Jenn Hall

Edible Jersey: A Conversation with Alice Waters

April 3, 2018 by jennhallwrites

Alice Waters speaks with the cadence of a poet. She talks of food the way one might of a treasured companion, with warm reverence. And while she is most associated with California, her formative experiences happened here, in Chatham, NJ. Alice Louise Waters was born in April 1944, the daughter of a stay-at-home mom with a love for gardening and brown grains and a father who worked for Prudential and who adored jazz and coconut cake. “I grew up at […]

Categories: food & drink

Edible Jersey: America’s Favorite Companion – Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman

April 3, 2018 by jennhallwrites

The beauty of home cooking lies in its ability to be delicious, unpretentious and—dare we say—triumphant, all at the same time. That’s the conviction explored by beloved food blogger and Jersey native Deb Perelman, with her trademark wit, in her second cookbook: Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant & Unfussy New Favorites (Knopf, 2017). It’s a mission she has brought to millions of Smitten Kitchen blog readers since 2006, an unheard-of run in the fickle turbulence of the internet. There’s a reason […]

Categories: food & drink

Edible Jersey: From Appalachia to Bourbon Country

January 30, 2018 by jennhallwrites

One of the eye-opening things about exploring America by car is witnessing the changes, natural and cultural, that give rise to sense of place. In that way, Kentucky is singular. From the gray-tinged mountains of Appalachia to the stately fields of bourbon country, high and low intersect by the mile—and the genesis point for elegance isn’t simply demarcated. For a hungry traveler, it’s tough to say which region produces the most crave-worthy experiences. Along the rocky spine that juts up […]

Categories: food & drink, travel • Tags: road trips

Edible Manhattan: The Magic of a Jersey Kid’s City Christmas

December 27, 2017 by jennhallwrites

For lots of kids, there is an upside to divorce that crystallizes like a snowflake every December. Unlike those with strange, stable families, you get two Christmases. There’s no need to be smug about it, what with the disappointment of a broken family, and yet… During our ’80s-era childhood, my sister Becky and I celebrated our “main” Christmas with mom in Jersey. Then there was a bonus holiday with our father. Eight years old, I’d watch from the porch of […]

Categories: essay, food & drink • Tags: essays, holidays

Edible Philly: Mince Piyes My Mother’s Way

December 7, 2017 by jennhallwrites

Imagine that Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen—a chatty, personal recipe blog that celebrates unfussy food—came into possession of a time machine. Then pretend she had a penchant for early-modern British cooking. In that alternate world, her website might read quite like Cooking in the Archives, a Philly-based website that revives dishes from 1600 to 1800, one recipe at a time. Intimidating culinary techniques that have faded or been forgotten are reborn and rendered tangible for a 21st-century audience. A door […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: baking, holidays

Edible Jersey: Modern Jewish Baking with Shannon Sarna

November 22, 2017 by jennhallwrites

Jewish baked goods have brought families together around the table for centuries. In food writer and editor Shannon Sarna’s childhood home, that tradition came with Italian accents. Yiddish quips and rugelach mixed with her mother’s Christmas cookies. The December holidays overlapped. Dad, a musician, was an early Food Network adopter, cooking dinners for his kids on weeknights. Mom was in musical theater, whipping up meatballs on weekends. Mom also was an avid home baker, working steadily through a beloved 1975 […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: baking, interviews, recipes

Inside Jersey: A Guide to New Jersey’s Pinelands – Three-Part Series

October 17, 2017 by jennhallwrites

The Pine Barrens contain a wealth of history: of privateers and Revolutionary War generals, of Native Americans and farmers who coaxed the sandy soils. It has been populated by industry barons, Civilian Conservation Corps workers, scientists intrigued by its ecosystem, and DIY types. Its aquifer, the Kirkwood-Cohansey, is rich with 17 trillion pristine gallons that industrialist Joseph Wharton once tried to poach for Philadelphia. Here, both civilization and its absence are worthy of contemplation. And while it’s tempting to think of a […]

Categories: travel • Tags: pinelands, road trips

Edible Jersey: Drinking slow with Danny Childs

October 5, 2017 by jennhallwrites

The story of a cocktail, and of the ingredients that create its internal harmony, is one of nature and agriculture. Distillation and fermentation stop ingredients in time, the elements of season and place suspended. The spirit captures what the earth provides so that it might be used to heal, to entertain or to console. Those who respect that history tap into a power that enables them to tell new stories about their own time and region. It’s no surprise, then, that […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: interviews, recipes

Edible Jersey: Not a Drop to Spare

October 5, 2017 by jennhallwrites

In a state that boasts 1,792 miles of coastline when you count bays, offshore islands, sounds, rivers and creeks, it’s strange to think of water as a scarce commodity. This is ever more so the case after a summer marked by frequent rain. Yet water here has always required careful management. It’s why the New Jersey Water Supply Management Act was passed in 1981. That’s an issue that resonates in the Pine Barrens, where there is fear that the Comprehensive Management […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: pinelands

Edible Jersey: Special Report – Oysters – 2018 IACP Award for Narrative Food Writing

July 21, 2017 by jennhallwrites

Perhaps no food conveys a sense of place like the oyster. To tip back a Cape May Salt or Forty North Rose Cove and sip its brine is to kiss its native waterway on the lips, in a paraphrase of French poet Léon-Paul Fargue. It is to commune with season and location, a humble creature transformed by salt and time into something far more grand. It is to taste the point where river gives way to sea, the best of […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water • Tags: farming, oysters

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