We always rely on food to open new places and experiences to us when we travel. But, on a recent cold night here in Boston, we were reminded that food can also be the key to other times and locales. Novelist and culinary enthusiast Crystal King has just published her second book, The Chef's Secret (Atria Paperback, Simon & Schuster, $16.99). To create an imagined life for Bartolomeo Scappi, the famous Renaissance-era chef who created over-the-top feasts for cardinals and popes, King studied his elaborate cookbook L'Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi (in a translation from the University of Toronto Press) and then let her imagination take over. “I thought what was his life like,” she told a small group gathered at Juliet restaurant in Somerville (www.julietsomerville.com)...Read More