How excited was I to get an invitation to be a speaker at the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Litfest festival at the Ballymaloe Cookery School? It popped into my mailbox a few months ago and although I had been to Ballymaloe a few years back, I remembered the exceptional food of Cork, Ireland, and the lovely people – which meant there was no way in heck I was going…
A few years back, all of us elderly ladies and gents who were blogging for a while were suddenly surprised (and delighted) at a group of young ‘uns, in their teenage years, who up and started food blogs. And let me tell you, it’s really nice to see young people doing something worthwhile with their time — like cooking and baking, for example. My introduction…
If you’re not from a place, you don’t have the same nostalgic pangs for the foods, even if some of us invoke Proust when we bite into a madeleine, or get all bent out of shape when someone messes with a certain food from a particular country or region – even if we’ve never been there. I’m not a big fan of creamy soups, but…
It’s always nice to meet your heroes and many years ago, I was fortunate to meet one of mine. But I can’t claim Nick Malgieri as “mine,” as he’s been a guiding influence for bakers everywhere, publishing books with recipes and technique for making everything from traditional Italian pastries to Viennese tortes and even Middle East and Greek sweets, to the delight of bakers near…
Someone recently asked me why cookbooks go out of print. I was thinking about it and when trying to find out how many cookbooks are introduced each year, I couldn’t find any accurate statistics except for “hundreds.” In publishing, cookbooks also have two seasons; fall and spring. Depending on the subject, the publisher will decide when is best to release it. And for a variety…
Apparently I’m not the only one who loves polenta cake. The Italians like it so much that it’s called Amor Polenta. Which means “Polenta Love.” Well, at least that’s what I thought it meant, because amour in French means “love.” And I assumed that it was the same in Italian. (Another reason for finally getting on that life-long ambition to live in Italy and learn…
There’s been an anglo-wave sweeping across Paris the past few years, and the latest to excite Parisians has been the return of Marks & Spencer. Their last store in France closed over a decade ago and after a lot of speculation, and anticipation, they’re back. Their initial rentrée was a shop on the Champs-Elysées, which gives more room to clothes than it does to the…
One of my friends who also has a food blog told me that she likes the posts where I cobble together ingredients in Paris to make something American. After spending countless hours roaming the city in search of this and that, it’s something that is actually fun for me to do, too. I like nothing better than prowling around and discovering ethnic épiceries (often around…
At first, I thought that I was a little late to the party, posting a cranberry recipe after Thanksgiving had passed. Then I realized that now may be the actual best time to post a cranberry recipe since after Thanksgiving there is usually a glut of cranberries on the market, and prices drop after the Thanksgiving. Well, at least in America. I was fortunate because…
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