Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again. ~ Julia Child Everybody says it happens, yes. Love at first sight. It happens. I must concur―it was true, at least for me, when it came to cookbooks. The summer I turned fourteen, I fell hopelessly in love with the … More Discovering Cookbooks, a Memory
Sarah Rutledge’s cookbook, The Carolina Housewife, surprised me the other day. Try as I might, I could only find one recipe for pork in the whole book! “Ham Toast,” on page 75. I kid you not. “Meat” seems to be beef or veal. That’s it. Ms. Rutledge’s book did include a number of vegetable recipes, … More “To Fry Tomatoes”: Sarah Rutledge Mixes Up a Few New World Foods
Tomatoes, poisonous or aphrodisiac? That was the question lurking in the pot for quite some time after the Spanish and the Portuguese began their voyages to the New World beginning around the late fifteenth century and likely introduced the tomato (and other New World foods) to Europe and Africa. John Gerard, a renown herbalist and … More Day 5: Tomatoes – Celebrate American Food History
Writers throw out the words “African cooking” all the time. I know. I have written same words, to my great embarrassment. But stop and think about something for a moment. The term “African cooking” is just as ridiculous as calling the cooking of Europe “European cooking,” lumping together the cuisine of France with that of … More Peanuts and the Cooking of West Africa
My little brother took his first breath on a cold day in February, when doctors still made house visits and new mothers still spent days in the hospital. And that was good, as far as I was concerned, for during those 4 or 5 days that my mother lay exhausted in the maternity ward, I … More Tomato Sauce with Butter: Thinking About Marcella Hazan, My Nonna in Spirit
Fall can be a bittersweet time, a time to look forward to cool-crisp nights, hearty meat-and root-vegetable stews, and the smell of burning leaves, that is, you’re allowed to burn them where you live. On the other hand, the coming of fall and frost signifies the end of the growing season, and the beginning of … More With Time and Frost, Things Fall Apart
In keeping with the whole British colonial heritage story [See HERE and HERE for more], here’s a change of continents. From Africa to the Indian subcontinent. Chutney. Etymologically, the word entered English via Urdu ( چٹنی ), Hindi ( चटनी — caṭnī ), and Bengali (চাটনী) . Chutney is chutney is Major Grey’s mango chutney. … More MOVE OVER, MAJOR GREY
CYNTHIA D. BERTELSEN 
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