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cheese, Cooking, Eggs, Photography, Russia • Tags: Acharuli khachapuri, Baking, Bread, Celiac Disease, Demeter, Gluten intolerance, M. F. K., Persephone, Republic of Georgia

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Russian Wooden Sppons

From Russia with Love: Cooking Utensils

August 10, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The theme of next year’s Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery centers around “Food and Material Culture.” The spoons captured my interest and so I decided to take a quick peek at other utensils. I never get tired of looking at the tools that people created for cooking their food, food that gave them the will and the power to keep on living in the direst of circumstances. The ingenuity of cooks never ceases to amaze me. And I wonder […]

Categories: Art, Asia, Cooking, Photography, Russia, Russian cooking • Tags: Cooking, Russia, Wooden spoons

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French cooks horsemeat parody

Eating Black Beauty,* Or, Horsemeat, a Taboo That Became a French Stereotype

March 1, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Taboo: A custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing. One of the most emotional experiences of my childhood came when I read Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, a story of a mistreated English horse. I remember sobbing for hours in the way that children can when they experience something so hurtful that only tears will do. Later, I saw a movie based on the book and the same thing happened, the […]

Categories: Asia, Cooking, Europe, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Emile Decroix, Food History, France, French Cooking, Henriette Davidis, Horsemeat

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Complete-Indian-Housekeeper and Cook cover

Heat and Dust and Cooks: The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook

February 10, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“The tale of the British in India holds keys to the universal story of colonization. A no-nonsense book, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook provides a very engrossing narrative and amplifies the story of how a small island off the coast of Europe managed to run an empire of millions of souls. It can be said that it all began in the kitchen. . . .” European women who lived in 19th and 20th century foreign outposts sought authoritative voices to guide […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, English Cooking, India, Reference • Tags: Culinary History, Flora Annie Steel, Food History, Grace Gardiner

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Screen-Shot-2012-01-29-at-11.54.04-PM

The Roger Smith Cookbook Conference

February 8, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Just a reminder that you will be able to see some 10 of the 28 sessions live and for free on Friday and Saturday, February 10 and 11, 2012. See schedule of free sessions below. To brighten up a dreary February in 2011, a group of food scholars and cookbook writers started a cookbook conference. It was so successful that they’re doing it again this year, bigger and better. Unfortunately, this year’s Cookbook Conference is completely sold out, and there’s a […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food News, Food writing, India, Methods • Tags: Cookbooks, Culinary History, Food History, Roger Smith Cookbook Conference

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Chapa Sapa Panorama

Apples in French Indochina: Chapa (Sa Pa) – The Phantom Hill Station in Vietnam

January 11, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In looking at pictures of the former French colonial hill station of Sa Pa/Sapa (formerly called Chapa by French colonizers), Shangri-La comes to mind. But James Hilton’s 1933 novel of that name likely took place in the Nepalian Himalayas, not in the highlands of northern Vietnam. A little taste of paradise, that’s what Sa Pa might have represented to French colonizers longing for the cool breezes of Normandy or the crisp fall days in Burgundy. Sa Pa also meant, though, […]

Categories: Apples, Asia, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Vietnam • Tags: Apples, Cat Apples, Culinary History, David Burton, Erica Peters, Food History, French Armed Forces, French colonial empire, Hmong people, Luke Nguyen, Sa Pa, Vietnam

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French cooks Andre Joyeux 1

The French in Indochina: Caricatures and Satire

September 7, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In 1912, André Joyeux published a most interesting book, La Vie Large des Colonies, filled with satirical caricatures of the the colons, or French colonialists in Vietnam. Some were amusing, others truly horrific. Note: The caption reads – Ce que ça va les faire gueuler à Paris! – Ben, qu’ils viennent bouffer les soupes qu’on nous prépare… – What a row it’s gonna make in Paris – Well, just let them come and eat soups that are cooked for us […]

Categories: Art, Drawings, France, Vietnam • Tags: André Joyeux, Caricatures, France, French colonial empire, Political satire, Vietnam

French cooks market Saigon 1947

Saigon, Indochine 1947: Marchés (Markets)

September 5, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Asia, Photography, Vietnam • Tags: France, French colonial empire, Indochina, Indochine, Markets, Vietnam

French colonial history Affiche-troupes-coloniales-IMG_0929

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Me, Etc.

