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Israel-India: Food Wanderings: Jewish-Indian Fusion?
Malida, Sweetened Poha: Breakfast Cereal or Ceremonial Offering?
Introductions, please
Shulie: I am so pleased to be featured on The Rambling Epicure, this international, thought-provoking culinary site based in Switzerland. I love the multicultural content, which explores the world of food in depth and in all its facets, and brings us together as a community so that we better understand each other. Thank you, Jonell, I am honored to be a part of this wonderful journey. This post gives you a glimpse into my very mixed background.
Jonell: It’s unusual to find someone with such a rich and varied background as Shulie, yet still so close to her roots, who creatively weaves it all together to produce her very own Jewish-Indian fusion cuisine. This article is like an introductory culinary tour of the world, with a big dose of little-known Jewish history and culture thrown in. Got your bags packed? Here we go!
I was agonizing over what my first post should be. I could have written about how I’d won the battle of the great macaron, which was in fact a double challenge, as I had to replace the almonds with another pantry ingredient. Or about the elusive, and as I once thought glorified, meringue. The sheer challenge is fascinating, but macarons are French, or better yet Italian, and meringue is Swiss, and my ancestral roots are deep in the East. So I will start from home, so to speak.
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Food Art: Azulejos 2, food photography by Mónica Pinto
Food Art: Azulejos 2, food photography by Mónica Pinto
I recently discovered Mónica Pinto’s beautiful food photography when searching for World Food Blogs for my Food News Daily column. Of Portuguese origin, her recipes are often traditional Portuguese, but her photography is firmly rooted in the spirit of cutting-edge food photography. Mónica runs the blog Pratos y Travessas, writtten in both Portuguese and English.
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Simple Sustenance: Herb Magic — Creamy Cilantro-Lime and Cannellini Bean Spread
Simple Sustenance: Herb Magic — Creamy Cilantro-Lime and Cannellini Bean Spread
by Renu Chhabra
The more you eat, the less flavor; the less you eat, the more flavor.–Chinese Proverb
It is amazing how herbs can completely transform a recipe, giving it a whole new personality. Pureed with beans to make flavorful spread, processed with nuts for hearty pesto, or blended with oil or herb oil are just a few ways to taste the magic of herbs. Other blander dishes such as salads, grains, soups, stews, and breads also get fresh and delicious makeovers when they are in the company of herbs. And we can’t forget lavender cookies or basil ice cream, which add a few stars to the dessert category. It doesn’t take a lot to infuse their flavors to any recipe — sweet or savory. They always play their magic.
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Food Art: Herbed Lamb and Lentil Salad, food photography by Meeta Khurana Wolff
Food Art: Herbed Lamb and Lentil Salad, food photography by Meeta Khurana Wolff
See more food photo compositions at Meeta K. Wolff or in our Food Art category. She also runs the popular blog What’s for Lunch, Honey?
Bio of Meeta Khurana Wolff
Meeta, that’s my name given to me by my dad. I was born back in the summer of 1972, one beautiful day in Bombay, India. I was practically delivered in a hotel. That’s where my father has worked for most of his life and it’s what injected the hotelier’s blood into my veins. This hotel lifestyle enabled me to travel the world, get close to many cultures, learn a few languages, and experience many great adventures.
Knowing only a hotel life, I decided to follow my dad’s footsteps and studied Hotel Management, specializing in Marketing and Guest Relations. I trained in one of the finest luxury hotels of this world in Doha, Qatar. That is when a tiny spark for food was ignited in my soul.
I now have settled down in Germany, with the two men I adore, Tom, my loving partner for almost 10 years, and Soeren my adorable son of 5 6 7 years.
Hotels are not a part of my life in Germany. After graduating I came to Germany and worked in an advertising firm, an architecture and design firm and a couple of software firms. Don’t ask how that came about – it just happened. Glad it did too because along this path I bumped into and fell in love with Tom.
We are now in Weimar and you’ll laugh when I tell you this my traveling feet have begun to itch again! Let’s see where life takes us.
I love photography, always have, but it was with the start of this blog that I discovered the world of Foodography. Since then the passion for photography I developed has taken a complete new angle and opened so many exciting doors. I try to capture shots that speak a thousand words, that makes one feel as if they were a part of the scene and experience the photo with their senses. You tell me if I am succeeding!
You can see more of Meeta’s work at What’s For Lunch Honey.
