New Books in Food

Sarah BeskyView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in South Asian Studies] In this wonderful ethnography of Darjeeling tea, Sarah Besky explores different attempts at bringing justice to plantation life in north east India. Through explorations into fair trade, geographic indication and a state movement for the Nepali tea workers, Besky critically assesses the limits of projects that fail to address underlying exploitative structures. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Plantations in India (University of California Press, 2014) is a readable and theoretically nuanced book that should be of interest to many.

David E. SuttonView on AmazonDavid E. Sutton's book beguiles. Secrets From the Greek Kitchen: Cooking, Skill, and Everyday Life on an Aegean Island (University of California Press, 2014) seems like a simple chronicle of the most basic food practices on the island of Kalymnos. But what practices they are. Cutting boards are not used. Cooks cut food while holding it and the ingredients drop directly into a bowl or a pot. Just that simple action reveals a connection to what is eaten that opens up a world. It is a world worth a visit – and certainly a listen – as Prof. Sutton and I discuss some of our favorite places on earth, the ancient and ebullient islands of the Aegean sea.

View on Amazon"How do you govern a country that produces 365 kinds of cheese?" What puzzled Charles de Gaulle inspired Françoise Branget, the author of French Country Cooking: Authentic Recipes from Every Region (Arcade Publishing, 2012). She too is a politician, yet she managed to achieve consensus among a group better known for dissent. She asked 180 of her fellow deputies in the French General Assembly to provide a traditional recipe from their region. (Don't be surprised if one of them is now the prime minister of France.) What emerges through the most cunning means is a portrait of "deep France" (la France profonde). No matter how many French cookbooks you have read, this book is the food of a France you do not know. It is the France of past generations and poorer times, when one ate only what one grew or raised. Yet the limited ingredients, combined with ingenuity of country women feeding their families, produced remarkable flavors. This is the genius upon which all French cuisine rests. The book contains the common (18 different recipes using potatoes), the delectable (salmon steamed over cabbage, duck pot-au-feu, Breton apple cake) and the adventurous (roasted pig's head). Nothing is out of bounds. Our interview is with the book's English translator, Jeannette Seaver, herself the author of four cookbooks. A Parisian who is the publisher of Arcade Publishing, she received France's highest citizen award, the Legion of Honor, in 2012 for her services to French culture. And culture is what this book conveys, through its unique format of haunting photography, a map on each page, and evocative introductions from contributors ("made by my grandmother," "enjoyed since early childhood at Sunday dinners"). These are the recipes that shape the life of the table in France.

Andrew CoeView on AmazonThrough some quirk of fate, the Hobbesian tag "filling, cheap, and familiar" is probably the defining phrase used when Americans think of Chinese food. Yet what could be less accurate a description of this cuisine, born halfway around the world, which had been evolving for well over a millennium before it was brought to California in the 1840s? The events that brought the Chinese and their food to our shores, to become so important a strand in the fabric of American eating, is the story Andrew Coe tells in his fascinating book, Chop Suey: The Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2009). It takes the reader by ship and railroad from 1784, when the fledgling United States first focused its sights on China as a market, to the present day. Why the Chinese came, what reception they received, what they did, and what happened when their work ran out is part of the story. After arriving in 1848 for the California Gold Rush, the Chinese created ancillary businesses, first feeding themselves, then feeding Americans, both in prospecting camps and in the village of Yerba Buena (which would grow into a port called San Francisco). The Chinese were "other." Their story as an ethnic group is not a familiar one to most Americans. The West Coast has a dark history regarding its treatment of residents of Far Eastern origin, and it begins with the Chinese in nineteenth-century California. Coe opens our eyes. And what is chop suey? Is it even Chinese? Will Americans ever graduate to authentic Chinese food? These questions, and many more, with be answered by some unlikely professors: Louis Armstrong, Richard Nixon, and a Peking duck. National Geographic interviewed Coe in May 2014 for their upcoming television documentary, "Eat: The Story of Food," scheduled to air in November 2014.

Rawia BisharaView on AmazonDoes olive oil these days still taste as good as it did in decades past? That's one of the topics Rawia Bishara and I discuss on the occasion of the publication of her cookbook Olives, Lemons and Za'atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking (Kyle Books, 2014). Ms. Bishara is the owner of the beloved Bay Ridge, Brooklyn restaurant Tanoreen. She grew up as part of a Palestinian-Arab family in Nazareth, southern Galilee. As we talk, she recalls the fruity olive oil of her youth, made by relatives, and wonders if it has lost something — but we also discuss the way New York has influenced her evolving homespun Middle Eastern fare, and the book which features dishes like Spice Rubbed Braised Lamb Shank marinated in ginger and rose buds, and Egyptian Rice with Lamb and Pine Nut. Is there a better reason to open a restaurant than that you have a story you yearn to tell through food? Rawia means storyteller. Listen.

