Late Season Makes for Happy Meals
Everyone here – everyone being most of the growers I buy from – says we’re three weeks behind the normal season. This means that instead of jumping feet-first into the strawberries, those gorgeous harbingers of spring are trickling in. And in Normandy, where the soil is still cold, they are a pleasure yet to come. […]
Concarneau – Brittany’s Best
Brittany. It’s a magic land. I just returned from a few days respite in Concarneau, in the Finistere, a bustling sea port of 20,000 settled around its crown jewel, the Bay of Concarneau. City planners long ago knew the beauty they held in their hands, and specified that houses on the coast could be of any […]
Persimmons
Persimmon. It has always been a mythic fruit to me, one my grandmother talked about from her childhood. Because they grow in warm climates, and because I have never lived in one of those, they weren’t ever part of my diet. Oh, I occasionally found them at the market in New York when I lived […]
Making Pita in the hills above Sarajevo
A personal dream came true today as I watched Zijada, a Bosniak cook at the mountain chalet Ruralna Kuca, make and roll out the paper-thin dough that makes a Bosnian pita, or pie, so very special. The dough isn’t like any sort of French pastry. There is no fat in it, except the sunflower oil […]
Some Tastes of China
I didn’t expect to fall in love with China, but that is what happened. I’ve just spent a week on business in Beijing, with a side trip to the city of Chengdu, and I was won over by everything, from the universally kind and gracious people who welcomed me, to those more anonymous people […]
