Happy Birthday Adam

Last night we ate dinner at Shalimar to celebrate Adam's birthday. I enjoyed the Indian food. I especially liked the kabob made with lamb and the bread basket with various stuffed and plain Indian flat breads. The kabob was supposed to be spiced medium. For some reason, it was hotter than the "Indian hot" lentil dish. Adam in the photo is eating his mysterious mango and chocolate birthday dessert.

Thank You, Judith Jones

I just read The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones. I positioned the book for its photo on a random location on my kitchen bookshelf, and it landed in front of at least 4 books that she helped create. As an editor at Knopf, she was the first American to appreciate Julia Child. Imagine this: she used Mastering the Art of French Cooking before it ever was published. And without Jones's realization of its genius, maybe no one else would have had the chance. She continued with quite a few others. And before she worked at Knopf, she read and recommended The Diary of Ann Frank to its first American publisher, Doubleday. (p. 45)

I really enjoyed the early chapters, telling how Jones felt about the American foods of her childhood, and how she came to love French food. Her adventures in Paris are delightful. Then she returned to New York and desperately desired a book that would help her learn to create the food she had enjoyed in France.

I enjoyed her contrast of early-1950s France with the culinary desert of the USA, and her struggle to find fresh, good meat or vegetables in that canned-good era -- and how Julia Child changed her life and so many others. Her later chapters, though not quite as exciting, combine memories of eating with descriptions of what it's like to edit cookbooks by authors who need various kinds of flattery, editorial suggestions, and other kinds of help. The final 80 pages offer her personal recipe collection along with comments that are also worth reading. (I haven't tried the recipes, but they sound good.)

As I have recently been reading the works of M.F.K. Fisher, I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Jones's relationship with her (though she didn't edit much by Fisher):

"There is an appetite now [around 2006] for reading all about the behind-the-scenes workings of a restaurant kitchen where the testosterone flows, the vocabulary consists of four-letter words, and the competition is brutal. But what does that have to do with taste?

"It is all the more surprising that a writer like M.F.K. Fisher should have emerged pre-World War II, at a time when America was at a low point gastronomically. Not that her early books were as widely appreciated as they are today, but there was a small, hungry following that cherished her as a writer who dared to embrace food as a part of the sensual life." (p. 150)

Jones often expresses my feelings or suspicions about the current state of food -- though she speaks as an expert, and I have no experience, only indirect reactions. Her comments about the molecular gastronomy adventures in artificially enhanced foodstuffs interested me a lot:

"When I attended Madrid Fusion, the food conference held in Spain in 2006, I couldn't help but think that there was a disturbing amount of manipulation of food going on in these days on the part of the new, highly applauded star chefs. ... I admit to having an aversion to foam, particularly when it is pale green. It reminds me all too vividly of what happens when one's dog has deliberately eaten a large dose of grass to purge himself." (p. 135)

I have some some small criticisms of this book. For one, Jones narrates a variety of experiences without letting the reader know the dates; she may be combining things that happened in various years. I am actually interested in the food history embodied in her life, and would have appreciated a bit more specificity about when this or that event occurred. Also, she seemed very distant about telling about her personal life; in the parts that took place after her marriage, she seemed to be avoiding the profoundly personal.

All in all, though, I feel that her editorship of some of the best food books of the 20th century means we should be very grateful. I say: Thank You, Judith Jones!

Cranberries Again

It's almost Thanksgiving. The Michigan cranberries are beautiful. So I'm revisiting many of my old favorite cranberry recipes.

Cranberry Brownies
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 Tb. vanilla
1 Tb. oil
1 cup flour
6 Tb cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup halved fresh cranberries or 1 cup dried cranberries



Preheat oven to 350º and grease and flour a 9 x 9 inch baking dish.

Cream butter and sugar in mixer. Stir eggs, vanilla, and oil together and add to mixer bowl, beating until fluffy. Sift flour, cocoa, and soda together and add to mixture. Beat until smooth.

Spread batter in the prepared baking dish. Distribute cranberries over the top and press into the batter. If using fresh berries, sprinkle very lightly with sugar.

Bake at 35oº for 35-40 minutes until a tester comes out clean.

