* New Bibliography Available, on Southern Food & Cooking & Stuff

January 22, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I love books passionately, especially cookbooks and any books about food. Because of my current emphasis on foods and cooking and foodways of the American South – tied as all that is to social change and the influx of new population groups – I have created a small (to me) bibliography of books about the South and its ever-changing food. You will find the bibliography by clicking HERE, or by clicking on […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Books, Cookbooks, Libraries, Photography, Reference • Tags: Bibliography, Cooking, Cuisine of the Southern United States, Southern United States

The Saga of a Virginia Coal Town (Part 1): By the Sweat of Your Face You Shall Eat Bread, till You Return to the Ground, for Out of it You were Taken

December 13, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I wandered again to my home in the mountains, Where in youth’s early dawn I was happy and free. I looked for my friends, but I never could find them, I found they were all rank strangers to me. (Traditional bluegrass lyrics, “Rank Stranger”) As I drove along the winding roads toward the coal town of Pocahontas, Virginia, dilapidated trailers and several abandoned Victorian houses lined the way, their filigreed porches sagging under the weight of the wild brush, vines […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cabbage, Cooking, Food writing, Hungary, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Coal mining, Cooking, Hungarian Cabbage Roll, Immigrants, Photography, Pocahontas, Pocahontas Coalfield, Southern cooking, Southern Food, Virginia

Weaving the Ties that Bind, One Bite at a Time

October 8, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I stood by the wooden fence, peering over the barbed wire fringing it like a lace collar. For some reason, I couldn’t focus the camera lens clearly on the Holstein standing a few yards away. The cow gazed back at me, her jaws moving with the steady precision of a slow motor. When I stooped just a bit, I saw it clearly. But it wasn’t the cow in the viewfinder. No, the camera had zoomed in on an exquisite spider […]

Categories: Books, Cheese, Cooking, Food writing, Photography • Tags: Charlotte's Web, Cooking, Cows, E. B. White, Feta, Photography, Spider webs, Spiders

How Cooking Transforms the Aching Soul

September 12, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Living today’s hurry-up-run-run-run-faster-faster-text-text lifestyle tends to blunt contact with more earthy things, like cooking. The act of cooking offers something that the stiffest drink or most potent tranquilizer cannot. Dare I say it out loud? It’s even better than sex, in a way. Especially when chocolate is involved, but that’s another story … . For me, cooking offers a glimpse of the spiritual, but it’s also a calming and mindful activity. After all, I must be in the present moment […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Peaches, Photography, Pies--Sweet • Tags: Cooking, La Cucina, Lily Prior, Meditations, Peaches, Photography, Pies, Spirituality

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

Grow a Backbone! How to Deal with Illness and Culinary Exile*

August 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Being ill results in culinary exile, every bit as much as what occurs when that knock on the door comes at night, the jackboots pounding the stairs, or when torrential winds blow off the roof and streams of water turn streets into rivers filled with floating cars and lawn ornaments set adrift. Like other calamities of man and nature, being injured upends your life and propels you into a place you only know from nightmares. But in this case, there’s […]

Categories: Cooking • Tags: Cooking, Culinary exile, Illness

Ivan Day: Master Food Historian

February 25, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Those of you with a tremendous love of food history will be happy to know that Ivan Day blogs with all the beauty and erudite authority of his spectacular recreations of historical British food. (Yes, British food!) Take a look both his blog - Food History Jottings - and his regular Web site – Historic Food. You’ll love both.

Categories: Chefs, Cooking, English Cooking, French Cooking, Lit & Food • Tags: British Food, Cooking, Culinary History, Food History, French Food, Ivan Day

Let Me Count the Ways: St. Valentine’s Day 101 (Yes, There’s a French Connection)

February 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Remember the old shoeboxes for valentines in your grade school classroom? How you’d decorate your box with all sorts of frou-frous and hope the cute little boy (or the cute little girl) with the dimples would give you a valentine card, one of those mass-produced things? In school, at least, probaly no teacher ever told you why so much was made of Valentine’s Day. Right? In fact, the American way of celebrating St. Valentine’s day really began in the nineteenth […]

