• “How birds fly fast through narrow spaces”
• “History of bushfires in Australia”
• “Dolphins better at getting the girl with help from mates”
• “Litter of baby quolls a boost for breeding program”

Funnily enough, my first story at Australian Geographic takes me back to my sophomore year art beat.  I was expecting something more science-driven, somehow, but there’s still time. In the meantime, I’m getting a crash course in Australian history and culture.

It’s spring here, so I’ve been enjoying my life here in Sydney by refinishing furniture (as pictured here),

replanting seeds, and getting up to my usual shenanigans in the kitchen. This curried salad is from one of my CSA box experiments, and uses up some of the first signs of summer’s impending heat in the form of a roasted red pepper and some beautiful curly kale. I can’t wait until I have enough of my own produce to try a version of this from our balcony garden.

Curried raw kale, roasted red pepper, and spelt salad

I did not measure quantities for this, nor should you need to. Make as much as you feel like making, and play with the proportions to suit your taste and available produce.  This is fresh tasting and delicious, and is a nice introduction to using raw kale in anything.

Salad

• Curly kale, thinly sliced. You’re going to throw this in raw, so make sure you really thinly slice and de-stalk the leaves.  I probably used 4 large handfuls to the quantity of spelt below, but use whatever you like.
• Red bell pepper (or capsicum). I roasted this until the skin was black and the inside was soft on my gas stove top, but you can also roast over a hot barbecue or under the broiler/grill in the oven.
• Finely chopped almonds
• Cooked spelt (soak overnight, 1 c. spelt:2 c. water, cook with same proportions of spelt to liquid until soft–maybe 30 minutes?), cooled.
• Raisins, if you feel like it. Soak in a bit of warm water and drain before adding.

Dressing

• Juice from an orange (I used half of one for ~4 c. of salad)
• Curry powder (choose a sweet one with a hit of cinnamon)
• 1 part Balsamic vinegar: 3 parts olive oil
• salt and pepper, to taste

Mix the dressing together and pour over the tossed salad ingredients. Toss again. Eat.

Simple enough?

The wildflowers are out in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and our dwarf Meyer lemon tree looks like it is about to bloom.  Springtime here doesn’t come with quite the feeling of euphoric relief I used to get at a long, snowy winter’s end, but it’s pleasant all the same. I think I’m finally learning to enjoy Australia’s more subtle approach to the changing of seasons.

I’m teaching a course on bread in about a month’s time, and I have yet to develop a perfect gluten-free recipe to share with students. This one comes pretty close, though–particularly in comparison to my last effort, which was more scone-like in consistency than this batch, and inherited an unfortunate aftertaste from some bad millet flour.

This is freshly-mixed dough, before the rise. I've tossed the ball in a bit of olive oil to keep it from sticking. Next time, I'll shape the loaf from the start, so I don't disturb the structure post-rise.

This version gets its taste from a combination of sorghum, buckwheat, and almond flours.  The buckwheat is probably the most noticeable flour in this bread; it has a strong flavor that I like, but it can be swapped out for something else if it’s not to your taste. The almond flour provides moistness, and I believe the sorghum is responsible for the relatively light texture of the bread. It has a mild flavor, so it’s a good choice as a base flour for baked goods.

Here's the dough post-rise. It feels kind of spongy when you press on it. It does not rise much, especially not in comparison to normal bread, and will not rise much in the oven, either.

To create the spongy structure of the bread without gluten, I used a chia seed slurry (ground chia seeds, boiling water) and added in some psyllium husk for good measure (which I first read about here).  Both ground chia seeds and psyllium husks mimic gluten by creating gel-like strands when mixed with water; these strands reinforce the structure of the rising bread and give it a nice crumb, which can often be difficult to achieve with gluten-free flours.  You can also use a flax / linseed slurry if you prefer, and can supplement with xanthan gum as noted below.

Gluten-free buckwheat bread

Makes 1 small loaf.

I’m calling this buckwheat bread because buckwheat is the defining flavor of this loaf. Feel free to swap one or more of the flours below for equal weights of other gluten-free flours; just try to swap in flours with similar qualities to maintain the texture and consistency of the loaf.

