Review of Twenty Dinners

April 23, 2015 by 2 Comments

Twenty Dinners, written by Ithai Schori and Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtman, is divided by the 4 seasons. It offers 5 complete suggested dinner menus that take into account ingredients of that season. Each dinner menu includes a protein main, two sides, dessert, and suggested drink to accompany that dinner (always wine, sometimes a cocktail recipe is included in the chapter). In particular, the authors are promoting the concept of cooking with friends, not just cooking for friends.
Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

This means that the recipes are more like guidelines, generally the methods use basic techniques, with the most technical portion often being the cutting of the protein. I wish there had been a photo guideline on these cutting techniques, or at least some small photos with the recipe on what the right cut is. This seems like a detail that was missed since there are suggestion chapters written by other friends varying from “mastering” wine to how to create a home bar or coffee, and there are also special sections in the back that define cooking terms in normal layman speak (you will need it now and then- several recipes for instance call for bouquet garni), essential tools that you need in a kitchen, and how to shop and store for ingredients. If the authors are going to assume we need help with that information, why wouldn’t cutting the meat be included?

The photographs and feel of the book showcases the food generally plated family style, and is beautiful but relaxed. The feel is almost like something you’d see in a lifestyle magazine if you were in your late 20s/early 30s and regularly threw outdoor dinner parties in your expansive backyard and your rustic house full of bookshelves and records and big wooden tables on your dining and living rooms and fireplace for your all childfree friends.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

The meals vary from the more impressive like 5 courses (Sliced Fluke, Plum and Cilantro; Seared Kale Salad with Brown Butter Toasted Pine Nuts and Smoked Bacon; Roast Chicken; Morel and Shiitake Mushoroom Risotto; Maple Panna Cotta with Candied Almonds and Buttered Bread Crumbs) to simple hearty ones that have a suggested ingredient or technique thrown in to raise it up a level from regular home cooking recipes (Meatballs and Spaghetti; Caesar Salad with Egg in a Frame, Affogato with Biscotti).

I’m not sure whether to count one chapter’s dinner that is just general guidelines for assembling a cheese plate along with a gruyere pastry and fig earl grey jam. On the other hand, there is also a dinner that includes a whole spit roasted pig, and a couple pages devoted to the ingredient of ramps, and another couple pages with ideas for using tomatoes during tomato season.  I love in general how they are very conscious about using the best ingredients and that is always based on the season.

There are a few pages are dedicated to delectable sounding four seasons of burrata toasts, where based on the season, your burrata toast may be Poached Pears and Bacon Maple Burrata Toast (Fall), Fennel and Grapefruit Burrata Toast (Winter), Whiskey’d Burrata Toast (Spring), or Tomato Confit Burrata Toast (Summer). Yes, you bet I’m making that Spring one ASAP if I can find some burrata. In general, they sound like great dinner menus for a casual dinner party – even if I don’t believe all the cooking is as casual as they write.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

The recipes are written similar to a grandma/mom instructing you on the steps, in paragraph form, possibility with a little note at the beginning.  For instance, in salting the meat for their Rib Eye Steaks Seared, Roasted and Basted in Butter, they advise “season generously with the kosher salt all over; it should look as though you’re salting a sidewalk before a snowstorm” and to keep an eye on the meat because “often when it will contract when it hits the heat and create a concave surface over the skillet. Using a spoon or spatula, hold the center of the meat down so it sears evenly.”

In preparing your dinner party, although the recipes mostly seem approachable, you definitely will have to divide and conquer responsibilities for each part of the suggested dinner or it will be hours before you get to eat, and seems like with their love of roasting there will be some oven conflicts if you attempted to multi-task the courses at once (it seems the authors ran into the same logistical dilemma).

Also definitely make sure you read through the details of the recipe as some will require a lot of prep work or time to sit to absorb flavors – for instance a Carrot, Parsley, and Pomegranate Salad with Confit Shallot Vinaigrette sounds good, but the vinaigrette requires roasting the shallots for 1-1.5 hours first.

