Epicurean Adventure: Cities in a Basket: Food Markets of the World

Published by Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rebecca Varidel

What better place to start an Epicurean Adventure than exploring the hub of any city — the food market.

Towns historically formed around the market centre. Farmers brought their produce to town to barter or sell, long before 20th-century industrialisation and long before we turned the fashionable 21st-century urban phrase ‘farmers’ market’. All around the world, food markets are still the bustling heart of local cuisine, and the best place to start your culinary holiday.

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Introducing Rebecca Varidel, a new Voice, a new column: Epicurean Adventure

Published by Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rebecca Varidel

Rebecca Varidel believes in the generosity of food and enjoys home and restaurant cookery that uses fresh local seasonal produce as its base.

Australian born and bred, Rebecca worked as a chef, in restaurants and later, cooked for the rich and famous in award-winning, private catering. Her latest endeavour is contributing editor for the popular food and travel website Inside Cuisine.

The 2011 Foodies Guide to Sydney says, “Rebecca Varidel seems to live a fortunate life. When she’s not quizzing celebrity chefs, she pops up at the best food parties, escapes to fabulous locations, or dissects a major foodie festival. Prize recipes from big name chefs only add to the caché.”

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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, February 18, 2011

Published by Saturday, February 19, 2011 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

For the first time I know what it is to eat. I have gained four pounds. I get frantically hungry, and the food I eat gives me a lingering pleasure. I never ate before in this deep carnal way… I want to bite into life and to be torn by it.–Anaïs Nin (1903 – 1977)

The daughter of Spanish composer Joaquin Nin, Anaïs Nin is most known for her diaries but she is also the author of numerous novels, poems and erotic short stories which were published after her death. In 1974 she was elected into the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

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Wild Woman on Feral Acres: How to Keep Eggs 4 Months Without Refrigeration

Published by Friday, February 18, 2011 Permalink 0

by Esmaa Self

Backyard hens are an integral part of our sustainability efforts here at Middleground Farm. I feed ‘the girls’ wild greens, table scraps and essential nutrient-rich gruel; in return they give us incredibly healthy eggs. Our free-range flock reduces the property’s bug population and we protect them from chicken predators. It’s a beautiful relationship, and one that blesses us all.

Select fresh, clean, unblemished eggs

Perhaps you’ve heard that happy hens lay eggs. While flock contentment is relatively easy to attain (simply provide food, water, shade, soil to scratch, safe spaces in which to lay eggs, roost and roam), I am here to tell you that there is a poultry discontent beyond human control.

Some hens are better layers than others and will vigorously produce eggs come what may. Others find it too taxing to lay when the mercury rises above 92° F or falls below 32° F. A few breeds lay through the molt and when days are short, but many do not. Nearly every mature hen will lay eggs in abundance during spring, so productive are they then your refrigerator may become overrun by eggs.

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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, February 17, 2011

Published by Thursday, February 17, 2011 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

Food is the most primitive form of comfort.—Sheila Graham

Sheila Graham was a notable gossip columnist and author during Hollywood’s “Golden Age” who met and became romantically involved with F. Scott Fitzgerald, an affair which she chronicled in her autobiography, Beloved Infidel: The Education of a Woman (1958, with Gerold Frank), a bestseller which was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr. Born in Britain, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen and died in Palm Beach, Florida, in November 1988 at the age of 84.

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Food Poetry: Green Beans, by Rod Jellema

Published by Thursday, February 17, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rod Jellema

Green Beans

The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine;
but you never can put beans into poetry. . . .
There is no dignity in the bean.

Charles Dudley Warner

1.

Spring-loaded vines
on tendrils
shinny up skinny
poles and
shoot for the sun.
Their leavings are
heart shapes that
pinch to life
small yellow curves
that plump
like the knuckles
on babies’ hands.
Each nub
lengthens down
to a green
velvet composure
that will curtsy
and sway in the wind.

2.

