It’s a . . ? It’s a Brown Tomato
It’s a brown tomato. It came in a plastic box with half a dozen confreres at my local Wal-Mart in Mexico City. Inside it’s still brownish. Tastes fine. Disconcerting, a bit. It was new to me. But...
View ArticleHunger, Bread, Free Trade, and the Moral Consumer
Samuel Palmer, Gleaning for Wheat under a Harvest Moon, 1833 from Feasts and Festivals Sometimes things just come together. Last week I spent a good bit of time at a seminar on Nutritional...
View ArticleSesame Seed: From Mexico to the World
Just returned with a new jar of tahini from Café Jekemir, a delightful chain of Lebanese-Mexican coffee shops that have been in business since the 1930s here in Mexico City. Since most of the canned...
View ArticleCuisine and Language 7. Loan Words, Loan Ingredients
Linguists use the term loan words for terms borrowed from another language. Would this help clarify the discussion of what are popularly called “fusion cuisines?” The more I think about this term,...
View ArticleThe Japanese as a Wheat-Eating Nation
Sorry, folks. I hit the publish on this before I meant to. In any case an interesting story in Slate. I’d actually put the beginnings of the Japanese move to wheat at the beginning of the twentieth...
View ArticleThe Islamic Contribution to Mexican Cuisine
When Mexico’s leading writer, Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz, arrived in New Delhi in 1962 to take up his post as ambassador to India, he quickly ran across a culinary puzzle. Although Mexico and...
View ArticleWheat, Glorious Wheat: Borlaug100
One of the great things about working on “food” is that it’s such a huge and various subject. This past week I was lucky enough to be one of 700 people from 56 different countries attending the...
View ArticleThe Pizza Effect
I’d never heard of the pizza effect. That is, until Bob Lucky commented on my Cornish pasty post.* The Cornish pasty’s export to other parts of the world with emigrants, its transformation, and its...
View ArticleThe Indispensable Culinary Middlemen and Women
“I think we’ll use your handout in our staff training sessions,” said one of Rick Bayless’ team, without so much as a “by your leave.” Or a “may we?” “Hmm,” I thought, “that’s not right.” This was in...
View ArticleThe Red Brick Fish of Dublin
Pull up images of Dublin and you are apt to see the elegant white Georgian squares and government buildings. Very lovely they are too. It’s something of a relief, though, to leave this behind for the...
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