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Alex Gallafent

Alex Gallafent is a contributing correspondent for PRI's The World

Alex Gallafent is a New York City-based correspondent whose reports for PRI’s The World have taken him to Swaziland, South Africa, the Brazilian Amazon, Turkey, Chile and the UAE. A former staff reporter and producer, he produced The World’s series on US presidential influence overseas in 2012. Alex’s radio career began with the BBC in London, where he produced flagship arts programs Front Row and Night Waves; Outlook; and the globe-spanning music show, Late Junction.Alex is also a Design Lead at IDEO, and a composer/sound designer for theater on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dips and Small Bites from The Palestinian Table: (clockwise from left) Taboon Bread; Parsley or Cilantro (Coriander) Tahini Spread; Walnut and Garlic Labaneh; Deep-Fried Cheese and Za’atar Parcels; Garlic and Cucumber Labaneh; Avocado, Labaneh, and Preser

‘The Palestinian Table’ is as much a memoir as a cookbook

Food

Reem Kassis left her Palestinian family behind in Jerusalem, but she’s captured their culture and cuisine in her new cookbook.

A local cook prepares a traditional ethnic Tujia wedding feast during celebrations marking the Lunar New Year in China’s Hubei province.

Cooking Chinese food is all about family and friends

Culture
Katie and Leeann Chin.

How a Chinese restaurant in America’s Midwest won Sean Connery’s heart

Food
Sabrina Ghayour

No one else in her family cooked, so Sabrina Ghayour taught herself at age 5

Food
Aquavit in New York is a big-name restaurant that’s flown the flag of Swedish cooking for years.

This chef cooks Swedish in New York — and shoots Texan in Dallas

Food
Mexican singer Astrid Hadad performing 2012.

Astrid Hadad’s cabaret of colors will stop you in your tracks

Culture

The Mexican cabaret performer Astrid Hadad describes herself in a variety of ways: Singer. Artist. Costume designer. Political provocateur. And she recently brought her act to New York City.

French chef Dominique Crenn.

A French chef’s love letter to Brittany

Culture

Chef Dominique Crenn, owner of Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, is from Brittany. It’s a place she holds dear and describes as very rustic, very raw. She says it’s like a painting: It’s cold, it’s windy, it could be rainy at times — it’s life in itself, nature in itself. There is nothing manicured about it.

Alex Stupak's pastrami taco.

Behold the fine-dining pastrami taco

Culture

Alex Stupak made his name as an award-winning experimental pastry chef and came of age during the time of so-called molecular gastronomy. But it was when he tried a fresh corn tortilla for the first time — when someone took fresh masa made from corn, and pressed it out by hand and put it on a hot griddle and served it to him immediately — that things changed.

The winning sculpture — "Treasures not trophies."

It’s too cold in much of the US for beach fun — but perfect sandcastle weather in Bermuda

Culture

Summer’s over here in much of the States — hello rain and cold. But it’s still high season in Bermuda. The island is a short flight off the east coast of the United States — and it’s known for its beaches of ultra-fine sand. Just the thing for building sand sculptures, as reporter Alex Gallafent discovered recently.

True love cake by baker Samantha Seneviratne. Permission from "The New Sugar and Spice," by Samantha Seneviratne, copyright 2015, published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Too sweet? This baker has figured out how to balance sugar and spice.

Culture

New York-based baker Samantha Seneviratne grew up with cookies and brownies and sticky buns. But as a baker, she yearned to make things that are a little less sweet and cloying. She found the answer in her Sri Lankan heritage.