Reviews
ANCIENT FISH TALES by Paulette Licitra
Gastrology or Life of Pleasure or Study of the Belly or Inquiry into Dinner by Archestratos
Translated by Gian Lombardo
Quale Press, December 2009
Paperback 86 pp., ISBN: 9780979299964
I’m a big fan of archaeology. I love looking at ancient stuff that people from thousands of years ago actually had their hands on. It’s hard to fathom. How can you capture ancient in your mind? Stand in front of the Roman Coliseum and let your head spin. I’ve done that a few dozen times. Still can’t really feel the years.
As far as what they were all eating back then you can look to a few sources. Of course, the Roman Apicius tantalizes your culinary imagination with flamingo tongues and everything bathed in fish sauce, but here’s another interesting blast from the past: Archestratos.
His reflections and recipes come to us from the mid-4th century BCE. He wrote for his fellow Greeks about the food ways of Sicily where he traveled through ancient Greek port towns. Despite the long circuitous title of the work, the pieces inside are short and ultra-pithy, sometimes just a sentence is a chapter: “To hell with side dishes of purse-tassel bulbs and silphium stalks, as well as any other appetizer of the same ilk.”
Gian Lombardo’s translation makes the ancient Greek especially accessible and entertainingly fun. We get the feeling we’re hanging out with a curmudgeon-y fussy eater who also has a broad culinary knowledge and pretty good taste.
Archestratos gives us recipes: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice: Eat braised ray in the depths of winter. Give it some cheese and silphium. This is the only way to cook up any of the sea’s progeny that has flesh that’s not fatty. Got it?”
Much of the food talked about comes from the sea—Karystian dolphin fish, sand sharks, grey mullet, and Siracusan tombarello are among the swimming menagerie. Archestratos instructs on where to find lobster colonies, how in Sikyon you must have their conger eel, and to buy scorpion fish and octopus in Thasos. He also has some opinions about the natives: “Don’t let any Siracusan, or Italian for that matter, get near when you’re cooking.”
Opinionated and brutally to the point, he doesn’t mince words (but probably herbs): “Siracusans call foxfish dogfish. That’s thresher shark in Rhodes. If no one’s willing to sell you one by any name, steal one—even if you wind up strung up by the neck. One taste and I guarantee you’ll gladly suffer whatever fate throws at you.”
The book is a slim pocket paperback, easy to carry around. Read the short passages on the bus or train or even at a stop light. Not only will each entry get you giggling, it’ll also transport you to the table of the ancients, where, apparently, eaters were just as obsessed about food as we are.
26 FLAVORS by Ruth Polleys
Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table
A Collection of Essays from the New York Times, Edited by Amanda Hesser
W.W. Norton, Reprint edition November 2009
Paperback 208 pp., ISBN: 9780393337464
Almost every day after school, I’d hop the 96 bus to Harvard Square and sling ice cream along with a gang of other 16 to 18-year-olds who chose not to bag groceries at Star or serve billions under the golden arches. Instead, donning a red, white and blue uniform amid a similarly patriotic décor, over and over I explained to Brigham’s patrons, largely transplanted Harvard students and tourists, that jimmies were chocolate sprinkles—that frappes had ice cream; milkshakes did not. For three years I went home with my right arm sticky and shiny from vanilla, mocha chip and peppermint stick. For three years I sampled every new flavor and invented any number of successful and dreadful ice cream/topping combos. You’d think I’d hate the stuff, but no. That would’ve been a blessing. For Colson Whitehead, novelist and one of 26 contributors to Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table, it’s a curse.
In his essay “I Scream,” Whitehead describes how his disenchantment developed over several summers of scooping at Big Olaf in Sag Harbor, Long Island. He ate ice cream for “breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner, depending on my shift” until he was nauseated. Now he eschews all desserts, much to the disbelief of dining companions. “To hate ice cream is to dread the clearing of the table, for at any moment the waiter will return with the dessert menu and put your nice evening to the test.” It’s unusual to read a writer writing about a food he can’t stomach (especially one I so thoroughly enjoy). Whitehead makes me laugh and makes me want to read more.
