Global Culinary Traditions A cook who has made the same dish twenty thousand times, on one burner, for people who will notice immediately if it’s wrong. That’s not lesser cooking — it’s a different and often harder discipline. There’s a hierarchy built into the way most people talk about food, and it runs from the … Read more
Global Culinary Traditions Farro, freekeh, millet, sorghum, teff, buckwheat. Grains that fed empires, sidelined by industrial agriculture, now back — and genuinely worth cooking, once you cut through the marketing. Walk into a supermarket and the grain aisle offers wheat, rice, oats, and maybe a token bag of quinoa. Walk into a market anywhere in … Read more
Global Culinary Traditions It became famous as a diet. It survives as something more interesting — a way of cooking built on cheap ingredients, restraint, and the assumption that eating is social. The Mediterranean diet has an unusual history for a cuisine: it was identified by researchers before it was marketed by anyone. Mid-twentieth-century studies … Read more
Global Culinary Traditions A bowl of rice, a bowl of soup, three small dishes. Behind that unassuming structure sits one of the most rigorous philosophies of cooking anywhere — and one that translates surprisingly well. Ask most people outside Japan what Japanese food is and they’ll say sushi, ramen, tempura. Ask inside Japan and you’re … Read more