Coming in March, available on AMAZON A sequel to Clifford A. Wright’s groundbreaking A Mediterranean Feast, which won the 2000 James Beard award for Cookbook of the Year and the James Beard award for the Best Writing on Food, An Italian Feast celebrates the cuisines of the Italian provinces from Como to Palermo. An illustrated […]
Food of Medieval Andalusia and the Expulsion of Spanish Muslims
April 29, 2019 by 2 Comments
Seville, along with Genoa, Leghorn (Livorno), Venice, Ancona, and Naples, was one of the great commercial centers of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century. The riches of America flowed to Seville exclusively because it was in direct line of the trade winds and had a legal monopoly on that trade. The soil was productive, and […]
Wampanoag Indian Dish from First Thanksgiving
November 15, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Between 1620 and 1621 Edward Winslow, who arrived on the Mayflower and was a leader of the English settlement at Plimouth in the Massachusetts colony, wrote with William Bradford Mourt’s Relation, the full title of which was A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New […]
Spinach is the Queen of Vegetables, Captain of Leafy Greens
December 26, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Spinach is an annual plant with dark green leaves that enjoys cool weather. There are two kinds of spinach, prickly-seeded and round-seeded. Most spinach on the market is derived from the round-seeded kind. Spinach is also classified by the shape of its leaves. Again, there are two major types, smooth-leafed or crinkly-leafed. Spinach produces dioecious […]
What is Bulgur?
June 9, 2014 by 2 Comments
Bulgur is a durum wheat product used in the Middle East. After the durum wheat harvest the raw hard wheat is cleaned and sun-dried, traditionally, in the towns on the flat terrace roofs of homes. The wheat berries are separated from the chaff and boiled in water for two hours until they are about to […]
Mac and Cheese, Its Origins
January 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Since the Kraft Company put it in a box in 1937 every American kid grew up with macaroni and cheese. There can be no doubt that its ultimate origins are Italian, as one finds macaroni and cheese recipes from the late thirteenth century in southern Italy. The anonymous Liber de coquina, written in Latin by […]
Origin of Risotto
March 13, 2013 by 6 Comments
Where did risotto originate? In northern Italy in the fifteenth century, the Lombardy plains were cleared to establish rice fields. The motivation for the clearing and reclaiming of the plains was simply the demand of the growing towns for food. That demand was met by budding capitalists who had the financial wherewithal to back the […]
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