The New Gastronomes

Internship chapter:
Firenze, Tuscany, work.
Last days of summer.

Samira tossed me a large straw shopping bag before fastening a freshly pressed lavender scarf over her hair and tightly around her face. She stepped back, looking me up and down, studying me carefully. I thought for a moment that maybe I was improperly dressed or that she expected me to cover my head as [...]

It has been a busy week. It seems to me it just started for I didn’t even have the time to think at the time passing by. Hectic, frenetic, intense. What did I do? Well, more than I expected for sure! Living in the countryside, surrounded by hills and green fields where is easier [...]

In the vineyard,
leafy, green rows one after the other,
hanging from the plants, packed bunches of ripe, blue grapes,
the weight of the bunch in my hand as the scissor liberates it from the plant,
the sun burning my neck,
the satisfaction of finishing another row
and, later, the smell of freshly squeezed grapemust
and thoughts of all the good it will [...]

The best sandwich ever. I mean it. Crispy bread on the outside, soggy on the inside from its juices. Crunchy and salty crackling and thinly sliced, juicy pork belly as the filling. Nerbone’s porchetta sandwich is a must for anyone passing through Florence. You can find this tiny food stall is in the San Lorenzo [...]

“Do you want a Hot Tamale candy?” Meghan, a fellow UNISG student, asked as she opened a birthday package from her sister.
“Sure!” I replied with glee. “Wait. You don’t have real tamales in there do you?” I asked hoping against all rationality that the small FedEx package might contain those steamed corn cakes, individually wrapped [...]

It’s dusk and every minute counts as we drive out of Clybucca, a sleepy little town on the east coast of Australia. The campground is waiting. The tins of baked beans jingle in the back seat amongst other oddly matched ingredients, which will become our dinner — a pumpkin, 4 eggs, a loaf of white [...]

What do Shropshire Sheep, Silver Grey Dorking, Ayrshire Cattle, Pure Breed Suffolk, and Wessex Saddleback have in common? Apart from being romantic names one might expect to read in the pages of Pride and Prejudice, they’re also rare breeds that are making a comeback to our culinary assembly.
For those of us who value taste and [...]

I recently attended an event at a place called “Krogerup” in Humlebæk about 20 km. north of Copenhagen. Krogerup is an old estate and farmhouse and now the headquarters of the company “Aarstiderne”, meaning “the seasons”, who each week delivers 30.000 boxes of organic vegetables, fruit, bread, meat, fish and nearly everything else to the [...]

It was nearly dark by the time we decided to finally ignore the rain. It had rained persistently the last two days and we had been waiting  in vain for a few dry hours to go and pick chanterelles. In northwest Styria (an Austrian Bundesland known for being very mountainous and covered mainly by forests) [...]