September 21, 2024 | The Rambling Epicure

A Taste of Paris, by David Downie

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, December 27, 2017 Permalink 0

A History of the Parisian Palate

A Taste of Paris is a delicious promenade through the Paris of times past and present with David Downie, guide par excellence. History and the senses are intertwined as Downie leads us through the City of Lights he knows so intimately, with many an unexpected turn, making it a suspenseful story that unravels the preconceived ideas we’ve woven about the history of French cuisine. Downie is not a tourist who spends a few weeks in Paris a year. He has dedicated his career to French gastronomy and Parisian history and is one of today’s foremost authoritative voices on these subjects. While this is a most entertaining French food history, it is much more. You come away understanding how and why this grande cuisine rose to such heights. Like the ancient Romans, the French, with all their pomposity and refinement, have a very sensual, down-to-earth relationship to life and land, and hence to food. This is a 12-course feast of words, and I wouldn’t skip a single dish.

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Our Rambling Epicure Book-a-Month Club discussed the book at length in November.

Pumpkin and Anchovy Pudding

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, December 27, 2017 Permalink 0

I baked my “yellow pumpkin,” my zucca gialla, which the greengrocer recommended as being the sweetest for my baked pumpkin pudding. While pulling out the seeds and flesh with my fingers, I noted some little hard, dark bits, so I pulled them out as best I could, all the time thinking it strange that they were there. When I went to my cutting board to get the chopped anchovies to add to my liver pâté, they were gone. I had kneaded them into my pumpkin. This may be the beginning of a new and improved (?) pudding. Some people like sweet and savory together, right?

Venetian Hours: Window into the Past

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, December 15, 2017 Permalink 0

Canal window fenestra façade Venice Venezia

by Jonell Galloway

We all have to let off steam from time to time. I do it through words, sometimes harsh, sometimes sweet; Venice does it through windows and steam-pipes.

Hand-shaped bricks were laid onto this marshland over a thousand years ago and still stand, the alder wood foundation stakes digging deep to reach the bottom sands of this shallow lagoon.

This wall tells a tall story, filled in over the centuries with newer bricks and stones, later covered with plaster, itself now crumbling with age, like family stories that change tones with the times and are embellished with black or white lace as we choose. Windows were carved out, later filled in and plastered over. A small window inside the older, larger one — for ventilation? — now itself bricked in, a simple steam pipe serving the purpose of ventilation today. It reminds me of that story about my great great grandmother who was kidnapped by an Indian chief for her beauty and the posses went out to look for her. It’s changed several times during my short lifetime, and I asked my mother: “maybe it was she who ran off with the Indian chief?” My imagination could go wild.

New-green plants nestle up close to darker, old ones. A half-timber overhang at the top recalls that Venice is in so many ways the door to the East and a city where old and new, East and West, uninhibitedeness and reservedness, have always lived comfortably alongside each other despite the natural elements being against her. I could study this façade for the rest of my life, unfolding its timeworn story, imagining the joy and the agony that went on behind this wall. Venice remains a city full of mystery, even after all these years of snuggling up tight with her.

Italian Hours: Struffoli in New Haven

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, December 14, 2017 Permalink 2

Long Lost: The Archeology of an Italian-American Family and its Struffoli

by Jocelyn Ruggiero

I’m flipping through a thirty-year-old community cookbook by the Saint Ann Society of St. Michael’s Church in New Haven, Connecticut, when a recipe for struffoli, the Italian pastry, catches my eye. Crispy on the outside and cakey on the inside, these marble-sized balls of dough are first deeply fried in vegetable oil, then drenched in warm honey laced with tangerine peels. Every year at Christmas time, they are served piled high in a mountain of sticky goodness. And for me, struffoli are inextricably tied to my great Aunt Chris.

I tasted her struffoli just once, when I was very young. I sit on a green and gold velvet couch in the living room of another great aunt, from another side of my family. I place the struffoli in my mouth in bunches. They are sweet and syrupy. I know, because my father told me, that my Aunt Chris made them, and that they are special.

struffoli Italian Neopolitan Christmas fritters

BOOK REVIEW: BAKING POWDER WARS

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, November 13, 2017 Permalink 0

BOOK REVIEW: BAKING POWDER WARS

by Margie Gibson

Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking, by Linda Civitello

If baking powder doesn’t seem substantial enough to merit an entire book, that’s only because its history and background have not been widely explored and remain generally unknown. Linda Civitello’s carefully researched book has finally opened a window onto a fascinating subject and era in U.S. history. The book is interdisciplinary in nature, shedding light on the science and chemistry behind baking powder, the international exchange of ideas and scientific knowledge that enabled the powder’s development, the history of chemical leavening agents, politics and corruption, suspicion of foreigners (in this case, Germans), and insights into the role baking powder played in the economic history of the U.S., as well as marketing, feminism, and social issues.

