Cookbooks take me places. I don’t know how old I was when I began to make the connection between food and identity, but when I was very young I began to understand that the food eaten by people of different cultures connects them with those cultures. I understood, too, that eating those foods myself gave me a sort of glimpse into different communities and countries.
As an adult, I still do much of my exploration through cooking. While I’ve been fortunate to travel from the Arctic to the Antarctic, there’s a lot of in-between I have yet to cover; cooking offers me at least a glimpse through the fence posts.
Joan Nathan’s recent, wonderful “The Foods of Israel Today” examines the myriad of cultures – as well as the politics and history – behind many of the astounding varieties of foods modern Israelis enjoy.
“But favism, an inherited enzymatic deficiency occurring among some Jews—mainly those of Kurdish and Iraqi ancestry, many of who came to Israel during the mid 1900s—proved potentially lethal, so all falafel makers in Israel eventually stopped using fava beans, and chickpea falafel became an Israeli dish.”
Ghillie Basan’s “Vietnamese Food & Cooking” offers this surprising bit:
“And then there is the ice cream sandwich. A popular sweet snack with children in both Vietnam and Cambodia – thick chunks of baguette are halved lengthways and a wedge of ice cream is tucked in between them – a South-east Asian version of an ice cream cone.”
“Classical Southern Cooking” by Damon Lee Fowler offers a pointed editorial on one of its own recipes:
"Though it is made with the most civilized of spirits, champagne, it can in no way be described as genteel. Try it only if you must, and don’t bother to use a good champagne; though I am as devoted a Savannahian as they come, I think this is a hell of a thing to do to good wine and good friends."
In San Francisco, where food is one part soap opera, one part social badge, and one part contact sport, bookstores offer substantial collections of new and used cookbooks. Unsurprisingly, many of the nation's most popular cookbook authors and food writers have a strong presence in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Food trends, like fashion, come and go and there’s a lot of money to be made on well-informed guesses. Every year, London-based market research firm, Mintel offers up its projections for popular flavor trends over the upcoming year. The new... Read More Topics:
Food trends ,
Mintel ,
2009
One of the best things about buying secondhand cookbooks isn’t the books themselves –although that’s obviously a high-point – but what you find inside them. Besides notes handwritten in the margins (“Jerry likes this!”... Read More Topics:
Spry ,
Aunt Jenny ,
Unilever ,
vegetable shortening
For years, I had assumed vanillin was an artificial flavoring, and generally avoided products that included it among their ingredients. Why settle for something like vanilla when I could have real vanilla? As it turned out, I was only partially... Read More Topics:
Vanilla ,
vanillin ,
Ig Nobel
Why is salmonella more dangerous from chicken meat than other meats? Richard, San Francisco.Richard, with more than 2,000 strains of salmonella floating around, it's only surprising that salmonella infections aren't more common than they... Read More
It's Thanksgiving, you have a house full of guests, including that snarky cousin who has delighted in your personal disasters ever since that incident back in second grade, and the turkey/pie/rolls are burnt beyond recognition/fallen/still frozen.... Read More Topics:
Thanksgiving ,
recipe help ,
emergency
Most of the cornbread I encounter is too sweet or cakey in texture. Typically, they come from a mix like Jiffy or Aunt Jemima. I’m of the firm opinion cornbread should taste of corn, not be too sweet, and have a good, gritty bite. And it... Read More Topics:
recipes ,
cornmeal ,
Thanksgiving ,
cornbread ,
corn ,
clabbered milk
You probably don't want to hear this, but there are numerous options for cooking your turkey. Once it's thawed (assuming you bought a frozen turkey) and brined, the time to commit yourself has finally come. Ultimately, you want a moist turkey, cooked... Read More Topics:
roasting ,
Thanksgiving ,
Turkey ,
Barbara Kafka ,
internal temperature
You’ve picked your turkey, you’ve lugged him home, and now he’s thawed (assuming you picked out a frozen bird). What’s next? Unless you’re planning on sushi, you’ve got to cook him. But there’s one more step... Read More Topics:
Thanksgiving ,
Turkey ,
brining ,
Harold McGee