Rachel Laudan

This is the time of year when most books on Mexican cooking written for English-speakers leave you a bit up in the air (exceptions are Patricia’s Quinatana’s Mexico’s Feasts of Life and Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz’s Complete Book of Mexican Cooking).
All my neighbors are busy exchanging their recipes for piernas (legs of pork), pavos (turkeys) and [...]

This is something I’ve been thinking quite a bit about, particularly after Adam Balic’s comments on my post on Mexican salsas and North African harisa. You’d think these methods would be well established. But since most histories of food, following most political histories, focus on national history, it’s actually still wide open territory.
Here are [...]

The new Astor Center, run by Doug Duda, is a hospitable place for anyone interested in the history of food. In the Spring they will feature one of Barbara Wheaton’s eye-opening seminars on how to read a cook book as well as a forum with Gastronomica editor Darra Goldstein.
Speaking of Gastronomica, it just won [...]