I found especially interesting the book’s exploration of how baking powder revolutionized women’s lives, freeing them from the necessity of spending long hours kneading and baking bread for their families. The popularity of baking powder in the US also explains how baking styles here developed differently from European baking — U.S. cooks relied much more extensively on a chemical leavening action while more traditional European cooks relied on beating bubbles into the batter and using eggs as a leavening. This difference created new American baked goods such as cookies, quick biscuits, cobblers, and light, fluffy cakes.

Baking Powder Wars provides fascinating insights into a unique American product — insights that will change the way you look at a marvelous invention that we have too long taken for granted.

Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking, by Linda Civitello, University of Illinois Press

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/98ppx5cp9780252041082.html

Venetian Hours: Bistrot de Venise

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, November 13, 2017 Permalink 1

Stained glass isn’t only for churches. It’s also for temples of cuisine like the Bistrot de Venise.

The Rambling Epicure Book-a-Month Club

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, September 11, 2017 Permalink 0

THE WINNER IS “WHAT SHE ATE” and we’ll start discussing it from September 15 to 30, 2017.

Click here to join.

In The Rambling Epicure threads, it’s become clear that many of us like reading about food as well as cooking it, eating it, talking about it. With that in mind, it seemed like a sort of “foodies’ book club” (with apologies to those who hate the word “foodie”) might be an interesting thing to try. Jonell has a ton on her plate right now, and I’m always looking for an excuse to avoid work, so I’ll start off by moderating, but that’s just for convenience and for the moment.

As a beginning, we thought we would suggest four books. Pick the one you’d most like to read and discuss, vote for it in the comments, and on Friday, September 1, we’ll announce a winner. We’ll give everybody time to acquire and read the book, and we’ll open things up to chat and argument on Friday, September 15 and continue until September 30.

If there are other books you’d like to suggest, that would be great. Please note them in the comments and I’ll keep a list, then we’ll run the most popular suggestions for the next cycle.

For this opening cycle, please vote for ONE of the following:

What She Ate, by Laura Shapiro
Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong
Start the Fire, by Jeremiah Tower (also available as California Dish, in an older, cheaper edition)
The Making of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman

Since this is our first attempt, please feel free to add any suggestions about dates, timing, books, and how might generally build this reading group together.

All these books are available as ebooks.

Click here to join.

Maggie Topkis

P.S. We are now taking suggestions for books for the next The Rambling Epicure Book-a-Month club in October.

Food and Wine Tasting Masterclass in Chartres

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, June 15, 2017 Permalink 0

Exploring the Food and Wine of the Beauce and the Loire Valley

Award-winning wine writer, James Flewellen, and Cordon Bleu-educated cook and food journalist, Jonell Galloway, present wine and food tasting masterclasses in the historic French city of Chartres. Comprising dedicated wine tastings, sumptuous meals made from local ingredients paired with regional Loire Valley wines and a unique, “sense-awakening” taste experience, our food and wine holiday courses will help unlock your taste buds and introduce the richness of aromas, flavors and textures present in food and wine.

Courses conducted in English
All lunches, dinners, and wine included
We use only the highest quality, locally-sourced produce and ingredients
Over 10 hours of professional food and wine tasting instruction
Taste over 20 (4-day course) different wines from the Loire Valley
Learn the art of food and wine pairing
Dine and learn in a 1,000-year-old converted chapel
Socialize with like-minded wine- and food-lovers
Experience the atmosphere of the Chartres Festival of Lights in a UNESCO World Heritage site
Guided city tour & collection from the station included

Click here for more details.

Dates for our 2017 masterclass are now confirmed:

Our signature 4-day Taste Unlocked masterclass costs €695pp and runs from 14–17 September, coinciding with the world-famous Chartres Fête de la Lumière.

James and Jonell are also available for bespoke tasting courses and events throughout the year for groups of 4 or more. Please contact us for more information.

Bordeaux wine museum complex has more than 425,000 visitors in first year of operation

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, June 15, 2017 Permalink 0

One year after opening to the public, the Bordeaux wine museum complex has welcomed 425,000 visitors from 150 countries.

Pari tenu pour la Cité du Vin à Bordeaux: un an après son ouverture au public, elle a accueilli 425.000 visiteurs de 150 pays et atteint

Source: La Cité du Vin a accueilli plus de 425.000 visiteurs en un an – Le Figaro Vin

France Revisited

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, June 15, 2017 Permalink 0

From Venice to Chartres

by Jonell Galloway

Venice is a memory. She is a magnet, pulling me forever into her depths, a cozy, labyrinthine nest I roost in, venturing into her damp, dark streets to come home to perch every evening. Venetian food is good, but not good enough to keep me there forever. Still, it was hard to leave her. She had become my best friend, the one I wanted to cuddle up with for the rest of my life.

Every time I set foot in Venice, I forget the rest of the world. I’d forgotten about crispy baguettes and sea-salt butter and unctuous raw-milk cream from Normandy that one can eat like yogurt. I’d forgotten that the history of “my” Chartres is as old or older than that of Venice, going back as far, we know, as the Druids and Romans.