Honestly I feel mixed about the recipes: some are wonderfully inspiring, like a Lavender Infused Olive Oil Poached Cod. But others are really just variations on using the grill (not surprising that these men love the grill), such as Charred Spring Onions they had as the side to that poached cod. The key with their (or anyone’s) slow roasted duck fat potatoes is access to duck fat, as is the bottarga with a Radish Salad with Bottarga. They do suggest some substitutions, though I wonder if it really is as good with the substitute ingredient.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.
From the Twenty Dinners cookbook by Ithai Schori, Chris Taylor with Rachel Holtzman. Photographs by Nicole Franzen.

One thing I appreciated is that sometimes they authors suggest additional recipes in order to recycle the leftovers into new dishes- such as stuffing poblanos with some leftover Wild Rice with Celery and Pecans. I also really liked all the cocktail ideas that were listed as part of the dinner here or there, as it’s a fun take that although they suggest a wine, having a cocktail pairing with the dinner just gives the meal an extra touch of sophistication. Cocktails they include recipes for range from Peach Porch Punch, or Smoked Earl Grey Hot Toddy, or basics like pairing Bloody Mary with oyster and burgers parties.

I’ll share a post in the future where my friends and I tried to use one of the Spring Dinner recipes, since I don’t think doing a recipe on my own is the intention of the book (some of them are so enticing they beg to be lifted off for a nice dinner at home even if it’s just the two of us).

Disclosure: This book was provided to me as part of the Blogging for Books program, but I will always provide my honest opinion and assessment of all products and experiences I may be given. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own.

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Review of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

April 9, 2015 by 3 Comments

I can’t believe I’ve been reading and trying to write my review of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing by Anya Von Bremzen since November.

The rationing, the famines, food verging on rotting, minus forty degree weather, the long lines, and the many many deaths, the reality of people dying in the millions as I turned the pages of chapters… It wasn’t really Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday reading, and after a sad January and February I still couldn’t pick up the book. I wasn’t ready to resume reading about the details of normalized struggling that is Soviet life. It wasn’t until the past few weeks as spring brought cherry blossoms and irises and tulips and some 70 degree days of sunshine that my mood became lighter, and I picked the book up again to read a bit at a time.

I even tried to hold a carrot out for myself- when I finished the book, I would celebrate and reward myself by going finally to dine at the Russian pop-up Da Net and I would get to go on a dinner date to Kachka. Throwing in a stick as well, I told myself I would not dine at these two places until I finished the book.

I told myself by reading the memoir, I would have a richer experience because of references in the book to her family’s story and to Soviet history to the foods I might have.
DaNet PDX Kachka PDX
What I told myself, by the way, is totally true. Now that I finally finished the book, even just looking at the menus of these two places brings up newly acquired memories from Anya’s book.

Thinking about vodka flights, I know from her book how I need a quorom of three co-bottlers and that drinking without zazuska (a food chaser) is taboo. I know that “The Deep Truth fond in a glass demanded to be shared with co-bottlers.” and that toasting every time is mandatory.
Kachka PDX Vodka Flights: 30 grams x 3 of curated vodka. This one is the Mother Russia flight with from right to left, green mark, hammer + sickle, and imperia

I think of her grandma Alla who drank beautifully with smak (savor), iskra (spark) and could pour in exact vodka portions with her Glaz-almaz (eye sharp as a diamond).

I think also of how alcohol is so ingrained in their culture that Russians pretty much drank anything from ethyl alcohol to wood varnish from Lenin’s Mausoleum Lab, eau de cologne to brake fluid to surgical glue and pilot fuel (MIG-25 airplanes were also nicknamed letayushchy gastronom, flying food store).

When I look at Kachka’s offering of a zazuski of brindza pashtet (sheep cheese and paprika spread and scallion on lavash), I think of Anya’s poor father, trying to impress with her mother’s favorite canapas, a gratineed cheese toast with Friendship Cheese, cilantro, and adzhika that he made himself. That makes me think about her mother and what she went through in terms of the melancholy and fear in her childhood, the love then disappointment with Anya’s father, and all the hopes and dreams she put on Anya and emigration to the US.
Kachka PDX cold zakuski of brindza pashtet, a sheep cheese and paprika spread with scallion served with lavash

When I tasted Kachka’s take of salat Olivier, which is a duck Olivier, I think of Anya’s story of the communal salat Olivier that the whole building put together in celebrating how in darkness overnight, the tenants had knocked over an empty dwelling space to expand the communal kitchen in a mini revolution.

