I think that curiosity happened on these reviews where I was just a guest of the reviewer, because it introduced me to new cuisines and to the idea of cooking as a mechanism for studying other cultures and understanding other parts of the world.
Writers like John T. Edge, whose work is all about the cultural histories behind food, have done so much to show that these stories are a really vital part of our cultural heritage.
I attended classes and taught classes, in Food Anthropology at Pace University, with an anthropology professor. You can trace history by the architecture and food of a place. Food is one of those things that transcends and stays in the culture.
Food is culture, and we need to listen to it.
Food is one of the great organizing tools.
Take it from somebody who has been around for a million years: When you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time.
You cannot get an influence from the cuisine of a country if you don't understand it. You've got to study it.
Food is a profound subject and one, incidentally, about which no writer lies.
