For the last couple of weeks, we've been staring at a pair of cookbooks on our living room coffee table. One is Gunpowder: Explosive Flavors from Modern India, the other Levant: New Middle Eastern Cooking from Tanoreen. But instead of inspiring us to rush to Whole Foods and stock up on ingredients, they're making us consider booking some airline tickets. We tend to read cookbooks the way some people read guidebooks. We realize that this tendency works against our long-term interests, since we actually write guidebooks and don't write recipe books. But we can't help ourselves. Food is the easiest gateway into culture, and as we read the recipes, we imagine ourselves in distant kitchens. It doesn't hurt that both books are written by expatriate...Read More