Alison PearlmanView on AmazonWhen you imagine a gourmet experience, what comes to mind? An elegant restaurant, perhaps, with a single candle flickering at the center of a luminous white tablecloth? Maybe a quartet plays somewhere in the romantic distance, as the waiter slips a perfectly plated appetizer of escargot before you, and you proceed to nuzzle them out of their shells with silver tongs and that dainty fork? Perhaps this isn't your image. Perhaps yours includes a view of the Pacific shore or the skyline of Manhattan or a wine list as long as actuarial table. But does your image include a taco truck? When Food & Wine magazine declared Roy Choi on of its "Best New Chefs" of 2010 for the food he was serving up in his Kogi BBQ truck, it signaled something like a sea change had happened in our idea of gourmet eating. And that's the very change that Alison Pearlman explores in her book, Smart Casual: The Transformation of Gourmet Restaurant Style in America (University of Chicago, 2013). As she puts it, "Between 1975 and 2010, the style of gourmet dining in America transformed. Increasingly, restaurants of 'fine' dining incorporated food, décor, and other elements formally limited to the 'casual' dining experience." The result, as Pearlman shows us, is a gourmet experience "replete with eroded hierarchies and pointed style contrasts, convergences of haute and ordinary." And, we might add, taco trucks. In a keen investigation of every element of the dining experience, from menus to molecular gastronomy, Pearlman's book reveals the surprising nature of what fine dining means for us today.

Meghan TurbittDon't worry. Or do. The most graphic page of Meghan Turbitt's new comic book, #FoodPorn (2014) has sushi covering all the risky parts. Turbitt says she was inspired to ink the 32-page comic by her dining experiences around her neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. A taco vendor's apron, resplendent with bits of spicy food, looks too good not to eat. A rather ugly pizza-tosser becomes more attractive moment by moment as the gorgeous pie he's constructing moves closer to her climactic devouring of it. Here is an artist using comics to do what the medium can do better than nearly any other: allow the creator to follow his or her Id to its absolute expression. Listen and love.

Ruth ReichlView on AmazonA real treat here. Probably the most famous living American food writer, Ruth Reichl joins Allen Salkin for a conversation partly about her new novel Delicious! (Random House, 2014), but also about New York City hot dogs, her writing process and the arguments she had with David Foster Wallace when editing his piece "Consider the Lobster" for Gourmet magazine. You will want to listen to this one for sure.

Laura SilverView on AmazonSomething nice and filling for you here! Laura Silver's book Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food (Brandeis University Press, 2014) concerns itself not only with the round — or is it square? — savory pastry brought to America from somewhere in Europe to fill the working bellies of not well-to-do immigrants. The tale of the knish is a way to tell the story of where an ethnic group has been, where they think they are, and where they might be going. A free-ranging talk between Lower East Side resident Allen Salkin and the author, with stops along the way for smoked fish, hot dogs and pasta.

View on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] Believe it or not, the origins of this podcast and the entire New Books Network can be traced to a conversation I had in a café in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Sweetwaters in Kerrytown, as it happens) in 2004. I was sitting there minding my own business when I overheard Ed Vielmetti and Lou Rosenfeld talking about something called "del.icio.us" [sic]. It sounded interesting, so I asked them–complete strangers though they were–about it. They kindly brought me up to speed on something else called "Web 2.0." Then I begin thinking… Turns out a lot thinking is done in cafés, as Leona Rittner, W. Scott Haine, and Jeffrey H. Jackson point out in their fascinating book The Thinking Space: The Café as a Cultural Institution in Paris, Italy and Vienna (Ashgate, 2013). At one time or another, most modern Western intellectuals found themselves in one or another café drinking coffee, dreaming big dreams, and often arguing with another. The caffeine helped, but the atmosphere and company helped even more.  Unhurried, quiet, comfortable, warm,  public, inexpensive, full of reading material, open long hours, and right on the corner.  The coffee house is an ideal "third place" for cerebral types. To my mind the most fascinating thing about this remarkable collection of essays is the variety of kinds of coffee houses found around Europe. Needless to say, they didn't (and don't) all look like your local Starbucks. If you like cafés, you should grab a copy of this book and read it . . . in a café, of course.

Aaron Bobrow-StrainView on AmazonWhen we think of the stuff that dreams are made on, we might think of the spirits that Shakespeare's Prospero conjures up in "The Tempest"; we might think of stars, rainbows, maybe even wishing wells, but what probably doesn't leap to mind is a loaf of Wonder Bread. And yet, ever since the invention of the mass-manufactured loaf of white bread in the 1920s, that spongy tasteless loaf has been a way in which Americans have defined themselves and one another. In his new book, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf (Beacon Press, 2012), Aaron Bobrow-Strain shows us how that familiar slice of white bread is much more than a food. It's a symbol, one that in its nearly hundred-year-old existence has come to represent "the apex of modern progress and the specter of physical decay, the promise of a better future to come and America's fall from small-town agrarian virtue." The history Bobrow-Strain tells us ranges from the immigrant bakeries of turn-of-the-century America to the Cold War to the rise of yuppie and "locavore" eating habits. It's a history, as he writes, "of the countless social reformers, food experts, industry executives, government officials, diet gurus, and ordinary eaters who have thought that getting Americans to eat the right bread (or avoid the wrong bread) could save the world–or at least restore the country's moral, physical, and social fabric.

