Food Trends Around The World

Just some of the recent food coverage in the international English-language press online includes theEnglish Market in Cork; a Native Canadian restaurant; Asia's first Master of Wine who is introducinga wine vocabulary based on Asian ingredients and spices; a homage to Chile's Pastel de Choclo; andan Egyptian TV chef. A digest follows.

Coming Up: Austria, Canada, Switzerland, France

Slow Food's international autumn events include a "diversity market" from October 13-15, 2011 infront of Vienna's Town Hall. Taking place for the second time this year, it drew over 10,000 visitorswhen it launched in 2009. Austrian producers will be present along with producers from Germany,Switzerland, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. Expect everything from Slovakian sheep'scheese, Vienna wines, Czech artisanal beers, and from points south, Sicilian winter melon and oliveoil with bergamot... From November 10-13, 2011, the Slow Motion Food Film Fest takes place inWolfville, Canada: screenings, farmers' markets, special dinners featuring local food and wine... InZurich, 150 small-scale producers from across Switzerland will participate at the 11-13 November,2011 Slow Food Switzerland Market. Later in the month in Tours, France is Eurogusto, a major hoe-down with products from all over France and other European countries, also Africa - Morocco, IvoryCoast, Mauritania. Markets, tastings, workshops and more, November 18-20, 2011.

Restaurant Reviews: Sydney, New York, Toronto

"Marque Restaurant Named Australia's Best by Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide Awards" byJulia Carlisle on news.com.au is a wire piece about 2012 award winners. Go to the website of theSydney restaurant, run by owner/chef Mark Best, and it looks like a high opinion of Best's cookeryhas been out there for years held not least by the great food writer that was R.W. Apple, Jr. of theNew York Times: "... You will not eat food like this, encounter such ideas on the plate, elsewhere.Originality abounds alongside a healthy interest in - and yet at the same time healthy disdain for -the tricks of the new wave. Give it Frenchish wings and watch it fly... Possibly the best food inAustralia!"

"Many restaurants these days bandy about words such as 'sustainable' and 'local.' Indeed, these arethe best new food-marketing buzzwords. But Keriwa, which to my knowledge is our first nativerestaurant, walks the walk, in moccasins," writes Joanne Kates in "At Keriwa, Local Food GoesNative, With Stunning Results" in Canada's The Globe and Mail. The just-opened Keriwa Café inToronto is run by chef/owner Aaron Joseph Bear Robe, who is from the Siksika Nation in Alberta. Heserves up such delicacies as pemmican - traditionally, Kates says, "pemmican was dried bisonpounded into coarse powder and mixed with melted fat (and maybe Saskatoon berries) ...Pemmicanupdated is ultra-tender braised bison with barely pickled yellow beans, pea shoots and a scatteringof Saskatoon berries."

Matt Rodbard interviews "Gaston Acurio, Peruvian Food Ambassador" for Food Republic. ThePeruvian chef's restaurants from Lima to Madrid, Mexico City to San Francisco, have enjoyed greatsuccess and he is now about to open his 29th restaurant (and first in New York City). One focal pointat NYC's La Mar Cebicheria will be the marinated raw fish dish known as ceviche: 68 kinds, "rawceviche, wild ceviche, spicy ceviche. We have hot seviche and grilled ceviche - which is not aninvention of our restaurant. It's a very old recipe from the Incas," says Acurio. The other is Piscococktails made with "Amazonian wild tropical fruits" and of course the strong grape brandy that isPisco.

Chefs: Catching up with Ferran Adrià in Hong Kong and Barcelona

In " 'Soul-Searching' Chef Ferran Adrià Looks to Asia" by Cathy Yang for Reuters, the Spanish chefand molecular wizard Ferran Adrià, who closed his cult restaurant El Bulli this year, tells reportersin Hong Kong that "Asia could be an archive of ideas" for his next venture, the El Bulli Foundationslated to launch in 2014. "I've looked at the soul of the cooking and the reason of things (in Japan)and then I started looking at cooking techniques. But I haven't got to that point for the rest of Asiayet," he said after a visit to Shanghai and Beijing to promote Spanish food. Meanwhile: "Missed Outon El Bulli? Then Try Tickets, Ferran Adrià's Affordable Barcelona Tapas Bar." Allan Jenkins'sObserver piece reviews the venue that opened this spring, and serves such items as "air baguette,""liquid ravioli," and "candy-floss clouds studded with fruit and El Bulli essences, served up on a smallbush and ceremonially carried to your table."

Six Features: Chile, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Ireland, Korea

In an article in the Chicago Sun-Times, "Food Detective: The Power of Pastel de Choclo," writerDavid Hammond says that when traveling in Chile if he's not sure if a person is from that country orsome other Latin American country all he needs to do is ask if they know this dish - Pastel de Choclo.Chileans do, others don't, he says. But this "captivating casserole, with its caramelized crust andcrisped, homey edges" not only helps him play detective. The dish made of meat, vegetables, hard-boiled egg, olives, raisins, herbs and spices cooked in a clay dish is "a beautiful emblem of Latin

American 'fusion' cuisine, blending indigenous ingredients such as corn with Spanish contributionslike beef."

The Food and Wine section of the Guardian Nigeria is worth a scan if just to get a feel for unfamiliarrecipes and ingredients -- like palm wine larvae, which "are very delicious and meaty and are used inpreparation of some dishes. This nutritious meat is regularly sold along with palm wine in some localrestaurants and drinking shacks. Many roast larvae and mix them with salt and pepper. Sometimes,they are served with oil bean (ugba) and vegetables commonly known as utazi in the Eastern part ofNigeria and akwukwo anyara (garden egg leaves)."

Leila Fadel's piece, " In Egypt, Ghalia Alia Mahmoud is a New Kind of TV Chef," in The WashingtonPost presents a product of the New Egypt: a 33-year-old cook who had been working for a familywhen she was spotted by a burgeoning TV station entrepreneur and has become a TV star in Egyptsince her own show launched on August 1. Ghalia Alia Mahmoud's good-natured, earthy authenticityand ability to rustle up a delicious family meal for just $4 have Egyptians of all classes glued to theirsets, pen and notebook in hand to record her cooking tips and store of traditional recipes.

Last week I highlighted an article about lokantas in Istanbul: this week, read James Brennan's "AFoodie in Incredible Istanbul" written for 4Men Magazine and published in Dubai's Gulf News.

Xanthe Clay in The Telegraph quotes British chef Rick Stein as saying that the English Market inCork is "the best covered market in the UK and Ireland." The Queen certainly thinks so: shespecifically asked to go there when she visited Ireland in August. This article takes readers on theirown tour of the market, with its "olive sellers, and Irish chocolatiers," past "brill the size of turkeyplatters, lobsters and wild salmon," "pork offal and 'bodice' - cured spare ribs," "kielbasa and coiledboerwors, the South African sausage," "spelt loaves and some local 'grinders,' ugly great trolls ofbread" and a good deal more.

Breakfast Recipes

In " First Asian Wine Master Brings Asian Vocab to Wine " by Park Min-Young in The Korea Herald,Hong-Kong based Jeannie Cho Lee talks about her second book, Mastering Wine for the AsianPalate. The new publication describes "the taste and smell of wine through Asian spices andingredients." In Seoul on a tour to promote her book, Lee said: "The international wine language isWestern. We are taking borrowed language that has been handed down to us, even though wine isnow becoming more and more local. China is the sixth-largest producer of wine now, and Asia is thefastest growing wine market. There is a need to rethink how we can make it uniquely ours."