Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life

Main menu

Skip to content
  • 365 Days – Photo-a-Day Gallery
  • About Gherkins & Tomatoes
  • Culinary History Resources
  • RECIPE INDEX

Archives

Show Grid Show List

Post navigation

Dana Polan French Chef

Julia Child’s “The French Chef, ” by Dana Polan

July 17, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“a history of early American television telescoped through the persona and history of Julia Child. . . . fascinating . . .” When you walk the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, you can’t miss the lingering traces of heroes and history. From the names of the men who brought you the Boston Tea Party to the dead in the Old Burying Ground near Harvard Square, the past perfumes the air. Nearly everywhere you’ll see pictures of a more modern hero, too. […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food News, France, French Cooking, Uncategorized • Tags: Book Reviews, Dana Polan, Dione Lucas, Florence Hanford, Food Television, France, French Chef, French Cooking, Julia Child, Nigella Lawson, Paul Child

Ginette Mathiot

Who was Ginette Mathiot? And Why Should You Care?

November 15, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Ginette Mathiot wrote books that bring up long-lost taste memories in France, much as Marcel Proust’s oft-quoted prattle about about madeleines. Only her work proves infinitely more readable and enjoyable. She also basically sticks it to Julia and makes French cooking seem less like a prolonged session at the dentist’s. One of her books, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie, appeared in an English translation on bookshelves on November 5, 2011. It’s a book that just might crack open the mysteries […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Butter, Cookbooks, Cookies, France, French Cooking • Tags: Book Reviews, Chocolate & Zucchini, Clotilde Dusoulier, Cookbooks, Cookies, Dorie Greenspan, France, French cuisine, Ginette Mathiot, Je Sais Cuisiner, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie

1
MacLean Unquenchable

Unquenchable: Natalie MacLean’s Terrific New Book on Wine

November 7, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If, like me – overwhelmed by the hundreds of possible choices in front of you at the grocery store or local wine shop – you’ve ever stood in front of the endless shelves of stunning wine bottles and felt like just closing your eyes and grabbing a bottle, any bottle (preferably one on the lower shelves where the price stickers read below $10 a bottle), then, you’re going to just love Canadian wine writer Natalie Maclean’s new book, Unquenchable: A […]

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Germany, Italian Cooking, Italy, Wine • Tags: Book Reviews, Château de Roquefort, M.F.K. Fisher Award, M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, Natalie MacLean, Peter Mayle, Provence, Rosé, Unquenchable, Wine

Katish Our Russian Cook

A Russian Cook

December 18, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Another good appetizer is stewed white mushrooms, with onion, you know, and bay leaf and other spices. You lift the lid off the dish, and the steam rises, a smell of mushrooms … sometimes it really brings tears to my eyes! ~~Anton Chekov, “The Siren” With the publication of Gourmet magazine beginning in 1941, stories about cooks appeared sporadically, including a series on Katish, a Russian cook from the childhood one of Gourmet’s writers. Wanda L. Frolov compiled the articles […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Food writing, Mushrooms • Tags: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooks, Katish, Mushrooms in Sour Cream, Russia, Russian cuisine, Wanda Frolov

2
DSC00562

Christmas Cheer, or, Fire Up the Reindeer

November 27, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Black Friday marks the first “official” day of Christmas, er, shopping, that is. (You know it’s almost Christmas when the day after Halloween, the grocery stores start hauling out the red ribbon and fake mistletoe.) A bit premature, but that’s cultural change for you. Used to be that you couldn’t find a bit of tinsel or a reindeer before Thanksgiving was over. But Advent and Christmas will soon be upon us, along with visions of sugarplums and plenty of reindeer.  […]

Categories: American Cooking, Book Reviews, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, United States • Tags: Black Friday, Book Reviews, Christmas, Christmas Cookbook, Cookbooks, John Clancy, Mimi Sheraton, Reindeer

2
Photo copyright Nancy Crampton

La Toussaint:* The Saints and Souls Who Preserve Us

November 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A novel about an arrogant food critic could only happen in France. Bien sûr! Some time ago, I set myself the challenging and Sisyphean task of reading Muriel Barbery’s first novel, Une gourmandise, in French.  (Barbery’s reputation rests on her extremely philosophical second novel — The Elegance of the Hedgehog [what a title!], which took France by storm. The heavy larding of the text with academic philosophical bits proved to be the downfall of many American readers. But not all.) […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Food writing, French Cooking, Lit & Food • Tags: All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day, Book Reviews, France, French Cooking, Gourmet Rhapsody, Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

4
Halloween ghoulish goodies

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Ghoulish Goodies

October 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Check this out — a recent cookbook all about Halloween, for kids young and old: Ghoulish Goodies: Creature Feature Cupcakes, Monster Eyeballs, Bat Wings, Funny Bones, Witches’ Knuckles, and Much More! (Frightful Cookbook), by Sharon Bowers (2009). Eat, drink, and enjoy the creepy yuckiness of Monster Eyeballs, Chocolate Spider Clusters, Buried Alive Cupcakes, and Screaming Red Punch. In her colorful collection of frightful foods, Sharon Parrish Bowers shares the fun of baking, decorating, and indulging in delicious treats that celebrate […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Food News, Halloween • Tags: All Souls' Day, Book Reviews, Day of the Dead, Ghoulish Goodies, Halloween, Sharon Bowers