Comment on Chinese Food

Catherine Mambretti, a mystery author and blogger about legal issues (http://blog.thejurorinvestigates.com), responded to my Chinese food posts with a fabulous account of her recent trip to China. Here it is:

I just returned from my first visit to Beijing. Everything about the place was a huge surprise--not the least of which was the food. I haven't seen "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles," but I'd be curious to learn what it says about some menu items offered at "The Princess Restaurant" (in the Best Western Hotel), including deep-fried bullfrog, whole abalone, and "sea bream" (which was a mistranslation of sea slug). There's no mistaking these dishes, since the menu provided four-color photos. The "sea bream" looked like a black and orange version of this creature: http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a135/tanjay_1/Malaysia/IMG_1218.jpg [and at right].

Another favorite delicacy (according to my English-speaking guide) is fried scorpion, which can be found at a popular street market in the central city near the five-star hotels. Fan Wu's 2006 novel, February Flowers, also describes a snack of parboiled scorpion. (Being a mystery writer, you can probably guess how this set my imagination off.)

For breakfast, besides congee soup, a ubiquitous offering was tea-boiled egg. I have a cholesterol problem, so I didn't try it. A couple of years ago in Taiwan I tried "thousand-year-old duck egg" and immediately had a gallbladder attack.

The obvious conclusion is that the Chinese believe, "Waste not, want not." Even the preparation of chicken proves this. The Chinese hold chicken feet to be a delicacy. Chicken stews use the entire chicken chopped into bite sized pieces (skin, bones, neck, and flesh); nothing is left out except the feathers. The Chinese may not bake, but they do use ovens for preparing these stews in clay pots with whole garlic cloves, roughly chopped onions, and a luscious brown sauce. I was taken to an ethnic Dai restaurant that served this chicken stew in the bamboo tube in which it was baked. The bamboo was said to lend the stew a unique taste (although my jaded American tongue couldn't detect the bamboo).

Even in the hotels that cater to Westerners, items on the menu bear little resemblance to Chinese foods I've eaten elsewhere. Hot-and-sour soup is generally less sour and more hot; a delicious variation had crab in place of beef strips. Crab baked in the shell was coated in coconut. Most dishes were lightly spiced, allowing the flavor of the main ingredient to dominate: if you order asparagus with almonds, that's what you get. The sauce, of course, doesn't rely on corn starch for body. (A Taiwanese woman told me long ago that Chinese food doesn't use corn starch.)

In Taiwan, MSG is ladled into food. I can't say whether this is true in Beijing. In fact, in Taiwan a popular wedding gift is jars of MSG.

"The Fortune Cookie Chronicles" may claim that Chinese meals don't end with sweets, but they do end with fruits. When my husband visited Shanghai several years ago, one of the multi-course meals ended with elaborately carved melons. Like the Japanese, the Chinese take fruit very seriously. Unless a fruit is perfect in every way, it isn't sold, let alone served. I visited a tiny village just north of Beijing (although technically inside Beijing's boundary, the "fourth circle") called Longevity Village, where the Ming emperors are buried. The fruit there is particularly prized. At the time I was there, the apple crop was almost ready to harvest. The golden fruit on the branches brought to mind William Butler Yeats' "the golden apples of the sun. . . ."

Drinks are also unlike anything served anywhere else I've been. I had celery juice, lichee soda, and an array of teas (about which I could write at very great length).

Catherine Mambretti

Cranberry Cake of Good Fortune

I'm always looking for a new recipe that uses cranberries. A cake recipe that ran in the L.A.Times last month sounded wonderful, though big. I made it for my book club last night, because a dozen people could nearly finish it, I thought.

I baked the cake even though The Fortune Cookie Chronicles clearly says that a Chinese meal does not finish with sweets, traditionally, and even though in her blog, Jennifer 8 Lee repeats that Chinese people do not bake --"Fried turkey dumplings, of course, were my family’s solutions to elementary school bake sales — as Chinese people don’t bake. They don’t bake brownies. They don’t bake pies. They don’t bake apple crisps. They don’t bake cookies (fortune cookies are grilled)." For the full treatment of her view, see these articles by Jennifer 8 Lee: One Cook’s Battles with Her Oven and this: My Fried Turkey Dumpling/Potsticker/Guotie Recipe.

