A Literary Culinary Journal
by Simón de Swaan
Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well one must love and respect food.–Craig Claiborne
Craig Claiborne was an American restaurant critic, food journalist and book author. A long-time food editor and restaurant critic for The New York Times, he was also the author of numerous cookbooks and an autobiography.
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A world devoid of tomato soup, tomato sauce, tomato ketchup and tomato paste is hard to visualize. Could the tin and processed food industries have got where they have without the benefit of the tomato compounds which colour, flavour, thicken and conceal so many deficiencies? How did the Italians eat spaghetti before the advent of the tomato? Was there such a thing as tomato-less Neapolitan pizza?–Elizabeth David (1913-1992), An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, 1984
Elizabeth David was a British cookbook writer who, on her return from “exile” in Egypt after WW2, decided that action had to be taken with regard to the quality of food in Britain. She was outright hostile to second-rate cooking and the use of frozen, canned and out-of-season ingredients, and is, in many people’s mind, a precursor of the concept of Slow Food. In any case, she was a primary mover in bringing true traditional home cooking using quality ingredients back into the mainstream in Britain.
All her books are listed here, and most are still available at Book Depository or other online independent booksellers.
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A number of rare or newly experienced foods have been claimed to be aphrodisiacs. At one time this quality was even ascribed to the tomato. Reflect on that when you are next preparing the family salad.–Jane Grigson
Jane Grigson was an English food writer. Grigson’s growing interest in food and cooking led to the writing of her first book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967), which was translated into French, unusual for an English food writer. Elizabeth David read the book and was impressed by it, and recommended Grigson as a food columnist for The Observer, for which she wrote a column from 1968 until her death in 1990.
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by Simón de Swaan
Summer cooking implies a sense of immediacy, a capacity to capture the essence of the fleeting moment.–Elizabeth David
Elizabeth David was a British cookbook writer who, on her return from “exile” in Egypt after WW2, decided that action had to be taken with regard to the quality of food in Britain. She was outright hostile to second-rate cooking and the use of frozen, canned and out-of-season ingredients, and is, in many people’s mind, a precursor of the concept of Slow Food. In any case, she was a primary mover in bringing true traditional home cooking using quality ingredients back into the mainstream in Britain.
All her books are listed here, and most are still available at Book Depository or other online independent booksellers.
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by Simón de Swaan
All the gifts are nothing. Money gets used up. Clothes you rip up. Toys get broken up. But a good meal, that stays in your memory. From there it doesn’t get lost like other gifts. The body it leaves fast, but the memory slow.–Meir Shalev, Four Meals
Israeli journalist and television host Meir Shalev is also one of Israel’s most celebrated novelists. His other books include The Blue Mountain and A Pigeon and a Boy, for which he won the Brenner Prize, Israel’s highest literary recognition.
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by Simón de Swaan
The ultimate aim of civility and good manners is to please: to please one’s guest or to please one’s host. To this end one uses the rules laid down by tradition: of welcome, generosity, affability, cheerfulness and consideration for others. People entertain warmly and joyously. To persuade a friend to stay for lunch is a triumph and a precious honour. To entertain many together is to honour them all mutually. It is equally an honour to be a guest.—Claudia Roden, A Book of Middle Eastern Food, 1968
Claudia Roden is a cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist based in the United Kingdom. She was born in 1936 in Cairo, Egypt. A Book on Middle Eastern Food is a classic in the world of cookbooks, and James Beard referred to it as “a landmark in the field of cookery.”
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One should never refuse an invitation to lunch or dinner, for one never knows what one may have to eat the next day.–Édouard de Pomiane, Cooking with Pomiane, 1962
Édouard Alexandre de Pomiane (1875-1964) was a French scientist, radio broadcaster, and food writer. His best-known works to have been translated into English are 
and Cooking with Pomiane. His recipes often take pains to demystify cooking by explaining the chemical processes at work.
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by Simón de Swaan
A chief maxim in dining with comfort is to have what you want when you want it.—Thomas Walker, The Original, 1835
Thomas Walker was a police magistrate and author. On 20 May 1835 he began publishing The Original, and continued it weekly until the following 2 Dec. It is a collection of his thoughts on many subjects, intended to raise “the national tone in whatever concerns us socially or individually,” but his admirable papers on health and gastronomy form the chief attraction of the work.
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by Simón de Swaan
The air pulses with the warm smell of lilac, but as we pass each door, the lilac dominance is subdued by heady wafts of asparagus cooking.–Jane Grigson
Elizabeth David was an English food writer. Grigson’s growing interest in food and cooking led to the writing of her first book, The Observery (1967), which was translated into French, unusual for an English food writer. Elizabeth David read the book and was impressed by it, and recommended Grigson as a food columnist for The Observer, for which she wrote a column from 1968 until her death in 1990.
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by Simón de Swaan
The artichoke above all is a vegetable expression of civilized living, of the long view, of increasing delight by anticipation and crescendo. No wonder it was once regarded as an aphrodisiac. It had no place in the troll’s world of instant gratification. It makes no appeal to the meat-and-two veg. mentality.–Jane Grigson
Jane Grigson was an English food writer. Grigson’s growing interest in food and cooking led to the writing of her first book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967), which was translated into French, unusual for an English food writer. Elizabeth David read the book and was impressed by it, and recommended Grigson as a food columnist for The Observer, for which she wrote a column from 1968 until her death in 1990.
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Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