Required equipment: 1 mixing bowl, 1 small bowl, 1 spoon, 1 scale (Yes, this is required if you want to try gluten-free baking).

Optional equipment: A cast-iron dutch oven. If not, a baking pan and some parchment will work.

Chia seed slurry

• 15 g. ground chia seed
• 30 g. boiling water

In a small bowl, mix together the ground chia seed and water until it forms a consistent slurry. Set this aside; when you’re ready to use it, it should feel kind of like silly putty.

Dry ingredients:

• 25 g. almond meal (I use this because of its high fat content; you can swap in millet flour or something along those lines if you prefer.)
• 125 g. sorghum flour (also known as jawar atta; look for this at Indian food markets or Fiji Market in Newtown, if you live in Sydney.)  You can use 125 g. teff or 75 g. brown rice flour + 50 g. millet (thanks for the recipe tests, Mom!)
• 50 g. buckwheat flour
• 40 g. potato starch
• 30 g. tapioca flour
• 15 g. psyllium husk
• 5 g. instant yeast (This is a bit less than a typical packet.)
• 3 g. salt (1/2 t.)
• If you don’t mind using xanthan gum, 1/2 t. does help the rise a bit, and you can add it to the dry ingredients.

Wet ingredients

• 7 g. honey  (Use an unprocessed sugar or a light molasses if you prefer; it doesn’t add to the flavor of the bread but helps feed the yeast.)
• ~250-270 g. warm water (This quantity will vary depending on the flours you use, the humidity, etc. Use enough so that the mixed dough is soft and tacky; it should feel sticky, not smooth.)

The procedure:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together thoroughly.
2. Add the honey and chia seed slurry, then mix in the water. It’s best to start with less water than you think you’ll need, and keep adding more until the dough comes together. I use my hands for this step–I just keep mixing the dough together (kind of like kneading, except you’re not building up the gluten framework) and adding small quantities of water until it feels right. For this dough, it’s right when the dough is sticky and you have no more dry flour in the mixing bowl.
3. Once the dough is mixed, lightly oil a bowl (even the one you just used for mixing), or, if you prefer, a loaf pan.
4. Shape the dough into whatever shape you desire.
5. Lightly oil some plastic wrap and cover the shaped dough. Let rise for a couple of hours.  It won’t rise a lot, but will feel spongy when you press gently on the loaf.
6. About 20 minutes before baking, put your clean cast iron dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 500°F / 260°C, or as high as your oven will go.  If you don’t have the dutch oven, just preheat the oven.
7. When the oven’s preheated, lift the lid (carefully!) off the dutch oven and place the risen bread inside. Put the lid back on, put the pot back in the oven, and lower the oven temperature to 450°F / 230°C.  If you don’t have the dutch oven, just slide the bread in the oven on a parchment-lined cookie sheet or in a loaf pan.
8. About 15 minutes after you place the bread in the oven, remove the dutch oven lid (or simply turn your loaf, if you aren’t using the dutch oven).
9. Continue baking for 15-20 minutes, or until the crust of the bread has taken on a nice brown color.  At this point, tap the bottom of the loaf. It should sound like a muted drum when it’s finished; if it doesn’t, give it a bit longer.
10. Once the bread is done, place on a rack and let cool.

It looks edible, at least.  This is my first attempt at gluten-free bread, and the crumb has worked out pretty well. It’s light, airy, and not what I expected, texture-wise, for gluten-free bread.  The taste? Well… These rolls ended up with an incredibly bitter aftertaste.  We’ll just call this experiment #1 and leave it at that.

I did learn a few interesting things along the way, however, which I thought might be worth sharing.

Lesson #0: Gluten Free Girl’s gum-free version of gluten-free bread is an excellent recipe to start with. 

Some of the ingredients aren’t readily available here in Australia, so I am on my own in terms of the final combination of flours, etc, I use. I’m also hoping to make a vegan version of this bread. I have relied on the weight ratios, etc, she uses in this recipe as a starting point.  At least as far as texture goes, I’m on the right track.

