A Literary Culinary Journal
by Jonell Galloway
Ferran Adrià promises that the La Fundación El Bulli exhibition will cover the entire evolution of what was for 5 years the best restaurant in the world, El Bulli, in Roses in the Catalonia region of Spain. The foundation will serve as an encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia, in that it will cover all the groundbreaking techniques of El Bulli, now closed, as well as of haute cuisine around the world, all free of charge.
Link: Informe21
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by Jonell Galloway
Better eat all the chocolate you can now. Seems global warming is going to hit West Africa, and it will affect chocolate production. Chocolate will only be for the rich in the not-so-far-off future.
Chocolate art in all its forms: photo exhibition of odd chocolate creations.
Chocolate is the star at Le Cordon Bleu Australia this month, and they will be exhibiting October 19 to 21, 2011, at the Paris Expo, held at the Porte de Versailles.
Roundup of chocolate events in Britain’s chocolate week.
Psychology Today says the feel-good chocolate effect only lasts 3 minutes.
Check out BBC Good Food’s wealth of chocolate recipes. There’s something to everyone’s taste, and recipes go from easy to difficult.
Just discovered: Death by Chocolate, by Alan Nolan, a comic writer.
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by Jonell Galloway
Husband Peter and I and Rosa Mayland, author of our column “Rosa’s Musings,” had a great time at the Expat Expo Geneva on Sunday. It’s a great way to make contacts in Geneva.
We had a drawing for 6 red polka-dot Kuhn Rikon knives.
Here are the winners:
Paula Davies-Smith
M. Rowe
Peter Zornow
Sayjel
Alison Farley
Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter
Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of knives made by one of the most reputable brands of cookware in the world, and they’re made in Switzerland!
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by Jonell Galloway
The Maison Cailler (Nestlé), in Broc, in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland recently opened its doors to the public. The factory, built in 1898, and still in operation, has been converted into a chocolate museum and visitor center. It offers an interactive audiovisual and guided walk through the factory-museum which explains everything aspect of chocolate making.
The fact that it’s located in a working chocolate factory enhances the experience, and the guided tour explains the history of the factory from its beginning in 1898 to present.
The 7 million CHF renovation project created nine themed areas, including Aztec temples and Swiss hillsides, says Aus Food News. Since the factory is still up and working, you can actually witness chocolate bars being made.
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You can go to chocolate-making school at the Chocolaterie Rapp in Prangins, between Geneva and Lausanne, even if you don’t want to be a professional chocolatier.
The introductory course lasts one hour and a half and consists of:
Classes are given on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and on reservation only.
Price: 15 CHF per person, with a minimum of 10 people per class.
The school can be visited on Saturday for 25 CHF per head.
The full course lasts 5 hours, and consists of:
Price: 160 CHF per person.
Unfortunately, all classes are fully booked until the end of August 2011. September dates will be announced soon.
If you want classes in English, please request well ahead of time.
For more information, call (41) (0)22 361 92 12 or contact the school by e-mail at rapp-confiserie@bluewin.ch.
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The From Plate to Page food photography and writing workshop will start on Friday, May 20, 2011, lasting until Monday, May 23, 2011, in Weimar, Germany.
Rambling Epicure contributor Meeta Khurana Wolff, a professional food photographer and stylist whose photos appear almost daily in the slider at the top of our home page, is one of the four professionals giving the workshop, along with another Rambling Epicure contributor, Jamie Schler, author of our Destination Dessert column.
From Plate to Page is an intensive hands-on food workshop aimed at food bloggers, writers and photographers looking to enhance and hone their photography and writing skills while finding their own unique style and voice, both for their blog and for professional work. This exciting, one-of-a-kind workshop will intended to pull food bloggers and photographers out of their creative ruts and start them on their way to a more professional style.
Rather than follow the style and program of traditional food blogging conferences, From Plate to Page is a workshop encouraging active participation by each attendee in the ultimate learning experience. Working alongside four of Europe’s most popular and respected food bloggers — each one of whom has turned her own blog into a springboard for a successful freelance writing or photography/styling career, participants will spend an extensive part of the weekend working on assignments designed specifically for the food blogger. All dedicated activities throughout the weekend will be the source of a writing or photography experience followed by analysis, critique and discussion.
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by Jonell Galloway
When you learn French in school, you learn how to say “the past recaptured,” “finding time again,” and other such useful Proustian phrases, but you don’t learn how real people talk today, as in, “I would like a dozen of those luscious dark chocolate religieuses, please.” School vocabulary is often formal and outdated, and omits teaching you useful, everyday phrases.
When I arrived in France, people would kindly smile at my textbook phrases. I quickly caught on that when they smiled, it was best to just ask them how they would say it, in plain French, because I sounded like Proust, which makes an ordinary French person want to go to sleep.
This applied in particular to the most ordinary, commonplace words. I had read Flaubert, Maupassant and Proust, but sometimes didn’t know the words for the simplest objects.
My best example is café au lait. For some reason unbeknownst to me, when you order café au lait in a café in France, you call it café crème. There is no logic in this, because it doesn’t contain an ounce of cream. It is made with steamed milk, just like the café au lait you make at home. It’s the same thing, but you call it by another name, depending on the context.
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by Jonell Galloway
from “Word of Mouth Blog,” The Guardian
We eat with all our senses and we are shorting ourselves if we’re not aware of the multi-sensory aspect of the eating experience. If something “looks” good, we have a tendency to think it “is” good. Of course we all know that can be true, or it can lead to disappointment if quality ingredients and craftsmanship have not gone into the final product. Just like with people, looks are not all that counts. What’s inside really does count.
This article from The Guardian of London explores this.
“We know that our enjoyment of food is about more than how it tastes…On the contrary, much research suggests that it is in fact our eyes leading the way, our tongues merely follow. ‘People’s perception is typically dominated by what their eyes see,’ writes Charles Spence, Oxford professor of experimental psychology.”
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Hostellerie Les Chevreuils is offering summer cooking classes for children. Classes will continue on Wednesdays through October.
These courses were such a great hit in last summer that head chef Geoffroy Pautz has decided to do it again. Classes are geared for children 10 to 15 years of age, and take place in the restaurant kitchens.
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Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
