Welcome to Culinaria!

Culinaria is a free online resource for anyone that’s interested in cooking and cuisine from around the world. Our goal is to enlighten and educate anyone who’s interested in some of the tasty things the world has to offer.

The idea came about one afternoon when a PBS channel aired a string of cooking shows with little variety in the cuisine.  Most of the shows focused on Italian food, and while we all love Italian cuisine, there is a lot more out there that is rarely focused on or even shown.

The end result is a collaboration of three colleagues – Alex, Zuzana, and Stephanie.

Alex is not only the technical side of Culinaria, but has been into cooking since childhood. Coming from a somewhat traditional Greek/Anglo-Saxon family, his love of traditional family meals and European fare drives him to explore the culture and cuisine of Europe.

Zuzana was born and raised in Slovakia, and learned much Eastern European tradition and cuisine from her mother.  Her gift is in hosting and plating, as she plates pretty much every dish you see photographed here. While she’s not really writing the entries here, she is a strong support for our efforts.

Stephanie is a mixture of  Italian, Slovak, and Irish.  She was also brought up in a more traditional family setting, and has been cooking and documenting her family’s recipes for years; even publishing a cookbook for her loved ones though tastebook.com.

Culinaria

The Culinaria series of books are the great inspiration to the direction of this website. Each book focuses on a specific country and explores the various flavors of each region.  The Culinaria series not only displayed recipes and guides on how to create the ethnic dishes of the countries focused upon, but they portrayed some beautiful photography and gave the reader a grasp of the culture and cuisine of that country.

Now this is not just a blog repeating recipes out of the books, but more carrying on in our own way how those books told a story of the food and then shows how to make it yourself.  We want to invite and introduce you into the many wonderful dishes and cuisines all over the world.  Many cuisines of countries outside of a few are given a bad rap, while we’ve tried the actual dishes and found much to love and much to show.

We want to show you and encourage you to try preparing these dishes yourself.  You’ll find recipes in each article that we encourage you to try on your own or even explore to improve on.  Most dishes usually become personalized as you make them.  You might add salt where we didn’t, or not add garlic where we did.  The only “right or wrong” in any of this is your palette.  That’s the final judge.

So enjoy Culinaria and feel free to email us or post questions and comments.

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