August 26, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dear readers of Gherkins & Tomatoes /Cornichons & Tomates, Soon I will embark on a great adventure, doing research on France’s colonial empire at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence, thanks to a grant from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Until I return, I will not have the time to devote to posting the intricate blog posts that I love to research, write, and share. I trust that you, gentle readers, will however […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Algeria, French Cooking, Libraries, Local foods, Photography, Reference, Senegal, Tunisia, Vietnam • Tags: Aix-en-Provence, Archives, Archives nationales d'outre mer, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Colonial France

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French cooks Exposition Anvers 1930 women eating

Eating Around the Empire in a Day: The 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition

June 30, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To her sons who have extended the empire of her genius and made dear her name across the seas, France extends her gratitude. ~~ Inscription on the facade of the colonial museum, now the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration Before EuroDisney, people who might never be able to go to Tahiti or Senegal or Morocco often attended various fairs and expositions. One such exposition left a lasting mark on France:  the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition. Twenty-five years in […]

Categories: Africa, Asia, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Morocco • Tags: 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition, Africa, France, Louis Hubert Lyautey, Marseille, Morocco, Paris, Vincennes

Vadouvan 2

To India, via Paris’s Le Passage Brady

January 24, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In spite of French presence in India for a couple of centuries, trying to find Indian curry in France tends to be a bit of a chore. The first Indian restaurant didn’t open in Paris until 1975. Those in the know (mostly British expatriates pining for curry in London) lament the lack of good Indian food, although there’s an occasional stampede to certain Indian restaurants in parts of Paris, only to find that the owners are Pakistanis.  And Richard C. Morais’s […]

Categories: Asian Cooking, Chefs, France, French Cooking, India, Spices • Tags: Cuisine Francaise, Cuisine indienne, Curry, France, French cuisine, French India, India, Indian Cooking, Paris, Passage Brady, Spices, Vadouvan

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France Joseph François Dupleix

East is East and West is West: Pondicherry and French Curry

January 20, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In Pondicherry, Pondichéry, or Puducherry as it is now called again (since 2006), you still see streets sparkling with old colonial buildings, dating back to a time when passersby heard French spoken daily. Yet, those buildings, policemen’s hats, and a fully functioning French lycée or school, are among the few overt signs that you’ll notice of France’s colonial presence in India. The French colonized a piece of India in the 1600s, leaving only in 1954. After the Treaty of Paris […]

Categories: Cooking, France, French Cooking, India, Menus • Tags: Antoine Beauvilliers, Colonialism, Colonialisme, Cooking, Cuisine Francaise, Culinary History, Curry, France, French cuisine, India, Joseph François Dupleix, L’Art de cuisinier, Pondicherry, Post-Colonialism, Puducherry

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Cooks India

Idylls of Cuisine, #74

August 8, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation. See also "India Asks, Should Food be a Right for the Poor?"]

Categories: Cooking, India, Photography, Rice • Tags: Cooking, Food Photography, India, Indian Cooking, Poverty, Rice

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Cat cooking

Eating Cat Meat: A Taboo?

June 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of the most memorable sayings you learn when you first study Spanish is, “Dar/vender gato por liebre,” or to “give or sell a cat instead of a rabbit,” meaning deception. Digging into the history of Spanish cookbooks, you’ll find a famous — and oft-quoted — recipe for roast cat in Ruperto de Nola’s* fifteenth-century opus: Libro de cocina compuesto por maestre Ruberto de Nola cocinero que fue del sereníssimo señor Rey don Hernando de Nápoles …,** thankfully also known […]

Categories: Africa, China, Cooking, Methods, Spain • Tags: Cats, China, E. N. Anderson, Eating Cats, El Llibre del Coch, Food Taboos, K. C. Chang, Robert de Nola, Spain, Vender Gato por Liebre

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Jewish Prayer Shawl, Prayer Book, And Glasses

I was in Prison and You Did Not Feed Me

May 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In preparation for certain medical tests (the torturous “tum-and-bum” procedure, I call it), I recently spent five days on an extremely restricted diet. Shall we say that if you consumed that diet over a period of weeks, death might soon be scooping you up. And on the Sunday before the test, I spent the afternoon with a book group discussing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison (1997 edition). You can’t help but notice, as his prison stay extends way […]

Categories: Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, Nutrition, Philippines • Tags: Cara da Silva, Concentration Camps, H.C. Fowler, Holocaust Survivor Cookbook, In Memory's Kitchen, Philippines, Prison Food, Recipes Out of Bilibid, Starvation, Worl War II

