A celebrity chef meets breadfruit in a Hawaiian botanical garden.
Wild food plants in Italy
I find it pretty amazing how much — and how many — wild plants are still used for food in many parts of Italy. That includes some pretty unusual things.
Chez Alice
Pioneering restauranteur Alice Waters on Slow Food and more.
Ancient Irish beer recreated
Archaeologists interpret fulacht fiadh, brew ancient Irish beer, then go for curry.
Buckwheat musings
Greetings from Nairobi. I’m here for a week’s rest and relaxation, which does not of course preclude blogging! Anyway, what I wanted to write about has nothing to do with Kenya. Or at least I don’t think buckwheat — our subject this evening — is grown here. It all started a week back when I went up to Lucca, near Pisa, for the weekend. That included a lot of eating, of course, and one of the dishes that particularly struck me was a main course composed of a thin tortilla-type thing, folded up, and filled with a nice sauce. I can’t remember the name of the dish, but the tortilla was made of “grano Saraceno,” according to the menu. I hadn’t heard the name, but a little snooping confirmed it to be buckwheat. A rarish crop in Italy, but nevertheless the basis of some interesting traditional recipes. Now, I knew a little about buckwheat, but next to nothing about its nutritious relative, Tartar(y) buckwheat. And I certainly didn’t know that there’s an easily de-hulled variety of this crop called rice-tartary which promises to be a boon to breeders. Nor that you can emasculate the flowers with hot water, which could also be useful if you’re trying to make crosses. I should eat out more.