I’m doing a bunch of teaching and related things in the coming months, so here’s a list in case you’re interested in any of the following:
Category: Travel
The cuisine of Southwestern France ranks among the most iconic and delicious in the whole country. What would you say to an eight-day culinary tour of this incredible region, living at a gorgeous retreat with a big pool? What if we also had a yoga teacher on site, so we could all eat and drink guilt-free?
We finally got the spring issue of Fish & Game Quarterly out, and it’s all about Vermont, a state very dear to both Zak and me. We have some excellent writing in the form of three longer pieces that overlap in appealing ways, and a spring recipe from one of the state’s best chefs. Enjoy.
Also, the culinary tour of Umbria is filling up fast. Click that link for details, and don’t dawdle—space is limited.
Italy taught me to cook. When I moved to Rome at 20, I had rudimentary kitchen skills. Over the course of the next couple of years, when I went out to eat I savored every bite, trying to understand how seemingly simple food contained so much flavor, and then I’d try to reverse-engineer those dishes back in the kitchen. Daily shopping in Campo dei Fiori taught me the central answer: the quality of ingredients, grown nearby, is key. Practice (and lots of what I called “research eating”) taught me the techniques I needed. The rest is history; in the ensuing years I’ve built on that knowledge and turned it into a career as a food writer, photographer, teacher, and gardener. Now I get to share this passionate connection to one of the world’s great cuisines with you as I lead a ten-day cooking class in Umbria this fall.
After a hiatus this summer, the new issue of Fish & Game Quarterly is out today, and it’s a good one. Spend a little time with the talented people we gathered in our little corner of the Web; it’s about as far from clickbait as you can get in the food world, and we’re proud of that. Dig in.
I took the kid to Italy for his thirteenth birthday; we just got back a few days ago. I realized when we arrived in Rome that it had been fifteen years since I was last there, an inconceivably long time given the crucial part Italy played in forming who I became artistically and culinarily. The visual influences became apparent immediately in my paintings, and that continued until I left figuration behind entirely a few years later. The culinary influence proved to be even more durable, and increased in importance as I began growing and cooking food all the time when we left Brooklyn for the country. Now that I write about food for a living, the Italian approach to ingredients—the simplicity, the honesty, the glorification of peasant frugality—remains one of my touchstones.
The new Fish & Game newsletter is out today, and it includes a profile of Hirotake Ooka, one of the four extraordinary natural winemakers I visited last month during a quick trip to France.
The new Fish & Game newsletter is hot off the virtual presses, and particularly timely in that there’s nary a hint of spring to be found anywhere. We’re on track to have the book out by fall, so watch this space for news as that time draws nearer.
I do enjoy a vacation from blogging sometimes. There has been no shortage of cooking, both here and in Vermont, but not so much documentation. Among other memorable events, I taught a bread class, cooked for 75 or so people at a charity benefit, and fed my family daily as is my wont, but just wasn’t feeling the writing about it part. With an average of a post every other day for six and a half years, I don’t feel bad about taking a break. So now, as regular content resumes—subject to an impending deadline and how well I stave off the cold that Milo caught right before his birthday, torpedoing a weekend’s worth of fun—I’ll begin lazily simply with a few shots of How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