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Herbals Chinese

Idylls of Cuisine, #62

May 16, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: China, Herbs, Photography • Tags: Ba Bao Cha, China, Chinese Herbs, Eight Treasures Tea, Food Photography, Herbal Tea, Herbs

Herbals Yellow Emperor

Sour and Bitter Blended in the Soup of Wu:* Very Early Chinese Herbals

May 13, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

For years, I’ve been carting around a number of books about Chinese medicine and food, fascinated by the ancient linkage of food with medicine (similar in some regards to the Ayurvedic system of India). As you can imagine, getting down to the bone on this matter is not an easy proposition, given the lack of fully accessible written material for non-Mandarin speakers. The inability to read the original texts proves to be a huge drawback to pursuing questions in the […]

Categories: Asia, China, Herbs • Tags: Ch'uTz'u: The Songs of the South, China, David Hawkes, E. N. Anderson, Herbals, Huang Di Nei Jing (Su Wen), Imre Galambos, Mawangdui, Shen Nung Pen Ts'ao Ching, Yellow Emperor

Culinaria Russia

Culinaria Russia: A Picture Cookbook for Grownups

April 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I’ve only known two Russian cooks in my life. First there was Olga, the cook who sustained me during my Peace Corps years, whose Russian roots rarely extended to the table of her Paraguayan pension. Always tripe and manioc and beef à caballo, never borscht or blini or piroshki. Sometimes meat laced with chimichurri, a green sauce from Argentina, which reminded Olga of home, as we shall see. And then there was Marina, who only cooked for me once. She […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Russia • Tags: A Gift to Young Housewives, Cookbooks, Culinaria Russia, Culinaria series, Elena Molokhovets, Green sauce, Russia

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Russia Easter icon

From Mother Russia with Love: Kulich and Paskha

March 31, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Because Russian Orthodox Easter falls on the same day this year (2010) as the Western Easter, it seems appropriate to include recipes for Russia’s most well-known Easter sweets: Kulich, a tall puffy “baba” or sweet-bread cousin to Italian Panettone (maybe with phallic overtones and fertility in mind?) and Paskha, a cheesecake-like dairy-rich concoction eaten with Kulich. Imagine … In the darkness of midnight, you hurry to the church, carrying your baskets filled with Kulich, Paskha, and brightly decorated eggs, seeking […]

Categories: Bread, Easter, Russia • Tags: Easter, Festive Breads, Kulich, Paskha, Russia

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Russia Ivan_the_Terrible_begs_to_become_a_Monk

From Mother Russia with Love: The Domostroi

March 29, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Cabbage soup and gruel are our food. (Shchi da kasha, pishche nashe.) ~~Russian peasant proverb Trying to ferret out tidbits about Russian food history can be tough going. Aside from the language barrier, anyone interested in Russian culinary history suffers from a major weakness: there is a terrible lack of written material contemporaneous with Forme of Cury and other such books found in the Western culinary history lexicon.* Happily, however, there’s Carolyn Johnston Pouncy’s translation of the sixteenth-century Russian household […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Lent, Methods, Reference, Russia • Tags: Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, Domostroi, Ivan the Terrible, Lent, Russia

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Russia blinis

Idylls of Cuisine, #56

March 28, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, or two, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Photography, Russia • Tags: Blinis, Food Photography, Russia

Russia kulebyaka

From Mother Russia with Love: A Fish in Every Pie

March 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The kulebyaka should be appetizing, shameless in its nakedness, a temptation to sin. ~~ Anton Chekov, “The Siren” Fish dishes abound in Russian cuisine, in large part because of the Russian Orthodox Church’s strict rules on fasting during Lent other times of the year. But we cannot ignore the simple fact that fish thrive in the thousands of rivers and lakes crisscrossing the face of that immense land mass, bordered by twelve seas. Again we see the impact not only […]

Categories: Fish, Menus, Pies--Savory, Russia • Tags: Cooking, Fast days, Fish, Kulebyaka, Lent, Pies, Russia, Sturgeon, Vesiga

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Russia mushrooms

From Mother Russia with Love: Meaty Mushrooms and Relentless Lent

March 25, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit’ po gribi (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest. ~~ Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory Nabokov hits on something many of us reading his words cannot really sense, cannot really feel. For those of us who grew up on canned […]

Categories: Beef, Cookbooks, Cooking, Lent, Mushrooms, Russia • Tags: Beef Stroganoff, Classic Russian Cooking: A Gift to Young Housewives, Cookbooks, Cooks, Elena Molokhovets, Joyce Toomre, Lent, Mushrooms, Recipes, Russia, Vladimir Nabokov

