Gherkins & Tomatoes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

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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Bread and jam 1

The Little Red Hen had a Point: The Tao of Baking Bread

November 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cooking, Photography • Tags: Baking, Bread, Photography

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France HUGE baguette old picture

Telling Stories, About French Bread

August 24, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Even years later, long after someone took this photo, I can see this young boy – I’ll call him Jacques –  standing in the street, lugging his heavy basket made of tree branches, no doubt the same ones that Jacques’s father might use on the poor boy’s legs if he doesn’t sell all the bread that day. Look at his shoes, it’s hard to tell, but is one of the soles higher than the other? And his toes, poking out […]

Categories: Bread, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Elliott Erwitt, France, French Cooking, Photography

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Strasbourg in the Cold (Used by permission.)

Bringing Home the Bacon … and the Onions and the Cheese: Tarte Flambée, Flammekueche, or Alsatian Pizza Bread

December 18, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One cold, rainy day in October, I sat in front of a fireplace in a  small weinstub, or bistro, in Strasbourg, France, listening to my growling stomach. I couldn’t face another round of choucroute, that heavy Alsatian ode of love to the pig and the cabbage. On the greasy menu, fingerprints from previous guests clearly visible on the laminated plastic, one dish stood out: Flammekueche, also known as “Tarte Flambée.” I ordered it. And a bottle of Alsatian Riesling, never […]

Categories: Food writing, French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Alsace, Bacon, Bread, Cuisine Francaise, Culinary History, Flammekueche, Food, Food History, France, French Cooking, Tarte Flambee

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French cooks cheese bread Paris 2011

Food First, First Things

October 4, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

After a long day flying, and given the “food” served on the airplane, the first order of business when I arrived in Paris included real food. I needed to drop my bags in the apartment and seek sustenance. Quick. (Actually, after taking the RER from Charles DeGaulle airport to the center of Paris, through the banlieues that François Maspero wrote about in Roissy Express: A Journey Through the Paris Suburbs, I snapped a picture of my “new” (and  quite decent) kitchen. […]

Categories: Cheese, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Cheese, France, Olive bread, Paris kitchens, Pavé d'Auge

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Sunset at Ramadan in Morocco (Used by permission of David Young.)

RAMADAN KARIM — The Fast

July 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(I wrote this several years ago and include it here as a tribute to the Moroccans I knew then and to all the people who will begin fasting for Ramadan starting on Monday, August 1. Note that while Paula Wolfert’s cookbook, Couscous and Other Good from Morocco, seems to be cited everywhere, Kitty Morse — who grew up in Morocco — has also written a number of excellent books on Moroccan cuisine.) Manage with bread and butter until God sends the […]

Categories: Bread, Morocco, Recipes • Tags: Agadir, Ait Baha, Anti-Atlas, Bread, Cooking, Fasting, Food, High Atlas, Morocco, Peace Corps, Ramadan, Recipes

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Panis gravis, or Bread, Endless Nurturer

March 23, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A whole world dwells within each tiny  seed. Of porridge,  of bread, of love it whispers – in all these lies the promise of wheat. With it all comes both the caress of crumbs and the sour stink of brown bread and garlic, the pain of brokenness … and the bitter bread of exile. But yet there’s this … In the beginning, the pure green frenzy of genesis, sprouting skyward. And then, suddenly, fields swaying in the wind, like breakers […]

Categories: Bread, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Cuisine Francaise, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, Meditations, Pain de France

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Water, the Essence of All

March 21, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Begin with a washing of hands, cleansing and purifying, before approaching the stove, as to an altar. Pouring water into a pot, do you remember the source? Rain, clouds, rivers, streams, lakes, oceans … Transformation, from elements and compounds and chaotic matter to life. Essence. Alchemy. In your hands, a cook’s hands, water shape-shifts into magical forms: liquid, gas, solid. Water … Boils, blanches, poaches, simmers, steams, freezes … Water … Becomes soup. Steam … Becomes tamales. Ice … Becomes […]

Categories: Bread, Eggs, Photography, Soup • Tags: Acquacotta, Bread, Meditations, Photography, Soup, Water

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Panis focacius, la Gibacié, and la Pompe à l’huîle, Kin Under the Crust, One of the Thirteen

December 6, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Christmas cakes were baking, the famous pompou and fougasse, as they were called, dear to the hearts of the children of old Provence. ~~ Christmas in Legend and Story A Book for Boys and Girls I’ve always loved the “Jacob’s Ladder” look of fougasse. The lacy leaf-like lattice reminds me of the connection between bread and art, with that unspoken tie to pagan sacrifice, manifested in people- and animal-shaped holiday breads and sweets. And, not surprisingly, fougasse is one of the […]

