I know, it’s a somewhat unusual title for an article about cooking. But things become clearer when you realise it’s about pasta e fagioli—and because Dean Martin once sang, “When the stars make you drool, just like pasta fazool, that’s amore.”Legend has it that the ancient Romans cooked something similar. They loved thick bean soups…
Potatoes and Plums
Authentic Slovenian Plum Dumplings (Slivovi Cmoki) with Potato Dough Most fairy tales begin with “once upon a time”.Once upon a time, there was a country in the Balkans called Yugoslavia. While the south of the country smelled of charcoal and juicy grilled meat, the Slovenian hills and valleys in the north smelled of potatoes in…
Anniversary Brochure
A short design fairy tale with a happy ending I’m sitting in a bar one hot Sunday afternoon sipping a beer. A light draft, because they don’t have a dark one to order a mix, half and half. Across from me sits my old friend K1, who came from far away on the other side…
Four Cups of Tea
Part 4: Mint Tea in Marrakech And then one day the inevitable happens. Your steps become shorter, your breathing becomes more laboured, and you crave a cup of tea more and more.And that has nothing to do with altitude.Slowly, the years force you to give up extreme trekking. You opt for a more urban way…
Four Cups of Tea
Part 3: Butter Tea with the Changpa Nomads I admit that I am quite stubborn by nature. And sometimes I bang my head against a wall. How else can I explain that struggling around Annapurna and over the Thorung La Pass, crossing half the Sahara and climbing high into the mountains of Algeria was still…
Four Cups of Tea
Part 2: Morning Tea with the Tuaregs To this day, I still don’t understand what drives a person to set out on a three-week trek through the desert. Sand. Sand and rocks. An almost lunar landscape. Dry heat. Sweat. Sand between your teeth, and even in bread freshly baked over the embers.And morning tea.Back in…
Four Cups of Tea
Part 1: Tibetan Refugees in Nepal Tea. A drink enjoyed all over the world, in seemingly endless variations. From real tea, to South American mate tea, to various drinks that have nothing to do with tea except for the name.My first memory of tea goes back far to childhood, when we had a cold and…
A Burger Story: From Hamburg to the East Village
Let me first point out that, as much as I find the overindulgence in food in Michelin-starred restaurants stupid, I also hate fast food. You know, when you get a centimeter-long steak decorated with grass and I don’t know what else. Or you get a greasy patty that you eat standing up while rushing back…
Beer Tour
Across Southern England and Wales in the Summer of 1983 Last fall, I wandered around New York. I came across McSorley’s Old Ale House nearby. Supposedly the oldest Irish pub in the city.Sitting in McSorley’s, I suddenly found myself back in England — or perhaps Ireland. The same low light, the same stubborn wood, the…
Moroccan Chicken Tagine
Morocco! In the 1960s and 1970s, Marrakesh was for some Europeans a kind of nearby version of the great road to Kathmandu — less distant, but with the same promise of difference, spices, slow time, and the feeling of having arrived somewhere far away.At a time when Western musicians were looking for new sounds and…