Rachel Laudan

Lots of disciplines wrestle with understanding the diffusion of ideas, technologies, products and so on. I find browsing the work of archaeologists, economists, historians and others a fruitful source of ideas for understanding change in food.
For the last few months I have been dipping into Richard Fletcher’s The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. [...]

Back to the issue of food on the move. Here are some general observations about the origin and diffusion of dishes.
Independent invention versus diffusion
The case of North African harisa and Mexican adobo illustrates this nicely. Here you have two very similar techniques (soaking chiles, grinding with herbs and spices, adding oil). Were [...]

Inspired by Kyla Wazana’s post on harisa, in my ongoing quest to explore connections between Mediterranean and Mexican cooking, I finally got around to making some to see how it compared to Mexican salsas.
Now just what harisa was turned out to be a tad problematic. Kyla’s recipe specified dried chiles, anaheim peppers, fresh coriander, ground [...]