Travel

Hitting the road stirs up culinary ideas more than just about anything else one can do. These posts share the highlights.

Uno de pilón en Sayulita, Mexico

8 March 2012

When my sister told the family that she wanted her wedding to take place in Mexico, none of us could quite believe it. My clearest memory of my sister in Mexico was years ago when our family visited cousins in Morelos, a state just outside El DF, Mexico City. Before going to bed, our aunt [...]

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A trip to an Italian grocery store

16 November 2011

Ah, Italy.  A place where markets with baskets of perfect tomatoes spill out of every piazza and the sun always shines. La vita è bella. Except when it isn’t. Torrential rain led to mudslides in Liguria and northern Tuscany, with devastating consequences. In Friuli, hail storms ruined the grape harvest in the Collio. And when [...]

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What did the Romans eat, anyway?

20 October 2011

Ever since we crawled out of the Dark Ages, the legend of the Roman Empire has enthralled and enchanted us. (They irrigated their fields and built aqueducts! They engineered bridges and roads that lasted long after the Empire crumbled! They had mile markers on their highways! They were democratic!) So even though the western half [...]

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On the Table

1 September 2011

Growing up, I never remembered how to set the table correctly. It was not because of any lack of effort on my mom’s side. Every day, I’d hear something like this: “the fork goes on the left.” Or, “the spoon goes on the outside of the knife.” Or, “the knife blade faces the plate.” And [...]

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Pasta Postcards from San Francisco

22 August 2011

Anyone who’s tried to get in touch with me this year knows that it’s been a precarious task. What city am I in? What country am I in?  Where am I going next? There have been a few times that I’ve woken up and had to ask myself these questions. Being nomadic has its advantages. [...]

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You Say Barolo

16 August 2011

I have a new (and really annoying) party game.  It’s about Italian wine. I call it “Grape or Place?” It works like this: I say a wine-related word. Then you tell me if it’s the name of a grape or the name of a place. After becoming indoctrinated into the world of Piemonte wines not [...]

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Umbria Has a Green Heart, They Say

29 July 2011

Even though my trip to Italy was only in April, it is starting to feel like months ago. The trip, while enjoyable, wasn’t a vacation. It was in the name of research for the SPQR cookbook. We’re coming to the final miles of our marathon, and with that comes a sense of urgency. I feel [...]

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Vie Cookbook Photo Shoot: on the farm

5 July 2011

This past weekend, on what turned out to be the hottest day yet of summer, I trekked out to Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery in Champaign, Illinois, with Paul Virant and Tony Porreca. The point of the trip was twofold: Paul and Tony had been invited to cook dinner for 50 at the farm. Meanwhile, [...]

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Orange wine and other enological wonders

16 June 2011

Once again, I find myself immersed in a world of Italian wine. I’m writing a book about modern Italian food and wine with two experts: Shelley Lindgren, wine director of A16 and SPQR, and Matthew Accarrino, the chef at SPQR. This is the second time Shelley and I have collaborated. The first project, A16 Food [...]

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Postcards from Italy

21 April 2011

After spending nearly three weeks in Italy visiting nine regions and filling four notebooks with food and wine notes for an upcoming book project, I am only just starting to reflect on the trip’s successes and surprises. You can learn a lot in three weeks when you forgo sleep (fish auctions start well before dawn) [...]

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