But I wanted to bake. At Elaine's request, here's the recipe:

Cranberry orange cornmeal cake

Total time: around 2 hours … Servings: 18 … LA Times 10/29/08

2 cups flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 eggs
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla
14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) butter
1 1/2 cups sugar (for batter) plus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling
2 1/4 teaspoons salt
Zest of 1 orange
2 cups ricotta cheese
2 1/2 cups cranberries, divided in half

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-inch round by 3-inch tall cake pan (I used a 9” springform pan) and line the bottom with parchment paper (I couldn't find my baking parchment, so I just buttered the pan very heavily).

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and baking soda. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, maple syrup, oil and vanilla. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream together the butter, 1 1/2 cups sugar, salt and zest. Mix just until thoroughly combined; do not overmix.

4. With the mixer running, slowly incorporate the egg mixture into the butter just until combined.

5. With the mixer on low speed, add one-half of the flour mixture to the batter and quickly mix for 5 seconds. Turn off the mixer and add the rest of the flour, the ricotta and one-half of the cranberries. Mix the remaining ingredients into the batter over low speed just until combined, being careful not to over mix. (I may have undermixed a little, as the cranberries were much more evident in some slices than in others.)

6. Gently pour the batter into the cake pan and smooth the top. Scatter the remaining cranberries over the top of the cake, and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar (Ok, I just shook the sugar shaker over the cake until it looked sugary).

7. Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean, about 1 hour and 15 minutes (actual baking time was at least 10 min. longer – it rose all the way up to the rim of the pan, so it is a huge cake). Place a loose piece of foil over the top of the cake if it starts to darken. Cool the cake on a wire rack before removing it from the pan.


I followed the recipe directions for prepping all the different segments of ingredients, and the above photo shows how many different containers I had in use, even including the sugar shaker. Not shown: the 1 cup measure and spoons for dry ingredients.

Fortune Cookies, Dumplings, Buddha's Delight, and Chop Suey

Last night was our book club discussion of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. I served the Chinese food we all were craving: dumplings from the Chinese grocery store and take-out food including General Tso's chicken, Buddha's Delight, tofu with vegetables, garlic green beans, an unnamed Chinese vegetable (I think it was some sort of bok choy), and sesame beef. My friend Tsun had given me a tip for pan-frying the dumplings to make pot stickers. He said to add some balsamic vinegar along with the water to steam the pot stickers, thus making a kind of glaze. Delicious!

Finally, we had chop suey made by Gabi from her husband's grandmother's recipe. A whiff of it for me was a Proustian experience: it smelled like the chop suey my mother made from the Chun King Chop Suey kit. She brought a big bag of crunchy noodles to put on top of it, too. The recipe calls for both pork and ground beef.

When we discussed our experiences with Chinese food, about half of us remembered our mothers' use of the kit from La Choy or Chun King: canned sauce, canned vegetables, and soy sauce from a tiny bottle combined with chopped fresh celery and beef or pork. Mary Beth's mother was ahead of the rest: she took a Chinese cooking class and ever after made fried rice (MB didn't like it much, we gathered). Laura said that on Chinese food night she would call her friends and ask if she could eat at their house. Barb said the kit-made chop suey was part of the weekly rotation.

Along with out take-0ut, Gourmet Garden, the Chinese restaurant, gave us plenty of fortune cookies. Also, Merrill brought a huge bag of them that her son had received while trick-or-treating. Several of us agreed that fortune cookies have become a common treat for the trick-or-treating hoards that come to a few doors such as mine.

Our discussion also ranged over the Chinese restaurants of our collective first experiences in Evansville IN; St. Louis MO, Dearborn, Grand Rapids and Flint MI, San Francisco China Town, New York City, and Windsor, Canada across the bridge from Detroit. Earlier memories include the old-style Cantonese specials like almond chicken and egg foo young, as well as chop suey. We talked about the rather gummy dinner rolls that we recall came with the menus in some of these restaurants, such as Kow Loon in Dearborn and Leo Ping's in Ann Arbor. All of us have long-since moved on with Szechwan etc. as newer and better types of Chinese food caught up with us. Most of us also have Chinese friends, colleagues, or in-laws who have introduced us to Chinese American home cooking.

M.F.K. Fisher

The Art of Eating collects 5 of M.F.K. Fisher's famous books in one volume. I have just finished reading the first of these: Serve it Forth.