Lesson #1: It is possible to make gluten-free bread without weird ingredients.

Yes, “weird” may be a fairly subjective term in this case, but I tend to think that chia seeds are pretty easy to get. I used freshly ground chia seeds in this experiment; when you mix them with boiling water and let the mix cool, you get a stretchy, almost putty-like paste. The chia seed “slurry,” as Gluten Free Girl (a.k.a. Shauna) calls it, looks like this:

You can apparently use flax/linseed or psyllium husk in place of the chia seeds, both of which I intend to try. These ingredients work because they are all pretty high in dietary fiber, some portion of which forms long chains of sugars that can be used to stabilize foams. Bread, as it turns out, is essentially a set foam, so anything that helps foams set properly could work in gluten-free bread.

Lesson #2: Gluten-free dough is really wet. 

It does not feel like normal dough. There is no window-pane test, you will not create a nice, taut ball of dough, and you should add as little flour as possible. In fact, I followed my usual rule for scones and avoided working this dough more than I had to. I think it paid off in the end, as the bread ended up fairly light considering the ingredients I used.

Lesson #3: This bread looks funny when it rises.

Yes, that’s two hours after the dough was mixed. It did rise a bit, but not a lot, and definitely looked nothing like normal bread dough.  I was able to shape it easily enough, at least.

Lesson #4: Too much buckwheat does not a tasty bread make, perhaps? Or I need to be more careful about where I get my flour.

I stuck to the same flour:starch weight ratios defined by Gluten Free Girl (weight ratios really are the key to making a good loaf of bread in any situation), but I changed the flours (to millet, buckwheat) and the starches (to potato, tapioca). I definitely used a lot more buckwheat than most recipes I’ve found.  At first, I thought this might have been it, but then I remembered the last buckwheat noodles I cooked. They didn’t taste bitter at all, and they were all buckwheat. Perhaps my millet flour was bad? If so, well… Bad news for the co-op, because that’s where I got it.  I’ll have to do a taste test and see what I find.  As for the next experiment, I’ll try a different set and proportion of flours, but stick to a similar technique. I think I will also add some olive oil next time, just to make it taste a bit richer.

The verdict?

I’ll spare you the recipe. This one simply isn’t ready for release yet.

Forgive the photos. Our apartment is dark, and as is typical for Sydney, the only place I could store a light-box for photos is in the bathroom.

I volunteered to teach a bread course for a local co-op a while ago, and just heard back. It looks like they’re interested! Naturally, these pages will be filled with bread in the coming weeks as I prepare, so stay tuned…

One of our first purchases for our new home in Sydney was a dwarf Meyer lemon tree. $50 and several months later, we picked our first three fragrant fruit. Not bad for a partially sunny balcony in Sydney’s Inner West, don’t you think?

Meyer lemons, a cross between lemons and mandarins, have a bewitching floral scent and a sweet, tart, juicy interior, so they make especially good additions to baked goods.  With this in mind, I decided to use the juice from two lemons to make a tart and the zest to make a Meyer lemon vodka. The tart lasts several days in the fridge, and the Meyer lemon vodka lends the fragrance of these beauties to everything from cocktails to cookies for months after the citrus season has come to an end.

With the last lemon, we made homemade Meyer lemon-lime bitters—a fitting way to celebrate our first citrus harvest.

Meyer lemon vodka – a recipe in pictures

1. Gather ingredients.  Excellent vodka isn’t essential for this; Smirnoff or something similar will do.

2. Peel off the zest of the Meyer lemons, carefully avoiding the pith.

3. Drop the Meyer lemon zest into the vodka, and let the flavor of the zest infuse in the vodka for a few weeks. When the vodka is fragrant, it’s finished.

This vodka is delicious in any fruity mixed drink, and also works well in baked goods calling for orange liqueur.

Meyer lemon tart with cardamom and orange zest
Makes one 9-inch tart.

