PLAY FULL EPISODE Apocalypse. The End of the World. We kind of morbidly fantasize about it. Any zombie movie reflects back our vision for our own end. Overpopulation, greed, arrogance, the world moving too quickly for its own good, humanity’s god-complex: any of these could be plot points for the first five minutes of a sci-fi horror film, or the […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE On today’s episode of my podcast,  A Time And A Plate, we follow Antonin Careme, the chef of kings and the king of chefs as he cooks his way through revolution, war, and across a Europe in upheaval. Antonin Careme was the classic star – blazing too bright, dying out too young. He was scrappy, handsome, charming […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE Vienna was under siege. Between the trench warfare in the dried up moat below, and the pangs of hunger that led civilians to capture and eat “roof rabbits” (also known as…cats) there was a soft, clanking sound underneath the city’s feet. Impossible to hear over the cannon’s roar, but in the quiet of the night, in the […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE On today’s episode of A Time And A Plate, we look at the Candybomber of the Berlin Airlift, and the street food that came out of post-war Berlin, Currywurst. Currywurst can be argued as the emblematic dish of Berlin. Like Fish and Chips in London, or a Lobster roll in Maine. It was born directly out of […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE As a kid, I always envisioned Marco Polo carrying a box of spaghetti in his pack, eager to share with ready-to-eat Italians. Of course, it’s a little more complicated, more grey, and more nuanced than that, as most things are. There wasn’t even an Italy for Marco to return to. Not the way we know it anyway. […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE Do you walk under a ladder if it’s in your path, or do you hesitate and walk around it? Throw a coin in a fountain from time to time? Notice uneasily when the number 13 pops up in your life? Are you that person at dinner parties who insists on maintaining eye contact during the toast – […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE Imagine chocolate. What do you see? Do you see a truffle? Or a bar with Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket? Maybe an ice cream sundae? Or even a box of chocolate milk in your school lunch. But thick, rich, almost savory, and in a small cup was probably not your first thought – but that’s how chocolate was […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE I am so excited to announce the launch of my podcast, A Time and A Plate. In each episode I’ll explore a historic moment in food in each century, starting from the year 1000 all the way to today. It might seem impossible to believe that we have a lot in common with a peasant toiling in […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE One thing has always fascinated me about Da Vinci’s Last Supper. The food served to Jesus and his disciples in the painting is neither Kosher nor period accurate – but it’s a favorite of the Renaissance table: eels with orange slices. This is the historical quirk, from an old edition of the food magazine Gastronomica, that captured […]

PLAY FULL EPISODE On Episode Two of A Time and A Plate, we explore the influence of the East on the West, and the explosion in the spice trade in the wake of the crusades. We also get to sit down with Chef Michael Solomonov, of Philadelphia’s Zahav who discusses Israeli cuisine and Mediterranean foodways, while sharing a recipe from his […]