So there it was, just the other day – a telltale sign of the times. Those times were June of 1986, when I shot a black-and-white photo of then-celebrity chef Felipe Rojas-Lombardi at the Ballroom in New York City. In the suggested cutline (caption) for the photo to go with my UPI food feature, I’d […]
Two of the Mediterranean world’s Arabic-speaking stalwarts, Egypt and Lebanon, find themselves in a stiff competition over which makes the best burger – that burger being either a Cairo-born stuffed-pita street food named hawawshi or a Beirut-born meat sandwich named arayes. It’s easy to predict the loyalties in each of these countries and food cultures, […]
Several cultures around the world enjoy some version of cake-with-fruit-baked-in-skillet – for instance, the all-American Apple Brown Betty. But few cultures can boast of a skillet cake that also has some of the lush texture of a flan. Clafoutis has always been a favorite in the South of France, especially in the region of Provence […]
Though I hardly understood the significance at the time, I actually traveled to Alexandria on the coast of Egypt by way of Venice on the coast of Italy. Both cities made it into our modern world after centuries of now-faded glory, making for an exquisite game of compare and contrast for anyone who reads two […]
We’re convinced that the best food show on television isn’t on the Food Network, or indeed on any of the cooking/eating channels born of the then-gutsy original’s success. The best food show on TV might not even technically be “on TV,” since the series in Italian with English subtitles is, of late, only on the […]
It was sometime after midnight that the train I’d taken up from Rome stuttered to a stop in the dark as I tried to sleep sitting up, slowly releasing all its passengers onto a concrete walkway. Guards with machine guns directed us into a tunnel of high fencing lit in pools by spotlights. The year […]
While most associated with the island of Santorini, with its special, very flavorful cherry tomatoes, these tomato balls turn up on the menu on many Greek islands. Everybody calls them balls in English because the Greek name is domatokeftedes (keftedes usually meaning meatballs). But… tomato fritters is probably a more accurate name, since most cooks […]
Hummus, the chickpea dip or spread usually enjoyed on a traditional flatbread called pita, is claimed as a native or national dish by many countries, most of them in Arab North Africa and the Middle East. It’s a bit like one child claiming to have been born to several mothers. We figure it isn’t, or […]
Santorini is a small island on the southern edge of Greece’s Aegean Sea, small certainly if measured in square miles (less than 25) and arguably if measured by impact on world history. Yet thanks to one iconic wine grape and a dazzling origin story that might actually be true, this purple-black volcanic rock rising from […]
Over millennia, four of the most fascinating cultures this world has ever produced decided to fight it out over the almost-inland sea called the Mediterranean. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Arabs known as Saracens, Moors or Turks argued over everything – religion, science, government and real estate chief among them. But they […]
