A Literary Culinary Journal
I’ve admired Kulsum Kunwa’s wonderful mix of cutting-edge photography and traditional Indian dishes for a long while now, so I am thrilled to have her exhibit on The Rambling Epicure.
Kulsum is an Indian expat living in Kuwait and shares her love for Indian food and photography through her beautiful blog Journey Kitchen, sharing recipes and family stories, reliving the times she lived in India. She brings a little of India everywhere she goes.
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by Renu Chhabra
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.–George Eliot
Fall is a perhaps the earthiest of seasons. Crisp air, fallen leaves, and trees changing hues make it a season to savor before winter sets in. For me, it’s a pleasant reminder of the holiday season ahead. But most of all, fall brings us an abundance of harvest.
The first thing that comes to my mind is pumpkin – the good old orange ball, greeting us at farm stands and grocery stores. Big, small, mini, round, and some not so round — they all whisper, “Take me home with you!” How can you ignore these scrumptious beauties? Even though they are not the easiest of fruits to peel, if you can win that battle, there are endless ways to enjoy them, sweet or savory.
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XVIII . He who plays host without giving his personal care to the repast is unworthy of having friends to invite to it.—Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was a French lawyer and politician, and gained fame as an epicure and gastronome. His famous work, Physiologie du goût (Physiology of Taste), was published in December 1825. The full title is Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante; ouvrage théorique, historique et à l’ordre du jour, dédié aux Gastronomes parisiens, par un Professeur, membre de plusieurs sociétés littéraires et savantes. The book has never been out of print since it first appeared, two months before Brillat-Savarin’s death. Its most notable English translation was done by food writer and critic M.F.K. Fisher, who remarked, “I hold myself blessed among translators.” Her translation was first published in 1949.
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Prerna Singh runs the award-winning food blog Indian Simmer, which was a finalist in the prestigious Saveur Best Food Blogs this year. Her photos are at the same time sophisticated and rustic, giving a natural yet polished look to the simplest of foods. She grew up in India, but now lives in the U.S. with her husband and daughter.
Prerna uses a Canon 50mm f1.4 lens and photographs in natural light, occasionally using reflectors.
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by Tamar Chamlian
Cranberry harvest in New Jersey in U.S.
It’s autumn, a season when the color of much of nature goes red by default — vineyards, trees, Japanese oaks, Virginia creeper. Houseware and kitchen accessories — and even Starbucks — magically sells everything in red, even the paper cups. Except for cranberries, which are naturally red, and we have plenty of good reasons to eat them in abundance during the two months they are available, not just for their color, but for their taste and health benefits.
Here are five easy ways to incorporate cranberries into pretty much any dish you’re whipping up.
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Let the revolting distinction of rich and poor disappear once and for all, the distinction of great and small, masters and valets, of governors and governed. Since all have the same needs and the same faculties, let there be one education for all, one food for all.–François-Noël Babeuf, 1796
François-Noël Babeuf, known as Gracchus Babeuf (in tribute to the Roman tribunes of the people and reformers, the Gracchi brothers, and used alongside his self-designation “Tribune”), was a French political agitator and journalist of the revolutionary period.
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David Downie, our France and Italy correspondent, has just been interviewed by the American Library in Paris in one of the best interviews I’ve seen to date. “I’m an accidental Parisian: my early encounters with Paris in the 1970s left me wondering what all the commotion was about. Pompidou was playing Napoleon III—or Baron Haussmann—and the city seemed like one endless worksite, an experiment in brutalism, populated by people Sophia Loren once described as “Italians in a bad mood.” Click here to read on. 
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by Simón de Swaan
Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.–Voltaire, 1770
François-Marie Arouet, better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a writer, historian and philosopher of the French Enlightenment, famous for his wit and for advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state.
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Prerna Singh runs the award-winning food blog Indian Simmer, which was a finalist in the prestigious Saveur Best Food Blogs this year. Her photos are at the same time sophisticated and rustic, giving a natural yet polished look to the simplest of foods. She grew up in India, but now lives in the U.S. with her husband and daughter.
Prerna uses a Canon 50mm f1.4 lens and photographs in natural light, occasionally using reflectors.
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I am not a lover of sweets, in fact most of the time I dislike them, which is quite a handy thing for my figure.
Still, sometimes, nostalgia takes over. I remember my great aunt’s fresh coconut layer cake, with the layers stacked high like a cathedral, and how the white coconut reminded me of angel’s wings. I remember moist chocolate layer cakes from childhood birthday parties. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, popular when I was in college. As a little girl, how pretty the name “red velvet cake” sounded. Gingerbread with hot butterscotch sauce on a cold winter’s day, made by my best friend’s mother on Saturday afternoons.
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Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
