Deeper Dives Into Food (to treat Internet-fevered brains)
I find the best antidote for the kind of distracted and fractured attention span that can result from too much online browsing is a deep dive into a specific topic. It's a form of brain training. If you find your mind darting about like an entire shoal of zebrafish, I recommend the following pieces of food writing whose authorial focus puts mine to shame. Some are scholarly, others more light-hearted, but they are all entertaining and offer the kind of commitment to a single topic that I truly respect.
James Beard award-winner Mark Kurlansky's latest book. Milk! A 10,000-year food fracas was initially an unlikely choice for me, a veteran of the School Dinnerlady Battles where we'd be sat mutinously, for hours, in front of hideously warm bottles of milk. But Kurlansky's tracing of milk's fascinating history which led to it becoming the world's most regulated food is absolutely compelling. If you like this, I recommend his previous books, Cod: a biography of a fish that changed the world; Salt: a world history and The Big Oyster: history on the half-shell.
If you've already read and enjoyed Kulansky's book about oysters, this, by Robb Walsh might pique your interest too.
A look at the milk splash in art.
Still on dairy, Butter, by Elaine Khosrova came about after the author was asked to test ten kinds of butter for the food magazine she was employed at. Traveling the world to meet butter makers and the animals they farm, she visits the USA, Ireland (of course!), Bhutan and France. The chapter titles are gorgeous ('Grass:Crud: Cream; Handmaidens of Flavour; Butter Meets Metaphysics) and there are lovely recipes for cooking with it, plus a comprehensive guide to making all kinds of butter. I loved the explanation of how a cow turns grass into milk which starts with the use of her tongue to lasso tasty clumps: 'there's no such thing as fast food in the life of a pastured cow,' Khosrova writes. The book is prefaced with a poem by Elizabeth Alexander which ends: "glowing from the inside out, one hundred megawatts of butter" which makes me remember holding buttercups under my chin.
The always witty and smart-as-a-whip Helen Rosner on the iceberg lettuce (and me on it too because Iceberg rocks and I have always enjoyed writing about the unfairly maligned).
The pawpaw is America's largest native, edible fruit and Andrew Moore's book offers a fascinating exposition on a fruit I am highly unlikely to be able to buy because of its elusive window of ripeness. It grows wild in 26 states; can weight between 5-16oz; has fed Native Americans and European explorers, presidents and the enslaved (it fed the Lewis and Clark expedition); and inspired folk songs, poetry and scores of place names in states such as Illinois and Michigan, Virginia and Georgia. Moore's love of the fruit shines from prose which explores his own personal history through the prism of horticultural history. He journeys widely, epically canoeing the lower Mississippi in search of wild fruit, drinking pawpaw beer in North Carolina, tracking down lost cultivars in Appalachian hollers, and helping to bring in a harvest in Maryland, reminding us that not all food odysseys need to be global.
If you like the sound of Pawpaw, then The Apple Orchard: the story of our most English fruit by Pete Brown and The Land Where Lemons Grow by Helena Attlee will please too. Both made my mouth water as did Oranges by John McPhee with its striking cover art and small, manageable size (It's perfect to take on flights) and deliciously zesty subject matter. McPhee was a class act and I'm enjoying exploring his archive (If you are a New Yorker subscriber, you can read the original article here.)
'They say it takes nerve to drink a Moxie,' wrote Robert Dickinson in a letter to the makers of this soft drink from Maine, USA. What follows is a funny exploration of a popular, yet local beverage as Dickinson tries a drink that one imbiber describes as like drinking a telephone pole. I'm very fond of essays about highly regional American foodstuffs and Moxie, A Flavour For the Few, is an old friend. I often reread it because I enjoy being repelled and fascinated at the same time.
The Cornbread Book: a love story with recipes by Jeremy Jackson on the quintessential American bread is a light-hearted and very comprehensive collection of recipes and writings. I like Jackson because the first thing he establishes is that cornbread should be one word. This is a hill I am prepared to die on too. There are so many different types of cornbread, many of them strictly regional. As Mark Twain wrote in 'Corn pon opinions,' "you tell me where a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."
The Case For Bad Coffee by Keith Pandolfi: From Folgers and the yellow packaging of Chock-Full-O-Buts to the sky blue cans of Maxwell House, Pandolfi revises his previous insistence upon the finest of drip-coffees served by a bearded man in Brooklyn and gives us a finely-drawn portrait of his stepfather too. I adore Pandolfi's writing and this essay especially. It makes me wonder what might my food affectations be? My young son once came home and asked if we might buy some of the posh coffee he had been offered at friend's house. What was its name?, I asked him. 'Coffee Martay,' he replied, in his best French accent. It took some time to realise he meant Coffee Mate.
I drank vinegar as a kid so naturally, I was drawn to Acid Trip: travels in the world of vinegar by Michael Harlan Turkell. Traveling through the USA, France, Austria, and Japan, Turkell takes his readers on an absorbing journey through the world of vinegar, an ingredient that many people take for granted but one which has as its mother, a complex interweaving of history, terroir, craft, and science. For those of you whose taste buds are piqued, Turkell has thoughtfully included recipes from many leading chefs, including a delightful honey za’atar vinaigrette and an autumnal brown butter balsamic mushroom dish with hazelnut and sage. (I believe British food writer Angela Clutton has a book about vinegar out soon, which focuses on the different kinds available, and how to use them in the kitchen.)
We know comparatively little about the life cycle of the eel compared to many of the other animals we hunt and eat. They are such mysterious creatures and living so close to Ely, in a region where there are so many tales of giant eels found in drained ponds, means I sometimes feel a bit weird about eating them. The Book of Eels by Tom Fort is a densely written (and that's not a criticism) account of determination, sex and death, long-haul travel, family ties, and slime.
How does the invention of one ingredient reflect the wider themes of American history? As Darra Goldstein says about The Baking Powder Wars by Linda Civitello, 'who knew that baking powder has such a complex history, one full of political intrigue, gender wars, health scares, and race relations?' God, this is such an absorbing book.