Just as Whitehead brought me back to Brigham’s and that slightly acrid aftertaste of constantly cooking hot fudge, Eat, Memory floods us with triggers of place and taste. Editor Amanda Hesser, long-time New York Times food writer and author of The Cook and the Gardener and Cooking for Mr. Latte (as well as co-creator of the acclaimed blog food52), culls an eclectic collection of place-steeped and tasteful essays written by novelists, journalists, playwrights, poets, chefs, restaurateurs and teachers—eaters all. Some essays are quick blips in restaurants, as in poet Billy Collins’ verse consideration of the fish he consumes. Some linger longer and cross continents, as in R.W. Apple Jr.’s accounts of meals taken as a journalist covering conflict in Lagos, Moscow and Saigon. In many essays, the food—ice cream or garlic, Tang or B&M Baked Beans—is the star; in others, it plays scenery.
Paris performs as spectacular scenery. Ann Patchett writes of a relationship that almost didn’t survive the damask draperies of the famous Taillevant. When the bill for $350 arrives, the argument, not the exquisite French food, is best remembered. Julia Child recalls her failed exam at le Cordon Bleu, while John Burnham Schwartz details the Sunday dinners hosted by a friend who couldn’t handle the drudgery of restaurant cooking, yet concocted masterpieces in his tiny, two-burner rue du Temple kitchen.
Taste, texture, and questions of consistency feature prominently in the essays. For Yiyun Lee, Tang becomes the symbol of status and courtship in Beijing, only to be relegated to a humble astronaut-approved, orange-flavored convenience food in the U.S. Tom Perrotta must reconcile a squeamishness for eggs and espionage, and Allen Shawn recalls how small variations to the repetitive birthday menu for his mentally retarded sister alter and enrich his family. All of these writers demonstrate agility with text that, in other hands, might be overly, achingly sweet.
“Nothing sentimental,” instructed Hesser as she invited writers to contribute to her column. As a rule, the authors comply. Food as fact helps to assuage sentiment, as Bordeaux helps to cut the fat in Brie. The sentimental caveats in Eat, Memory are, curiously, the section titles: “Illusions,” “Discoveries,” “Struggles,” “Loss.” The essays gain no more from being so clustered. And save for a few cleverly penned inclusions (Patricia’s Marx’s obsessive-compulsive Caramelized Bacon, and George Saunders Light-as-Air Brunch), recipes tacked on as endnotes to many essays add little to them. But if anyone wants to tackle the twelve-hour Boston Baked Beans in order to replace the molasses-thick taste of the industrial version in Tucker Carlson’s essay, be my guest.
Me, I’ll be choosing between flavors at a little place called Christina’s Homemade Ice Cream: Nietzsche's Chocolate Ascension or Sex on the Beach sorbet (no jimmies, thanks), and checking out Colson Whitehead’s blog to see where he’s not eating ice cream these days.
REVIEW by Esther Cohen
Eat My Globe: One Year to Go Everywhere and Eat Everything by Simon Majumdar
Free Press, May 2009
Hardcover 304 pp., ISBN: 9781416576020
Is eating the new money, or even, sex? In Simon Majumdar’s charming odd voyage, he, a writer in London born to a Bengali father and a Welch mother, travels the world to eat. (Thankfully he doesn’t pray or love.) He’s 40, and in a search for how to make his life better than it is, he finds, in his own notes, a scrawling message from when he was in his twenties: GO EVERYWHERE, EAT EVERYTHING.
Majumdar’s family’s religion was food. They discussed meals they’d had, and meals they wanted, every single day of his life. Meals are his true passion, his meaning. He pursues both, in country after country. The book is divided the way he traveled: UK, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Mongolia, Russia, and Finland. Then the U.S., and Mexico, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, Spain. He ends in Italy, home of excellent meals.
What he’s looking for is an understanding of life, and the world, from what he eats. He knows thousands—really—of people everywhere, from Mexico to Istanbul. (His New York: Katz’s deli, Ali’s Kabob Café in Queens, Yasuda’s sushi. His New York friends try to talk him into liking pizza. They bring him to Patsy’s in Harlem. He hated the pizza, as always.)
His six appendix sections are wonderful: top twenty foods in the world that he experienced; his martini recipe, his way of cooking dahl, ten worst snacks, ten best snacks, and ten travel tips. Next time he’s in New York, I’d like to meet him for a meal.