I think of how Anya explained that with salat Olivier, identity issues boiled down to choice of protein… and how everyone re-used mayo jars for everything and anything, including carrying bio samples for medical tests.
Kachka PDX cold zakuski of duck Olivier, a cold salad that includes diced boiled potatoes, carrots, brined dill pickles, green peas, eggs, celeriac, onions, diced boiled meat - in this case duck, and all mixed with mayonnaise. Kachka's version uses duck meat and crispy duck skin, and duck fat mayo

In other words, her book covers the whole gamut of cultural tradition by way of both notes of history and familial anecdotes interwoven with some of the good and a lot of the bad that frankly, seems to the essence of Soviet culture.

Each chapter covers a decade, starting with 1910. The first chapter centers around kulebiaka (a fish in puff pastry dish) as an anchor. That dish is used to connect Anya’s memoir with

1. the present (her mother and herself in Queens, New York, creating a czarist-era dinner)

2. a lesson on Russian culture (Russian writers using food as a great theme of “comedy and tragedy, ecstasy and doom” in a way similar to how English writers use landscape or class)

3. of the past of her family as it references the time when Anya lived with her mother in Moscow in a communal apartment before the US, and

4. the dark Iron hand of a history lesson  as rationing and communism and the struggle for just staple foods to survive.
Kachka PDX, a traditional dish called kulebyaka of multi-layered pie filled with black cod, red chard and crepes, served with creme „eurette

And that’s where it starts – the way she intertwines the timelines and facts and stories of that first chapter continues through the rest of the book, from the rise to the fall of the Soviet Union.

However, the center being such exquisite food stops there, because then we enter the 1920s with Lenin. That’s when Russia becomes a transformed society that was ready to sacrifice all to the socialist cause. This included private lifestyle and was a shift as food to only being utilitarian, simple, and not meant to be pleasure or luxury. Food was only meant as fuel for survival, with only few moments of food enjoyment here or there from crumbs of the privileged.

Because food is scarce, although it shows up in the chapters,  it is no longer the center – at least not until the 1960s, when Anya is born and her more food-centric viewpoint (and the better availability of food) becomes the main narrative.

There is always a food mentioned though. And, in the back of the book at least, for every chapter/decade a recipe for one of the foods mentioned is shared along with personal notes.  Not sure why they couldn’t have integrated that into the book itself, such as at the end of every chapter instead of hidden until I finished the book.

I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about Soviet history until I read this book. Now I know a lot more about how truly terrible it really was. As I followed three generations of Anya’s family through history, every page told me the details of everyday hardship. Anya’s writing is easy to read. The storytelling of the memoir balances teaching everyone history (assuming correctly that we know nothing) with stories of her family and how they lived in those times to keep you interested and give you context to the historical facts she has to initially set up.

It may sound sort of dry, but I think it’s about needing to understand the circumstances around the anecdotes. The 1940s chapter is full of death every day and paranoia and delusion. But those facts are helpful so that you understand the parallel small joys of survival, and the food and longing that are the theme throughout the book and lives of the Soviet consciousness.

At one point she writes of bublik (a flimsy chewy poppy seed bagel-like bread roll) and podushechka (a pebble sized sugar candy). She explains the process for eating this was you suck on the candy under your tongue to make it last while smelling the bublik, and then spat out the candy for a bite of bulik so it would taste “like the greatest of pastries in your candy-sweet mouth. A bite of bublik, a lick of podushcechka. The pleasure had to last the entire fifteen minutes of recess… Some stoic classmates managed to spit out the half-eaten candy for younger siblings.”

Out of all the bleakness of the tales of each chapter are always these brief glimpses of small happiness, and of situations so ridiculous you can’t help but as a reader be amused and shake your head or roll your eyes even as you read the words.

