I am thrilled to finally reveal the cover of my cookbook, MODERN KOSHER: Global Flavors, New Traditions. The book is scheduled for release by Rizzoli New York on September 8, 2020. It may seem that working on this with all that’s been happening in the world would have been … [Read more...]
WORLD FARE: A Lebanese take on drinking food at La Miche Kabobgee
No one truly knows whether Russia’s Tsar Nicholas I, in fact, referred to the Ottoman Empire as the “Sick Man of Europe.” But three things are certain: (1) that sick man liked to drink; (2) he liked to eat, and; (3) when that sick man died, he left behind the meze (or “mezze”) he … [Read more...]
WORLD FARE: Ishtar Restaurant: fighting ISIS one falafel at a time
There was once an old Vietnam-era slogan on posters, buttons, bumper stickers and T-shirts. Today it would, no doubt, be a ubiquitous Facebook meme: Join the Army; travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them. It had resonance because it … [Read more...]
TURKEY: Pammukale
Turkey is exotic. It has been so for centuries -- millennia even -- becoming in Western European minds the very definition of "the other." Its exoticness, though, is of a particularly beguiling quality. There is just enough that is familiar to raise the comfort level. Istanbul … [Read more...]
MIDDLE EASTERN TRAVEL: Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv is, especially for a Southern Californian, the most comfortably familiar city in Israel. It feels at once urban and yet laid back. The sensation is not unlike a beach community in San Diego or Los Angeles; secular, hedonistic and modern. … [Read more...]