New Books in Food

James A. BennView on AmazonJames A. Benn's new book is a history of tea as a religious and cultural commodity in China before it became a global commodity in the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Tang and Song dynasties (with brief extensions earlier and later), Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History (University of Hawaii Press, 2015) demonstrates that a "shift to drinking tea" in China "brought with it a total reorientation of Chinese culture." Benn pays careful attention to the challenges and opportunities offered by the sources of China's tea history, and each chapter offers a critical introduction to and analysis of some of those sources while also narrating a key moment and theme in the history of tea. (Because of this wonderful focus on the sources of tea historiography – including some great partial and whole translations of key documents of all sorts – the book makes not only a great read, but also a very useful pedagogical resource!) The coverage of Tea in China ranges from the earliest possible textual references to tea, to accounts of tea in medieval anomaly accounts and Buddhist texts, to Tang tea poetry by Li Bai and others, to Lu Yu's Classic of Tea, to a twelfth-century Japanese work on tea, to Ming practices of tea connoisseurship. Enjoy!

Yael RavivView on AmazonIn the late nineteenth century, Jewish immigrants inspired by Zionism began to settle in Palestine. Their goal was not only to establish a politically sovereign state, but also to create a new, modern, Hebrew nation. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Zionist movement realized its political goal. It then sought to acculturate the multitude of Jewish immigrant groups in the new state into a unified national culture. Yael Raviv highlights the role of food and cuisine in the construction of the Israeli nation. Raviv's book, Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel (University of Nebraska Press, 2015) examines how national ideology impacted cuisine, and vice versa, during different periods of Jewish settlement in Palestine and Israel. Early settlers, inspired by socialist ideology and dedicated to agricultural work, viewed food as a necessity and treated culinary pleasure as a feature of bourgeois culture to be shunned. Working the land, and later buying "Hebrew" agricultural products, however, were patriotic performances of the nation. With increased Jewish migration, the situation changed. Cuisine emerged as an aspect of capitalist consumer culture, linked to individual choice and variety. As Israel became more cosmopolitan, its food scene grew. Israeli institutions professionalized cooking and emphasized ethnic diversity. Culinary pleasure, no longer shunned, even moved into the public sphere, as picnics and barbeques became a national obsession. Food Nation takes us on a historical journey through a century of Jewish foodways in Palestine and Israel, highlighting their essential role in creating an Israeli nation.

View on AmazonThe new edited volume by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black and Dagmar Schafer is a wonderfully interdisciplinary global history of rice, rooted in specific local cases, that spans 15 chapters written by specialists in the histories of Africa, the Americas, and several regions of Asia. Rice: Global Networks and New Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2015) creates a conversation among regional and disciplinary modes of studying and narrating rice histories that have often been conducted in isolation. Specifically, the project brings together two large-scale debates that emerge from very different rice historiographies: the "Black Rice" and "agricultural involution" debates frame the inquiry here, and as you listen to my conversation with Francesca and Dagmar (the two co-editors with whom I spoke for the podcast) you'll hear them offer an overview of the nature and stakes of both of those areas of inquiry. In the course of the conversation we also had a chance to talk about the collaborative process that produced the volume, a process that successfully maintained the specificity of the local case studies while still enabling authors to contribute to and participate in a common, global conversation that made new kinds of comparisons possible. Enjoy!

Ted MerwinView on AmazonIn Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli (New York University Press, 2015), Ted Merwin, Associate Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at Dickinson College, serves up the first full-length history of the New York Jewish deli.  A social space and symbol, the deli demonstrated American Jews' connection to their heritage and to their new surroundings.  Merwin addresses the rise and fall of the Jewish delicatessen in America, how we remember it, and its contemporary resurgence.

Anna L. TsingView on AmazonAnna L. Tsing's new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-Find-A-Way-To-Somehow-Engage-Even-If-Reading-Is-Not-Their-Thing. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton University Press, 2015) joyfully bursts forth in a "riot of short chapters" that collectively open out into a mushroom-focused exploration of what Tsing refers to as a "third nature," or "what manages to live despite capitalism." Tsing's book is based on fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2011 in the US, Japan, Canada, China, and Finland, plus interviews with scientists, foresters, and matsutake traders in those places and in Denmark, Sweden, and Turkey. The book is an exemplar of the kind of work that can come out of thoughtful and extended scholarly collaboration, here resulting from Tsing's work with the Matsutake Worlds Research Group. The book treats matsutake mushrooms as objects and companions that are good to think with, offering an exuberant picture of what it might look like to live "in our messes" as parts of contaminated and contaminating multispecies worlds and assemblages. Tsing calls for renewed attention to the importance of "arts of noticing," of curiosity, of play, of polyphony, of adventure. And at the same time as it accomplishes all of this, The Mushroom at the End of the World is deeply committed to telling stories, taking us into moments in the lives of individual smellers and sellers and pickers and tasters and bosses and crusaders. It is a wonderful work of ethnography that, in many ways, transcends genre and discipline.