Categories: Cakes, Coconuts, Recipes, Southern Food • Tags: Cake, Claudius, Coconut Cake, Cooking, Feast Day Cookbook, Food, Geoffrey Chaucer, History of St. Valentine's Day, Juno Februata, Lupercalia, Recipes, Saint Valentine, St. Valentine's Day, Valentine Cards, Valentine's Day, Valentines

Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot

February 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A type of pot used during the colonial era, as well as in Victorian England in general, Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot served many purposes. Mrs. Beeton wrote of it, giving dimensions and prices, in her Book of Household Management. The pot closely resembles the couscousière, a pot used in North Africa for making couscous and familiar to the French there, and an Asian bamboo steamer, another utensil familiar to the French. Probably by means of this invention less food is wasted […]

Categories: Cooking, England, English Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lamb • Tags: Captain Warren's Cooking Pot, Colonial era, Cooking, Cooking equipment, Cookware, Culinary History, England, Food History

SUGARPLUM VISIONS: Christmas Cookies

December 20, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

…visions of sugarplums danced in their heads. ~~Clement C. Moore~~ ” ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” Happy Holidays to all readers and visitors to Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons et Tomates! I will “see” you again on January 2. ‘Tis soon the season to be jolly. And to bake cookies, the sugarplums of today. I’m about to head out to the kitchen to do just that right now. For many Americans, especially those of Northern European descent, Christmas without special […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies • Tags: Bibliographies, Christmas, Cookies, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, Gingerbread man, Recipes

December 12: The Virgin of Guadalupe

December 10, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Patron Saint of Mexico and the Americas Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that “…one may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe.” Apocryphal or not, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe makes fascinating reading. And the food’s pretty good, too, like most feast-day food tends to be. But first a little history. An Aztec convert, Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin*, first saw the Virgin […]

Categories: France, French Cooking, Mexico • Tags: Atole, Cooking, Culinary History, Food, Food History, France, French Cooking, Mexico, Recipes, Saints' Days, Virgen de Guadalupe, Virgin of Guadalupe

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

Boeuf Gras, or, Fat Bull = Fat Tuesday

March 3, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In 2011, the event takes place on March 3, thanks to a personal message from the Office of Tourism in Bazas. The day before Lent descends. With a litany of names. Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. Boeuf Gras. Shrove Tuesday.* Boeuf Gras? Symbol of the fattened ox, the last meat devoured before Lenten stringency took hold. With roots in the Minotaur and Labyrinth myth. What really drove the Lenten fast? And how did Boeuf Gras begin? During the Middle Ages, and […]

Categories: Festivals, French Cooking • Tags: Boeuf Gras, Bugnes, Carnival, Cooking, Fat Tuesday, Food, Lent, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday

Cooking with Saint-Pierre (John Dory)

February 23, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

As it fell on a holy-day, And vpon an holy-tide-a, Iohn Dory bought him an ambling nag, To Paris for to ride-a.* ~~ Child Ballad #284A: “John Dory” I first met John Dory at the open-air fish market in Rabat, Morocco. He’s a solitary soul. Doesn’t hang out too much with his own kind. And he goes by many names, John does: Saint-Pierre in France (also Poule de Mer, Sea-Hen, and Dorée), Gall in Catalonia, Gal in the French Midi, […]

Categories: Africa, Fish, France, French Cooking, Morocco, Recipes • Tags: Africa, Ballads, Child Ballads, Cooking, Fish, Food, France, French Cooking, John Dory, Louis Eustache Ude, Morocco, Recipes, St. Perre, The French Cook, William MacGillivray

Chartreuse and the Vallée du Désert: The Elixir of Life

February 16, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

While writing my brief “Gherkins & Tomatoes” blog post, “Cookbooks for a Desert Island, or an Autumn Afternoon,” I thumbed through de Groot’s book once more, swearing I would cook “Green Beans Sautéed in Cream” and “Potato Pancakes of the Mountains.” The price of peace and solitude has been unending struggle. ~~Roy Andries de Groot, The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth Every once in a while, a book speaks to my soul, over and over again. Roy Andries de Groot’s […]

