More than half of the Australian state of Tasmania is preserved in national and state parks. That doesn’t mean there’s no enterprise. But instead of loggers or miners, the workers are much smaller.
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The first English written reference to toast appears in 14th century cookbooks. Back then, after grilling your bread over the fire, you didn’t slather on butter or jam. Instead, toast was served soaked in ale or hot wine and spices. (They called this dish sops, which turned into our words soup and supper—a light evening […]
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If you order “a coffee,” what will you get? It depends where you are in the world.
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In college, my roommate and I had a VCR with one tape: Braveheart. We watched it daily. Sometimes twice. I memorized the scenery as much as the dialogue. Regardless of the film’s historical accuracy, Scotland looked beautiful and I dreamed of going. Twenty years later, last spring, I finally had a reason. I had just […]
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“Territorial” is a term of art for traditional regional British cheeses. As a definition it’s a bit loosey goosey. It can mean an area as big as a county where a cheese was made, like when it’s used for Lancashire or Cheshire. Or it can be as specific as the town where the cheese was […]
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Good winemakers often make wine from the grapes grown in their own vineyards. Excellent olive oils are most often pressed from the olives of a single estate’s groves. Farmstead cheeses, made only with the milk of the cheesemaker’s own herd, are revered at most good cheese counters. Being involved in every step of the process […]
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Some foods are so much a part of a place that you never think of one without the other. Belgium’s got their waffles. Champagne has their bubbly. Buffalo has its chicken wings; Nashville has its hot fried chicken. In the Spanish village of Almoharín, they’re all about their figs.
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I used to joke that The Netherlands only had one cheese: Gouda. Gouda in endless varieties, gouda with endless wardrobe changes. Gouda aged one year. Two years. Four years. Gouda with red wax. Gouda with black wax. To me, Dutch gouda was an enjoyable cheese, but monotonous, dull. It never got me excited. It never […]
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Cory Carman grew up in the Wallowa valley in eastern Oregon, the fourth generation on her family’s cattle ranch. On the wall in her office, she has a map of the surrounding land. She can point out which plots were purchased by her great-grandfather a century ago, and chart how the land was later split […]
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On the surface, making caramel is simple enough: take sugar, heat it to boiling, add cream, let cool until creamy or chewy. But it’s tricky to make really well, which is why it’s hard to find great versions of the darkly sweet treat in stores. It comes in a variety of consistencies and flavors and […]
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