Tom JacksonView on AmazonTom Jackson's Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again (Bloomsbury, 2015) is a completely engrossing look into the history and technology of refrigeration.  This book reads like an expanded chapter of James Burke's classic book Connections.  Refrigeration is not only one of the most important foundation stones of our technological society, it's also one that we take for granted.   It's hard to say which is more interesting; the realization that people were aware of a cooling method almost two millennia before the birth of Christ, the history of refrigeration from the Middle Ages to the present, or the possibilities for refrigeration technology in the world of the future.  Chilled is a fascinating look into one of the most amazing and important technologies that man has ever developed.

Hanna RaskinView on AmazonIt's pretty likely you use Yelp, the restaurant review app and website. Wouldn't it be nice if all the reviews on there were concise, thorough and trustworthy? If it were up to me, I'd give everyone who leaves reviews there a copy of Yelp Help: How to Write Great Restaurant Reviews by Hanna Raskin. As the Food Editor and Chief Critic of the Post & Courier newspaper in Charleston, SC, Raskin brings a full set of chops to the topic. We talked about the food scene in Charleston, the importance of hand soap scent in restaurants and all of the observations one can include in a top notch restaurant review. Great stuff.

Josh KunThis book is a ton of fun. To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City (Angel City Press) taps the deep and colorful collection of Southern California restaurant menus archived by the Los Angeles Public Library. Author Josh Kun, a professor in the Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism at the University of Southern California, presides over beautiful pages showing a century of menus, ranging from the Art Deco high points of the Brown Derby (purportedly where the Cobb Salad was invented) to the low points of "Southern" style joints whose menus used stereotype Aunt Jemima-type depictions of African American women to draw in customers. My favorites include a menu for the Hangman's Tree Café, a joint in the San Fernando Valley that seemed to be working the theme of serving last meals. Fun? Kun uses the images to spin a narrative about class, race and, of course, food in the history of Los Angeles. Enjoy.

Reid MitenbulerView on AmazonMost of the year, when the weather lets us, my wife and I wind down on our front porch with a bourbon. We live out in the countryside and, for no particular reason, bourbon feels like the right choice as we watch the long grass waving on the hillside and the birds shuttling back and forth between the far trees. Every so often, I'll suggest we change things up: maybe a Scotch or an Irish whiskey–not really such a big change in the grand scheme of things–but my wife looks at me as though I've made some horrible faux pas, as though I've suggested a tumbler full of cotton-candy vodka or bacon grease. Bourbon, she insists, that's what goes with the landscape. And she's not alone. As Reid Mitenbuler points out in Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America's Whiskey (Viking, 2015), bourbon is our native spirit. This is the fact that Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning affirmed in 2007, when he sponsored a bill to declare September "National Bourbon Heritage Month." Bourbon, the bill stressed, captures the American values of "family heritage, tradition, and deep-rooted legacy." Like most American icons, bourbon's true history isn't so rosy. It is, however, fascinating, as Mitenbuler shows us by tracing the spirit's place in every era of America's past, from the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 to the "Declaration of Independence" for bourbon, which wasn't passed until 1964, when congress voted on a resolution deeming bourbon, in lackluster language, "a distinctive product of the United States." Yet here, too, Mitenbuler finds a great story, about power brokers, corporate maneuvering, and a forgotten man named Lewis Rosenstiel, who is the reason we now have whiskeys aged over eight years. Mitenbuler offers us a rich sense of the true heritage, tradition, and legacy behind the bourbon in our glasses, and it's as complexly American as the country itself. Scotch whiskey? Irish whiskey? My wife is certainly right. What was I thinking?

Tom HertweckView on AmazonMovies and television shows often include scenes of eating, either as a side activity of the actors or as an integral part of a scene. University of Nevada, Reno Professor Tom Hertweck compiled 14 essays in his collection, Food on Film: Bringing Something New to the Table (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). He talks with me about the overall procedure of editing a group of essays, as well as the themes he discovered in this process.  

