Month: March 2011

Flying high with one of Spain’s top chefs

We give Iberia Airlines credit for hiring superchef Sergi Arola to create the menus for its business class customers. Arola has been one of our favorite Spanish chefs since we met him shortly after he opened his first restaurant in the Hotel Michelangelo in Madrid. His great flair with food was matched only by his deep sense of hospitality. For those of us in coach seats, the airline tortures us every month with an Arola recipe in the inflight magazine, Ronda Iberia. This chicken stew is a great example of a dish that can be reheated and served at 35,000 feet and will still taste good. Arola's unexpected touch is the addition of a vanilla bean. We've adapted it for home use and added an...Read More

Having a blast at Las Fallas in Valencia

Valencia is beginning to rev up for Las Fallas, the festival of fires, fireworks, and managed explosions that culminates on the evening of March 19. The pageantry, sheer noise, and almost giddy sense of celebration is almost unfathomable, and we were not sure how we could possibly write about it. But we gave it a try for the Boston Globe. See it on the Globe's web site or check it out on our page of sample articles. This being Spain, there is of course plenty of time set aside for eating. Paella, the quintessentially Valencian dish, fits the celebratory mood as people gather around a big festive pan. Last year we posted our version of paella valenciana . But we know that a lot of...Read More

Why we are not foodies after all

Ever since the Atlantic Monthly published contributing editor B.R. Myers' screed ''The Moral Crusade Against Foodies'' in the March issue, insults and calumnies have been flying back and forth on the Web like mashed potatoes in a cafeteria food fight. The gist of Myers' argument is that to be a foodie is to be a glutton. When he insists that foodies have ''a littleness of soul,'' he reminds us of the New Yorker who went deer hunting in Maine, shot a farmer's cow, and pronounced that he preferred beef anyway. Myers picked some easy targets (Anthony Bourdain's ''oafishness,'' Michael Pollan's ''sanctimony'') and knocked them over—but so what? Even Bourdain, Pollan, et al. should be pleased. Myers' excoriation might even sell a few more books. We...Read More