REVIEW by Esther Cohen
Eating by Jason Epstein
Knopf, October 2009
Hardcover 192 pp., ISBN: 9781400042968
Jason Epstein, illustrious book editor and publisher (Mailer, Nabokov, Vidal, Doctorow are just a few), fell in love with food as a young boy, even eating his grandmother’s not-altogether-good chicken pot pie. He has been cooking all his life and publishing food books, too. (Alice Waters, Mario Batali, Julia Childs, Irma Rombauer are just a few of his famous food friends.) Eating is Epstein’s own wonderful food book, a book of memories and recipes. It’s even beautiful: brown type for recipes, black for the narrative text. He loves eating, and knows how to tell us why. (Esther Cohen loves eating, too.)
SINGLES NIGHT by Ruth Polleys
What We Eat When We Eat Alone:
Stories and 100 Recipes
by Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin
Gibbs Smith, May 2009
Hardcover 256 pp., ISBN: 9781423604969
Watch a video. Hear interview excerpts.
Shredded wheat. Or Brie and baguette. Asparagus. Or eggs. When I eat alone, which is rather often, these foods become my staples. Woefully simple. Assembled not braised. Lone eaters rarely attempt actual cooking, I’d thought. Shop—yes. Take-out—sure. Flip the lid off the New York Super Fudge Chunk and skip the dish—definitely. But bona fide cooking?
So I wasn’t sure what to expect from What We Eat When We Eat Alone by Deborah Madison, co-authored and playfully illustrated by her husband, Patrick McFarlin. How many others intend to cook for themselves, have quinoa in the cupboard and pine nuts in the fridge, only to resort to cereal or cheese? It turns out many of us cobble meals and eat at the sink or in front of the TV. But there are also cooks—onion-chopping, nut-toasting, chicken-roasting cooks—who turn up the heat for one. Some who eat at tables.
Madison—cook, restaurateur, teacher and award-winning author of books that herald the garden, stress vegetarian, and promote eating locally—makes frequent trips to meet farmers and food producers. She and her husband invariably discuss food with fellow travelers. "I simply asked people about their behind-closed-doors food practices," notes McFarlin, who jotted details for fun at first. Then he and Madison began to talk to friends and strangers, "cooks, farmers, artists, writers," and others they’d meet at a concert or an airport, about their solo eating rituals.
The result is a delightful, conversational journey that weaves a surprising number of voices into neat little chapters that explore gender (yes, men eat more meat, but also more pasta), quirks (fried Spam with grape jelly, oyster crackers in coffee), and shortcuts (eggs any style, condiments galore, leftovers love). Recipes tucked into the end of each chapter include the basic (Tomatoes on Toast, Mashed Potatoes) as well as the more complex (Three-Minute Tuna with Salsa Verde, Winter Squash Risotto with Parsley and Sage), and a range of ingredients that prove cooking for one can be quicker than you think and full of flavor.
Flavor is key. More than one solo cook demands "good" olive oil. Some insist on just-picked herbs, Polish blood sausage, or aged Gruyère. Some recreate childhood—tater tots or hot dogs—though more express a requirement for superior wine. In "Meals with a Motive," singles share their seductive preferences, Champagne and oysters included. It’s fun to see how old stand-bys, and clichés, prevail.
Chapters entitled "Alone at Last" and "Alone Every Day" find eaters both resigned and thrilled to have the kitchen to themselves. Though some have trouble ("How am I going to cut up half a carrot?"), some find joy. Betty Fussell, noted food writer, shares this:
I eat alone all the time in this my seventy-ninth year, and I love to eat alone. Nobody to please but myself. I open the door of the fridge and look inside. It’s always exciting, so many little things forgotten at the back of the shelves. What can I put together for this improvised, unrepeatable, once-in-a-lifetime meal?
And this appears to be Madison’s upbeat message. Treat yourself right. Eat what you like. And go ahead, improvise! So I did. I dug out that canister of quinoa, toasted a big pinch of pine nuts and roasted asparagus spears. I mixed it all together on a blue ceramic plate, and topped it off with a golden-yolk egg, a drizzle of oil, and shavings of good Parmigiano-Reggiano. The table was set with a linen napkin and a glass of chilled Sancerre. There, a meal deserving of a fine diner—party of one.