Goat Song

Goat Song: Romancing the Pastoralism (Not)

September 7, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

People today seek a connection with the earth in many ways. The shape of that seeking takes many forms. First it was buying a house in Tuscany, making dreams of Paradise concrete. Or at least set in rough stone. Now it seems to be goat-herding and cheese making. Truthfully, there’s something about herding that calls up the pastoralism that birthed all of us, although we tend not to remember that in our frantic day-to-day rush to connect to something, anything, […]

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Books • Tags: Book Reviews, Brian Kessler, Goat Song, Goats, Herding

1
Fresh

Fresh: A Look at the Meaning of Freshness and the Refrigeration Revolution

June 15, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A review of Susanne Freidberg’s Fresh: A Perishable History (Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2009) The debate continues on the local foods argument … To listen to many food activists talk these days, one would think that for dinner — up until now — most people just simply stepped outside their doors and plucked fresh leaves and herbs and slaughtered one of the many chickens clucking around in the dirt. Susanne Freidberg’s Fresh: A Perishable History (Belknap Press of Harvard […]

Categories: American Cooking, Book Reviews, Locavores • Tags: Book Reviews, Eat Local, Fresh: A Perishable History, Locavores, Susanne freidberg

Meat McLagan

Reveling in Books: Fresh, Bones, Fat, and Meat

June 10, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Like Susan Bourette in Meat: A Love Story My Year in Search of the Perfect Meal (did she get this subtitle from Roy Andries de Groot, a food writer popular in the sixties and seventies who wrote In Search of the Perfect Meal (1986)?), many people temporarily eschew meat at some point in their lives. And, as Bourette herself did, they return to eating meat. With gusto. Those of us who, like Bourette, relish meat (but don’t like the conditions […]

Categories: American Cooking, Beef, Book Reviews, Cookbooks • Tags: Bones, Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Jennifer McLagan, Meat, Susan Bourette, Susanne freidberg

1
Mob cap

Reveling in Books: The Garden Cottage Diaries

June 8, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Most of the time, I judge food by its looks and books by their covers. Sorry, but give me a little art, a bit of color, and a mob cap any day of the week. Mob cap? Take the cartoon-like cover of The Garden Cottage Diaries for example. Like a magnet, this visual rendition of a locavore’s dream popped the romantic in me right into the scene:  an intrepid woman wearing a mob cap digs in the ground with a […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, English Cooking, Gardens, Scotland • Tags: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cottage Garden Diaries, Culinary History, Eat Local, English Cooking, Fiona J. Houston, Locavore, Scotland

rulman-ratio

Michael Ruhlman’s “Ratio”

April 13, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When two elements combine and form more than one compound, the masses of one element that react with a fixed mass of the other are in the ratio of small whole numbers. ~~ Humphry Davy Although there are those who claim that they who know how to cook never need recipes, they actually follow recipes, whether written or not written. Recipes (ratios by another name) serve as guidelines and no one, no matter how accomplished in the kitchen, can dream […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Food Science, French Cooking • Tags: Book Reviews, French Cooking, Michael Ruhlman, Ratio

pierre-thiam

Yolele! Recipes from the Heart of Senegal

April 9, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor,* a good African cookbook is hard to find. And so when such a book appears,  the bubbly comes out and the music crescendos. Senegal-born Chef Pierre Thiam wrote the first cookbook on Senegalese food, Yolele! Recipes from the Heart of Senegal,  and ended up nominated for a prestigious IACP (International Association of Culinary professionals) award. Alas, this year someone else won, but that doesn’t really make much difference. As the chef said in an interview, his […]

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Cookbooks • Tags: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Pierre Thiam, Senegal, Yolele

2
pie-global-history-clarkson

Pie in the Sky: A Review of Janet Clarkson’s “Pie: A Global History”

March 31, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

You will eat, bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. ~~ Joe Hill*, “The Preacher and the Slave” chorus, 1911 Everybody knows what pie is, right? Wrong, and Janet Clarkson (The Old Foodie) tells us why in her dazzling new book, Pie: A Global History (Reaktion Books, London, 2009). Clarkson brings pie history all together under one crust, as it were, sort […]

Categories: American Cooking, Book Reviews, Chocolate, Pies--Sweet, Recipes • Tags: Book Reviews, Chocolate, Food, Janet Clarkson, Pies, Recipes

8
stuffed-by-cardello

Food History Isn’t Just Old Stuff

February 16, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Convenience in the kitchen, a state of affairs that most of our great-grandmothers would have killed for, snuck into food history about the time the Russians sent Sputnik into orbit. Science ruled, even in the kitchen. An interesting thing happened, though,  when everybody happily dove into easy-to-fix dinners and eating out. People started looking like the Michelin Tire guy and the Pillsbury Dough Boy rolled into one. In other words, America got fat. For the first time in human history, […]