Categories: Book Reviews, French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Chartreuse, Cooking, Cooks, Cuisine Francaise, Food, France, French Cooking, Recipes, Roy Andries de Groot

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

La Malbouffe, Oui ou Non? Fast (Ethnic) Food and the French

January 5, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If you saw the following headline  pop up on one of the many news feeds streaming into thousands of computers around the global, you might think, “Oops, some editor didn’t ingest their caffeine fix in time!” French Get the Taste for Fast [Ethnic] Food (Click on the link above to read the article that inspired this post.) Ah oui? The honest-to-goodness truth? A pita restaurant in Antwerp, Belgium scored a whopping 13 out of 20 points from the picky GaultMillau […]

Categories: France, French Cooking • Tags: Colette, Cooking, Fast Food, France, French colonial empire, French cuisine, Harissa, Immigrant cuisine, North African Cuisine, Paris, Recipes

Gifts of French Food: Blogs to Hold in Wonder

December 18, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With each gust of drafty air from the front door, the candles  shimmer, and the flickering light scintillates off blood-red wine glasses and the golden gilt rimming them. Your mouth rounds in an “O” as you see the table for the first time. The sight never fails to cast its spell as, for a brief  moment, the magic sweeps through you. All these small moments add up to the persistent memories looming over every Christmas Future. Yes, you might have […]

Categories: Christmas, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Christmas, Cooking, France, French cuisine, French Food Blogs, Lucy's Kitchen Notebook, MyFrenchKitchen

Nougat Noir, or Black Nougat, Another of the Thirteen Desserts

December 9, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A Provençal gros souper (Christmas Eve dinner) would not be correct without some nougat noir to challenge the skill of your dentist and possibly lay waste to your dental work. In other words, nougat noir can be a bête [bite!] noire*, if you’re not careful. For nougat noir is a hard candy, not the pillowy stuff you might be thinking of. Several types of nougat exist, thanks to the Arabs and the enterprising people of sixteenth- century Montélimar in France. You will […]

Categories: Christmas, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Honey • Tags: Black Nougat, Christmas, Cooking, Cuisine Francaise, France, French Cooking, Nougat Noir, Provence, Thirteen Desserts, Treize Desserts

C’est Pas Foie Gras, Or, Liver Follies and Foibles

November 18, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I have a confession to make: I don’t really like liver. For one thing, the gamey taste lingers on the back of my tongue a tad bit too long. For another thing, the smell of liver frying in butter nauseates me. It’s enough to gag a goat. Don’t ask me why on earth I ended up cooking 20 pounds of goat liver one day in Haiti. It’s a long story. The abbreviated version sounds pleasant enough. I landed a job […]

Categories: Cooking, France, French Cooking, Pork, Poultry • Tags: Cooking, Foie Gras, Goat liver, Haiti, Jane Grigson, Michael Ruhlman, Pâté

FRANCE — HOW THE LOVE AFFAIR BEGAN*

November 12, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. ~ Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude ~ “We began our lunch with a half-dozen oysters on the half-shell. I was used to bland osiers from Washington and Massachusetts, which I had never cared much for. But this platter of portugaises had a sensational briny flavor and a smooth texture that was entirely new and surprising. The oysters were served with rounds of pain de seigle, a pale rye bread, with a […]

Categories: French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Cooking, Cuisine Francaise, Food, France, French Cooking, Recettes, St. Jean Pied de Port

Disappearing Act: Will Centuries-Old French Fruits and Veggies Go the Way of the Dodo?

November 11, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

According to an article (in French) recently posted on the ASFS (Association for the Study of Food and Society) discussion list (a great list for people interested in food and culture in all their permutations), 25 — yes, 25 — familiar fruits and vegetables  — many that you might consider quintessentially French —  will soon disappear from France’s agricultural repertoire if recent production  rates  continue. Unfathomable as it is, the stark statistics tell a gloomy story for those of us […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Soup • Tags: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Cooking, France, Parsley, Parsley Root, Persil, Pottage, Soup, Soupe

