cuisine

From street-food to fine dining, traditional Italian to Asian-Fusion, being well-versed in global cuisine is the first step to culinary mastery.

A superfood fit for a pharaoh
"It's easy to swallow, so Egyptian mothers feed their babies on it after nursing," remarked Emad Farag, an employee at The St. Regis Cairo, as I slurped another spoonful of the mysterious moss-coloured soup. Of all the things I'd imagined I'd be dining on in Cairo's swankiest new hotel, "posh baby food" was not it.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Feast
House of Bennani: the library of the habous of couscous
At the western edge of Tunis' medina, beneath a loud mural of football graffiti, I arrived at an almost invisible arched door set in a pale pink stone doorway carved with flowers. As I pressed the doorbell, I heard shuffling inside and the loud turning of an old lock. The door swung open, and Mohammed Bennani beckoned me inside.
By Mejra3 years ago in Feast
The French take on a trendy 'superfood'
As Scarlette Le Corre edges slowly through the sun-blazed shallows at low tide, emerald sea lettuce and ginger sea spaghetti kaleidoscope around her rubber boots like two-tone marbling ink. No step is taken without first scrutinising the marine life at her feet – this highly trained eye doesn't miss a subaqueous beat. Snip. A head of rock-clinging sea lettuce unveiled by the ebbing ocean is deftly cut off and popped in her bucket of water. Snip. A fistful of coarse red dulse and clumps of green hairy cheveux de mer (grass kelp) – which sea-vegetable gourmets in France simply rinse, twirl in olive oil and eat – get the chop.
By Mejra3 years ago in Feast
London's most authentic Indian food?
You could easily miss Drummond Street. Just west of Euston Station in central London, it's an unassuming stretch of townhouses, basement flats, restaurants and shops, easily walked in a couple of minutes.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Feast
The desert chefs who cook with the sun
Piercing rays of light beamed down on the Chilean village of Villaseca as Luisa Ogalde placed a pot filled with cabrito (young goat's meat) in an angular, transparent-topped box and angled it in the direction of the mid-morning sun. The cabrito, she explained, would stew in that box for four hours, slowly transforming into meat so juicy and tender you could slice it with a fork.
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Feast
France's undisputed queens of cheese
In the months leading up to the very first cheese-focused iteration of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF) competition, held every few years to recognise the country's the best craftspeople, Nathalie Quatrehomme remembers her cheesemonger mother, Marie, taking over the family living room, assembling and disassembling a plexiglass apparatus supporting dozens of different cheeses.
By Mejra3 years ago in Feast
The world's oldest dessert?
It was a cold, drizzly January day in Istanbul and I was searching for inspiration at Goreme, an old-school dessert shop in the Kurtuluş neighbourhood. Renowned for its oven-baked pudding and consistently excellent dairy-based desserts, they also offer what is thought to be the oldest sweet treat known to mankind: ashure.
By Gorodniki3 years ago in Feast
Why is Food Depackaged
How is Out of Date and Unwanted Food Depackaged? Why is organic food depackaged to remove wrapping materials? The reason is that unused food was once simply thrown into landfills, or burned in mass-burn municipal incinerators, and this is no longer socially or environmentally acceptable for numerous reasons. Instead, the requirement is now for the organic content to be anaerobically digested, and for the rest of the material to be recycled. In reality, the rejects almost always end up in a landfill or are inefficiently incinerated, but this is far better than the whole lot going to a landfill or for incineration.
By Miley3 years ago in Feast
England's 'nose-twisting' superfood salad
It was a sunny July day and I felt as though I was standing in a 19th-Century film set. The whistle of the steam train sounded as I waited on the perfectly preserved Victorian platform at Alresford station in Hampshire. The pale yellow and green station palette, barley twist lamp posts and original signage was virtually the same scene as 100 years ago, and colourful blooms amplified the serene setting. The historical hissing sound marked the beginning of my journey back in time to when the county's famed watercress began to spread nationwide.
By Sweet Holdeman3 years ago in Feast
Chhurpi: The world's hardest cheese?
Enveloped in a thick veil of grey mist, Nepal's remote Himalayan village of Parvathy Kund was nearly deserted. One of the few people in sight was an old woman sitting in the doorway of a wooden house, who flashed a welcoming, toothless smile at my friend and I. "Would you like to eat some chhurpi?" my friend asked the woman, having just bought a few kilograms of the local cheese from a factory opposite her home.
By Sweet Holdeman3 years ago in Feast
Slippurinn: The restaurant reinventing Icelandic cuisine
Much of what chef Gísli Matthías Auðunsson serves at his restaurant, Slippurinn, comes from outside his door. Only instead of a backyard garden with haricots vert and artichokes, there are meandering hills that look like green dragons dusted in fairytale-pink arctic thyme; cliffs perched dramatically over untamed fields of lemony sorrel; beaches dotted with briny oyster leaf and deep craters full of yellow-topped pineapple weed growing in volcanic soil as black as night. These, plus dozens of other wild-harvested ingredients like yarrow, sea beans, spruce and rowanberries, are pureed, dried, pickled and fermented in Auðunsson's kitchen apothecary.
By Gay3 years ago in Feast
The UK village that lost its cheese
Stilton, Cheshire, red Leicester. There are more than 700 cheeses produced in the UK, but in parts of the English-speaking world, a certain type is so ubiquitous that it's simply referred to as "cheese".
By Gay3 years ago in Feast