Except for a few details (like using the name Cochin China for Vietnam) I would scarcely realize, while reading, that this book had first been published in 1937. The author's point of view on food and food history still seems fresh to me. The beauty and skill of Fisher's writing -- especially the use of quoted conversations to create character sketches -- presents quite a contrast to the books I recently read by Symons and Rossant!

Here are some quotations I enjoyed:
"I do not agree with the Greeks and Romans, that women should be reserved for the end of a meal and served with the final wines and music, nor do I think that Frenchman was right who stated that there are no blue eyes, no curls and dimpled shoulders, which can replace for a true gourmet the charms of a black truffle.
"It is, though, very dull to be at a table with dull people, no matter what their sex." (p. 44)

"We said we were going to live in France.
"She [an acquaintance] said, 'Where?'
"We said, 'Here, there -- maybe Dijon --'
"Suddenly her face was blasted. 'Oh, Dijon!'
"She put her hands up to her eyes and wept and then cried fiercely: 'The smell of it! The smell of Dijon gingerbread! When you go there smell it for me!'
"So we did.
"We smelled Dijon mustard, especially at the corner where Grey-Poupon flaunts little pots of it. We smelled Dijon cassis in the autumn... But all year and everywhere we smelled the Dijon gingerbread, that pain d'epice which came perhaps from Asia with a tired Crusader." (p. 80)

To continue: this afternoon I read the second of Fisher's works: Consider the Oyster, first published 1941. Although it has a few more points where one feels its age, it's also still fresh and fun to read. The fact that she could write so much just about the life of oysters, a few bits of history, and her experiences dining on oysters is in itself amazing. Other books about oysters (such as those by Eleanor Clark and Mark Kurlansky) deviate into tales of oyster cultivation, detailed history, and sociology. Fisher sticks to her subject: basically, eating oysters. I read this book quickly because, unlike the first volume, it contains a number of recipes, which do not take much time to look over.

Here's a passage I liked:
"There are, oddly enough, almost as many ways to eat such a simple dish as there are men to eat it.
"First, several millennia ago, men cracked the shells and sucked out the tender gray bodies with their attendant juices and their inevitable sharp splinters. Then, when knives came, they pried open the two shells and cupped the lower one in their hands, careful not to spill its colorless elixir. And always, even from the beginning, there have been variations on these two simple processes; there has been invented a series of behavior-rules as complex as the recipes to prevent sea-sickeness or how to arrange three tulips in a low jade-green bowl for the local garden show.
"If a man cared, and knew all the rules, he would be really frightened to go into a decent oyster-bar and submit his knowledge to the cold eyes of the counter-man and all the local addicts." (p. 156)

I have on my bookshelf Fisher's With Bold Knife and Fork, and I may have read other books of hers, but I think the works contained in this volume are new to me, and I look forward to continuing my reading project.

"A History of Cooks and Cooking"

For a book about food A History of Cooks and Cooking has a lot of undigested material! You can learn about the sin of gluttony, the salt trade in Jericho 12,000 years ago, The Seven Necessities that the Chinese feel even poor people need (firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea), the history of chefs' knives, the origin of specialized butchers at least 9000 years ago in the Middle East, the role of animal sacrifice in the history of cooking, feasts, festivals, and other dining rituals, the loaf of bread given to the prophet Jeremiah, and many other trivial or important facts. Each chapter has a topic, but in the end, the enormous amount of detail makes it hard to get a big picture.

The encyclopedic nature of the book is reinforced by little black-and-white sketches and full-page images of various food themes, bits of cooking equipment, and elaborate dishes. These images are uncredited and unlabeled (as far as I can find in the book).

My favorite chapter is titled "The Sons of Mama Camous." Its subject is restaurants, cook shops, street food, and other public cooking. The author begins in ancient Sumer around 5000 years ago, and includes details from ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Biblical times, medieval China, early modern Europe, and many other places and times.