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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, September 12, 2013
Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, September 12, 2013
In most recipes there are encouragingly few pitfalls. One mustn’t go berserk with the thought, but a quarter cup of liquid, a tablespoon more or less of butter, five minutes or so of cooking time are all variable and the sooner the beginning cook learns it the better the food will be.–Craig Claiborne
Craig Claiborne became food editor of The New York Times in 1957. Food editors didn’t really exist before him, at least in not any serious form. Thomas McNamee refers to him as The Man Who Changed the Way We Ate. Frank Bruni of The New York Times calls him “an anxious Southern man named Craig Claiborne sat on a remote island in the Pacific and plotted to turn the American culinary world on its head.” Claiborne also wrote a stream of bestselling cookbooks, including The New York Times Cookbook, The Chinese Cookbook, and Craig Claiborne’s Gourmet Diet.
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Easy Late Summer Seville-style Gazpacho
Spontaneous Cuisine: Easy late summer Seville-style gazpacho
by Jonell Galloway
Take 4 thick dry or toasted slices of hearty whole grain bread and tear it into bite-size pieces. Drizzle olive oil over it and add 2 to 4 cloves of crushed garlic, depending on how much you like garlic.
Mix and let it sit for a few minutes.
Take 8 large, extra-ripe red tomatoes. Cut into large chunks, and save all the juice. Mix into the bread and garlic.
Put into blender, with salt and pepper. Refrigerate and let it sit for a half hour or so, or several hours or overnight if possible.
Before serving, taste and then season with more salt, pepper and olive oil if necessary. Add ice cubes if you want it to be colder or thinner.
If you want to give the dish a bit of color or enhance it, add fresh coriander or basil, or a dollop of cream.
This batch will easily feed 4 or 5, and is better the second day, once it has marinated in the refrigerator.
This recipe is my version of a friend’s recipe for Seville-style gazpacho. The friend has chosen to remain incognito for reasons unknown to this writer.
This article was originally published on Geneva Lunch.
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Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, September 11, 2013
Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, September 11, 2013
Don’t take any recipe on faith. There are some hostile recipes in this world.–Peg Bracken
One might say Ruth Eleanor “Peg” Bracken was an “anti-housewife”. She did what was necessary to take care of her family, who she loved very much, but did her chores “as seldom as possible.” Bracken wrote a series of humorous books on cooking, housekeeping, etiquette and travel, always conveying her point of view in a witty manner, which many housewives of the 60s related to. Her most well-known book out of the nine she wrote is the 1960 The I Hate to Cook Book. Bracken is quoted often.
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La Semaine du Goût Geneva – Sept. 12, 2013
La Semaine du Goût Genève – Geneva Tasting Week
Swiss tasting week, referred to as “La Semaine du Goût” in the French-speaking part of the country, starts on Thursday, September 12, and runs until the 22nd. Each producer, restaurant and farm participating offers events. I will list a program of events, by day, in the Geneva area.This event is sponsored in part by Slow Food Switzerland. Here is the schedule for Thursday, September 12.
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Food Poetry: Recipe. A Cento, by Karen Resta
Food Poetry: Recipe. A Cento*, by Karen Resta
after Billy Collins
You are the soup and the fish,
the buttered crumpet and the tea.
You are the cook at the brothel’s stove
and the bubbling beans in the pot.
You are the great eater of the beef,
and the lobster trembling for life.
However, you are not the cheese of the poet,
the hell of the spinach,
or the apples of Eve.
And you are certainly not the Quangle Wangle’s tree.
There is just no way that you are the Quangle Wangle’s tree.
It is possible that you are the sauce to dress the goose,
maybe even the restaurant in Baudelaire’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the grape of Beulah at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the fat of the child-pig
nor the past alive as madeleine.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the corn who’s better than sex.
I also happen to be the hencod’s roe,
the small green face of the freshly shelled green pea,
and the hunger for fried fish in the open air.
I am also the parsley that is gharsley
and the goblin’s cry of fruits.
But don’t worry, I’m not the soup and the fish.
You are still the soup and the fish.
*Lines from Sydney Smith, J.C. Masterman, Polly Adler, Martial’s Epigrams, William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, G.K. Chesterton, E.B. White, Lord Byron, Edward Lear, Alice B.Toklas, Baudelaire, Mae West, Charles Lamb, Proust, E.S. Gaskell, Garson Keillor, James Joyce, William Wallace Irwin, Mark Twain, Ogden Nash, Rosetti.
This poem was previously published in Best American Poetry.
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Karen Resta has had an interesting career history, one part as Executive Chef for Partners Dining at Goldman Sachs in NYC, and another as VP for Goldman Sachs NYC. Her writing can be found at eGullet, The Culinary Media Network, Serious Eats, Book of Rai, Christian Science Monitor, One Million Stories and Rose Red Review.
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