One of the most popular stories (likely false) is that a man named Juan Mendez from Chihuahua, Mexico used a donkey to carry around his supplies for his food cart. To keep the food warm, he would wrap it up in a big homemade flour tortilla. First appearing in the early 1900s, right around the...
Zucchini, like all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas. However, the varieties of green, cylindrical squash harvested immature and typically called “zucchini” were developed in northern Italy, long after the introduction of cucurbits from the Americas. It appears that this occurred in the second half of the 19th century, though the first description of...
Rosemary or Rosmarinus officinalis comes from the words ros which means coolness and marinus which means marine. So, basically is the sea coolness. It probably took its name because it bobbed up with Aphrodite from under the water at the island of Cyprus. Aphrodite touched the plant and gave it the distinct aroma it has...
Surrounded by sea, Greece is the place to have fresh, straight from water, seafood and fish. The country is full of tavernas serving all kinds of seafood and a vast range of fish that are available in Greek sea. From small to large fish, shrimps, crawfish, mussels and several other edible seafood are the contents...
Pineapple plant has its origins in south America and more specifically in area between south Brazil and Paraguay. Inhabitants from Brazil and Paraguay spread pineapple to the whole south America and eventually to the Caribbean, central America and Mexico. Mayas and Aztecs cultivated pineapple. In 1493 Christopher Columbus discovered pineapple in the beautiful island of...
All these years I’ve been blogging I met the most wonderful people. Through this hobby of mine, I got to know so many people around the globe, enter their kitchens and learn things about their lives and countries. Thanks to them I have cooked so many wonderful recipes and learned not only new dishes and...
Dill is very well known from ancient years. In ancient Greece dill plant was a sign of wealth and burnt dill oil to aromatize their homes. Soldiers placed burnt dill seeds on their wounds to heal. For ancient Egyptians dill was a medical plant that was used as an ingredient in the production of pain...
A fermented fish sauce called garum was a staple of Greco-Roman cuisine and of the Mediterranean economy of the Roman Empire, as the first-century encyclopedist Pliny the Elder writes in his Historia Naturalis and the fourth/fifth-century Roman culinary text Apicius includes garum in its recipes. The use of similar fermented anchovy sauces in Europe can...
The name basil is derived from Greek basileus “king”, because of the royal fragrance of this herb. Basileus “king” means essentially “people’s leader. Basil belongs to the family of Lamiaceae. Its leaves show an intense green color on the upper side and a green-gray color in the bottom side. Today, basil is cultivated in many...
Sun dried tomatoes are made from a variety of tomatoes that is very usual to several Aegean islands and looks very much alike the Italian pomodori. The tomatoes are dried under the sun until the water they contain evaporates. Usually, they lose between 88% to 93% of their weight depending on their shape, i.e. 88...