This tart has a complex, not-to-sweet flavor; it pairs well with strong coffee or English Breakfast tea.  The recipe is adapted from the 53rd edition (yes, you read that right) of The C.W.A. Cookery Book and Household Hints.  The C.W.A. is well-known in Australia for their baking expertise, and their cook book is probably the only volume I have ever owned that covered lemon tarts and home remedies for common livestock maladies in the same volume. It is also the only recipe book I have ever seen that lists oven temperatures in terms of “low”, “moderate”, and “high”—there are no degrees in sight.  The C.W.A. expects their reader to have more than a cursory knowledge of baking already, it seems, but that is part of the fun.

Biscuit pastry

• 2 T. sugar
• 1-1/2 c. self-raising flour
• 125 g. (4 oz.) unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• a few tablespoons of water or milk

Pre-heat oven to 165°C / 330°F.  Whisk the sugar and self-raising flour together, then rub in the butter (hint: use your hands!) until you get an even crumb.  Make a well in the mixture and break the egg in the well; beat the egg slightly, and then mix the egg gently into the mix until the dough starts to come together.  Add water or milk as needed to bring the dough together completely. It should still be relatively crumbly, and you should avoid working it more than absolutely necessary. Simply push it into the bottom and up the sides of a tart pan or pie tin until the bottom and sides are evenly coated.

Tart filling

• 2 eggs
• 1 c. sugar
• zest from one orange (or a Meyer lemon)
• juice from two Meyer lemons
• 1/2 t. ground cardamom

Beat the eggs and the sugar together until the mixture takes on a smooth orange color and a thick consistency.  Mix in the remaining ingredients.

Baking the tart

First, bake the biscuit crust alone for 5-7 minutes, or until the pastry begins to puff up at the edges of the pie pan.  Let cool for another five minutes, and then pour the tart filling in the pastry.  Bake until the filling is set (if you tap the side of the tin, you shouldn’t see the filling wobble at all); this took about 20-25 minutes for me, but make the C.W.A. proud and keep an eye on your tart.

Let it cool before you dig in, if you can bear the wait.

I only started to feel settled here in Sydney when we figured out where to get decent flour.  It was an outright quest for us, slowed only by the oppressive heat of summer, but we found it in the end: high-protein, good quality bread flour, with sufficient gluten to make a proper, self-supporting loaf.  With it, we discovered rye, hard whole wheat, spelt, semolina, all the ingredients we needed to make the bread we missed, and perhaps try a few new ones along the way.

This loaf here? It’s a new favorite. The raisins give it a subtle sweetness while the coriander turns this bread into something decidedly adult.  And the semolina? It makes this amazing toast without messing with Tartine Bakery’s characteristic open crumb.  In short, it’s the kind of sourdough loaf I’ve been trying to create since James and I became interested in baking so many years ago.

The only fault I can find with this bread is that it takes some planning to make. But now that it’s dark when I leave work, I don’t mind this so much.  It gives me something to look forward to on the long drive home.

Raisin coriander sesame semolina sourdough

Makes 2 loaves.

This recipe is adapted from the Tartine Bread cookbook, by Chad Robertson.  It requires a kitchen scale, a cast-iron dutch oven (or a really nice bread oven capable of keeping the steam in when baking starts, but now I’m really dreaming), and an active sourdough starter, which you can make using the instructions for a liquid levain here or via any number of recipes on the internet. Yes, it is a lot of work in comparison to, say, a basic Reinhardt recipe, but it doesn’t require much more effort in total, involves less cleanup, and makes a loaf that is typically better than anything you can buy here in Sydney.  In other words, it’s worth it.

