In Ancient Greece, the word for “cook” and “priest” was the same — “mageiros” — sharing an etymological root with “magic.” The word appears again in the revealing 1814 anonymous Old English book, The School for Good Living, defining “magirist” as a “cook and an artist in good living.”
Back in Croatia, 50 years ago, I grew up on asphalt with a family heaven-bent on cooking. We huddled over lamb rotating on a makeshift spitfire at the riverbank, over a clay pot of braising saksija in our oven, over two barrels on our balcony, a smaller wooden one with fermenting peppers stuffed with cheese, and a large plastic one with 19 heads of white cabbage and one head of red cabbage (we elevated creating pink sauerkraut brine to the domain of art). Then there was winemaking in our garage, and meat smoking and vegetable gardening just out of the city. And not one, or two, but three socialist refrigerator/freezer combos. All of this in our apartment project building. We broke…