Winter’s Leafy Greens: A Romantic History à la Française

November 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A few mornings ago, the pumpkins sprawling on my front porch sparkled with frost. And you know what that means. It’s time for some serious rustic cooking. (And I’d like to include a recording right here of someone yelling “Yippee!”) It’s time to turn to the hardy greens of winter, something that French cooks* use instead of the more delicate summer greens like butterhead lettuce or red oak. Somehow, and this might just be me, after September cold salad just […]

Categories: Beans, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Greens, Pork, Soup • Tags: Cooking, Cooking White Beans, Greens, La Varenne, Le Cuisinier François, Recipes, Soup, The French Cook

MORE THAN MEETS THE PIE

October 18, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

    The other day I saw another sign of autumn: a smashed pumpkin lying along the side of the road, pieces scattered like the crumbs in the forest that Hansel Gretel dropped on the way to the witch’s house. Pumpkins deserve more respect.  Think about it. Remember Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman, in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, who bashed poor Ichabod Crane with a carved pumpkin?  And year after year, pumpkins get to strut their stuff only in pies.  […]

Categories: American Cooking, Pumpkin, Recipes, Thanksgiving • Tags: Cooking, Food, Pumpkin, Recipes, Thanksgiving

Is Cooking Necessary?*

October 4, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

No, it’s not. That’s your immediate answer, isn’t it? After all, you’ve got more important things to do, don’t you? Or do you? You can live your life without cooking. You can go to your nearest grocery store and bypass all the technology and knowledge that took your ancestors centuries to refine. You can buy all the ready-made food you could ever eat. You can eat plastic food. And you’d survive, too. But, in spite of all that, well, and […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cooking, Local foods, Locavores, Recipes, Science of cooking • Tags: Community, Cooking, Empowerment, Fast Food, Local foods, Locavores

Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: The Other Mrs. (Abby) Fisher

September 13, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Before M. F. K. Fisher, sometimes known as plain Mrs. Fisher, there was Mrs. Abby Fisher. And Abby Fisher’s personage couldn’t be more different from M. F. K. Fisher than if a novelist like Flannery O’Connor dreamed her up. The author of what food historians long believed to be the first African-American cookbook,* Abby Fisher counted on others to actually write What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking in 1881.** As a former slave from South Carolina she went […]

Categories: American Cooking, Cookbooks, Corn, Recipes, Southern Food • Tags: Abby Fisher, African-American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, Cooks, Corn, Food, Recipes, Southern cooking

Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Patience Gray

September 6, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

HONEY FROM A WEED: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia, by Patience Gary (Harper & Row, 1987) Although Elizabeth David published the first truly popular English book on Mediterranean Food (1950), another author, the lesser- known English food writer and free-spirit, Patience Gray, wrote the more poetic works. Her Plats du Jour (1957), despite its French title, netted recipes from all the lands of the Mediterranean, mostly gleaned from books and such. Years later, she followed […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Mushrooms, Recipes • Tags: Cookbooks, Cooking, Cooks, Food, Mediterranean Cooking, Patience Gray

Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Edna Lewis

September 2, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Who was Edna Lewis? Why call her an American Idol? Before she wrote The Edna Lewis Cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, In Pursuit of Flavor, and co-authored that recent jewel of a book, The Gift of Southern Cooking with chef Scott Peacock, well, Edna Lewis did many things in her long, experience-rich life, including campaigning for Franklin Roosevelt. But she always cooked — what Southern girl from her background didn’t? After all, she was the granddaughter of freed slaves […]

Categories: Cakes, Recipes, Southern Food • Tags: Cooking, Cooks, Edna Lewis, Food, Malinda Russell, Mary Randolph, Southern Food

“Ginger Shall Be Hot i’ the Mouth Too”

August 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Sir Toby Belch: Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Clown: Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too. Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3. If anyone ever makes a movie about ginger’s long and fascinating history, I want Leonardo DiCaprio to play the lead.  Imagine him sporting a multi-colored pair of hose, leaping from bow to stern on a flimsy wooden caravel … Anyway, Shakespeare described […]

Categories: English Cooking, Food Columns, Ginger, Recipes • Tags: Chicken, Cooking, English Cooking, Fish, Food, Ginger