• 200 g. leaven (Leaven = 1 T active sourdough starter, 200 g water, 100 g. all purpose / bread flour, 100 g. whole wheat or rye flour, mixed and left to rest overnight or until a small piece of the leaven floats in water.  This recipe will make more leaven than you need; use the remainder as sourdough starter for your next batch.)
• 750 g. + 50 g. water, room temperature
• 700 g. semolina flour
• 300 g. all purpose or bread flour (bread flour is better, as it has a higher gluten content, but all purpose will work for those of you in the US. Australians should consider Wallaby baker’s flour, which I think Woolworths occasionally stocks, or hard bakers flour from a co-op of some sort.)
• 1 T. coriander seeds, crushed
• sesame seeds and fennel seeds, optional (I toasted ~30-40 g. of the seeds and ground them with a mortar and pestle before adding them to the bread. I also topped the shaped loaf with some more sesame seeds.)
• 10 g. salt. This is a factor of 2 less than the original recipe calls for, which seems to be ok for this loaf.
• 3 c. raisins, soaked in warm water for 30 minutes and then drained

Day 0: Feed your starter; make sure it’s active. If it’s in good shape, it should be bubbly after feeding and smell sweet and sour at the same time.

Day 1:

Make your leaven, following the instructions above.

Day 2:

1. Mix the leaven, 750 g. water, and flours until the flour is completely hydrated.  Let rest for 30 or so minutes.  (No, you can’t skip this step!)
2. Fold in the remaining 50 g. of water, salt, coriander, and the toasted fennel and sesame seeds until the dough is smooth and uniform.  The best way to describe folding is to repeatedly pull the corners of the dough ball and fold over, as if you were making an envelope.  Even better, check out the Tartine video for an illustration of how to fold dough. You’ll be doing this a lot today, so the five minute video is worth watching.
3. Cover the bowl with a towel and let sit.  Fold the dough every 30 minutes or so in the first two hours, folding in the raisins at the second fold. For this step, keep folding until the raisins are uniformly distributed.  After the second hour, you can fold the dough once an hour until it is ready to shape.
4. You know the dough is ready when the dough keeps the folded shape and the dough is smooth. The surface should feel as if it has some tension keeping it smooth; if so, your gluten structure is in place, and you’re ready to shape.   (Optional: You can slow this process down if you’re in a hurry by sticking the dough in the fridge overnight / during the day.)
5. Shaping is next, and it’s similar to the folding process, except you do more folds.  First, heavily flour a couple of kitchen towels and line two large bowls with the towels, flour side up.  Next, pull the edges of the dough under, tuck in the bottom center, and repeat. If you do this enough times in a sensible order (try clockwise), you’ll end up with dough that looks like a ball. Make sure the folded-in ends are pinched together, press some sesame seeds into the top, and then put the dough ball topside-down in the lined bowls.
6. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight (or during the day, depending on what your schedule is).

Day 3: You will have to bake one loaf at a time, so leave 2 hours for this process.

1. Let your dough come to room temperature (~1 hour on the kitchen counter should do it).
2. Stick your empty cast-iron dutch oven on the middle shelf of your oven. Pre-heat to as hot as your oven will get (~500°F, or “Max”, according to my oven).
3. When the oven and the cast-iron pot are preheated,  open the dutch oven lid and gently invert the bowl with the dough into the dutch oven. You should see seeds on top. If it gets stuck, well, save what you can and use more flour next time.
4. Slice the top of the dough. I usually use a square slicing pattern, but be creative.
5. Replace the dutch oven lid and slide the whole thing into the oven.
6. Bake for 20 minutes (the loaf should have puffed up by now), then remove the lid and reduce the oven temperature to 450°F or 235°C.
7. Bake for another 20-25 minutes, turning on occasion.  The loaf is finished when it sounds hollow on the bottom and has a beautiful browned crust.
8. Repeat steps 2-7 for the next loaf.

I’d say let the loaf cool before slicing into it, but I can’t even follow this advice, so I’ll leave this step up to you.

I cannot yet bring myself to embrace Autumn like I once did. Here in Sydney, the only signs of the changing seasons are bursts of torrential rain, moonlight on the drive home, and a sickly browning of the deciduous trees in place of the usual coppers, auburns, golds.  But Sydney does have one distinct advantage over the Northeastern United States when it comes to Autumn: the garden is still green, still abundant.

Without the threat of impending frost, we plant dwarf green peas and drape our late tomatoes over the balcony edge. Once plucked of green caterpillars disguised as stems, the fruit begins to warm in color, too late perhaps for the taste of summer’s first tomato.  But that’s the price we pay for waiting until February to plant this year’s crop (February–once the time for picking seeds out for the coming year, now a time for greenery, and the hottest nights you could ever possibly envision).

