In Italy, as in other parts of the wine-blessed world, there is a tendency to link certain regions with certain beloved grapes – thus the Chianti region in Tuscany with its sangiovese, the Veneto with its pinot grigio and all of Sicily with its nero d’avola. The commercial success of these grapes has inspired their […]
Americans don’t typically think of Syria or Damascus, its capital since ancient times, as being “Mediterranean.” The modern country’s coastline is only 110 miles long. And most importantly, its recent decades of anti-American leadership and now civil war make it an unlikely choice for the family vacation. The inland city of Damascus isn’t top-of-mind these […]
Pound for pound, day in and day out, I think all Greeks are secret almost-vegetarians. Sure, they eat lamb on special occasions, especially Orthodox Christian holidays, and plenty of pork the rest of the time. But I can’t think of a culture that grows more vegetables in its backyards and turns them into such delicious […]
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 […]