The tomato has origins traced back to the early Aztecs around 700 A.D; therefore we tend to believe that the tomato is native to the Americas. It was not until around the 16th century that Europeans were introduced to this fruit when the early explorers set sail to discover new lands (and plunder them!)
I can never have enough bread in my life. Currently, I favor the Italian kind, ciabatta, because I can buy a particularly good stick, and as my daughters are extremely fond of it as well, I have to buy 6 loaves at the time. That makes quite a few sandwiches!
Coming from the dried stigmas of the saffron crocus, it takes 75,000 blossoms or 225,000 hand-picked stigmas to make a single pound which explains why it is the world’s most expensive spice! In Sydney, I used saffron liberally. I made a knockout Scallop dish, cooked lightly in a saffron & vanilla broth.
The 15th and 16th centuries were a particularly fortunate time for Italian cuisine. With respect to the preceding period, there was a greater variety and richness in the preparation of foods: soups, grilled, roast and boiled meats, meat pastries, fish, vegetable (also in oil) and refined salads, almond-based sweets, pine-nuts and candied fruits; cane sugar [...]
Camembert is the most famous of the white mold cheese family and was first produced during the French revolution, a real newcomer in the world of French cheeses. Pic below is of a nicely running Camembert, the right way of eating this.
I’ve always wanted to do a piece on my favorite foodstuff: bread. Without it, I’d be lost, never mind the low carbers, I need my daily bread. In moderation of course.
Reading from my vast collection of world food stories, I came across a slew of recipes from wartime Europe. I had heard stories, of course, of meat shortages, rationed dairy products etc but I never really did pay any attention as to how they accommodated their meager provisions.
Salt, the most popular food seasoning, is a dietary mineral essential for animal life, composed primarily of sodium chloride. Salt for human consumption is produced in different forms: unrefined salt (such as sea salt), refined salt (table salt), and iodized salt. It is a crystalline solid, white, pale pink or light grey in color, normally [...]
It never occurred to me to write about French cooking in the past. Being French and having been taught at early age the rudimentary methods of our way of life, I had assumed in my naïveté that most people were equipped with a certain knowledge of food and could, if asked, whip up a mousseline [...]
Everyone knows about eating greens, particularly spinach, and the goodness that comes with it (though, I have to confess that one of my daughter refuses to even look at it despite Popeye’s help!) Spinach comes from a central and southwestern Asian gene center where it may have originated from Spinacia tetranda, which is still gathered [...]