No need to slit the tight skin
down to its pearls. Just snap
the stem and bite. The coldest
spring water never rinses away
the holy scent of turned earth
slendered into a bean, that trace
it holds of wild green smoke.
Relaxed in steam and slathered
in buttery gold, each one of
these peasants, when summoned
to the royal red silk
banquet hall of your mouth
will loyally serve its fare,
presenting with quiet dignity
small mists of sweetgrass, pineroot,
peat, seawater, ancient stone.

Rod Jellema is Professor Emeritus of English and former Director of Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. His 2005 book, A Slender Grace won the Towson University Prize for Literature. Incarnality: The Collected Poems, which includes his reading of 26 of the poems on a CD, was published in October, 2010. Click here to go to his website.

Photo courtesy of Dreamstime.

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The Rambling Epicure is looking for food photographers who would like to exhibit their work

Published by Thursday, February 17, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

When I had the idea of covering the entire A to Z of food, including Food Art and Food Poetry, I never dreamed it would be such a success. Our readers love it, and are asking for more.

If you’re a food photographer and would like to exhibit your work in our Food Art section, please send your portfolio to jonell@theramblingepicure.com. And please do spread the word!

Below you can view the exhibitions of our two staff members, Alison Harris and Meeta Khurana Wolff.

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Les sept vies du pain / The 7 Lives of Bread: All the Bread in the World (English version)

Published by Wednesday, February 16, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

translated and adapted by Jonell Galloway

Click here for French version

All the Bread in the World

Good news: You don’t have to be French to love bread. Indians, Iraqis, Israelis, Egyptians, Peruvians, Greeks, and Germans are also fond of it. The truth is all peoples dwelling on this earth are “bread eaters”, if you accept the formula Homer used in the Odyssey. For Homer, the art of bread-making was the criterion for distinguishing those who were civilized from the others, the savage barbarians. But the Greek bard probably didn’t even know that the American Indians existed. The Indians did not sit around waiting for the arrival of the “civilized” to understand the value of arepa, cassava, tortilla and hallaca.

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Coming up later today, stand by!

Published by Wednesday, February 16, 2011 Permalink 0

A new food photo exhibition

English version of Jean-Philippe de Tonnac’s “Tous les Pains du Monde,” published in French this morning

New article by David Downie

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Les sept vies du pain / The 7 lives of bread : Tous les pains du monde (original French version)

Published by Wednesday, February 16, 2011 Permalink 0

Dictionnaire Universel du PainLes sept vies du pain / The 7 lives of bread : Tous les pains du monde (original French version)

de Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

Click here for English version

Tous les pains du monde

Vous n’avez pas besoin d’être Français pour apprécier le pain. Les Indiens, les Irakiens, les Juifs, les Egyptiens, les Italiens, les Péruviens, les Grecs, les Allemands en sont friands, autrement dit tous les peuples de « mangeurs de pains », selon la formule qu’utilise Homère dans l’Odyssée pour distinguer ceux qui ont acquis l’art de la panification des autres, sombres barbares. Probablement l’aède grec ignorait-il l’existence des Amérindiens. Ceux-là ne l’ont pourtant pas attendu pour apprécier l’arepa, la cassave, la tortilla, le hallaca.

Mais même les nouveaux venus, peuples récemment convertis à la panification, ne tarissent pas d’éloges à propos des mérites du pain à mie ou à croûte. Car il faut choisir son camp. Sachez, en effet, que la véritable « ligne Maginot » dans le monde de la boulangerie universelle est celle qui sépare les amateurs de « pain à croûte », les Latins, des amateurs de « pain de mie », les Anglo-saxons et que la compétition est très largement en faveur des seconds. Raison pour laquelle, même en France, Mecque du pain à croûte (obtenue grâce à la réaction de Maillard), les consommateurs ont tendance à réclamer un « pain pas trop cuit ». Ce qui irrite par dessus tout notre spécialiste du french bread, l’historien Steven L. Kaplan, bien connu pour ses coups de gueule.

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