View on AmazonEugene N. Anderson's new book offers an expansive history of food, environment, and their relationships in China. From prehistory through the Ming and beyond, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) pays careful attention to a wide range of contexts of concern with nature and its resources. Readers of Anderson's book will find fascinating discussions of rice agriculture and fermentation, the etiquette of food and eating, concerns with deforestation in classical literature, the emergence of principles and practices of environmental management, and much more. Throughout the book, Anderson situates China within a larger frame of Central Asian history, with extensive discussions of the Silk Road and the importance of Mongol empire for the movement and circulation of food- and environment-related materials and practices. Though the main part of the book ends with the Ming Dynasty, a final chapter considers the themes of the book as they thread through modern and contemporary China. Two appendices offer further introductions to related themes – "Conservation Among China's Neighbors" and "An Introduction to Central Asian Food." Enjoy!

Margarita MartinezView on AmazonAn unusual case here: Margarita Martinez is not the author of Cabot Creamery Cookbook: Simple Wholesome Dishes from America's Best Dairy Farms (Oxmoor House, 2015). But I'm using this interview to reveal an interesting part of the cookbook business. The Cabot book is a group project, the original idea germinated by a publishing house. The publisher Oxmoor House, a division of Time Home Entertainment, approached Cabot, the cheese-maker which is a co-operative jointly owned by Vermont farmers and pitched the idea of bringing together recipes using Cabot's famous cheeses. The recipes would be contributed in large part by the farmers who make the cheese. As one of the last steps, Margarita Martinez, a camera-friendly food personality who had hosted a New England food/travel show broadcast on the regions PBS stations, was hired to be the spokesperson for the book. She did contribute two-recipes. What I wanted to get to here was the idea that there are many jobs in the food writing business, some which you might not expect. The interview is an interesting look into a business you might think you know, but about which maybe you still have a bit to learn. So listen and learn my friends! – Allen Salkin

View on AmazonIf Cuba will soon be a travel destination for Americans, what do we think we know about this neighbor that is so close geographically (93 miles south of Florida) and yet politically so far? For Ana Sofia Peláez, author of The Cuban Table: A Celebration of Food, Flavors, and History (St. Martin's Press, 2014), this is a question that has accompanied her through life. A Cuban American raised in Miami, she tasted Cuban food and culture in exile. Her grandparents learned to cook only after their arrival in the United States. It was their way of returning home through the familiar tastes. Yet the hunt for the right ingredients mirrored their search for roots in a new land. Peláez absorbed their quest as she went with her grandfather to the butcher or vegetable market, or watched the couple cook together in their apartment kitchen. After her first visit to Cuba, Peláez discovered what a far cry that kitchen was from the one they had left behind in Havana. For Ellen Silverman, her photo exhibit of Cuban kitchens fanned an interest that became the collaboration between food and photos for this book. Peláez worked through cooking and Silverman through images to provide a window into daily life in Cuba. For anyone weary of food magazine photography, this book (¡gracias a Cuba!) is the antidote. Food tastes as delicious on mismatched plates as it does on matching ones. America's craze for urban food trucks is simply the metal-clad version of what provides street food on the island. The forms of two-wheeled transportation are an eye-opener. Cuba has more than 3,000 miles of coastline. What is the least consumed food on the island? Fish. Peláez will explain but not solve the puzzle. She will also identify the foods that are never in Cuban cooking (no matter how much we keep looking for them). On her two trips to Cuba, she met relatives, friends' relatives, and strangers who became friends. It all took place mainly in the kitchen. That's where you learn the secrets.

Dorie GreenspanView on AmazonExcellence. Sometimes it's an additional 20 percent past "pretty good." But are you willing to put in that extra effort to polish your work, to make it gleam, to make it function irresistibly for your intended audience? Dorie Greenspan is – and it shows. So excellent and successful a cookbook author is Dorie that all her latest book needs on the cover is a simple title: Baking Chez Moi: Recipes from My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), a photo of something chocolaty, and her byline to make readers and cooks everywhere grab it. We spoke about her work with Julia Child, her well-fed husband, snow, butter and what it takes to do things right.

Bryan VoltaggioView on AmazonWhy are club sandwiches so good? This is among the important questions we get around to discussing during this podcast. Chef Bryan Voltaggio, a Top Chef finalist and Maryland-area restaurateur, met me at the Malibu Diner in Manhattan, known for blinky fluorescent lighting and a menu that includes cheap burgers and moussaka, to discuss his new cookbook Home: Recipes to Cook with Family and Friends (Little, Brown and Company, 2015), which comes out in a few months, his desire to open a restaurant in his house like my old dentist used to do with his practice, and whether or not chefs are artists. His wife Jennifer eventually slid into the booth to join the conversation.