Finally we get to the chapter's eponymous Mama Camous, the foster-mother and mentor of Henri Charpentier, a famous restauranteur in Paris and New York around 100 years ago. Mama Caomous' example -- along with that of her son, also a famous chef -- set Charpentier on the way to his invention of Crepes Suzette and his fame as a very refined master of French haute cuisine. His autobiography, the author tells us, elaborates her peasant ways with fresh food, and describes how he ended up feeding such famous people as Sarah Bernhardt, Theodore Roosevelt, Baron Rothschild, "Diamond" Jim Brady, and high-living diners on Long Island in the 1920s. (p. 319-320)

Symons' History is overwhelming at times, and frankly difficult to read, but it's chock full of information about every aspect of cooks' history. His premise is unforgettable: other animals may walk on 2 legs, may use tools, may speak a few words, may even laugh -- but only humans cook their food. (p. xii)

"The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food"

I have just reread Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. Questions for our discussion Monday night:

1. Lee asks this question: "Our benchmark for Americanness is apple pie. But ask yourself: How often do you eat apple pie? How often do you eat Chinese food?" (p. 26) Which do you eat more frequently? What was your first encounter with Chinese food? Gabi is going to cook us her husband's family's traditional Chop Suey recipe. What's your family's Chinese food story -- eating in or out?
2. How do you view the icons of Chinese restaurants that Lee mentions -- folding food boxes, fortune cookies, zodiac menus, soy sauce packets, industrial food processing, etc? Did you change your view of "authentic" Chinese food?
3. In the context of Lee's search for the greatest Chinese restaurant, what do you think makes a great restaurant? Do you have a candidate for greatest Chinese restaurant?
   
4. We learn how Cantonese immigrants moved to many American cities and towns in the mid-20th century, and how newer immigrants are now running many more restaurants. She gives the history of various immigrants and families and the dangers and challenges they face. Did this book change your attitude towards immigrants? Towards restaurant workers?
5. There are many autobiographical details in Lee's presentation. What is your impression of her? Here are a few quotes to start the discussion:
   "Chinese parents are so good at deferring gratification, they sometimes defer it to the next generation." (p. 289)
   "I never really understood what 'real Chinese food' meant until I went to China. ... China was a foreign country to me, but one where I happened to speak the language." (p. 15)
   "Look at me, and you may see someone Chinese. Close your eyes, and you will hear someone American." (p. 252)
6. What's the most memorable or funniest fortune you ever got? (Mine is "You love food but you love sex more.") If you don't know maybe we'll get some memorable ones in the cookies we eat at dinner Monday. We can also talk about the discussion of how the fortunes are written and the lucky numbers chosen, and about the history of the cookies.

I've written several other posts on this book if you are interested See these blog posts:

• More on "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles"
• Made in America
• "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles"
• More Chronicles of the Fortune Cookie
• "The Next to Last Supper"
• From the Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Fortune Cookies

I am busily rereading The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8 Lee, preparing for my book club meeting Monday. We will gather here for an appropriate Chinese dinner. Here are photos from the Oriental grocery store where I bought dumplings this morning. They were out of fortune cookies!

Fortunately (!) one of the members' children received many fortune cookies as treats for Halloween. I didn't know that it was traditional to give out fortune cookies -- I'll have to find out more about that.

I'll be posting more about the book and book club gathering, including discussion questions I plan to write for our meeting. This is one book that has no canned questions in the back, so I'm going to invent them.

I made sure the dumplings were made in California and Canada. I'm really worried about any food that's currently made in China, as they seem to have no food safety procedures in place at all. Very sad.

"Bones"

The book Bones: Recipes, History, & Lore really interested me, so I was happy to find it in my recent excursion in the library cooking section. It's a beautiful, coffee-table-sized book, with several gatherings of glossy photos of savory-looking meat dishes. I enjoyed leafing through it and reading the chapter introductions, but by the time I finished, I was disappointed. It just didn't meet my expectations or the high promise of the reviews I had read.

The intro to each chapter of Bones offers outline diagrams of animals showing where cuts of meat come from. A bit disconcerting: the diagrams show a skeleton, but also a head with a face and fur. Most of the non-recipe pages explain about which chops, roasts, etc. come from which parts of the animal, along with a primer on buying and cooking meat. This material is excessively long and repetitive.

While I have a nagging suspicion that I can actually get all the recipes I'll ever need from my existing cookbooks plus the Web, I love coherent books that also provide "History & Lore." Unfortunately, Bones covers these topics pretty much by putting brief quotations in sidebars in the middle of the very wide and beautiful pages.

