Mastering the Art of French Cuisine & Living

Jonell Galloway’s Résumé

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, February 14, 2013 Permalink 0

Jonell Galloway
Switzerland
Skype telephone number: 1-270-859-1112
Skype name: jonell.galloway.white
E-mail: jonell@theramblingepicure.com

Professional History and Experience

I started my culinary career in Paris in the early 80s. At the Sorbonne, where I studied French language and civilization, I asked for special authorization to write my thesis on the history of French cuisine, which was exceptionally granted. I later studied at both the Cordon Bleu and La Varenne, and studied wine in various locations all over France, including Steven Spurrier’s Académie du Vin. While in France, I developed and taught a method I called Spontaneous Cuisine, a market-based derivation of classic French cuisine; was a contributing editor for the English version of GaultMillau for France; and worked as a food translator and interpreter.

I have recently dedicated myself to a “literary” food website, The Rambling Epicure, joining the voices and visions of professional writers and photographers from around the world who promote a mindful, responsible approach to real food shopping, cooking, and eating, as well as food politics, safety, history, art, literature and philosophy. I invite you to browse the site to see the depth and professionalism of the coverage. http://theramblingepicure.com/

I am fluent in English (native tongue), French and Spanish, and have proficient skills in Italian and Portuguese. Having a scientific background, I thrive on investigative journalism and writing that requires in-depth research and documentation.

I currently divide my time between Switzerland and France, where I have a 1,000-year-old house in Chartres.

Other publications and projects I have worked on or participated in:

10Best / Travel Media Group at USA TODAY, Gannett Media
Travora Media
Le tour du monde en 80 pains/Around the World with 80 Breads, Orphie (Paris)
Serious Eats
Paris Voice
André Raboud: A Review of his Life’s Work, Edipresse (Switzerland)
Ma Cuisine Méditerranéenne/Small Plates of the Mediterranean Basin, inspired by Christophe Certain’s recipes
CityGuide Paris
GourmetLive
Geneva Lunch, Savouring Switzerland
The New York Times dining section
Athena Publications
Three Sisters’ Café, farm-to-table restaurant (Kentucky)
La Fourchette de Dimanche, RSR (Swiss French-speaking radio station)
Kentucky Poetry Review
Biography of Pierre Gagnaire, St-Etienne Tourist Bureau (France)

For more details about my professional path and education, please consult my résumé on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=33977805&trk=tab_pro

Education

University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude in Psychology. Honors: Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa

University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. Graduate studies, psychology and literature.

Sorbonne, Paris, France. French language, literature and culture. Level A diploma.

L’Ecole du Cordon Bleu, Paris, France. “Grand chef” diploma.

La Varenne (French cooking), Paris, France. Non-diploma program.

L’Ecole du Louvre, Paris, France. Art, 17th-century to present. Special diploma for foreign students.

L’Academie du Vin, Paris, France. Wine tasting.

Memberships

International Association of Culinary Professionals

Geneva Writers Group

Slow Food

Les Artisanes de la Vigne et du Vin (Swiss women wine producers association, for which I am ambassadress)

Social Media and Marketing

Websites: TheRamblingEpicure.com, TheRamblingEpicure.tumblr.com

Twitter @RamblingEpicure @SwissFoodies @JonellGalloway approximately +3,000 followers

Facebook: Jonell Galloway, The Rambling Epicure, Swiss Foodies, 4,400+ followers

Google+ 5,000 followers

Klout index usually between 61 and 63

Alexa rating The Rambling Epicure 1,200 in Switzerland (currently being rescanned). My main readership is Western Europe and the Anglophone world as well as the BRICS.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on My Mother, January 15, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, January 15, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My mother saw the world through beauty until she went blind seven years ago.

Will the metronome stop suddenly, will my fingers stop playing, frozen in their accustomed position, no longer able to stroke the keys to the rhythm of life? Will the angels stop singing?

When she goes, will I ride through life without a song? Will all the music stop? Will I still be able to keep a beat, listen to Horowitz in the same way? Every time I hear a hymn, will I remember her beautiful alto voice as my grandmother played her upright piano and the extended family sang shape-note hymns in harmony on a Sunday afternoon after church?