Categories: Bread, Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Olives • Tags: Bread, Christmas, Cuisine Francaise, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, La pompe à l'huîle, Pain, Treize Desserts

Fougasse mosaic

Idylls of Cuisine, #91

December 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Bread, Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Food Photograohy, Fougasse, France, French Cooking, Provence, Thirteen Desserts

French Bread of a Different Stripe

November 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Bread, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Bread, Cuisine française. Pain, France, French bread, French Cooking

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french-food-cest-la-merde

Another Last Word on French Cuisine and UNESCO’s “Intangible Cultural Heritage” Program

November 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The recent inscribing of  ”intangible cultural heritage” status  to “the French gastronomic meal” by UNESCO brought both cheers and jeers to the table. As I wash my hands and get out my Le Creuset terrine baker for the paté de campagne en croûte for Thanksgiving appetizers, I’d like to share a quote with all of you about French cuisine, at least as it exists in the incarnation rewarded with the UNESCO designation: Although it may be commonly agreed, and not by […]

Categories: Cooking, Food News, France, French Cooking • Tags: Bread, Butter, Cuisine Francaise, France, French cuisine, Intangible cultural heritage, Meilleur Ouvrier de France, Patrimoine mondial de l'humanité, Radishes, UNESCO, World Heritage Site

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Morocco bread

In Morocco, Bread is Life

July 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When the only bread you eat comes pre-sliced out of a plastic bag, it’s almost impossible to understand that “staff of life” saying so commonly applied to bread. George Orwell’s story of feeding bread to a hungry Moroccan worker pointed out the near reverence for bread in much of the world. And, in Morocco, bread indeed is the “staff of life.” Moroccan bread exemplifies the reason for the saying, as I learned, writing the following in a letter to the […]

Categories: Africa, Bread, Morocco • Tags: Bread, Morocco

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George Orwell

In Morocco — George Orwell, Bread, and Stirrings of Post-Colonialism

July 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

George Orwell spent the winter of 1938-1939 in Morocco, for reasons of poor health. Author of stinging commentaries on colonial imperialism [Full-text: Burmese Days (1934) and “Shooting an Elephant” (1936)], as well as 1984, Animal Farm, and Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell turned his blazing pen on French Morocco that winter. The following short passage comes from his essay, “Marrakech.” (Please remember that Orwell is writing a blistering indictment of colonialism, in spite of the way the […]

Categories: Africa, Bread, Morocco • Tags: Bread, Can the Subaltern Speak?, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, George Orwell, Marrakech, Morocco, Post-Colonialism

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Transforming Flour, Becoming Bread

June 18, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Putting bread in perspective. A photo essay accompanied by historical commentary. The baking of bread, one of much of  humankind’s most basic foods, transforms seemingly ordinary ingredients into the sublime, at times anyway (for exceptions, just think of black-burned toast or cannonball-consistency buns). Bread belongs more to the sacred than to the mundane. In the making and the analysis, we lose sight of the awe, the miracle of the raw, becoming nourishment. Yeast, bubbling with life, soon to perish in […]

Categories: Baking, Bread, Cookbooks, Recipes • Tags: Baking, Bread, Catharine Esther Beecher, Eliza Acton, Flax Seeds, Janet McKenzie Hill, John Harvey Kellogg, Recipes, Sunflowers Seeds, Whole-Grain Bread, William Henry Robertson. Cooks

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(Painting by Francisco de Zurburan)

At the Tables of the Monks: Daily Fare (Part III)

May 20, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fermentation provided a number of foods on the tables of medieval monks. Beer, cheese, wine, sausages all result from fermentation processes. While it is true that medieval monks invented none of these foods originally — the Romans made cheese, wine, and sausages and Norsemen enjoyed beer — the monks, after the fall of Rome, guarded the production processes in monastery kitchens and vineyards and smokehouses. And in doing so they improved upon the old tastes and created entirely new foods. […]

Categories: Beans, Bread, French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Bread, Cluny, English Monastic Life, F. A. Gasquet, Fava Beans, Francisco de Zurburán, Monasteries, Refectory

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yevtushenko

A Symbol of the Season

December 20, 2008 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Many years ago, I read A Precocious Autobiography, by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. One passage moved me to tears and I am sharing it with you this year, during this season symbolic of hope. In the darkness of winter, at least now in the Northern Hemisphere, we face the longest night, lighting candles and Christmas trees, and celebrating family and friends and love. In Moscow in 1944, Yevtushenko and his mother stood in a crowd of Russians, watching 20,000 German […]

Categories: Christmas, Russia • Tags: Bread, Christmas, Russia, Yevgeny Yevtushenko

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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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