The introductions to the recipes are not very interesting, original, or informative. Samples:

"I wanted to dress up my short ribs and highlight their rich beefy flavor. These impressive ribs with balsamic wine sauce are worthy of a fancy dinner." (p. 33)
"For me, roast lamb is always meant [sic] leg of lamb, but shoulder is equally succulent, if a little fatty -- don't overlook it." (p. 105)
"Chicken was once a luxuy item and the subject of promises of kings and presidents..." (p. 142 -- the author actually looked up whether Herbert Hoover really said "a chicken in every pot" -- actually the phrase came from the Republican National Committee in 1928.)

I'm a big believer in the better taste you get from old-fashioned cuts of meat that need longer and more skillful cooking than a steak. I expected this book to concentrate on dishes with the bones as a real contributor to that fifth taste, umami, which comes from the essence of bones and connective tissue. There are indeed some recipes for these dishes. I find the ones with an oriental origin to be the most appealing, and I might try one before I return the book to the library. The recipes for various game dishes would be totally useless to me, as you can't buy wild birds, elk, or any game, you have to shoot it yourself.

In my final analysis, I'm afraid this is another book that I'm glad I only got from the library and did not buy it, even for the $23 at amazon.com instead of the $35 list price.

Cranberry Season

Michigan cranberries have arrived at Whole Foods -- I love their recent policy of stocking local foods when they can. I think those are local yams beside the big boxes of cranberries -- maybe I'll get some of those soon also. The smaller boxes of cranberries were in another aisle, near the grapes. I've no idea why they do that.

I bought a 2 pound box of cranberries today, and have just made 4 jars of cranberry chutney. I also bought American organic oranges and lemons, organic brown sugar, and non-sulfured dried apricots from Turkey for the recipe. It's a good thing I read the book on oranges this morning, so I knew that an orange with greenish patches on its skin was fine: the green just means it was picked early in the season and that it wasn't artificially colored. The organic lemons had a fabulous aroma. It's good to have organic citrus, since the zest of all the fruit goes into the pot as well as the orange and lemon sections.

The chutney looks good, but needs to age so that it will be ready for Thanksgiving dinner. For the recipe see these Chutney Recipes which I posted last summer.

"Oranges"

Today I read Oranges by John McPhee. Published in 1967, and still in print, the book is a little like a time capsule. The main focus of the book is on the Florida orange industry of 40 to 50 years ago.

In the 1960s, the Florida orange-growing industry was in transition from producing and shipping fresh fruit up the east coast. The invention of frozen orange juice had just made a huge change. Instead of selecting and packing fruit, growers now sent them to nearby factories, in which the more imaginative businessmen among them were investing their money.

Instead of juice or fruit whose flavor varied from season to season, from tree to tree, and even from one orange section to another, the factories blended multiple types of concentrated, processed, frozen juice (which tastes, he says, like a blend of sugar and aspirin) with a little of the real thing.

At this point in the sixties, consumers had gladly switched over from squeezing oranges to reconstituting the stuff in the little frozen cans. McPhee discussed the sociology of this: the blue-collar families of his day were still drinking canned juice, while the educated consumer had embraced the frozen, and hardly anyone still squeezed their own. And the juice box, like the pasteurized OJ that's now most popular, was as yet unthought of.

As McPhee traveled the byways of rural Florida (remember, before Disney), he found that even the orange juice stands that remained out of a sense of tradition were serving reconstituted juice. Further, his interviews with growers, pickers, and factory owners revealed that many orange groves were being cleared for new land use -- the NASA facility at Cape Canavaral was in the process of being built on former groves. Above all, he wrote about the frenzy of effort to create new chemical orange juice surrogates. Add water to some crystals they were inventing -- they thought you would get orange juice. (I think they got Tang, but it was in the future and they were still optimistic.)

The material on the Florida industry is augmented by McPhee's brief -- though well-written -- overview of the history and social uses of oranges. He describes their origins in China, mentions the orange as an art motif especially in the Renaissance, presents the love of French kings and their peers for Orangeries, and says a few general words about orange juice drinking habits among various cultures of the world. Good job!

The top image here shows the current edition, which I have not seen. The second image is of my library book, a first edition from 1967. The graphic choices of the two covers support my time-capsule viewpoint.

"Artichoke to Za'atar"

Artichoke to Za'atar. Such a promising name for a book on Middle Eastern food. This work by Greg Malouf and Lucy Malouf has been on my amazon wish-list for quite a while, and so I've chosen it as the second of my current reading project.

