One of my greatest pleasures is discovering a new farmers market wherever I happen to be in the world. Having long meandered through the markets of Provence, savoring local delicacies in sun-dappled squares, it is wonderful to experience the aromas and peculiarities of a new locale. In Venice for example some of the daily markets are set up on floating barges tied up alongside the various canals. You jostle with the locals and chat with the vendors to find the choicest bunch of grapes, fresh...
"Talking of pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine -- how good how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified Strawberry." John Keats The great poet could well have been standing in my garden when he wrote those words. Two years ago I moved across town, into a charming cottage of a house, complete with white picket fence and a smattering of fruit trees. I...
“Where would we be without salt” – so wrote James Beard. Where indeed? What is it about this small piece of sodium chloride, the size of a grain of sand, that so effects what and how we eat? It is a basic seasoning in food and is elemental in food preservation as it inhibits bacterial growth. It is also one of the basic electrolytes in the human body. We cannot live without it. Like all living beings, we need salt (actually the sodium and chloride ions) in our system to regulate the...
The renowned French chefs Jean Pierre Troisgros once said "Cooking should be a carefully balanced reflection of all the good things of the earth." They may well have been describing stew which is essentially a great melting pot of flavors extracted over a period of time. If ever there was a dish that reflected ‘all the good things of the earth’ and of the season, this is it. Stews are to winter what salads are to summer. They are in essence rib-sticking, heart-warming and satisfying. They...
I like to think of the food that comes from this season as a reflection of the following simple philosophy. Nature has in its annual harvest, offered up some of its most delicious elements; a luscious fig, an ornamental pomegranate, a perfectly ripe delicate pear, a rotund pumpkin and an avalanche of exquisite tubers. Rushing their preparation and the subsequent eating of such splendors seems to be contrary to the season itself. History it seems agrees. From the time of the ancient Greeks,...
The drizzle and sometimes grey sky of winter is fading behind us, mirroring an ebb tide, retreating into the distance. Left in the tide’s wake are all sorts of ocean going creatures who take this twice daily break as an opportunity to hunt for food or doze in the pools. The turn of the season is similar to this. The first of the spring flowers peek their stems and heads above the ground as the weather warms up, only to retreat a little when a final winter blast streaks across the sky. Then,...
The French gourmet and politician turned gastronomical raconteur Anthalem Brillat-Savarin, recounts in his excellent treatise, The Physiology of Taste, the story of a young nobleman, The Chevalier d’Albignac, who, having escaped the ravages of the French Revolution, found himself in London and in need of earning a living.One evening whilst dining with friends at an inn, he was approached by a gentlemen, who upon hearing that he was French, asked him if he could make for them a salad ‘in the...
