food

The very words themselves call up ancient things. I imagine it on the menu that day in the year 1215 when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede or something Shakespeare’s own mother would have served.

When I fantasize about the words being read in a perfect movie, I hear a voice like Sir Alec Guinness intoning them.

“Roast Beef.”

Food is a lens. It's not all about chefs and buzzy restaurants. It's a lens through which we can learn about our culture, history and environment, among other things.

I learn words in many ways, but the best may be in eating. The words on the menus and in the cookbooks I have from around the world have helped me conquer at least ‘parts’ of foreign languages.

I have a good knowledge of French, Italian and even some Japanese, if you allow that food is the central most important aspect of understanding a people’s tongue. My vocabulary was broadened by at least seven new words in Little Havana just the other day at a place blandly named, “Viva Mexico.”

When you think "culinary district," does Oakland Park come to mind? Do you think about Oakland Park at all? Maybe you should, as the community seems to be on its way to developing a downtown area based on food culture.

I was near a small sandwich stand in an open-air market.

It was like many you would see almost anywhere in the world. A radio was playing a vaguely familiar tune. Soft drink cans and cigarette packs lined the windows inside the stand where a lady was stuffing soft buns with meats. There was a paper napkin dispenser advertising “Coca-Cola.”

This sandwich stand happened to be in Florence, Italy.

Long before any Hispanic boy bands tormented or tantalized the radio air waves, the soup/stew Menudo was a siren song sung to me for the first time back in my younger days in a little grocería named ‘La Bodega’ in Diamond Lake, Illinois. 

Maybe it was the alleged attributes of Menudo being able to cure a hangover that first led me to its pleasures. It must've been something strong to convince me Menudo is not made with things I normally consumed in my boyhood.

No hangover is required at all anymore for me to long for some of that homemade, restorative soup. And I had a hunch I’d find some of that in Homestead where one can find the best concentration of Mexican food to be found in either the counties of Miami-Dade or Monroe.

A dramatic rainstorm was rolling through the lower Florida Keys as we tried to decide what to make for breakfast the day after our granddaughter Audrey’s first birthday.

My daughter-in-law Lourdes wisely poured some freshly squeezed orange juice and put some of her homemade banana bread in the toaster to stave off the equally volatile storms of unquenched thirsts or insatiable appetites propelled and honestly worsened by our practice of morning café con leches.

If you missed our Twitter chat about Jewish cuisine and Jewish delis, catch the recap here.

Ted Merwin didn't set out to become a deli historian. About ten years ago, Merwin was working on his Ph.D. dissertation about the popular culture of second generation Eastern European Jews -- such as vaudeville and silent comedy -- in 1920s New York.

As part of our coverage of the Miami Book Fair International, WLRN invites you to join a live chat with author Michael Ruhlman ("The Book of Schmaltz") at 3:30 p.m. this Thursday, Nov. 21.

This year's Thanksgiving celebration coincides with the first day Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. It's a convergence that hasn't occurred since 1888 and which may not occur again for more than 70,000 years.

Jokes about Manischewitz-hued turkeys aside, this is a fabulous opportunity to mingle two great food traditions.

All of the conversation about food at Miami Book Fair International inspires the appetite. Unfortunately, if the past is a guide, the food at the Book Fair is not curated with the same care as the authors. It's basically overpriced carnival fare. 

What do you do with a word like aïoli the first time you see it in print?  If you don’t grow up versed in languages containing umlauts, It’s confusing for sure. Maybe I resisted learning much more until I started cooking and I discovered how good a word with an umlaut could taste! The first time I made an aïoli I was in Key West, not sunny Provence from whence she likely shone first. But the sun connected us through the gypsy medium of garlic!

Although less than 2 percent of Miami-Dade County's population is Asian-American, Danielle Chang, founder of the Lucky Rice Festival, decided her party had enough appeal last year to come back to Miami Beach for a second round.

In the movie Field of Dreams, an Iowan farmer builds a baseball diamond in a cornfield and the ghosts of the disgraced 1919 Chicago White Sox materialize from the stalks.

On a 1.6-acre plot of land in Dania Beach, there's nothing so supernatural taking place. Instead, the community, along with a public-private partnership, have joined together to build an urban garden. They grow vegetables and sell them to neighbors who otherwise have a difficult time finding fresh food near their homes.