Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

Sugar and tea

April 16, 2006

A smokey lapsang souchong, my favourite afternoon tea, served with plain and saffron flavoured sugar crystals from a Persian supermarket in Amsterdam.

Growing up in my family, sugar was called white death. Until recently I didn’t have much of a taste for sweets or sweetend things. Even one year ago, in the throes of low glycaemic cooking experiments, I never would have added sugar to my tea let alone, tea to my sugar.

But these sugars are so pretty, and the crystals flavoured with saffron are aromatic, combining nicely with smoke and bergamot, that everyone who sips tea flavoured in this way just closes their eyes in pleasure.

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Shorts in Bra
Slow Food on Film

April 15, 2006

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And by shorts I mean short films. And by bra I mean Bra, Italy, where the short film festival, Corto in Bra will host a programme titled Slow Food on Film. How fine it is to see one’s sensibilities well represented, in a country that no longer has a vile mo fo as elected head of state.

As the Slow Food Movement’s spokesperson and founder Carlo Petrini promised at this year’s Berlinal Talent Campus, a number of short films at the BTC would be chosen and placed prominently within the Corto in Bra programme. This is great news, also because culiblog found quite a few of these films to be well worth watching. Nice to see my cinematic tastes reflected in the message of the Movement.

Although there’s nothing short about them, both the Future of Food, by Deborah Koons Garcia, and Taggert Siegel’s the Real Dirt on Farmer John will also be screened. Ms. Koons Garcia is the Slow Food on Film documentary jury chairperson and I’m pleased that this festival doesn’t even pretend to be non-partisan like the big film festivals do. Amen.

You can start brushing up your conversational Italian by downloading the Corto in Bra Film Festival programme here.

The culiblog selection from the Slow Food in Film programme is here:

By the way, the festival passes are a bargain, so you can really forcus on enjoying this ‘citta slow’, which is ironically pronounced cheetah slow.

debra at 12:26 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us

Lace, about faceAnder Kant

April 6, 2006


Image of white chocolate lace detail, by Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer

Aren’t these edible lace tiles by food designer Katja Gruijters exquisite? She makes them out of caramel, white and milk chocolate and sand tart. They feature prominently in an exhibition on contemporary lace design titled, ‘Ander Kant’, (literally ‘other lace’, or ‘other side’) at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.


Image of a milk chocolate tile, by Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer

The collection is on sale at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum shop but you can also find out more about them at Katja’s website.


Image of a sand tart tile, by Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer


image of a caramel tile, © Katja Gruijters, courtesy of the designer
(Please read more… )

debra at 1:47 | Comments (4) | post to del.icio.us

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