My friend Kate knew just where to take us to dinner when we visited. The exterior of the Governor Francis Inn in Warwick, Rhode Island didn’t convey much. But when we stepped inside surrounded by wood paneling and golden lighting, I felt like I’d been here a hundred times before. A stone-clad gas fireplace in…
Note: This interview is from April. I had the pleasure of seeing Bernard Herman speak not long before we all began isolating. I really enjoyed reading his book but had a hard time writing anything expository to go with this interview. The book makes a beautiful gift so I did my best to get this…
Laurie Boucher told me that she always knew she wanted to study law. The vocation brought her from Pennsylvania to Baltimore, where she now resides. When Boucher needed more time to take care of family, she scaled back on lawyering, enrolled in culinary school, and began to master the art of pasta-making. As she shared…
One of the most vivid descriptions of the joys of foraging for wild food was written by Edna Lewis in “In Pursuit of Flavor,” the 1988 follow-up to her influential book “The Taste of Country Cooking.” She wrote in the present tense about the tastes from her childhood in Freetown, Virginia, where both cultivated and…
Abby Fisher’s 1881 book of recipes opens with an apology. Unable to read or write, the former slave and accomplished Southern cook apparently felt uneasy about producing the cookbook that was so often requested of her. Never mind that her contemporaries – such as Mrs. B. C. Howard and Mrs. Charles H. Gibson – didn’t…