Field notes from a Food Writers' Retreat

and a recipe for my favourite radicchio, orange and fennel salad

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

I’ve been trying to find my way into a story about the inaugural Food Writers’ Retreat I attended last weekend.

I had an idea that I would write about storytelling; the power and magic that’s inherent in hearing someone share something deeply personal, meaningful, or just plain funny. And maybe the moment when, with a startled gasp, you recognise yourself in the story being told.

Or about the way that a house full of nearly strangers, some acquaintances and a few good friends can be woven into a tapestry full of diverse and colourful threads.

Through travelling to the Poconos together…making meals as a team…learning how to do improv…write a cookbook proposal…take better food photographs…expand our culinary horizons by using Indian cookery techniques…having deep and personal conversations...every opportunity for interaction tightened the warp and weft of the beautiful magic carpet we were making.

All wrapped up in a generosity of spirit and a welcoming hospitality that was as big as the state of Pennsylvania and as intimate as a family gathering. It was all of this and so much more.

Digital relationships in a virtual world

When I started my first food blog in 2009, I was on a simple mission: to find and follow like-minded folks who loved food as much as I did. And boy, did I find them.

It was the first time that I formed friendships and close relationships through technology. Twitter and Instagram led me to IRL events, meet-ups and food happenings, from Pistoia in Italy to Ottsville, Pennsylvania. Those in turn, led to friendships that have persevered over time and miles.

From Plate to Page in Pistoia in 2011 to attending the Big Summer Potluck three years running in Pennsylvania from 2012 to 2014, I’ve had a long history of jumping on a plane to meet up with strangers and talk about food

I’ve had cocktails in Umbria, ice cream in London, a nifty Sazerac in SoHo, frozen yogurt in Washington D.C., a kitchen meet-up here in Toronto, all with friends I met first online. There is something that gets stripped away when you communicate first through technology, an immediacy that can be both fast and meaningful.

But it’s been a long time since I bought a plane ticket to spend the weekend with people I’ve never met before. And in a world where we can rightly blame social media for making us feel more isolated than ever, it was Substack that brought us together.

This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey.

—Joel Salatin, American farmer, author, and speaker

Writing can be a lonely endeavour. The solitary effort, internal focus, the feast or famine of words flowing versus a dry well…it’s the exact opposite of a team activity.

And for the most part, that’s okay. But still, great writing most often comes from inspiration, from being of the world and in the world. There’s something singularly energizing when you find your people. They are the ones who can understand your impulse to do the laundry or tackle some weeding in the garden at a particularly thorny juncture in your story, or your obsession with styling every dinner just so, in case anything turns out to be camera-worthy. It’s finding them that’s the hard part.

And so it was that Jenn Sharp decided to do something about it. An early member of the Food Writers Forum and Mastermind for Food Writers on Substack, Jenn—who is a born hostess and people convener—saw an opportunity to make our nascent community a truly thriving one.

Jenn sent out a call to the Substack community last July with a simple idea: what if some of the people who’d been chatting, and liking and subscribing and generally supporting each other’s Substacks met up in person? That she miraculously, effortlessly made this happen was a gift to the 20 of us in attendance.

Just one post won’t capture everything, so over the next two weeks I’m going to dive a little deeper into what we learned, ate, shared and laughed about.

As I pour through the photos and my fulsome memories, I’m reminded that stories unfold over time and space, that the telling in one place of a singular event might capture the essence, but not the whole. But that’s okay. Because I know I will be telling stories, as I have already done, about this extraordinary weekend for months to come. Stay tuned for more on how this magical weekend came together and what we did there.

You can show your support of The Delicious Bits Dispatch with a like ❤️, comment, share or subscribe; it helps more readers find their way here.

You can read other Retreat reflections here:

Rachel Ciordas: Food People are the Best People

Rebecca Blackwell: IRL. But with magic.

Kristen Hess: Finding Your Tribe: A Food Writer’s Retreat That Changed Everything

My favourite radicchio, orange and fennel salad

serves 4-6, scales up or down

There is no doubt that whoever first invented this brilliant combination of of citrus and anise was Italian, and all roads lead to Sicily as the source. A bread basket of an island that grows just about everything I want to eat, its abundance of citrus and wild fennel have long been combined to make a refreshing salad, served Italian-style at the end of the meal. Common add ons have come to include slivered red onion and briny black olives for a wonderful combination of flavours.

But my roots and heart lie in Veneto and it is there that I turn to inspiration for my take on this classic. Combining a mix of Radicchio di Chioggia (deep red) and Variegato di Castelfranco (a pale pink and creamy white variety), the radicchio’s bitter edge is softened and enhanced by both the citrus and the fennel.

I give the salad a further nod to Sicily’s Arabic roots with a healthy scattering of pomegranate arils and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses to finish and enhance the vinaigrette.

Best of all this salad can easily be made for a crowd, as I did at the Food Writers’ Retreat, where my salad complemented a creamy cauliflower soup I made, along with Kerry Faber’s potato-scallion flatbreads and chickpea salad. Watch for those recipes in future Dispatches!

The Noontime Ninjas dream team: Me, Kerry, and Dinesh Rathi, who added a much-needed extra pair of hands to our short-staffed crew!

Ingredients

Note: before you start, have an attractive wide serving bowl ready to put the ingredients in as you prep them

2 heads Radicchio di Chioggia or a mix of Radicchio di Chioggia and Castelfranco, leaves separated and washed, torn into bite sized pieces

4 oranges (varieties like blood, Cara Cara, or navel), peeled, pith removed, halved and cut into chunks.

Half a large white fennel bulb, cored, trimmed and cut into thin slices

½ cup pomegranate arils (seeds)

1 teaspoon Maldon or other flaky salt

Three turns of freshly ground pepper

1 tablespoon good quality olive oil

1 teaspoon aged white wine vinager

A drizzle of pomegranate molasses

Put all the ingredients in the bowl in which you will serve the salad and toss to combine. Season with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses. Toss again to distribute the vinaigrette, taste and adjust the seasonings to your liking.

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