Marlene ZukView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Big Ideas] The Hebrews called it "Eden." The Greeks and Romans called it the "Golden Age." The philosophes–or Rousseau at least–called it the "State of Nature." Marx and Engels called it "Primitive Communism." The underlying notion, however, is the same: there was a time, long ago, when things were much better than they are today because we were then "in tune" with God, nature, or whatever. Thereafter we "fell," usually due to our own stupidity, and landed in our present corrupted state. Today we are told by some that the paleolithic period (roughly 3 million to 10,000 years ago) was, similarly, a time in which we were "in tune" with nature. According to the paleofantasists, we were selected in the paleolithic environment and it is to the Paleolithic environment that we became most "fit." After the paleolithic, they say, came the fall (domestication, cities, states, industrialization). Today, they continue, we are "out of tune" and, as a result, we are suffering all kinds of nasty consequences. Or so the story goes. But  Marlene Zuk says it just ain't so. In Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live (W. W. Norton, 2013), she points out that we were always out of tune because evolution makes it impossible to be truly "in tune." The environment was always changing and we were always changing;the environment is still changing and we are still changing. What is "natural" to us is a kind of moving target. One millenium something seems "natural"; the next millenium not so much. Evolution is a ceaseless and surprisingly rapid process.

Kara NewmanView on AmazonChocolate fans out there may know all about the latest chocolate happenings, from Hershey's "Air Delight," a bar of aerated milk chocolate, to Cadbury's new melt-resistant chocolate, which apparently remains solid even after three hours at 104 degrees. But unless you happen to be a chocoholic who follows the financial news, you may not have heard of "ChocFinger," a British hedge fund manager named Anthony Ward. In 2010, Ward purchased 240,000 tons of chocolate–seven percent of the global production–and stashed it inside refrigerated warehouses throughout Europe. Ward has been accused by other investors of driving up the price of a commodity that had already seen two year's worth of price increases. Their worries might be valid. ChocFinger is in a position to influence the market for some time to come: he can continue to store or sell all that chocolate, enough to make over five billion candy bars, until 2030. This is just one of the "secrets" Kara Newman reveals in The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets (Columbia University Press, 2013), in which she examines how commodities markets influence what we eat and how much we pay for food. Newman brings a range of talents to her story. She's a former vice president of strategic research at Thomson Reuters who's versed in the world of finance. She's also the Spirits Editor for Wine Enthusiast, writes the weekly "Spirited Traveler" column for Reuters, and has authored two books of cocktail recipes. She's the sort of writer who can make the history of trading pork bellies or the volatility of global coffee production into a rich and lively read. Join us as Newman takes us into American's culinary and financial history and gives us a glimpse into our global future.

Barak KushnerView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in East Asian Studies] I bet you've never heard of the "Smash the Baltic Fleet Memorial Togo Marshmallow." I hadn't either, before reading Barak Kushner's lively and illuminating new book on the history of ramen in Japan. Grounded in ample research that incorporates archival and ethnographic methods, Slurp!: A Social and Culinary History of Ramen – Japan's Favorite Noodle Soup (Global Oriental, 2012) takes us from the early history of noodles and breadstuffs in China and Japan to the styrofoam bowl of instant ramen on modern grocery shelves. In Kushner's able and playful historical hands, this genealogy of foodways is interwoven with strands of Buddhist history, urban and colonial studies, and a detailed account of the emergence of a national cuisine in nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan, memorial marshmallows and all. Kushner's book explores the ways that military influence, the rise of "nutrition" as a health concern, and prevailing conditions of hunger and starvation created a social and political context out of which ramen emerged along with new ways of eating alone and away from home. As if all of that wasn't enough reason to read the book, you'll also learn about the Ramen Philosophers Hall and the technology behind making those crispy instant ramen noodles. Slurp!

Signe RousseauView on AmazonThe other day I found myself in a cooking situation that's fairly common: I had a few odd ingredients–some oxidized strips of bacon, a withered red pepper, a bunch of half-wilted parsley–and needed to use them before they went bad, but how?  The cookbooks on my counter didn't have an index in which I could search for multiple ingredients, and I didn't have time to flip through all of the recipes for each ingredient in the hopes of a possible hit.  So I popped them into Google, along with the search-term "recipe," and in .31 seconds I had 2,830,000 hits and a variety of options, from a recipe for crispy potatoes on the Food Network's website to Martha Stewart's recipe for gnocchi.  I opted for a cold tuna salad. In her new book, Food and Social Media: You Are What You Tweet (AltaMira Press, 2012), Signe Rousseau begins her first chapter by reminding us just how uncommon my situation actually is and how that feeling, that sense that this is what I do, that nowadays this is what we do, is just one of the fascinating characteristics of our digitized food culture.  Consider, for example, that 800 million users connect through Facebook everyday or that every week Twitter users generate a billion tweets or that there's now a 150 million bloggers adding new content to the web everyday.  With pith and insight, Rousseau looks at how this explosion of social media is changing not only how we view food, but also how we understand ourselves.  (You can find Rousseau on her blog and on Twitter.)