I Have a Blog Crush: Figs Olives Wine

Well, it's like a crush in that we're just getting to know each other, this blog and I. But I've already learned so much (by nature, blogs are not a shy bunch), and with every new post, I'm struck anew by the gorgeousness of Figs Olives Wine. Its writer, Amanda Darrach Filippone, is a Manhattanite chef, but her food is pure Mediterranean. She highlights seasonal greenmarket produce in unpretentiously alluring recipes. All of her dishes seem to have that distinctly Mediterranean deceptive simplicity that floors me: she puts together just a few ingredients in a way that seems so obvious, but is clearly quite artful. It's actually a bit infuriating -- recipe after recipe, photo after photo all lead to "why didn't I think of that?!"

And then there's the paragraphs (I love paragraphs). This is not a blog where an amateur waxes sentimental about her love of food (like, say, the one you're reading now). There's an academic expertise here that really appeals to the food geek in me. Her grasp of seasonality is impressive -- she's really mastered that squirrelly issue of 'Where does my food come from?' with monthly harvest calendars and a well-researched knowledge of the New York greenmarket circuit (not to mention the harvests of far-flung bits of Italy, France, Turkey, Greece...). And the stories that precede the recipes often include fascinating anecdotes, taking you from Sicilian breadcrumb slang to the spice-heavy days of the Black Plague to a houseguest hospitality in Cyprus. Delicious.

So, basically, what I'm saying is, check out Figs Olives Wine, swoon over the photos, learn a thing or two about Mediterranean cuisine, and make me some.