A Literary Culinary Journal
Americans, more than any other culture on earth, are cookbook cooks; we learn to make our meals not from any oral tradition, but from a text. The just-wed cook brings to the new household no carefully copied collection of the family’s cherished recipes, but a spanking new edition of Fannie Farmer or The Joy of Cooking.–John Thorne, American food writer
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Chartres makes for an easy, affordable weekend jaunt. There is no lack of things to do.
The Gothic cathedral is of course, the main thing to see, and you can spend 2 days just exploring that.
The cathedral itself, both inside and out, is truly one of the wonders of the world. The crypt includes a Romanesque church on top of which the cathedral was built, Roman ruins, an old Druid well, and a gallery that was probably used by the Druids to worship Bellissima, and later converted into a chapel dedicated to the Mother and Child of Chartres (it is said that the Druid goddess Bellissima also held a baby in her arms, although in a different position from the classic Christian manner).
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by Shelly Butcher
Like many people with an interest in food, I am forever buying cookbooks. Packages from Amazon, Abebooks and Alibris make me giddy.
Photos by Adolfo Delci. They depict Jewish women of Pitigliano (Machlin's hometown) preparing matza.
It’s not the anticipation that excites me — I know what the package contains as I’ve ordered it myself. Rather, it’s the world contained within each book that sparks my curiosity — recipes I hadn’t imagined, food traditions from the “old country,” combinations of flavors and ingredients at once foreign and yet faintly familiar.
My most recent acquisition is as dear to me as an old friend. I could hardly contain myself as I ripped open the cardboard packaging and removed the delicate white tissue paper that wrapped The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews, by Edda Servi Machlin.
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If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.–Fernand Point (1897-1955)
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Cooking is an art and patience a virtue… Careful shopping, fresh ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing — love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist — not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh, the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love.—Quote by Keith Floyd, “A Feast of Floyd”
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by Christophe Certain
Recipe translated and adapted by Jonell Galloway
Click here for French version
Tajine or tagine, as the Berbers call it, is a oven-stewed dish baked in a heavy clay pot. It is found in North African cuisines, in particular in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.
The name “tajine” actually refers to the clay pot in which it is cooked, because it has a very particular shape. The bottom part is flat and circular with low sides. The cover is dome-shaped and rests inside the base while baking. A tajine dish is usually painted or glazed and is quite decorative, so it can put directly on the table.
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by David Downie
Many wine lovers know that in the Middle Ages monks at the abbey of Cluny in southern Burgundy perfected the art of winemaking. But few outside the region have heard of Rector Eumenus’ speech in 312 AD to Emperor Constantine at Augustodunum, today’s Autun. Even locals don’t realize that fine wines were being grown in Constantine’s day on the limestone hills of the Côte d’Or.
Eumenus extolled in particular the vineyards of a pleasant village called Belenos, on the Roman road from Lyon to Paris, in the sunwashed Sâone River Valley. Still the capital of winegrowing in Burgundy, modern Belenos, better known as Beaune, hosts more wineries within or near its medieval ramparts than any mere mortal—except, perhaps, Robert Parker—could reasonably discover in anything less than a three-day visit.
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by Christina Daub
My name is Tina and I’m a chocoholic. Note I did not say recovering. I have no plans to recover. Once as a teenager, I tried to OD on chocolate. I thought this might cure me. Nope. Au contraire. It only made me want more, more, more.
As I matured quality replaced quantity and I began the search for each locale’s best chocolate. This column details some of my findings. As you well know fine chocolate is expensive, which is as it should be. It makes each nibble matter. Each lick and inhalation. If I am going to spend $X per piece, I want to be wowed, unable to speak, incapable of describing the bliss as it spreads through my taste buds.
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Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
