By Sara HodonPhotos by Chris Markey When most fiery food and pepper aficionados think of the hottest places to find habaneros, jalapeños, and other spicy favorites, any number of cities in the American Southwest might come to mind. Chances are the small Pennsylvania Dutch borough of Kutztown, PA wouldn’t even make the Top 100. Possibly not even the Top 500. …
Hot Stuff at Fancy Foods 2011
By Melanie Yunk On Sunday, January 16, 2011, the four of us arrived at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, ready to sample every one of the 80,000 specialty foods on display. Well, a few of them, anyway. My husband, Kent, and colleague, Kim, and her husband, Tim, helped me navigate the aisles, and we found more than enough tasty …
Panamanian Cookery, 1947
By Dave DeWitt Gladys Graham self-published her cookbook, Tropical Cooking, in the Panama Canal Zone, then a U.S. possession, in 1947. It is a surprisingly comprehensive survey of cooking in the zone with 130 pages of recipes with ingredients ranging from avocado to vulture. She wrote of visiting local markets in her introduction. “Here are counters with avocados, mangos looking …
Curry-Making [Made Complicated]
Curry-Making [Made Complicated] Editor’s Note: I added the extension in the title because that’s exactly what this long-winded, poorly- organized, and overly-complicated demonstration is. But it’s also funny, in a British sort of way. Curry was all the rage in England post-Raj, and many Brits thought that they could spread it to the States. But the culture in the former …
Observations on Paprika, 1844-1897
Compiled by Dave DeWitt “At the entrance of the market was planted a cohort of dealers in Paprika, who had sacks full of this red pepper, so violently pungent, that a little on the point of a knife was enough, to our taste, to spoil a dish, but of which astonishing quantities are eaten by the natives. In the hotels, …