C’EST LA DOUCE FRANCE
by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious—and Perplexing—City
by David Lebovitz
Broadway Books, May 2009
Hardcover 304 pp., ISBN: 9780767928885
Being a parisienne, I must confess that I share the daily frustration of my compatriots who express their shuffled dismay (Mon Dieu or Quelle horreur) at hordes of Americans treating Paris like a Disneyland, walking around the city as barbarics in high-above-the-knee shorts, exhibiting loudly their identity as Americans. They often forget that Paris is neither merely a tourist highlight nor a romanticized fixation of beauty and elegance—but very much an organic city where parisiens discreetly lead their French quotidian lives.
This rift sustains much of the various sweeping cultural stereotypes that define "dismay" from both ends. Such a nutshell seems to be the essence of what David Lebovitz, an American ex-pastry-chef-turned-cookbook-writer residing in Paris, explores in his anecdotal travel book, The Sweet Life in Paris, as he illustrates each enticing chocolate-related or French dessert recipe with his adventures as an expatriate in this (in)famous City of Light.
Paris, in Lebovitz’s colorful vocabulary, is the "world’s most glorious—and perplexing—city." Not perplexingly, he sets out to describe the numerous paradoxes that a typical American may possibly encounter when attempting to live the French life. Humor and sincerity shines throughout this delightful book that alternates simple and concise dessert recipes with chronicles of Lebovitz’s new life in Paris. (He arrived in France without quite knowing how to speak or write French, as a start). To add a refreshing touch to this seemingly banal Franco-American cultural account, he is determined to understand and to become an authentic parisien through a most attractive—and vital—means: food. Or to be precise, chocolat.
For Lebovitz, food is clearly an art, a telling facet of how one lives life, a revelation of one’s interior world. Trained at Alice Waters’ restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, he spent over a decade in the pastry department creating top-notch desserts with an international array of fruits, nuts, and all sorts of organic farm-fresh diary products. Chocolate is his specialty, and his life-long passion. Convinced by the healthy notion that no "sane" human being can easily run away from a pure chocolate temptation, he sprinkles in this book surprising recipes of innovative chocolate desserts such as Chocolate Yogurt Snack Cakes (Bouchées chocolat au yaourt), Nancy Meyers’ Hot Fudge Sauce (oui, Nancy Meyers the Hollywood filmmaker who directed Something’s Gotta Give, starring the almost nude Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton), Chocolate-Coconut Marshmallows (Guimauve chocolat coco); Individual Chocolate Almond Cakes (Financiers au chocolat); and Dulce de Leche Brownies (Brownies à la confiture de lait), just to name a few. Occasionally, he also slides in accessible, user-friendly recipes of slightly-more-sophisticated dishes, for instance: Pork Ribs (Travers de porc), Pork Roast with Brown Sugar-Bourbon Glaze (Rôti de porc marine à la cassonade et au whisky), Braised Turkey in Beaujolais Nouveau with Prunes (Dinde braisée au Beaujolais Nouveau et aux pruneaux) as well as Chicken and Apple Spread (Pâté de foie de volaille aux pommes). Also of worthy note is the feature chapter on Café français, which is just as original as informative, as Lebovitz differentiates the subtle (or are they?) nuances between café express, café au lait, café américain—or any sort of pseudo-Italian café that French bistros may serve.
Although he entertains with hilarious episodes of trying to settle in France—like chasing off his apartment painter who never wished to leave, or working at 5 a.m. in a fish market so as to cure his fear of squids—our author is serious about eating as much as most Frenchmen who would rather enjoy a three-hour dinner instead of eating pizza because of hunger and the biological clock. Ultimately, it is not about gastronomy or high art, but simply respecting the body (the temple, as a metaphor), and a desire to live with a more profound consciousness or presence. After all, what is la cuisine if not another denominator that constitutes the complex French culture and lifestyle à la mode? As Lebovitz asserts wisely, "But mostly it’s all about l’attitude." Whether exaggerated or not, he has succeeded in evoking emotions and cultural memories in his food writing. Casting aside his identity as a pastry chef, he has gathered a recollection of moments in his life, French or un-French. Voilà my favorite passage, near the end of the book, in which he describes a scene of eating cheese at a dinner chez un ami:
I actually gasped when the platter was put before us. Everyone around the table fell silent to inhale the aromas, savoring the moment of being in the presence of perhaps the ripest, most perfect specimens of cheese available anywhere in the world. Then the calm was broken. With self-assurance, a guest visiting from New York grabbed the lead—and the cheese knife. "Here, I’ll make this easier," he announced.