Will I cry every time I hear or read Whitman or Longfellow, or the many poems she knows by heart and can still recite? Will poetry ever be the same, or will it too lose its capacity to take me into its arms and soothe the day’s wounds?

Will I look at a painting, a quilt, a piece of art, and still perceive its beauty? Will visual beauty have the same all-encompassing, skip-a-breath effect it has now, or will it become cerebral and dull?

Every quilt she made was an objet d’art. Will quilts all be beautiful, or will they take on an unforeseen ugliness, forever bringing my mother back to life like a dagger through my heart? Quilts will become like life — pieces patched together however the quilter can, using whatever is available; living life with whatever, however it takes to survive — not art. Or will they? Perhaps that’s what art is, and not some planned and orderly activity. It’s about putting the chaos into some form that is aesthetic, pleasing, and has an important message.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 13, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, January 13, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My parents lost their only son, my brother Cecil, when he was only 25. Life was never easy after that. They kept on hoofing it through life, getting up every morning to face a little world they’d built, made up of four children and two exceptionally bonded parents, a world now broken apart, a world from which one of the vital building blocks had been abruptly and inexplicably snatched away without a moment’s notice. For nearly a year I would wake up in the middle of the night, and feel my right arm to see if it was still there, because I had the sensation that it had been brutally jerked off from the moment my brother died. I can’t imagine the nightmares my parents must have had. My mother’s jet-black hair started to turn white immediately. My 6-foot father started drooping his shoulders instead of holding them high, as he had always done. There was always a lingering sadness, a hole in what was once a whole. The grief was ever-present and it didn’t go away. It never has. It never will.

Explosion of the Mind, painting by Abram Cruz

We were a tightly-knit family, welded together by the strength and love of my mother, and as I saw her emotional strength and courage wither away, she still held her head high and endured. Imagining that she too will go away soon loosens all the nuts and bolts that hold me together. Will I fall apart when the moment comes?

Local vs. Non-local Food: The Arguments

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, January 12, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

I think we got spoiled by eating cheap food from all over the world. That put us out of sync with nature and skewed the price of local produce and products vs. produce and products from distant places, leading us to waste what we once had held precious because it was seasonal and local and therefore rare. Slow Food USA and Josh Viertel were right in fighting for fair wages for our own farmers and trying to lead us back to a way of eating that is in line with nature, which of course means paying a little more, but improving our health and local economy.

There are many more arguments to be put forth. Let’s talk about it: the pros and cons, your experiences, your convictions, etc. We’d love to get a big discussion going here.

Click here to watch Building a Slow Food Nation, outlining the history of Slow Food in the U.S., and including Josh Viertel’s view.

Food Art: Spiced Chocolate Pistachio Cake, food photography by Meeta Khurana Wolff

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, January 12, 2013 Permalink 0

See more food photo compositions at Meeta K. Wolff.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 9, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, January 9, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My mother has been bedridden since the spring, in a hospital bed with bars so she can’t get out, as if the blindness were not itself a prison. The Parkinson’s, along with Prednisone for her temporal arteritis, affect her sleep cycle, so she sometimes doesn’t sleep for 3 or 4 nights straight. She eventually starts hallucinating. Sometimes she thinks she can see little children coming out of the ceiling, rather like angels coming down from heaven. The “angels” do not comfort her; they disturb her and she tries to jump out of bed and go after them, thus the necessity of the bars. No medicine stops this cycle somewhere between heaven and hell, and probably nearer the latter. How do we calculate a life, when is it time to stop the clock? By spending her days saying, “dear God, dear God, why do I have to live like this?” has she not decided she wishes the clock to stop? We cannot do it for her; we are forced to hold her hand and suffer alongside her.