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Russian Lenten food tolokno

From Mother Russia with Love: A Monster of a Stove and Tolokno

March 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

You can’t cook porridge with a fool. ~~ Russian Proverb ~~ An example of Russian Lenten food, tolokno or oat flour with liquid, demonstrates the use of the astonishing Russian stove. Streamlined in the 15th century, the Russian stove incarnates the old adage, “The kitchen is the heart of the home.” Much of Russian peasant folk culture and ritual derives from these massive stoves. Taking up anywhere from a fifth to a quarter of the living space in a peasant […]

Categories: Lent, Oats, Russia • Tags: Lent, Oats, Russia, Russian stoves, Tolokno

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Kvass

From Mother Russia with Love: Great Lent, the Beginning

March 22, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Many years ago, a high school history teacher of mine asked our class to write down everything we knew about Russia within the space of about 30 minutes. Most people wrote a brief paragraph, describing the red Communist flag with its hammer and sickle. Some delved a little into the cruelty of the tsars and others brought up the dark and heavy literature of Dostoevsky. Still others spouted all the Cold War propaganda about the dangerous spread of Communism. I […]

Categories: Beer, Cooking, England, Lent, Russia • Tags: Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Redesdale, Great Lent, Kvass, Mitford family, Russia

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Lent fish heads Korea

Idylls of Cuisine, #55

March 21, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Asia, Korea, Photography • Tags: Asia, Fish heads, Food Photography, Korea

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Singapore

Cooking Fish — Let Us Count the World’s Ways: Asia 2

March 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Continuing our Lenten foray through fish cookery in Asia …

Categories: Asia, Fish, Korea, Lent, Philippines, Thailand • Tags: Asia, Fish, Korea, Philippines, Thailand

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Peru cookbook

The British Melting Pot

March 13, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I recently ran across these books, mentioned on an interesting British Web site providing glimpses and glances at cookbooks published in Britain, cookbooks that we here in the US of A rarely see. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems that the British cookbook market features more books concerned with other cultures and not so much with “slimming,” as our friends across the pond call dieting. So here they are, some books to fascinate you on a rainy day in […]

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, India • Tags: Africa, Cookbooks, Cooking, India, Middle East, Peru

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Lent Japan fish 1

Cooking Fish — Let Us Count the World’s Ways: Asia 1

March 11, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In Asia, cooking fish presents no problem to thousands of ingenious cooks. The abundance of fish and the surfeit of ingredients ensures that fish cookery scales heights far beyond scorched fish fingers, dried-out fillets, and mushy tuna-noodle casserole.

Categories: Asia, Asian Cooking, Cooking, Lent • Tags: Asia, Asian Cooking, Fish, Lent

Mardi Gras egg 2

Butterfly of Winter — Fabergé’s Mardi Gras Egg

February 12, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Carnival is a Butterfly of Winter whose last mad flight of Mardi Gras forever ends his glory.” ~ Perry Young, The Mistick Krewe: Chronicles of Comus and His Kin Theo Fabergé,  grandson of Carl Fabergé, created this dazzling egg to commemorate Mardi Gras in New Orleans:

Categories: Art, Eggs, Lent, Russia • Tags: Eggs, Fabergé eggs, Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Theo Fabergé

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Eggs Hot Springs

Idylls of Cuisne, #49

February 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Eggs, Japan, Photography • Tags: Eggs, Food Photography, Japan

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Pikliz (Photo credit: Trina Sargalski)

Ats Jaar: A Little Taste of Southeast Asia in the Antebellum South

February 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A little prickle of recognition, a sense of déjà vu — that’s what happened when I turned to page 86 of A Colonial Plantation Cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770 (1984, edited by historian Richard J. Hooker*). There it was: “Ats Jaar, or Pucholilla.” My first thought was, “What is an Indian (as in India) pickle recipe doing in a cookbook from colonial South Carolina?” And then I read this, in a footnote provided by the editor: […]

Categories: Asia, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, India, Methods, Science of cooking, Southern Food • Tags: Colonial Plantation Cookbook, Fermentation, Hannah Glasse, Harriott Pinckney Horry, Pickling, Richard Briggs, Richard J. Hooker, Southern cooking

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State dinners Kennedy_1962

Feasting in State: Obama’s First Real State Dinner

November 19, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In the next week, we will see real-time examples of a few of the different types of feasts common to American culture: Thanksgiving — essentially a harvest feast tinged with overtones of cultural identity — and President Barack Obama’s first true State Dinner, to be held on November 24, 2009 for India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — a feast based on the display of power and good will. Both feasts carry with them great tradition and historical precedent. Having covered […]