The ubiquitous queues where you stood for three hours and still got damaged ones or wrong size, but also were a public square of gossip, and as we learn, where Anya’s parents met. At Anya’s Soviet kindergarten, some of her fellow kindergarten inmates got ill from the spoiled meat in the borscht, and one teacher instructed a colleague to reduce class sizes to open the windows to the gusty minus thirty degree weather!

After being enrolled in a kindergarten for the offspring of the Central Committee of the USSR instead of the Soviet kindergarten, Anya is now force fed a spoonful of sevruga eggs/caviar. Her kindergarten mealtimes included veal escalopes with porcini mushrooms, or farm fresh cottage cheese putting with lingonberry kissel – all which she then dumped behind a radiator because though she wanted to eat it knew it would horrify Mother.

French Laundry- Cauliflower Panna Cotta Beau Soleil oyster glaze and Russian Sevruga Caviar

I enjoyed reading the book – and I promise you that it will make any Russian influenced meal you have afterwards have a lot more meaning.

Despite the title of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, this is definitely not about mastering any cooking at all, it is firmly in the category of memoir and history book. If you are looking for recipes, I now have on my wishlist Anya’s other book to which she contributed and which is actually a cookbook, Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook. As Anya herself describes in her 1990s chapter of the book (which is when she wrote Please to the Table), the cookbook has a whopping “400 recipes on 640 pages, it was heavy enough to whack someone unconscious”. And, it also won a James Beard award.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is the sort of book I wish I had been forced to read when learning world history because it makes facts become alive with the story of real people who had to live through those times and those facts and gives the context of culture.

The stories Anya shared are now part of my memory of Russia too, and so by accident, I have now learned several decades worth of Soviet history in detail that textbooks don’t offer.

I will be writing more on my meals at DaNet and Kachka later in future posts: the images you see for this post of food are from my visit to Kachka except the caviar, which is from French Laundry (Cauliflower “Panna Cotta” Beau Soleil oyster glaze and Russian Sevruga Caviar).

Have you read this book, or are you interested in Russian or Soviet cuisine? Have you been to DaNet or Kachka?

On a related but separate note, I used to be part of this wondrous book club in Chicago where we would read a book like this that was about another country and had some small hints of food, and then the book club would go meet at a restaurant with the ethnic cuisine of the book. Can you think of other books that would be a good excuse/pre-reading for a restaurant visit of that book’s highlighted food?

Disclosure: This book was provided to me as part of the Blogging for Books program, but I will always provide my honest opinion and assessment of all products and experiences I may be given. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own.

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Book Club: A Homemade Life

December 31, 2014 by 2 Comments

For December’s book club pick, we were free to read any cookbook we wanted or highlight a favorite standby.  So, I picked out A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg, otherwise known as the woman behind the blog Orangette (and fellow Pacific Northwest citizen- she lives in Seattle and has a restaurant there Delancey). I thought it would encourage you to read the book. I want to also visit her restaurant next time I’m in Seattle (and, I want to read her next book, Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage).

A Homemade Life

I don’t know if this really counts as a cookbook, though it does offer 50 recipes. It’s just that instead of the traditional just all recipes with beautiful photos, these come with lots of stories with each recipe. I guess it’s a book-cookbook.

What I love about this is that instead of photos to entice you about each recipe, the book offers a little slice of her life and the emotional connection of what this recipe means to her – and which can also persuade you just as much as a styled photo.

She is writing exactly as the posits in her introduction: “When we fall in love with a certain dish, I think that’s what we’re often responding to: that something else behind the fork or the spoon, the familiar story that food tells”.

This is a book I like to revisit. All the chapters are short- just a handful of pages each- which made this book very much like one of short stories. It does proceed chronologically from first being introduced to her family and father in her youth, her adult awakening in Paris, the crushing passing of her father (I got teary-eyed on the plane as I was reading it and had to put it down for reflection/calming down in public), and then her romance with the man who would become her husband. There is a certain formula to each chapter, revolving around a personal memory that is told and then ending the chapter with a related recipe from that story.

That’s a very high level summary- but what really sets Molly apart in her writing is how personal she makes each story in a vulnerable and honest way that touches the reader and takes you with her. I did get teary eyed at some chapters of the book, and felt exhilarated with a sense of adventure and like I need a trip to Paris at other times.

