How and when did Neapolitan cuisine, probably most epitomized by pasta and tomato sauce, become the symbol of Italian cooking? It certainly wasn’t early on, as tomatoes didn’t become a widespread part of local cooking until, really, the mid-1800s. And in Naples, it’s still not really the standard. In popular culture this was perhaps best… Read More Mangiamaccheroni – The Macaroni Eaters
I got on the wrong train. That’s how this one started. I was headed to somewhere I wanted to try for another “project” but accidentally got on the wrong train and found myself outbound on the line back towards Caseros. Rather than backtrack, I went with it, figured it was fated, and headed to a… Read More Eyes on Western Pies
It’s been awhile for this project, no? Our last entry, Egypt, was back in December 2021! Like all my projects, this one hovers in my mind, and it stalled out when I couldn’t find one of the key ingredients for many dishes in El Salvadoran cuisine, the papa del aire, or chayote. It was just an… Read More The Bread & Soup Project #54 – El Salvador
There once was a poet in Italy named Filippo Tomasso Marinetti. In the leading gastronomy magazine, La Cucina Italiana, in the early 1930s, he wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, a screed on Italian food traditions that became infamous for its dissing of pasta, among other things. In it, he declared that pasta was “an absurd… Read More The Anti-Futurist’s Pasta
In which we bounce all over the map, gastronomy-wise. This time, serving up six spots – we have two Peruvian, one seafood, one Jewish deli, one vegetarian, and one classic Argentine bodegón. Not in that order. Let us start, as I am wont to do, from the depths and move on to the heights. Oy… Read More Bite Marks #102
Many moons ago on a visit to Boston, I went with my friend I was visiting to Neptune Oyster Bar where I indulged in his recommended vitello tonnato sandwich. It was as glorious as he opined, a sandwich of shredded roasted veal topped with a wickedly spicy tuna tartare and fresh cucumbers all on toasted house-made white… Read More Tuna. Veal. Bread. Go.