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Chicken Vindaloo Made Easy: Outsourcing Memories From the Heritage Factory (Part 3)

Posted on April 8th, 2011

(ed: The final chapter of a 3 part series. Find parts 1 and 2 here, respectively.)

When Shoba Narayan was a little girl, she carried an aluminum pail to a man with a skinny cow, and the man was a farmer, and the cow’s udders had to be squeezed. The farmer squeezed the udders and Narayan brought fresh milk home to her mother. Fresh milk comes from a cow, not from a supermarket. Fresh milk is clotted and rich and its cream rises to the top, as it should when milk is fresh and comes from a cow. When her mother boiled the milk it was to set yogurt.

Categories: Uncategorized

Chicken Vindaloo Made Easy: Outsourcing Memories From the Heritage Factory (Part 2)

Posted on April 7th, 2011

( ed: continued from Part 1, found here)

It’s not just that the American palate has become bored with the offerings of Western Europe. Much has been said about how travel shows reveal the same narrative that Conrad explores in his 1902 novel: if one conjures a story about an arrogant white man seducing his own imagination with the perfumes of an Other culture, doesn’t one automatically assume the protagonist is No Reservations’ Anthony Bourdain? For some reason this story has become a lullaby, and now Gourmet has appropriated it.

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Notable and Potable Vol. 1: The Hide, London

Posted on April 6th, 2011

I recently had the pleasure of spending a week in England, starting with a few days in Cambridge and ending with the better portion of a week in London. The main purpose of the trip was for my husband to participate in his PhD ceremony at Jesus College, three years after actually defending his thesis. Come back for the Circumstance, stay for the Pomp. When combined with the coincidence that my birthday was to fall a few days after the ceremony, the Pomp levels were through the roof. So after enjoying many a pint of truly unique and fantastic cask-conditioned ales in Cambridge, we headed to London to continue the celebration with cocktails.

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Chicken Vindaloo Made Easy: Outsourcing Memories From the Heritage Factory (Part 1)

Posted on April 4th, 2011

(ed: The beginning of a three-part exploration by the author)

Whenever I watch an episode of Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie I remark how Americans must be the happiest people on earth, for they are always on vacation. Certainly I don’t mean that each one of us is right now carrying a fresh passport, sitting at the lobby of a terminal with a manila folder of tickets to commonplace destinations (oh, say, Oaxaca for mole negro oaxaqueno, Thailand for congee…)—at least I don’t mean this literally anyway. I suppose I’m simply trying to say that we are, all of us, travelers.

Categories: Uncategorized

Raw As Dairy, Real As Milk: The Farmer General Speaks With Kurt Timmermeister

Posted on April 1st, 2011

Kurt Timmermeister has made me feel better about urban farmer’s markets. Or, at least, about the following decidedly controversial opinion that I’ve privately held for some time now: I am not sure that I like them.

When I first thought to contact him for an interview, having read the story of his farm in Culture magazine, having chuckled over his wry and thoughtful journal entries on his own website, and, having longed for his Dinah cheese (a close friend is a cheesemonger, and cannot say enough good things about its entrancingly creamy innards), I worried. I fretted. I wrote an essay about the fretting, last week, and pondered what I might possibly ask of someone, on the subject of farming, as a person who failed to grow tomatoes in a backyard garden last summer.

Categories: Uncategorized

Rock Hobo Road Vol. 3: Cadbury Chorus Line.

Posted on March 31st, 2011

So there we were. A group of wayward travelers in London, jet-lagged, over-caffeinated, famished, and in need of a nice brew. Nicola led us to one of her favorite haunts in the Clarkenwell area, the Three Kings Pub. In was nice and cozy inside and we found a great big wooden table in the corner. Good music was playing, and the crowd was young, neighborhood-y, and relaxed. Pints were poured and then there was the question, “How many Scotch Eggs are we going to order?”

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On The Subject of Cookies

Posted on March 30th, 2011

These are my dad’s favorite. I know just how my mom uses her finger as a spatula so she can lick it clean. Unless it’s got fruit, sweets were never my sister’s thing, but my best friend and I make a mean batch every time we’re together. I even found a man who, on our first date, whipped out a recipe.

Categories: Uncategorized