A lot of the recipes do happen to be desserts, and I’m not really a baker so I didn’t bookmark those, but there are some savory recipes as well, and many are pretty homey and easy- such as one with Pain Au Chocolat (more like a formula of bread and chocolate), or another for buckwheat pancakes or french toast or a scrambled egg with goat cheese. She introduced me to eating radishes and butter with a sprinkle of good salt.

Other examples she shares include:

  • Her dad’s potato salad (Burg’s Potato Salad)
  • Custard Filled Corn Bread
  • Her mom’s Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake
  • Coeur A Le Creme with Raspberry Puree (haven’t seen that in a long time!!)
  • Hoosier Pie (a pecan pie with chocolate and bourbon)
  • Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Cake with Glazed Oranges and Creme Fraiche
  • Rum Pie with Graham Cracker Crust
  • Bouchons Au Thon
  • Roasted Eggplant Ratatouille
  • Italian Grotto Eggs
  • Slow Roasted Tomatoes with Coriander – which she recommends with many things, be it cheese souffles or pesto pasta or in a sandwich with basil, arugula and goat cheese. You can make them into a pasta sauce, or just eat with crusty bread and wedge of blue cheese. She also offers a recipe for Slow Roasted Tomato Pesto.
  • Fennel Salad with Asian Pear and Parmesan
  • Butternut Soup with Pear, Cider and Vanilla Bean… and more!

There are so many recipes that put together unique combination of flavors but are prepared simply. The one I decided to try and share with this book review is from a chapter where Molly writes about cream, and the accompanying recipe is for a Creamed Cabbage. I and never heard of such a thing, so had to try it. A creamed vegetable side dish sounds wonderful for the holiday month and the fact it is winter anyway. This recipe is typical of many in the book where it is simple but thoughtful and filling.

Cream Braised Green Cabbage

This recipe calls for a small cabbage, as Molly notes small ones are often sweeter and more tender than their big-headed siblings. You can certainly use any size you want, as long as you make sure each wedge is no thicker than 2 inches at its outer edge, and only use as many wedges as fit into a single layer in the pan, so the cabbage cooks properly. I walked around the whole Farmers Market trying to find the smallest one and only found a medium one, so that left me a wedge after I filled the pan for a future wedge salad. Molly also notes that you can try this recipe on halved or quartered Brussels sprouts.

Can you imagine a face on this head of cabbage from the Farmers Market?

Ingredients:

  • 1 small green cabbage (about 1 1/2 pounds)
  • 3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) unsalted butter
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
  • 2/3 cup heavy cream
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Directions:

  1. Prepare the cabbage by pulling out any bruised leaves, and trim its root end to remove any dirt. Cut the cabbage into quarters, and then cut each quarter in half lengthwise. When you but, make sure you keep a little bit of the core in each wedge to hold the wedge intact so that it doesn’t fall apart in the pan. You should wind up with 8 wedges of equal size. Again, make sure that each wedge is no thicker than 2 inches at its outer edge. You will only use as many wedges as fit into a single layer in the pan so the cabbage cooks properly.
  2. In a large (12-inch) skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the cabbage wedges, arranging them in a single crowded layer with one of the cut sides down. Allow them to cook, undisturbed, until the downward facing side is nicely browned (the more brown the more sweetly caramelized), 5 to 8 minutes or to your liking of brownness . Then, using a pair tongs (I used tongs and a spatula), turn the wedges onto their other cut side to brown.
    Cabbage getting browned in the pan for a Creamed Cabbage Recipe
  3. When the second side has browned, sprinkle the salt over the wedges, and add the cream. Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid, and reduce the heat so that the liquid stays at a slow, gentle simmer. Cook for 20 minutes, then using tongs, flip the wedges. Cook another 20 minutes, or until the cabbage is very tender and yields easily when pierced with a thin, sharp knife.
  4. Add the lemon juice, and shake the pan to distribute it evenly. Simmer, uncovered, for a few more minutes more to thicken the cream to a glaze that loosely coats the cabbage. Serve immediately. Molly recommends serving with salt at the table, but F is not a huge fan of salt so we went with lots of cracked pepper instead.

