One Year of Around-the-World Recipes
Cypriot octopus stew, summer pineapple salad, and retro cookbook treasures
The Cultural Context of Food
A year ago this week I started a somewhat nerve-wracking series on Instagram exploring a weekly recipe and diving into the cultural context around the place it comes from. I was not used to filming myself (I’m still not) and going through some of those older videos is a little aesthetically painful. But I wanted to provide a place for viewers to be introduced to a new recipe every week and to learn the stories and nuances surrounding those foods. Like when you learn a language you don’t just learn words and how to put them together, you have to learn the context of the culture your communicating with. When you learn a recipe, you shouldn’t just learn the ingredients but also the connection those ingredients have to the people and places they’re from.
The response to these videos has been overwhelmingly positive, with the only downside being that they’re on Instagram stories and disappear after 24 hours. I usually highlight the story each week, but then they go away. So to remedy, I’ve started an IGTV channel where these videos are archived and you can go back and revisit any recipe that you might have missed.
I’ve also rounded up some of my favorite recipes I’ve made over the past year and highlighted them in this blog post. None of these recipes is my own creation, and one of my favorite things about doing these videos is finding blogs and videos from amazing cooks around the world who are sharing their passions for their cuisine. So if you head to the blog or the IGTV channel or continue to watch on stories, give the original sources some views, likes, and follows to support their craft.
Kataklysmos: Festival of the Flood
Speaking of deep-dive recipe videos, this week’s focuses on the Cypriot festival Kataklysmos. All around this Mediterranean island people flock to harbors and waterfronts to celebrate the sea. The story surrounding Kataklysmos originates with the Greek creation story, where Zeus decided to flood the Earth because of his anger toward the human race. Prometheus warned his son Deucalion about the impending flood, and Deucalion build a chest to save himself and his wife. Once the flood waters receded, the couple emerged and were told to throw the bones of the mother over their shoulders to repopulate the world. Realizing that “Mother” was Gaia, or the personification of the Earth, and her “bones” were rocks, they started throwing rocks over their shoulders, which turned into people.
Once Christianity came around and migrated to Cyprus, the Bible’s flood story fit in well with already existing beliefs. There is a Christian religious aspect to Kataklysmos with some Orthodox rituals, but the community mostly comes together to dance, sing, splash water on each other, and hold a festival all about the sea.
I made a delicious octopus stew for this video from Aphrodite’s Kitchen. Check out the video tomorrow on Instagram stories, then it’ll be on IGTV afterwards.
Next week, we head to Venezuela while making arepa reina pepiada.
Cookbook(s) of the Month
An ode to retro cookbooks
I love old cookbooks. You’d think the way we list ingredients and provide written instructions to readers wouldn’t have changed over the years—and I guess it hasn’t all that much—but when you crack open a book from four or five decades ago, there is just an intangible difference to, say, flipping through the latest mass-market at Costco.
It might be the terms that differ (sometimes I have to Google cooking terms in some of these books), and sometimes it’s they way things are described. The rise of food photography in the past 20 or so years is probably the biggest difference, but I have a love of 80s and 90s food photography. Really, no matter how hard they tried, the dishes didn’t really look appetizing. Some of the books I have are littered with artistic and hilarious illustrations to try and set a mood or just fill some space. But retro cookbooks give us a fabulous look into the food trends of the day. Our miso salad dressings and Instapot obsessions were their crab salad and baked Alaskas.
I recently came across a small-town bookstore on a roadtrip that was having a mega sale: all cookbooks were free! I picked up probably too many but I’d encourage you to grab one or two the next time you’re at a used bookstore. They’re fun and challenging to cook from, and you’ll probably learn a few tips and tricks from seasoned pros.
Keep cool with pineapple and …beets?
Some of the 70s cookbooks I have present flavor combos that don’t seem like they should work. One of the recipes I was a little skeptical about was a pineapple and beet salad from The Vegetarian Epicure, Book Two (1972) by Anna Thomas. Along with celery and onions, I really wasn’t sure this was going to work, but on a hot summer day with no AC in our house, cold anything sounded worth it.
But interestingly, the textures and flavors go pretty well together. So if you’re looking for an offbeat summer salad to keep you cool during this heat wave, try this one out.
Also I really love the 70s trend of making salads with no leaves, then serving them on a single piece of lettuce.
INGREDIENTS
4 large beets (about 3 1/2 cups when diced)
1 1/2 cups chopped, drained fresh pineapple
1 cup thinly sliced inner celery stalks
1/4 cup minced onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
salt to taste
DIRECTIONS
Boil the beets, unpeeled, until they are tender (anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour). Cool them, peel them, and cut them in 1/4-inch dice.
Combine the beets with the pineapple, celery, and onions. Pour the oil and vinegar over them and toss until everything is evenly coated with dressing. Taste and add salt as needed. Toss again.
Chill the salad for several hours, then stir it up again and take it out of the refrigerator at least 1/2 hour before serving so that it’s cool but not ice-cold.
Serve in small bowls or on lettuce leaves.
Preserve your family food traditions
Whether you have a strong family food heritage or are major foodies, learn more about the custom cookbook process by grabbing The Family Cookbook Info Guide.