Introduction

By Susan Brady

The World Is a Kitchen was five years in the making, but the concept was formulated, quite unknowingly, fourteen years ago before culinary tourism had become the popular pursuit it is today. I was hired by a nascent travel publishing company to help produce its first book, but not having traveled much in my life, I seemed an odd choice for the job. My skills, however, complemented those of my two bosses, and working on Travelers’ Tales Thailand helped bring alive an unfamiliar country for me But something was missing. Having never been to Asia was an obstacle, until I found the article.  Written by Kemp Minifie in Gourmet, it was about a cooking school in Bangkok. She wrote that “one of the most vivid pleasures of travel to Thailand is the cuisine” and proceeded to seduce with preparation of dish after dish, eloquently describing smells, sights, sounds, tastes. I had found my connection. I went out and bought my first Thai cookbook, The Taste of Thailand by Vatcharin Bhumichitr, which has some wonderful stories as well as recipes. I read about unusual produce and regional foods, and started testing dishes. I felt like an alchemist in the kitchen with all these new ingredients and spices, the mixing, the preparation. The end product was bright, vivid, and full of flavor that tantalized my tastebuds. I was hooked.

To celebrate the publication of that first book, I cooked a huge Thai meal. And subsequent books received the same treatment. India, Spain, Nepal, France, Mexico, Italy…the list goes on. I was able to better understand and to connect to a country and its culture through the indigenous food. And, there was, of course, the side benefit of getting to eat really wonderful things, not just in celebration, but this type of cooking entered my everyday life. My children grew up eating curries and moles and cassoulets, with only the occasional meatloaf thrown in.

In the last five years I have begun to travel, and no matter whether it is to Erie, Pennsylvania, or Taipei, Taiwan, my focus on every trip is the food. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to go to a cooking school, like I did at the Oriental Cooking School in Bangkok, the Boathouse Cooking School in Phuket, and the New Orleans Cooking Experience in Louisiana. Oftentimes I focused on country specialties, like chocolate in Belgium and the Chinese- and Japanese-influenced regional cuisines throughout Taiwan. When a destination did not have a remarkable cuisine, I sought out unusual restaurants or stores, like La Buona Tavola in Seattle, which specializes in truffle-based foodstuffs and small vineyard Italian wines. Everywhere I went, I found common ground when food was the focus of conversation. Street food vendors gladly showed me how things were cooked, waiters went into lengthy descriptions of ingredients of a particular dish, spice sellers were happy to enlighten me as to how to use the mahlab fourteen different ways. Food brings out the best in people, and while people in many cultures may be shy or unused to sharing themselves, they have no qualms rambling on about the regional specialties, their mother’s famous dish, or even inviting you home for a meal. And some of the best teachers are in the home, as this book illustrates.

I now consider myself a culinary traveler, seeing the world through its food. I have found out that I was not alone in this endeavor. According to recent articles in Business Week, The Seattle Times, and MSNBC, the trend toward culinary travel is increasing. Cooking Light has expounded the virtues of culinary vacations and Margo True, the Executive Editor of Saveur, traveled and learned firsthand what “no TV cook or book could tell her,” while making strudel in Vienna and rolling yufka in Turkey. And I can attest to hands-on learning. It is something that alerts all the senses: seeing and touching the exotic ingredients, hearing them sizzle and pop in a pan, smelling the fragrant aromas, tasting the unique flavors. When you use all five senses, your memory recall is better and duplicating recipes at home is easier than checking out a cookbook from the library and having a go blindly. Stepping into another kitchen can be intimidating, but oh so worthwhile.

Taking the next step can be difficult. But more and more people are traveling these days and finding that the world is a friendly place. Given the proliferation of cooking shows and rise in popularity of food and cooking magazines, there’s little doubt that curiosity toward foreign cuisine is at an all-time high. Culinary travel gives us the opportunity to create bridges between people and cultures, and allows us glimpses into worlds previously unseen. And what marvelous worlds they are.

In the five sections of this book you will find connections and a direction for your next adventure. Will it be in Cyprus? Thailand? Ghana? France? New Orleans? Will you, like Eileen Hodges Sonnad, learn that it is a privilege to serve food to those you love, if it is done with love, in “First, the Mustard Seeds”? When planning that next trip, our Resource Section can help guide you to find the right tour, class, or school to fit your needs. Or maybe you will enter someone’s home through serendipity, like Celeste Brash does in “Mama Roses’ Coconut Bread” and find that where a language barrier exists, that words become irrelevant as time is passed, working towards the same goal, and a bong can be created that is like none other. Like Augusto Andres, you will come to realize that the how is not as important as the why while “In the Kitchen with Yuyo.” It could be that you will test a recipe, such as the mafe in the story “A Scandal in Senegal,” and will decide that Africa is the place to go. No matter where it is that this book leads you, we agree with Helen Gallagher, who in “Flavor by the Spoonful,” finds that food is the soul of good travel.

We have tried to combine first-person experiences of cooking in a foreign land, delicious recipes for you to recreate, and a resource section covering books, magazines, cooking schools, and culinary tours. The stories included in this collection serve to show just a small portion of culinary experiences abroad to help steer you in a direction that will make you, and your stomach, happy. Along with these great real-life experiences the Resource section will help you take the next step and venture out into the world of culinary travel.

—Susan Brady