Painting by Benozzo Gozzoli

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 8, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, January 8, 2013 Permalink 0

by King James Version

Mama went blind nearly 7 years ago due to an autoimmune disease called “temporal arteritis.” For a quilt artist and designer, a woman who expressed herself through images rather than words, there could have been nothing more devastating. She felt her life had ended and didn’t want to go on. We tried to give her bits of cloth, yarn, ribbon, wire, etc., in hopes she’d learn a new way of making sculptures or sewing patchworks in some crazy, original way using her fingers to feel her way around, but she couldn’t even see what she’d made, so it was of no interest to her. She would usually try for only a very few minutes and then throw it into the air in anger. She listens to audio books; her caregivers sing with her, read to her, play music for her – all things she loves — but she has lived in deep discontent because she has lost her most precious sense. Now she is physically diminished because of the disease, and speaks in the King James Version all the daylong. “Dear Lord,” she says, “let me go home,” where I will be able to see (I add).

The Mama Posts: Hanging out with My Mother

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, December 28, 2012 Permalink 0

Yes, you might have noted my absence over the last month. I’ve been hanging out with my mother in Kentucky.

She is still hanging in there. Her body may be shrunken and “miniature”, like the workings of a fine Swiss watch, but her heart beats strong like an ox. I’m not sure she was aware when the clock struck Christmas this year. She had already stepped far into another world where one speaks in the King James Version. She talks to God all day. “God, please help me. God, I doeth love thee. ”

Often I climb into her bed and hold her, talking of the old days and saying, “You’re the best Mommy in the whole wide world.” She strokes my cheek, and says, “I love thee,” and stops talking to God for a short while.

I’ll see you soon. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jonell Galloway, Editor

A Summary of All the Top 10 Cookbook 2012 lists in the U.S.

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, December 22, 2012 Permalink 0

Kathleen Finn pointed out this roundup of 2012’s Best Cookbooks: A Meta List of Listicles. It’s a nice, brief overview, so I thought I’d share it.

Kathleen Flinn (Photo credit: NCBrian)

The Art of Tasting Wine with James Flewellen: Top 10 Wines of 2012

Published by James Flewellen + Saturday, December 22, 2012 Permalink 0

by James Flewellen

A recent post by my friend Tom Parker on his top wines of the last year inspired me to go through my notes to consider the same question. Wine tasting being the highly subjective and opinionated business that it is, it is nigh on impossible to narrow down a list of the best wines one has tasted in a year. Thus, I’ll go for the most enjoyable wines I can recall from the past 12 months to create my list of the top 10 wines of 2012.

Enjoyment of wine is predicated on many things other than the quality of the wine itself – the situation, the company, your frame of mind, for instance. And I’ve found that tasting great wines in a sterile, academic or commercial setting doesn’t really do justice to the mystic and sublime essence of a magical beverage. I’ve tried to take these factors into account in my list, as well as reflecting a range of styles and the locations I’ve visited throughout the year.

So, in no particular order:

Pewsey Vale vineyard, Eden Valley.

1. Pewsey Vale ‘The Contours’ Riesling 2006. Eden Valley, South Australia.

A beautiful wine from a beautiful place. ‘The Contours’ is made from the best fruit in one tiny sub-plot from the Pewsey Vale vineyard high above the Eden Valley floor. 2006 was the most recent release at the time. Lively lime, blossom and tertiary notes developing. Refreshing and elegant.

2. Bollinger Grande Année 2002. Champagne, France.

I love rich champagne styles and Bollinger is always a sure performer for me in this regard. The superb 2002 vintage brings even more leanness and length to this wine. Still a baby in drinking terms but very hard to resist!

3. Brokenwood ‘The Graveyard’ Shiraz 2001. Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.

Hunter Valley Shiraz is so unlike the jammy Barossan ‘fruit bombs’ that most outside of Sydney associate with Aussie Shiraz. It can be wonderfully complex, earthy and Hermitage-esque. ‘The Graveyard’ is one of the best, and it was a rare privilege to taste such a great wine at an age it deserved to be drunk.

4. Langmeil ‘The Freedom 1843’ Shiraz 2009. Barossa, South Australia.

Tiny amounts of this wine are made from one of the oldest plots of vines remaining in the world. 1843 refers to the year of planting. This wine is nothing like any Barossa Shiraz I’ve ever tasted. Incredibly concentrated and animally. Far too young at three years old, but an amazing wine to experience nonetheless.

