When it comes to cradles of agriculture, West Africa does not often get a look in. The Sahel is better known as a place of famine than of feasting, but it wasn’t always so, and even today the Bamana people of Mali have a rich food culture. Stephen Wooten – …
I’m on what the real professionals call a mission, or, failing that, duty travel. And once again I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. So, rather than admit defeat and just leave well enough alone, I decide to record a little reflection on the food of Indonesia, at least, …
Karima Moyer-Nocchi is an American woman who teaches at the University of Siena. When she had been here almost 25 years she developed something of an obsession. On the one hand, she watched “a bewildering decline in the quality and craftsmanship of Italian food together with a skyrocketing deification of …
Huffduff it This year’s Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food was dedicated to The material culture of cooking tools and techniques and was full of fascinating stuff. I especially enjoyed a talk on the hay box, the original slow cooker. The principle is simplicity itself. Bring a pot …
Rachel Roddy, after about 10 years of hard slog, is an overnight sensation. She’s just scooped the André Simon award for best food book in 2015, a very big deal indeed for a first book. I’d been warming up this second helping for a day or two before that news …