Easy vegetarian side dish: recipe for Creamed Cabbage Easy vegetarian side dish: recipe for Creamed Cabbage
I have to admit visually, the Creamed Cabbage perhaps isn’t quite as pretty as other creamed vegetable dishes (I’m thinking particularly of creamed corn and spinach). However, the flavors are so good it is worthwhile to make this dish. The cabbage becomes sweet and nutty. And this dish is so easy to do – not much prep, and easy to manage as a side dish while multi-tasking other dishes in your kitchen.

If you are interested in the online book club the Kitchen Reader, the gist of our casual club is there is a new book selected for every month, each book is related to food, and members write a review on their blog during the last week of that month. Except for December which is open-ended, it’s interesting to read the round-up of reviews at the beginning of the month and see what other members have thought!

For January the book club selected reading is Food Gurus by Stephen Vines. It’s a book about food gurus and is more of an anthology of exploring various people and trying to understand what makes them a food guru: their recipes, the personality, the circumstance, etc.

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Book Club: Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture

October 31, 2014 by 3 Comments

For October the selected book subject for my online book club, The Kitchen Reader, was Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture by Dana Goodyear.
Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture by Dana Goodyear

I really enjoyed this book. First of all, it really worked out in terms of timing, as I cracked the book open in the airport. The first chapter, Scavenger, which was my favorite chapter of the book, highlights immigrant food and how interesting cuisine comes out of poverty and necessity eating. At the same time, the food of the poor people is now the food being seeked out by the New American gourmet for pleasure.

This chapter focuses a lot on Jonathan Gold (of the LA Times… their food section with their large gorgeous photos sadly has no comparison in Portland, despite all the foodiness we offer) and also Javier Cabral (of the blog The Glutster). Both Gold and Cabral food coverage stomping grounds are nooks and crannies of the very city my plane was heading towards as I read this book: one of the ultimate immigrant cities in the United States, Los Angeles.

I looked longingly out the window of the car after landing as we drove by Brooklyn Bagel Bakery (mentioned by Gold as the “single source of every good bagel in Los Angeles”) but reminded myself my sister DOES live here and I had time to visit again. In fact, while reading this book in LA, I ended up visiting two of Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants during my stay, Newport Seafood (a family favorite that I previously showed off their famous house lobster) and also Son of a Gun Restaurant (in this post here).

The San Gabriel Valley area of LA, referred to casually as SGV often in the book, is covered extensively in this same chapter of the book, highlighting the specialized Asian food in the area because regional cuisines remain intact, traceable almost to the villages of origin of the restaurant owners. The SGV is also referred to in other chapters of the book. Other Asian foods, particularly the wonder of Thai Town and all it has to offer, are also mentioned in this chapter and I enjoyed hearing the love for this authentic home-cooking.

Stewed Pork Hocks: I love it, and very common in Thai food. Would you eat it? Next, Kai Jiew Kai Mod – A Thai dish of egg omelette with ant eggs. Would you eat it?
Kai Jiew Kai Mod - a Thai dish of egg omelette with ant eggs at Sticky Rice, Chicago. Would you eat it?

I’m not actually that much a fan of LA as the traffic scares me and everything is so spread out, but the food, oh the food… It is worth coming to LA for a food vacation alone, despite the distance and traffic. Gold, who the book reports drives twenty thousand miles a year in search of food, himself admits it in the book: “I go into a fugue state, like the Aboriginal dreamtime, when you go on long aimless walks in the outback,” he says, “That’s how I feel driving on the endless streets of Los Angeles County.”

I took some notes on my phone as I was reading the book of places I might check out in the future. You might find yourself doing the same thing.

In so many ways, this book really is a love letter to the food in LA, which is refreshing since so often the focus ends up in New York City. The book does cover New York (in the second chapter, Grub, about purveyors of specialty food in the gourmet industry, particularly exotic animals and insects), and also Las Vegas (in chapter 3, Backdoor Men, about the suppliers of the outrageous and obscure ingredients from truffles to caviar to foie gras and the storytelling or conning that may be involved).

Inevitably though, the book always returns to LA and California (and also Gold, who is mentioned often in the book).