Categories: American Cooking, Book Reviews, Food News • Tags: Book Reviews, Hank Cardello, Obesity, Stuffed

platter-of-figs

The Washington Post on Best Cookbooks (Gifts) of 2008

December 22, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

An interesting and REAL list (for the most part) of cookbooks for serious and not-so-serious home cooks. Some of the 18 titles anointed and blessed  by The Post include: A Platter of Figs, by David Tanis (So popular right now that it can’t be had from any of the big online — or local — stores.) Summer on a Plate, by Anna Pump and Gen LeRoy (The Hamptons, yeah, Loaves & Fishes shop food) Outstanding in the Field: A Farm […]

Categories: Beans, Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Recipes, Soup • Tags: Beans, Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Soup

feast-of-the-seven-fishes

Feast of the Seven Fishes (La Festa dei Sette Pesci)

December 21, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If you like comic books, graphic novels, and cartoons, you’ll love Feast of the Seven Fishes: The Collected Comic Strip & Italian Holiday Cookbook. Let the author himself tell you what the book’s all about: “All I wanted to do was write a little romantic comedy about my family cooking fish on Christmas Eve. Little did I know what I’d unleashed – an acclaimed graphic novel, a festival, a movie – and now a blog – dedicated to keeping the […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Christmas, Italian Cooking • Tags: Book Reviews, Calamari, Christmas, Food, Italian Cooking, Squid

milk

MILK: That Old White Magic

December 16, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[Note: Ironically, I just came across this December 15, 2008 NPR interview with Anne Mendelson:  "A Culinary History of Milk Through the Ages." The NPR story includes a recipe for Apple-Onion Cream Soup.] Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, with 120 Adventurous Recipes that Explore the Riches of Our First Food, by Anne Mendelson (Alfred A. Knopf. 338 pages. $29.95). When it comes to writing about food, Anne Mendelson is no slouch. A southeastern Pennsylvania native, Mendelson […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Critic's Corner, Food Columns, Milk • Tags: Anne Mendelson, Book Reviews, Cooking, Food, Milk

1
mrs-charles-darwins-recipe-book

Mrs. Charles Darwin’s Recipe Book

December 6, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Nearly everyone on the planet, or at least those with access to education — unfortunately many areas of the world and even this country lack miserably in the teaching of the young — will know the name of Charles Darwin, as the blurb below allows. Now, maybe  some people don’t buy into the theory of evolution,  but the fact of the matter is that the issue is here to stay. And perhaps convince and persuade doubters as more and more […]

Categories: Beef, Book Reviews, English Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Book Reviews, Charles Darwin, Cookbooks, Cooking, Cooks, Emma Darwin, Food, Recipes

3
entertaining-from-ancient-rome-to-the-super-bowl

Let Me Entertain You … A New Food Encyclopedia Bellies Up to the Shelf

December 1, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl: An Encyclopedia might not grab you with a catchy, seductive title, but it’s a new and welcome addition to the food history literature. Published by Greenwood Press and edited by two respected culinary historians — Melitta Weiss Adamson (Food in Medieval Times, Medieval Dietetics, Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe, Food in the Middle Ages) and Francine Segan (Shakespeare’s Kitchen, Movie Menus, The Philosopher’s Kitchen, Opera Lover’s Cookbook), Entertaining journeys through the tables […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Food News • Tags: Book Reviews, Culinary History, Encyclopedias, Food

food-culture-in-sub-saharan-africa

Out of Africa: Review of “Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa”

July 31, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Say “African food” and most people visualize a cartoon with two missionaries boiling in a black iron pot in the middle of a jungle clearing. That’s the “Dark Continent” picture, deeply rooted in the West’s persistent attitude of colonialism toward Africa. Or, instead, they “see” stick-thin children sprawled out on their mothers’ laps, listless, flies swarming everywhere.

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Critic's Corner • Tags: Africa, Book Reviews, Food, Fran Osseo-Asare, Sahel

1

Post navigation

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.

My book, due out September 15, 2013

Looking for Something? SEARCH

What’s Cookin’ Here

  • Moonstruck, a Meditation on Earth’s Moon
  • The Grocery List: Color, Primates, and Food Selection
  • A Bare Table is Like an Artist’s Canvas
  • “Stew’s so comforting on a rainy day.” *

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 416 other followers

On the home page, click on the pictures to go to the posts. Or click the little boxes in the upper right-hand corner to display posts and first paragraphs.

What We’re Talkin’ About Here

Africa All Souls' Day American Cooking Art Barack Obama Bibliographies Book Reviews Bread Christmas Cookbooks Cooking Cooks Cuisine Francaise Culinary History Day of the Dead Eggs England English Cooking Fish Food Food History Food Photography France French Cooking French cuisine Gardens Haiti Halloween Herbs India Italian Cooking Italy Julia Child M. F. K. Fisher Monasteries Monks Morocco Mushrooms Paris Photography Provence Recipes Southern cooking Virginia White House

Who’s visiting?

Beautiful Blogger Award

Reader Appreciation Award

Blog at WordPress.com. Theme: Customized Gridspace by Graph Paper Press.
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 416 other followers

Powered by WordPress.com