For starters, check out the table of contents (left). The book is organized by basic ingredients, except the section on "Pastry." The first sections are "Almonds" and "Apricots." Third, not first, is "Artichokes." Look down towards the end of this list: the authors never actually get to "Za'atar" at all. OK, the publisher probably picked the title to make it catchier, never mind consistency.

Actually, inconsistency would be my word of choice for this book. Za'atar isn't omitted entirely, for example. The section titled "Thyme" claims that za'atar is simply a blend of thyme, sesame seeds, and sumac -- which isn't exactly right. Like many of the sections of this erratic book, this information is not very reliable. Even in Wikipedia's entry on Za'atar, there's a much more nuanced description, including a reference to hyssop, the unique ingredient in this somewhat obscure Middle Eastern spice blend (a fact I learned some time ago by reading the back of the Za'atar box -- see Muhamarra.)

Some sections offer interesting tidbits of information in the overview of the individual ingredient. Cardamom is a member of the ginger family. Quinces grow sweeter in hot climates, and can be used in both sweet and savory dishes. Apricots originated in China. But I'm sorry to say I think you could easily find out this much by a little simple web browsing. And cliches abound: "Garlic shouldn't overpower every other flavor in a dish..." (p. 135); "Parsley can be added to and will improve just about every dish imaginable." (p. 208) For the most part, these introductions just aren't adequately focused on the detailed uses of the subject ingredient. The list sounds delicious: lemons, dates, orange blossom water (no oranges), rose water, saffron, pomegranates, sesame seeds: mostly pretty Middle Eastern. But the treatments are too trivial.

And there are real gaps. In a book like this, I'd expect to learn about the Moroccan spice blend ras al hanout. In the section on ginger, the reader learns that ginger is one of the primary ingredients in the blend, but the ras al hanout recipe on p. 80 doesn't call for ginger in its long list of spices. And to my disappointment, I didn't find a single recipe that called for this blend. Tagines, the book says, often use it, but among the indexed tagine recipes, not one calls for it. (The index is incomplete -- another annoying inconsistency.)

Some of the recipes sound good -- though I think if I wanted to make the more elaborate dishes, I'd go for a more trusted source, such as one of Paula Wolfert or Claudia Roden's books. The elaborate recipes in fact aren't even always possible. I'd like to make a tagine, for example, but it's not helpful to have a recipe that calls for a pigeon. I don't have a BB gun so where would I get one? Some of the simple recipes appear interesting, such as the tahini and yogurt dressing with garlic, lots of lemon juice, salt and pepper. I might try that soon.

I enjoyed reading through the narrative portions of this too-ambitious book and seeing the variety of recipes, but I'm glad I only got it out of the library. It just wouldn't be worth the shelf space for the shallow coverage it gives its subject.

"The World in My Kitchen"

My reading project is underway. Today I read Colette Rossant's The World in My Kitchen. I enjoyed the first several chapters about the early years of her marriage in New York, and how she discovers the city and its many ethnic cuisines. She describes how she and her husband refurbished an old house in the Italian neighborhood of the city, how she found various jobs and learned to find markets with many types of ingredients and developed ways to cook them. She also made some interesting trips with her husband, especially living in Tanzania. I recall this voice from her earlier autobiography, Apricots on the Nile.

At a certain point, though, the narrative suddenly seems to consist more of name dropping than of experiences. Her cooking classes are a big success, and everyone wants to meet her and work with her. She meets every famous food authority from Calvin Trillin to Alice Waters. I don't doubt the truth of what she says, these later chapters just are not as interesting as earlier chapters, nor is the material about her success as interestingly presented as the material about her learning process.

At the end are several chapters about adventurous voyages to exotic places -- they seem like magazine set-pieces. Japan, China, the Australian Outback. There's something a bit too egotistical about these pieces. They just don't have the charm of the early chapters.

So the book is about half good.

Reading List

I went to the library yesterday, and I've also been busy over at amazon.com in the food and cooking section. I found quite a few books that have been on my long list for a while. The top book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, is the selection for this month's book club, so I need to reread it.