Ancient Shiraz vine in Langmeil's 1843 Freedom vineyard.

5. Cornas, Les Grandes Terrasses, Paul Jaboulet Aîné, 2001, Northern Rhône, France.

Rounding out a trio of Shiraz/Syrah: I showed this wine at a recent tasting in Oxford and was mightily impressed by its length, complexity and great value for money. Drinking very well now.

6. Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2010 (barrel sample). Margaret River, Western Australia.

The most enjoyable barrel sample I’ve ever tasted. The wine had been blended from the individually-aged parcels and was into its second round of oaking. Incredibly taut, balanced and complex. Brimming with potential.

7. Phélan Ségur 1996. St Estèphe, Bordeaux, France.

During a trip to Bordeaux over the summer, Phélan stood out for their hospitality, their obvious attention to detail in the winery, and their delicious wines. We were so impressed that a friend hosted a mini-vertical of Phélan later in the year. The ’96 was the most mature, complex and enjoyable of these, although many of the other vintages will get there in time.

With David Ling at Hugel following a portfolio tasting.

8. Hugel Pinot Gris Sélection de Grains Nobles 1976. Alsace, France.

One of the most astonishing dessert wines I’ve ever had. Pulled completely out of the bag during a visit to the charming Hugel property in Riquewihr. Endless length and complexity and a beautiful balance between sweetness, acidity and the perceived dryness all great dessert wines get with age.

9. Pirinoa Road Reserve Pinot Noir 2008. Martinborough, New Zealand.

A brilliant pretender to the Burgundian crown of Pinot supremacy. Great balance between lively red fruit, floral overtones and meaty depths. Still young but starting to develop delicious tertiary character.

10. Marie-Thèrese Chappaz Grain d’Or 2010. Valais, Switzerland.

A fascinating and unusual wine. Marie-Thèrese Chappaz makes extraordinary wines from her vantage point in some of the world’s steepest vineyards overlooking the Rhône River in Switzerland. This wine is mostly Marsanne, from gnarly 90-year-old vines (with a good claim to being the oldest in Switzerland), and spends 18 months in barrel. Still too young, but it’s so hard to get your hands on a mature example of these wines — they are all sold in person every year in May at the winery!

Grain d'Or at the Chappaz vineyard in Valais.

Commended

Jansz Traditional Method Sparkling. Tasmania, Australia. When my budget won’t extend to champagne or English Sparkling, Jansz is my delicious, great value fallback option.

Three Choirs Midsummer Hill, 2011. Gloucestershire, England. Brilliant value, light, fruity English offering.

Macrocarpa Pinot Gris, 2011. Marlborough, New Zealand. Lovely single vineyard expression of Pinot Gris firmly in the Alsatian mould.

The Lane Chardonnay 2009. Adelaide Hills, South Australia. Delicious Chardonnay with judicious and balanced use of oak. Went with a delicious lunch at the winery.

McGuigan Semillon Bin 9000 1997. Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia. Hunter Valley Semillon is certainly one of Australia’s great gifts to the world of wine. Lovely to taste one with significant bottle age to bring out the subtle tarragon and nutty notes.

Duas Pedras 2009. Alentejo, Portugal. Touriga Nacional blended with Syrah, this is a powerful, rewarding wine that needs decanting in advance and has become one of my staple reds.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and holiday season with plenty of good cheer and fine bottles. I’m not yet sure what I’ll be drinking on Christmas Day, but I have a feeling I’ll stick to my favourites: something French, something Kiwi, something sparkling, something Pinot…

__________________

James Flewellen is The Rambling Epicure wine columnist. James is a biophysicist at the University of Oxford. Originally from New Zealand, the huge range of wine James discovered in Europe spurred his interest in all things vinous. He became involved in the University’s Blind Wine Tasting Society and has recently completed a two-year term as its President. During this time he represented the University in a number of domestic and international wine tasting competitions, winning several awards. He is currently completing the WSET Diploma in Wine and Spirits. James has a passion for wine communication and education and runs the Oxford Wine Blog and the Oxford Wine Academy.