Food & Culture

*The following was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. I’m always trying to recreate a specific piece of my lost youth: a paella I had while living with a wonderful family in Almeria, Spain on the Mediterranean coast. I honestly can’t remember the details of any other meal […]

Paella and the Reclamation of Youth

19 Jun, 2012 in Essays / Food & Culture / Food History / Main Fare by Madara

Professional chefs know that a meal is a kind of performance, the dinner table a place of theater. So for the holidays I made sure to don my best chef’s hat and draw the red curtain on all my best cooking. Now, with the New Year upon us, I notice […]

Food Culture: a Creamy Moral Center

29 Jan, 2012 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Food & Culture by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) In 1993, I returned from a brief stint as a nanny in France with a suitcase full of stinky cheese. Nineteen-year-old girls should bring home kitschy black berets or sleek leather handbags, maybe even a snow globe with the Eiffel […]

Stinky, Glorious Cheese

30 Sep, 2011 in Alaskan Cuisine / Essays / Food & Culture by Madara

(This piece was originally published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) In his book “Street Food,” author Tom Kime wrote to “get a feel for the beating heart of any community, and to begin to understand a culture different from your own, you need to understand the food.” He’s right. For […]

Street Food or Something Like It

4 May, 2011 in Essays / Food & Culture / Food History by Madara

The Tart Little Piggy

a Food Writer and Her Library