Foie Gras and Caviar and Truffles, oh my
Poutine foie gras from Au Pied de Cochon Tru's famous caviar staircase/ In the caviar staircase, only four of the steps were actually caviar, the rest are accompaniants like egg whites, egg yolk, capers, and chopped onion. My brioche toast had a little bowl of crème fraîche along with. French Laundry- Carnaroli Risotto Biologico, with Castelmagno cheese and shaved white truffles from Alba. The foam you see around the risotto is truffle oil, and after the white truffle was added it was finished with melted Vermont butter.

The book also presents interesting political and ethical questions. Chapter 4 (The Rawesome Three, covering those who want raw unprocessed food, particularly dairy) and Chapter 5 (Double Dare, questioning the FDA and food regulation and how that creates conformity, and the role of corporate farms in the need for rules and regulation versus small farms) makes book readers to think about the line of government’s need to protect versus consumer freedom of choice.

There are also questions about our cultural sensibilities and environmental and animal rights stands of what is ok to eat. Chapter 7, Guts, centers around offal and the many parts of animal that are wasted in the American meat industry, including profiling one the Offal Prince himself, Chef Chris Cosentino.

Sweetbreads with Glazed Bacon/White Polenta/Shiitake Mushrooms / PDC, or Fried Pig’s Foot (Pied Cochon) with vegetables, mashed potatoes, stuffed with foie gras inside after deboning and then topped with foie gras. Would you eat these?
Sweetbreads with Glazed Bacon/White Polenta/Shiitake Mushrooms Au Pied De Cochon - PDC, The namesake dish of the restaurant, fried pig’s foot (Pied Cochon), vegetables, mashed potatoes, stuffed with foie gras inside after deboning and then topped with foie gras

On one hand, I side with this mission to honor the sacrifice of life and use whole animal. On the other hand, this chapter is where I was disgusted at some of the extreme food concoctions that clearly are challenges for a dining as sport and bragging rights. I can admire pig snout with escargot and watercress because pigs in nature like to eat snails and vegetation near streams. But, raw venison heart on a brioche made with pig skin, and mention of a goose intestine soup Consentino called “anal-tini” is a culinary dare that crosses to way too much for me.

The much more tame meat plate of Ox‘s Asado Argentino for 2 includes Grilled Short Rib, House Chorizo & Morcilla Sausages, Skirt Steak, Sweetbreads, or Roasted Marrow Bones appetizer at Little Bird Bistro
The much more tame meat plate of Ox's Asado Argentino for 2: includes Grilled Short Rib, House Chorizo & Morcilla Sausages, Skirt Steak, Sweetbreads Roasted Marrow Bones at Little Bird Bistro

Chapter 8, Off Menu, continues that line of thought of what is ok to eat and what is not, and what defines that line, as it tells the tale of investigating a restaurant serving whale meat and horse meat.  This was the most off putting chapter for me. Also mentioned in the book is eating dog, or live octopus. But, it did make me think about how casually, particularly in Portland, we eat pork… pigs are smart animals too. There are people who keep pigs as pet. Why is it acceptable to still eat them? I have to admit sometimes that line can be arbitrary… but at the same time, I can’t shake that line.

Meanwhile, Chapter 6, Haute Cuisine, is just wicked fun (and my second favorite chapter in the book) as it covers the wild wild west feel of food culture in exploring modernist cuisine and experimenting with food utilizing marijuana as an ingredient (with several hilarious tidbits and tales). Author Dana Goodyear observes, “Food, in the foodie movement, is often treated like a controlled substance”.

No, I have no photo of any food with pot in it. All I have is this playful dish by Homaru Cantu of “Roadkill of Fowl” which is a braised duck with beets. Notice the yellow dotted lines of the road and rice krispy maggots… Actually this was a really tasty dish.
Homaru Cantu dish of Roadkill of Fowl which is a braised duck with beets. Notice the yellow dotted lines of the road and rice krispy maggots Homaru Cantu dish of Roadkill of Fowl which is a braised duck with beets. Notice the yellow dotted lines of the road and rice krispy maggots

Overall, author Dana Goodyear has a very engaging voice and keen eye. In bringing her research/observational ride-alongs throughout the book, she describes the way people look and act in a way that succinctly embodies them. She tells specific side stories and uses metaphors and similes to really bring any subject or the way food looks and smells and feels to life in a way the reader can understand.

