Music multi-hyphenate Ben Fong Torres’ sister Shirley Fong-Torres was a chef, writer and created food tours of San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Shirley’s easy—and classic—recipe for congee (rice porridge) is one of C.J. Hirschfield’s all-time favorites; perfect for cold nights.
By C.J. Hirschfield
When a 97 -year-old cookbook writer is called “the Mick Jagger of Mexican cuisine,” and the “Indiana Jones of food,” you know there’s gotta be a story there. There is, and a fascinating one at that. Directed by Elizabeth Carroll and screening at the Legacy Film Festival on Aging, the documentary Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy shares the life and work of an impatient, antisocial, cranky, profane, opinionated woman—whose life has been driven by her enthusiasm and curiosity about authentic Mexican regional cooking. She is an absolutely marvelous force of nature.
By Patricia Unterman
To tell you the truth, my dear film buffs, I’m a reader, not a moviegoer, and I only read fiction. If I watch a movie, it has to be in a movie house on a big screen and it has to promise a good story, ideally involving sex. Documentaries, for me, are a bore.
But despite all odds, I was mesmerized by a new documentary on the life of Diana Kennedy, the grouchy, 97-year-old writer of regional Mexican cookbooks, by first-time movie director Elizabeth Carroll. The film felt novelistic to me—nuanced, revealing, true. It picked me right up from a desk chair in front of my little computer screen and dropped me in the upland forests of Michoacán. Continue reading
by Gary Meyer
At 94, Diana Kennedy has a youthful spirit and energy. She lives on her own, completely off-the-grid in a solar-powered house that she designed in the mountains of Michoacán. She has shared a few favorite recipes with EatDrinkFilms readers.
Elizabeth Carroll’s feature documentary Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy is showing at the Legacy Film Festival, May 24-31, 2021, as part of a program on food, “Savory Traditions.”
To celebrate the film’s release there was a celebration and discussion between the filmmaker and several celebrated chefs who have learned from Kennedy.
The entire conversation can be watched anytime by clicking here.
By C.J. Hirschfield
You may assume that the stars in this delectable new documentary feature are human; and some of them are. But when you experience an exhilarating dog’s eye-view of a hunt to find the rare and wondrous fungus and hear the excited snuffling sounds of success, you understand that there would be no truffle hunt without some very canny canines. Both they—and the aromatic white Alba truffles they hunt—are worth their weight in gold.
By Joyce Goldstein
This is not an unbiased review of the new movie A Chef’s Voyage (now available on Virtual Cinema). I am an admirer of David Kinch and Manresa. Over the years he and I have become friends, chefs with vastly different cooking styles and of different generations. (He is the same age as my son, Evan.)
David Kinch is the owner-chef of Manresa, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Los Gatos, California. Kinch took the entire crew for a one-of-a-kind collaboration with three legendary French chefs at their iconic restaurants in Paris, Provence, and Marseille. Continue reading
By Cari Borja
“tell me and i forget, teach me and i may remember,
involve me and i learn.
from salon #58 in Berkeley, CA studio, from SF Chronicle article
Ahh, the idea of being in a kitchen again ~ not mine, but someone else’s with others, (or even the kitchen I once had in my design studio in Berkeley, above) ~ apprenticing, learning, collaborating in the same tactile real space as other human beings (that I’m not related to)… making things and tasting things and giving others something they never knew they even wanted? I didn’t think I would actually have to imagine this, crave this even, as much as I do right now.
By Julie Lindow
Meeting the various food purveyors and trying their products at the 2020 Fancy Food show inspired me to learn ways to use some of these products as part of my own breakfasts at home.
I have selected some favorite recipes offered by several of the companies I wrote about in ‘My Fancy Future Breakfast.”
Kevin Longa has been working his docuseries, TASTE and has written for EatDrinkFilms previously, Now he, like millions of others in the food world is out of work. He will continue making the films and is posting a series of previews.
By Julie Lindow
Focus, focus, focus on Moringa! I just drank a Kuli Kuli raspberry, acai, Lion’s Mane mushroom, and most importantly, Moringa dietary supplement shot—it is nourishing my mind right now as I write. It tastes like slightly sweet matcha tea with raspberry and lemon. Yum!
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