Rachel Laudan

We were taking a day off from computers to stroll through the old colonial town of Coyoacán, now just part of Mexico City. We’d taken our shoes to the mender’s tiny shop, jammed with machines and glues and dyes. We’d bought pecans and sliced almonds (almendras fileteadas is the lovely Spanish expression) from the shop [...]

Until recently Jewish Mexican cooking was unknown outside the 50,000 Mexican Jews, most of whom arrived in the early twentieth century. [EDIT.  Here I am ignoring the Jews who came in the sixteenth century.  That is a whole other and distinct story.] In Mexico, the search for the Mexican tradition, for indigenous and colonial Spanish [...]

Shortly after my last post, Jeff Koehlerl, long-time Barcelona resident, now part of a Catalan family, and author of the compelling Rice, Pasta, Couscous: The Heart of the Mediterranean Kitchen (Chronicle, 2009), wrote me.  I had, if anything, underestimated the centrality of canelons to Catalan cuisine. Dec 25 and Dec 26 are the big holidays [...]