In addition I hope to peruse recipes or read, as appropriate, from these:

• Judith Jones, My Life in Food
• John Mc Phee, Oranges
• Collette Rossant, The World in My Kitchen (I liked Apricots on the Nile, her first autobiography)
  
• M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating (contains several of her books, I hope to read at least one)
• Michael Symons, A History of Cooks and Cooking (an Australian, whose earlier works on Australia I found interesting)
  
• Malouf and Malouf, Artichoke to Za'atar
• Jennifer McLagan, Bones
  

I'll write some brief reviews as I do this -- I hope I have the discipline for the project.

More thoughts on famine

I don't actually think that widespread famine is likely in America and Europe, though unfortunately it's a fact of life in Africa. I have been thinking about the way that political theories can cause hunger, and I've also been thinking about how those in past eras envisioned hard times.

I found a few very powerful images expressing various thoughts on famine. First, to the left, is a poster by the famous artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939).

Mucha is well known for his dreamy women, especially for depicting Sarah Bernhardt in an original style that pretty much defined Art Nouveau. When Mucha heard about the famine in Russia shortly after the Revolution, he created this poster for fund-raising to help the victims.

To go back much further in time, Famine rode a black horse along with the other horsemen of the Biblical apocalypse. War accompanied Famine in this view of man's fate. Even in those distant days, famine was apparently seen as the result of human as well as natural events like crop failure and drought. The words are vivid, and the inspired images in art are vivid.

Finally, I was thinking again of the Irish famine that devastated the population and drove so many Irish people to leave their country, while agricultural products other than potatoes were being exported for the international market. The starving peasants had no right to these products, and no money to buy them. The Irish had been victims before: the most famous creative work concerning them was a couple centuries earlier: Swift's A Modest Proposal. (You can read the entire work here.)

The following images of the apocalypse are by Victor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1897) and by Durer.


In Dublin in 1997, a very moving memorial to the Irish famine victims of the 19th century was created. Looking for these images introduced me to the sculptor Rowan Gillespie, whose work I hope I'll learn more about.



Thinking of Swift, here are the first paragraphs of his most perfectly ironic Proposal:

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the common-wealth, would deserve so well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

Political differences begin with breakfast

I just read an article that explains the difference between the Obama campaign and the McCain campaign in terms of what they serve for breakfast on the campaign trail:

What's the big difference between the two campaigns?"

I'd have to say it's the food. John McCain's campaign serves macho Republican meals. There are cooked breakfasts, chunks of dead animals on sticks and coffee that tastes like coffee. ...

On Mr Obama's plane, by contrast, the breakfasts are designed to keep scribblers lean and liberal. There are little plastic pots of cereal, no doubt rich in vitamins and fibre. There are little tubs of chopped fruit. There are cups of "coffee" that have clearly never met a coffee bean.

The cereal and the fruit I can understand. But what is the point of being a latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving progressive if you can't get a decent cup of coffee?

From the website More Intelligent Life. See: IN THE AIR WITH OBAMA AND MCCAIN -- October 26th 2008.

Renata's Kitchen in Warsaw

I have never been to Warsaw, but some day I hope to visit Renata. I met her when she was in Ann Arbor, and she agreed to send a photo for my series of kitchens.

Hard Times

Locally here in Ann Arbor, statewide in Michigan, and nation-wide, organizations that help feed people in difficult situations are experiencing greater and greater demand. The financial markets seem to crash right on top of the food markets, creating desperation among the most vulnerable.

"While the world's attention has been focused on rescuing investment banks and stock markets from collapse, the global food crisis has worsened, a casualty of the growing financial tumult." So states an article in the Washington Post: Financial Meltdown Worsens Food Crisis: As Global Prices Soar, More People Go Hungry.

Recent globalism -- integration of economies at many levels -- has made many people more dependent on food grown outside their immediate community, outside their region, or outside their country. Population growth is only one of the factors causing this widespread dependence beyond local food supplies. A variety of policies and interests have combined to create a fragile situation.

In reading about the famines of the past, I have found to my amazement that a very large number of them were due to politics and to political theories applied heartlessly. In the 19th century, the famous Irish potato famine started when potato crops failed and stocks of potatoes rotted due to micro-organisms; however, the British rulers of Ireland could have fed the starving Irish people. British politicians believed in the free market, so they declined to do so, and mass starvation and emigration followed. Are we going to see a 21st century re-run? I really don't understand current globalism enough to foresee what is going to happen.