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Food Art: Apples, Lace and Pie, food photography by Prerna Singh
Prerna Singh runs the award-winning food blog Indian Simmer, which was a finalist in the prestigious Saveur Best Food Blogs this year. Her photos are at the same time sophisticated and rustic, giving a natural yet polished look to the simplest of foods. She grew up in India, but now lives in the U.S. with her husband and daughter.
Prerna uses a Canon 50mm f1.4 lens and photographs in natural light, occasionally using reflectors.
Related articles
- Food Art: The Natural Beauty of Food, a slideshow exhibition of food photography by Prerna Singh
- Food Art: Composition with Slotted Spoon, by Prerna Singh
- Food Art: Lavender Pistachio Cookies, food photography by Meeta Khurana Wolff
- Food Art: Petit Ecolier Chocolate Cookies, food photography by SandeeA
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Switzerland: leshop.ch: Migros Full-Service Home Delivery, Perfect for Bad Weather or Illness
by Jonell GallowayMigros’s home delivery service is perfect during this period of icy, snowy streets
Since I live in the old town in Geneva, I walk everywhere. A few years ago, I had shoulder and wrist injuries from carrying too many heavy shopping bags, and ever since, I’ve had to do my heavy grocery and household shopping with a trolley. A couple of years ago, after regularly hearing the leshop.ch ads on WRS, I decided to try and avoid pulling my heavy trolley, filled with milk, detergents, and other heavy products, up the hill from the Coop 2000 and the Boulevard Helvétique market to the Russian Church, so I tried leshop.ch. With the ice and snow on the streets, home delivery can definitely be a godsend.
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Switzerland: Coop’s Pro Montagna Label: 5 Years of Protecting Traditional Swiss Food Products
Switzerland: Coop’s Pro Montagna Label: 5 Years of Protecting Traditional Swiss Food Products
by Jonell Galloway
In 2005, Andy Imfeld, a montagnard and organic food producer, started discussing the possibility of selling Swiss mountain products directly in Coop supermarkets. After long negotiations as to how it should work, it was decided that for each mountain product sold, a certain amount of the payment would go directly to the families of farmers or projects in mountain regions.
Coop labeled the products Pro Montagna, and the project has been a great success, with some 200 products to date, from yogurt to bread, and including meat products and wooden toys.
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A very useful overview of Swiss food and manners for the newcomer or tourist
This list is a very basic list indeed, but since there is not much available in English about Switzerland and its food, I thought it would be helpful to pass the link on to you.
Click here to read.
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Switzerland: About Cardoons, Geneva’s Favorite Winter Vegetable
by Jonell Galloway
Anyone living in Geneva really should know how to prepare cardoons, since it is Geneva’s favorite winter vegetable, and even has a right to an AOC, i.e. an official certified appellation, the “Geneva cardoon.” The problem is it is time-consuming and tedious, namely due to its prickly thistles.
Cardoons are one of Geneva’s favorite Christmas dishes, when it is most often served au gratin, but they are served in a variety of ways all winter long.
Viviane Bauquet Farre gives a wonderful explanation on how to prepare and blanch those tasty but thistly dears.
The Chapuis family, who does the Boulevard Hélvétique market in Geneva on Wednesday and Saturday, started preparing them and sealing them in vacuum packs a couple of years ago, and it has been so successful that everyone is following suit.
So if you’re brave enough, prepare them yourself. Otherwise, know you have an alternative. More and more sellers are copying the Chapuis and removing the thorns for you.
Originally published on GenevaLunch.
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Spontaneous Cuisine: Parsnip Velouté with Aged Mimolette Cheese
Itsy Bitsy History of the Parsnip
In the Middle Ages, Geneva was running over with parsnips, which they referred to as “white carrots”. It was almost always included in their “eternal pots” of soup, which consisted of seasonal vegetables that they just kept adding more vegetables to as needed, and a piece of meat once a week.
After World War II, many root vegetables went out of fashion in Europe, because people had had to survive on them and nothing else during the war, so farmers eventually stopped growing them. The same went for pumpkin. People in the north of France who had lived through the war and eaten pumpkin every day couldn’t bear the thought of eating pumpkin ever again.
In recent years, these old-fashioned vegetables, including parsnips, have again become available, and chefs are going crazy with new ideas on how to use them.
Parsnips are plentiful at the moment and there’s nothing better than soup to warm you up on a cold winter’s day. Eric Burkel, former financial analyst, entrepreneur and now president of his local food coop in Paris, got this recipe from one of the farmers who supplies vegetables to the coop.
Parsnip soup recipe
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Potato News: Robuchon’s mashed potatoes, Swiss giant potatoes to be fed to pigs, calorie counting at chain restaurants, how potatoes changed the world
by video
If you’ve ever had to the good luck to taste Joël Robuchon’s mashed potatoes, made with the variety Ratte, you probably daydream about them often enough. This here explains how to make them. Click Swiss Info to watch a video that explains how to make them.
Gawker says more than 10,000 tons of potatoes will end up in Swiss troughs this year. The dry spring and warm autumn made them too big to meet the standard sizes that can legally be sold in supermarkets.
Ever wonder how many calories are in those KFC mashed potatoes and gravy? article calculates “680 calories, and an even more shocking 2130 mg of sodium per serving.”
Potatoes from the New World most likely saved Europe from a famine in 18th century. This Smithsonian 
is a fascinating history of the potato and how it changed the world, and full of interesting facts.
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Betty Bossi’s Swiss Cookbook
by Jonell Galloway
Betty Bossi’s “The Swiss Cookbook”
The Swiss Cookbook, by the famous but fictional Betty Bossi, the equivalent of Betty Crocker in the U.S., can make a good addition to a cookbook collection for those who want to cook Swiss dishes but can’t read French or German. It makes a great Christmas gift, and is handy to have in the house, whether you’re a gourmet cook or just an occasional one.
The recipes are organized by region. In a land with four languages and such cultural diversity, this is a necessity. There is a brief description of each region and its cuisine, along with attractive photos. Each recipe is accompanied by a photo.
The ring binding and glossy pages make it practical to use. The Swiss Cookbook is appropriate for Swiss people as well as for expatriates, because it gives a good overview of traditional Swiss cuisine and contemporary cuisine using Swiss ingredients.
It is an attractive gift for most anyone interested in food.
It can be ordered online from the Betty Bossi online shop, and is also available in many supermarkets in Switzerland.
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- Swiss Cookware: Unbeatable Quality and Made to Last a Lifetime
- Switzerland: A Geneva Christmas: White Wine Potatoes
- Switzerland: A Geneva Christmas: Longeole Sausage
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Health Challenge: Getting your vitamin D fix this winter
by Tamar Chamlian
Vitamin D is of vital importance to our bodies. Most of us know that simple exposure to the sun for up to 10 minutes a day is sufficient for the body to make its own vitamin D.
Now that winter is setting in, if you live in countries that barely see the sun for months on end, you will need to seek other sources of getting your vitamin D.
It’s actually simple and easy. Here are the top three foods that can provide you with Vitamin D, with suggestions on how to use them.
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