It’s been a tardy summer, filled with other things. But here, finally, we managed to grow more than we thought we could in tiny pots, full of store-bought soil.  We have discovered that most things will grow in closer proximity than the seed packets claim, and while the results are occasionally cartoonish, like our French Breakfast radishes below will attest, they are still finer than their store-bought cousins.

Thinned out greens (young radish, kale, pea shoots, arugula, cilantro) make for memorable salads, accompanied only by good olive oil, a splash of balsamic, pepper, a dash of salt. And now that our sourdough starter is alive again (our newest pet), perhaps some homemade sourdough bread is in our future. Autumn is, after all, the start of baking season.

Time to go buy some flour.

I think our balcony has more greenery than all the sum total of all the other balconies in our apartment complex.  That’s saying something, given the 4-balcony townhouse monstrosities opposite us.

What we’re growing:

• tomatoes (planted late, but doing well, thanks to worm castings)
• dwarf Meyer lemon
• broccoli
• kale
• leeks
• spinach
• Swiss chard
• Brussels sprout (from the No-Dig workshop run by The Watershed)
• lettuce mix
• arugula / rocket
• dwarf peas (The shoots are delicious in salad)
• French breakfast radishes (If you plant too close, pluck the extra shoots and throw them in a salad.)
• strawberries
• sage
• parsley
• cilantro
• After-dinner mint
• rosemary
• basil
• thyme
• And some other stuff we had seeds for and decided to throw in the mix…

It’s not quite the same as our Connecticut garden, but here in Sydney, I think we’re doing pretty well.

Thank goodness for ice cubes. It’s been in the 40s here (C, not F–oh, how I wish it were the other way around), with high humidity, and it’s made for a rough week.

Even Australians seem to be having a tough time with it.  I came in to work on Wednesday after yet another sleepless night and found that people either couldn’t sleep, or had the courage to move their entire family into the living room, where most people have the only air conditioner in the house.  At least we’re not suffering alone.

The only thing that’s getting me through is copious amounts of cold-brewed iced coffee.  It’s magic in two ingredients. Three if you count the milk.

Don’t forget the ice.

Cold-brewed iced coffee

This recipe is the equivalent of sun tea for coffee drinkers. The main benefit to making iced coffee this way is that the end product lacks the bitterness you usually get from hot-brewed and then chilled iced coffee.

You need a french press (plunger pot, I think they’re called here?) or a coffee filter+large jug, and decent coffee beans. I make this in bulk, because it just makes more sense.  This recipe is imprecise; you will need to vary the amount of ground coffee to taste.

First, find out how much water your jug or french press holds.  You want a ratio of coffee to water of about 1:5.  Add the appropriate amount of ground* coffee.

Fill the jug with coffee grounds up with water. Cover, refrigerate, and let sit overnight, or all day.  Make sure your ice cube tray is full of ice.

If you are using a french press, plunge down the grounds. If you are using a coffee filter, then it’s best to filter the grounds from the coffee on a cup-by-cup basis.

Serve over ice, black or with milk.

Variations:

• Make simple syrup (recipe in the ingredients list here) and use that to sweeten your drink. You can even get fancy with this and make flavored simple syrup. Vanilla is a great thing to add, particularly if you want a creamy taste without the milk. Mint simple syrup is also a nice idea for summer.
• Stir in sweetened condensed milk to taste. You have now successfully made a bastardized version of Thai iced coffee.

*I use the usual grind for my french press.

America is small towns and segregation, vast expanses of open land and suburbs as far as you can see.  It is housing projects and mansions in a land where too many people in power think pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is possible for all, because you hear the stories of the lucky few.

It is also a place where people are passionate about making a difference, because we are all taught that we—as individuals—have that power, if only we work hard enough. It’s a place where you can find people who care about the food they grow and prepare, if you know where to look.

