The World Is a Kitchen

Sample Chapters

Here are three sample chapters from The World Is A Kitchen.

The Slaying of the Yabbies by Lucy Friedland

I have no business being in culinary school. I’m slow, clumsy, uncoordinated. Not chef material. Here I am anyway, slogging through a Commercial Cookery course in Sydney, Australia. We’ve covered soup through dessert in just ten weeks, skipping over the main courses. But now the party’s over. No more frilly stuff like canapés and Chantilly cream. We’re in the throes of the Fish and Shellfish module. Crustaceans are on the menu, and we’re staring down a tub-load of live yabbies.

Tastes of Generosity by Judy Ware

Spanish verbs run amok in my brain. My husband Jim and I are only two weeks into a three-month commitment to learn Spanish in Oaxaca, Mexico. I suggest a getaway day to explore the food of this region where at least fifteen indigenous groups contribute to its diversity. We get lucky. A call to local cooking diva Susana Trilling of Seasons of My Heart fame results in A journey into the secrets of Oaxacan cooking. Now our teacher sits in the front seat of the van, her long black braid brushing the top of my knees.

Basque Tortilla by Melissa Kronenthal

The first time you step off the plane into the cool, humid air, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve arrived in the wrong country by mistake. The landscape is the first clue, particularly if you’ve traveled here from other parts of Spain: parched, arid plains have given way to close-knit, brooding mountains, green and hemmed in by rain clouds. The cities are tucked in between them, huge apartment blocks challenged in height only by the aging black spires of the industrial infrastructure. There is no endless sun, no evening bullfights here; the people you encounter are quieter, more reserved. Signs on streets and doorways mock your grasp of Spanish with their incomprehensible strings of letters containing multiple k’s and x’s, and words like kaixo and eskerrik asko filter their way into the conversation of those around you. And if that’s not enough, when you start talking to people they all ask you how you enjoyed your time in Spain. But, you stammer, I haven’t left Spain!  Yes, they assure you, you have. You haven’t just crossed into another province of Spain, you’ve entered a place that is emotionally, intellectually, and linguistically its own country—the Basque Country, or Euzkadi, as the locals call it.

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About the Editors

When Michele Anna Jordan was offered a live sago worm at a farmers' market in Serian, Sarawak (one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo), she politely declined.  It is the only food she has ever refused during cooking and eating adventures in dozens of countries on four continents.  She ate durian in Kuala Lumpur and after her first bite of mangosteen bought a kilo and returned to her hotel, where she quickly devoured all of them.  Jordan has written about food, cooking, culture and travel in newspapers, magazines, anthologies, and in sixteen cookbooks to date, including California Home Cooking, The New Cook's Tour of Sonoma, Salt & Pepper, and The BLT Cookbook.  Her radio show “Mouthful” is available as a podcast at iTunes and Yahoo.  Jordan teaches unique in-home cooking classes and is currently at work on several new books. See what she is up to at MicheleAnnaJordan.com.

Susan Brady has been cooking up a storm in the Travelers' Tales kitchen for the past fourteen years, preparing and plating almost 100 travel books. She has traveled from the shores of Southern Thailand to the chocolate shops of Belgium in her quest to taste the world's many cultures and is still hungry for more. A member of the International Food, Wine, and Travel Writers' Association, she is known as Mrs. B in the food blogging world (follow her culinary adventures at : EatingSuburbia.com). Susan and her busy stove reside in the suburbs outside of San Francisco, California.

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.

Table of Contents

Preface       
Michele Anna Jordan                       

Introduction                               
Susan Brady

PART ONE
NORTH/CENTRAL/SOUTH AMERICA

In the Kitchen with Yuyo                       
Augusto Andres
Mexico

A World Without Latkes                       
Robert Golling Jr.
Airborne

Moqueca Feast                                
Avital Gad-Cykman
Brazil

Tastes of Generosity                           
Judy Ware
Mexico

Nawlins                       
Sarah Pascarella
USA

Making the Small Tortilla                        
Nancy Harless
Belize

Preface

By MICHELE ANNA JORDAN

There is no flavor called moon
although I feel as if I can taste it
cool, soft and powdery.
Tea-cookie, translucent jellybean, host.
Swallow her down
nibble by nibble
until you too glow.
Soon, people will stop
to lick your hands
and ask for the recipe.
—Lizzie Hannon, “A Night in My Kitchen”

Whether we travel to eat or eat to travel, when something tastes good we want more: We ask for seconds and sometimes thirds, we lick each other’s fingers, we ask for the recipe. We carry the treasure home, in our hands and in our hearts, where we hope to recreate the magic.

I was lucky to have been born with an adventurous palate. My first memory of food on the road was the sweet ripe watermelon I ate on my fourth birthday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A few days later, on the California Zephyr from Chicago to Oakland, I ate what I consider my formative meal, the one that that transformed me bite by bite from a passive into an active eater, one eager to discover and savor all the enticing flavors the world offers.