Category — Worth Watching/Reading

Whether you’ve got a meatball fiend, an armchair traveler, a rock n’ roll groupie or a plain old celebrity chef stalker on your gift list, cookbook publishers have provided. Please check out my story for some ideas about what to get the cook on your list.

Ari, Jake & Amy, aka: The Nazarov Family (photo by: Jose Rodriguez)

“No, no, like this,” said Rohinikaku, swirling her hand in a circle like she was cleaning a window. This was in Mumbai, where I was staying in the flat of my husband’s aunt Rohini, the 74-year-old family matriarch, while I waited for our daughter to come home. We were making mango pickle, and I was plodding around in the slippery chunks, making a mess of it.

It’s no secret that food — making it, eating, learning it — brings families together. But for adoptive families like mine, food also bridges cultures, and closes time and space. Please check out this gorgeous essay by my friend Amy Rogers Nazarov about how bi bim bap helped introduce her to her son. Also check out Amy’s blog, WordKitchen.

If you know about John Mariani you know he’s the food critic everyone loves to hate (Google it.) But he’s actually a lovely guy whose new book reveals how “garlic eaters” spread the gospel of la cucina Italiana around the globe.

Before there was chicken piccata, before there was manicotti, before lasagna and pizza and eggplant parmigiana, the culinary traditions of Rome, Greece and the Middle East met in the boot that would eventually become Italy, Mariani tells us in How Italian Food Conquered the World.

Today, that food has become a staple on American menus (think about: ever seen an Applebee’s without pasta?) Mariani offers a fascinating exploration of the cultural roots of the food we now think of as Italian. And that food’s migration into the mainstream of American culture and beyond. Worth a read.