Categories: China, Thanksgiving, United States, White House • Tags: Barack Obama, Manmohan Singh, marcus Samuelsson, State Dinner, State Dinners, Thanksgiving, White House

Captain John Smith

Hunger, Starvation, Famine and the Sweep of Human History

November 9, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When it comers to food, we humans live in a paradox these days. In the West, there’s too much food — as long as one has money with which to buy it — and because of that excess, we begin to look like the Michelin Man or the Pillsbury Doughboy. And on the flip side  lies true hunger and its cousin, starvation, usually in Africa and other places where money, transportation, and just plain decent soil (not to mention rain) […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, China, Europe, Thanksgiving • Tags: Africa, China, Europe, Hunger, Jamestown, Starvation, Thanksgiving

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Photo credit: Tracy Hunter

Idylls of Cuisine, #37

November 8, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: China, Eggs, Photography • Tags: China, Salted Fermented Eggs

Pasta encyclopedia cover

No Thanks to Marco Polo: An Encyclopedia of Italy’s Pasta Shapes

November 6, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Marco Polo returned to Italy from his Chinese travels in 1296. The myth, legend, what have you, credits him with introducing pasta into Italy’s culinary repertoire. But Marco Polo did NOT bring pasta to Italy. And 73-year-old Italian author Oretta Zanini de Vita wants you to know that, immediately, upfront and center. Zanini de Vita says, Dried pasta, the kind made with durum wheat, is found in Italy from about A.D. 800. It was in fact the Muslim occupiers of […]

Categories: Archaeology, Book Reviews, China, Italian Cooking, Italy, Local foods, Pasta, Reference • Tags: Archaeology, China, Encyclopedia of Pasta, Italian Cooking, Italy, Marco Polo, Oretta Zanini de Vita, Pasta

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Halloween soul cake

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Soul Cakes

October 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Trick-or-treating may well have originated in the old custom of “souling,” as people went from house to house, begging ( “mumming”) for “soul cakes,” actually prayers — in sweet form.  Sir James George Frazer wrote about this practice in The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, a classic in anthropology, first published in 1890: In Bruges, Dinant, and other towns of Belgium holy candles burn all night in the houses on the Eve of All Souls, and the […]

Categories: Europe, Halloween, India • Tags: All Souls' Day, Belgium, Day of the Dead, Halloween, Soul Cakes

Mead 1

The Gift of the Bees: Mead

September 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With a small tweak of the imagination, it’s not hard to see the scenario:  a little rain and some honey accidentally left in a hollowed-out piece of wood. For our early ancestors, it was — once tasted — a seemingly divine elixir. And no cooking required. In other words, mead, the first fermented drink. And so fermentation crops up again, a boon to the human race in so many ways. The tale’s been told a myriad of times, in a […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Asia, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, Herbs • Tags: England, Hilda M. Ransome, Mead, Metheglin, Sir Kenelme Digby, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore

Turmeric Flowers (Photo credit: Subharghya Das)

To Balance, Strength, Love, Faith, and Hope:* Jehangir Mehta’s Mantra

September 26, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Reflecting the ayurvedic principle of balance, chef Jehangir Mehta’s cookbook, Mantra: The Rules of Indulgence (2008), carries the imaginative use of flavorings to nirvanaic levels. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Indian-born Mehta draws on the centuries-old practices found in Indian cuisine and combines them in startling ways with many traditional Western, and even Indian, dishes. Take his Turmeric Yorkshire Pudding as just one example: Turmeric Yorkshire Pudding 16 servings 1 cup milk 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted […]

Categories: Asia, India • Tags: Cooks, India, Indian Cooking, Jehangir Mehta, Mantra: The Rules of Indulgence

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Food forms the very essence of life, from the fruit fly to the elephant, with humans in between. So much of what we do revolves around cooking, eating, and the finding of food. Here you'll discover stories, meditations, and photographs celebrating the places that we call home. And, of course, the food that garnishes it all.

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What’s Cookin’ Here

  • A Bare Table is Like an Artist’s Canvas
  • “Stew’s so comforting on a rainy day.” *
  • Singkong, Manioc, Mandioca, Mandió, Tapioca, Yuca: Singing the Praises of Manihot esculenta (Cassava)
  • The Promise of Apple Blossoms

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