Before moving to Sydney just six months ago, my husband (an Australian) and I (an American) lived in a town that had a European style coffee shop that roasted its own beans and three dueling Italian delis featuring locally produced meats and vegetables, panini made with fresh, flavorful ingredients, and handmade pastas brought in from another local business.  This was just what was available on our street. If you ventured further, mostly within walking distance, you could get fresh-baked artisanal sourdough, some of the best pizza in the country, transcendent French-influenced Thai food, local produce from the Farmers’ markets, spicy Malaysian curries and noodle soups, and experimental Spanish cuisine.

This is just the start of what we found in New Haven, Connecticut, a town of just over 120,000 people, not including the surrounding suburbs. New Haven is between Boston and New York, is the home of Yale University, and is a fairly typical mid-sized college town.  It is as good an example as any of America’s dysfunctional relationship with food.

Downtown, where most of the undergraduate students live and where tourists flock, fresh food is abundant, posh restaurants and bars line the streets, and everything from vegan raw cuisine to New York-style steak houses can be found.  Good food is plentiful, and beyond the street carts serving $4 burritos or Pad Thai with chicken, the familiar fast food chains so many of us associate with America are non-existent.

In New Haven’s poorer neighborhoods, you find food deserts, where anyone in search of lunch is more likely to end up with a burger made of government-subsidized corn products than anything else.  One of the local supermarkets, Shaw’s, closed suddenly this year, prompting community outrage and hurried attempts to find an adequate replacement. As far as I’m aware, the community is still in search of another supermarket chain to take its place.

But in these same neighborhoods, if you talk to the locals, you can find home-style Southern barbecue joints and discount grocery stores like C-Town that stock affordable foods and some of the most authentic Salvadoran food in the US.  More recently, local organizations like Cityseed have been working to make farmers’ markets more affordable and accessible to residents in these neighborhoods, with increasing success.

The American food landscape is changing because Americans are becoming increasingly aware that the culinary landscape of America is dysfunctional, and are making steps to remedy this.  It is happening, slowly, and with varying degrees of success, but it is gathering momentum.  New Haven is just one example of this movement, and these same changes are happening in cities and towns all over the US.

Does quality local food cost more than the government-subsidized, corn-filled food Michael Brissenden came across? Yes, of course it does, for obvious reasons. You pay more for quality, and for food the government doesn’t subsidize. This is why food in Australia, as a whole, is more expensive than food in the US.  This is why America, with its an ever-increasing rich-poor gap, comparatively minimal social services, and a non-existent public health care system, is filled with poor-quality, tasteless food.  It’s easy, it’s cheap, and it’s all people have access to in some cases.  But that’s not all that’s out there.

Even in my relatively short lifetime, it is clear that the food culture across the US is changing for the better.  But in a nation of over 300 million people, these changes take time, and are not always obvious to the casual tourist.

For now, I recommend that visitors to the US do some research before they arrive.  The internet makes this easy; sites like eGullet and Chowhound have forums separated by region where you can ask food-obsessed locals where they think you should get lunch in St. Louis, for example, or where the best Mexican food in Salt Lake City can be found (the Red Iguana gets my vote). If you’re taking a road trip, check out Roadfood.  As for coffee, look for an espresso machine and small serving sizes; these places are becoming more common with time.

And if you’re in New Haven, stop by Pepe’s Pizza for a white pie with clam or shrimp (no cheese); follow it up with a macchiato from Fuel, just around the corner. Then tell me what you think of America’s culinary landscape.

Here’s proof that we’re still cooking… Apologies for the picture quality; I was hungry and couldn’t be bothered with the lighting.  I highly recommend The Book of Tapas for quick, simple, delicious dishes. We made albondigas and a jamon serrano, mayo, red pepper, and asparagus tapa straight from the book.  I slightly modified stuffed mushrooms (added smoked paprika and breadcrumbs), a smoked fish tapa (used mackerel instead of eel), and an orange, fennel, and onion salad (used shallots in place of onion, added arugula and the rest of the asparagus) to accommodate the ingredients we had in the house.

I can’t wait until we host our first tapas dinner.