Making good on his promise, with a few deft strokes of the knife, he pounced on the cheese and started hacking away, cutting them all into little cubes as if they were going to be served with frilled toothpicks at a gallery opening alongside jugs of Mountain Chablis. In a matter of moments, he’d managed to decimate what had taken several generations of cheesemakers to perfect. We all sat in stunned silence, horrified by the desecration; our cheese course was ruined. ("Fancying le fromage," pp. 184-185.)
A SPICY STORY by Leah Rovner
Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen
by Monica Bhide
Simon & Shuster, April 2009
Hardcover 288 pp., ISBN: 9781416566595
Like all home-cooks, I have a few rules when it comes to finding a new cookbook: accessible ingredients, clear recipes, and a passionate story. If I’ve picked up your cookbook, I’m expecting to learn something, especially something about you: its author.
More and more authors now intertwine personal stories with the food inside their pages. Their culinary history is just as powerful to tell as the dishes themselves; it can inspire cooks to play with their own recipe ideas. It can also teach them that it’s okay to fail in the process, and that sometimes, baking the perfect apple muffin takes more than one try. It seems that people forget to look at cookbooks for what they truly are—books about cooking, not just a collection of recipes.
Monica Bhide’s newest cookbook, Modern Spice, is a cookbook that should be read from beginning to end. From a love affair with chaat masala to using peapods to teach her son how to read Hindi, Bhide shows us that the cookbook is not confined to recipes and instructions. For her, food is a kind of literary device that has the power to deepen your senses both on and off the plate.
Bhide has found what many may consider impossible—a medium between traditional Indian cooking and contemporary immediacy. Although it’s no secret that today’s home-cooks want recipes that are quick and affordable, she assures us that sometimes, taking a step back can be the difference between being a good cook and a great one.
All great cooks have one secret: diversity. Defined in culinary terms, this is the ability to take dishes from other countries and make them your own (check out page 114 for an Indian spin on the classic American hamburger). Bhide is committed to adding Indian food to your repertoire, whether you are an experienced chef or not.
Equipped with a complete set of personal cooking rules and kitchen notes, Bhide believes that the ethics of Indian cuisine can be interpreted in different ways. Whether it’s a two-hour recipe like curry leaf bread or a five-minute guava fool, it is possible to be loyal to age-old tradition while enjoying yourself at the same time.
Like most ethnic cookbooks, the tricky part of Indian cooking is locating ingredients. Yet many of the spices Bhide uses—like red chili flakes—are probably already in your pantry. Though Bhide offers several substitutes that you can use for some of the more obscure ingredients, I suggest using the correct spices if possible.
Modern Spice is a cookbook where the little things count. Garnishes become a crucial finishing touch on basmati rice with pine nuts, fresh mint and pomegranate seeds. Yellow turmeric and black specs of onion seed make caramelized shallots with turnips smoky, sweet and spicy—all at the same time.
And you’ll find new ways of cooking common ingredients. Dishes like tamarind chicken spice up boneless chicken tenders with Serrano chilies, red pepper flakes and red chili powder. Ginger tea perfectly compliments a long day at work. As long as you are comfortable with a bit of spice and heat, these recipes will not only make your diners very happy, but encourage you to experiment with new flavors and textures in the kitchen.
Perhaps the most wonderful aspect of Modern Spice is the writing. Mostly about her travels through India (as a child, and then later as an adult with her family), Bhide tells us about her personal connection to food, and how it has shaped her life. She reminds us that it can also take on a literary—and at times, transcendental—dimension.
People want to know the origin of their food, they’re curious about what’s lingering behind the dinner plate. Modern Spice gives us that bigger picture: recipes that inspire, and a great story or two along the way.