Not Your Mama’s Lettuce

August 16, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I don’t know about you, but I grew up with the ‘berg in the fridge, with a jar of Hellman’s on the side. That was as green as it got (and still gets) in my mom’s kitchen. Iceberg lettuce. Crisp, colorless, flavorless. Usually just a tired limp leaf garnishing a shrimp cocktail or stuck haphazardly in a sandwich, lettuce is one of those things taken for granted. A part of the landscape, so to speak. A piece of furniture. A […]

Categories: Greens, Recipes, Salads • Tags: Cooking, Food, Greens, Iceberg Lettuce, Lettuce, Mary Randolph, Salads, Southern cooking, The Virginia Housewife

Hamburger Heaven, or the Global Burger: A Medley of Recipes

August 9, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Hot weather does funny things to people, especially to cooks. Certain instincts crop up at about the same time that air conditioners crank up the juice. Primeval visions prevail, usually of smoldering coals and roasting meat, prompting the almost daily obeisance to that great American tradition, the summer barbecue grill. And summer just wouldn’t be summer without another American tradition — the barbecued hamburger sandwich. Originally a chopped beef gravy-covered patty characteristic of German cooking, the hamburger became a sandwich […]

Categories: American Cooking, Beef, Recipes • Tags: Beef, Cooking, Food, Grilling, Hamburgers, Labor Day, Summer Food

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

BY WAY OF AFRICA: Seafood on the Plate

August 5, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Africa, West “…with a legion of cooks, and an army of slaves.”–Lord Byron– Five hundred and eighteen years ago, an event occurred that changed the world in more ways than its perpetrator thought possible. Christopher Columbus’s voyages caused a collision of cultures, people, and foods on a scale never before seen in the history of mankind. With Columbus’s “discovery” of America, thousands upon thousands of people yet unborn were destined to become slaves. And many millions of people around the […]

Categories: Africa, Food Columns, Recipes • Tags: Acras, Africa, Cooking, Cooks, Food, Haiti

Coconut Groves and Coconut Dreams

August 3, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Columbus had no idea, of course, of the almost infinite ramifications of his voyages on the way future people would eat.” ‑‑Raymond Sokolov‑‑ Why We Eat What We Eat(1991) Trying to get the meat out of a coconut is like trying to pull a tooth without Novocain, a very painful process. I know—I tried to do the locavore thing once with a casual piña colada, wrestling with a coconut from my yard and nearly decapitating myself with a machete. As […]

Categories: Africa, Haiti, Recipes • Tags: Coconuts, Cooking, Food, Haiti, Recipes

Saffron: The Gold We Eat

July 29, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Once used as money instead of gold in Don Quixote’s Spain, saffron costs upwards of $1000 US per pound. Indeed, the world’s costliest spice.  Most likely you will not have ever seen saffron for sale in your local grocery’s spice department. Knowledgeable customers ask the store managers for it; they keep it behind the counter, safe from pilferers. Why do cooks desire saffron? Saffron lends an indescribable flavor to food. It also imparts a tenacious yellow color to anything it touches; […]

Categories: Beef, Recipes, Rice, Spices • Tags: Beef, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Rice, Saffron, Tagine

Idylls of Cuisine, #65

June 6, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Art, Cooking, Greece, Italy, Paintings • Tags: Art, Cooking, Greek Goddesses, Hearth, Hestia, Kitchen Gods, Roman Goddesses, Vesta

Idylls of Cuisine, #59

April 18, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

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

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Cooking, Photography • Tags: Africa, African Cooking, Children, Cooking, Food Photography, Refugees

Pass the Nostalgia, and Nix the Organics

April 14, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I’ll be blunt: I like my food with a heaping handful of nostalgic romanticism. Yes, there are those who claim that the present food landscape sparkles with the dreamy hue reminiscent of rose-colored glasses, that the perfume of nostalgia permeates too much of present-day “discourse” on food. And then there’s the flip side of that discourse — I hate that word, so pompous, nay, plump with the moral sensitivities of a Cotton Matheresque preacher — the self-righteous guilt-producers crusading to […]

Categories: Books, Cookbooks, Critic's Corner, Editorials, Food writing, Paintings • Tags: Alice Waters, Cooking, M. F. K. Fisher, Michael Pollan, Organics, Tangerines

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