I already liked her when in the introduction, she described herself with this short story while simultaneously providing the credentials of why she was the right writer for this book: “My relationship to food is that of an acrophobe to a bridge: unease masks a desire to jump. A well-fed child with the imagination of a scrounger, I remember holing up in the back of the station wagon eating the dog’s Milk-Bones, which were tastier than you might expect.”

Dana’s writing includes profiles of  everyone,  both big and small in this adventurous eating world. The critics, the famous chefs and staff of famous restaurants or local pop-ups, the food suppliers both grand and small (from those in suits with exquisite butters and saffron to the tweakers who may forage your mushrooms), the food bloggers, other dining guest foodies eating with her, federal investigators… all are included in her scope of view.

Because of that diverse scope of anyone in the food scene is part of the story, the food culture that Dana depicts is rich with so many real characters that as a reader, you feel that the food world described seems very accurate in parting the curtain that a normal consumer does not know.

In observing the food scene, in particular some of the more extreme food combinations, Dana functions as our eyes and ears and grounds everything more in reality. She will admit when she leaves a pop-up still hungry and need to stop to get a hot dog, or that she’s impressed, or alternately that she is afraid for her health because of a dish.

In one example in the book, she explains “that dish –  quiver on quiver on quiver – epitomized the convergence of the disgusting and the sublime typical of so much foodie food. It was almost impossible to swallow it, thinking ruined it, and submission to its alien texture rewarded you with a bracing, briny, primal rush”

I waited 2.5 hours to eat at Sushi Dai in Tokyo. The one to the right, the clam, was still moving when the chef put it down.
Sushi Dai sashimi, Sushi Dai, Tokyo, Japan, Tsukiji Fish Market Sushi Dai

I shared a lot of photos of various foods that I thought tried to illustrate some of what was talked about in the book… are there any that you would eat?

Have you visited the food scene of LA, and did you know that the San Gabriel Valley of CA was such a hotspot for food?

What do you think of how Jonathan Gold, as noted in the book, subscribes to the following translation of the county health inspection ratings which are posted by law in every restaurant: “A stands for American Chinese, B is for Better Chinese, and C is for Chinese food for Chinese”?

And if insects were presented in some of the ways written in the book from the cooking competition at the Natural History’s Museums annual bug fair (most of the judges are children because of their openness to new foods):

  • bee patties for Bee L T sandwiches,
  • tailless whip scorpions in a tempura with spicy mayo,
  • fried wild caught dragonflies with sauteed mushrooms with Dijon soy butter,
  • Ugandan katydid and grilled cheese sandwiches,
  • a spider roll with rose haired tarantula (hair burned off, don’t worry – usually spider rolls are made with bottom feeding crab while spiders eat crickets that only eat grass- one young girl declared “It’s sushi. With spiders. It’s awesome”)

would you try it?

And, because I can’t think of any other time I could use these photos (which come from an exhibit on insects at the Seattle Pacific Science Center called Insect Village)… ha. The eating cookies with insects isn’t as far-fetched as you think. In my local paper, they just ran an article about kids pondering a mealworm chocolate chip.
Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Insect Village exhibit

I hope this has been an interesting recap/review of the book for you. For next month, the November book for the book club is Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite by Frank Bruni.

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August Book Club Review: Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee

August 30, 2014 by 3 Comments

For August, the Kitchen Reader online book club assignment was Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America by Thomas J Craughwell.

First, I have to say that the title and description on the book jacket of this was totally misleading to me. In advertising it as a deal between Thomas Jefferson and his slave James Hemings and how they studied and brought  French cooking and crops to America, I thought I would be reading both about what Thomas Jefferson contributed as well as what James Hemings contributed.

Book cover for Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America

Instead, the narrative history sticks much more as the side stories that you might hear from a history professor in telling interesting facts here and there from that time period, tying them loosely together based on the chapter. There are many pages of the book which are about neither Thomas Jefferson or James Hemings but a great detail what it was like to generally be living in that time either in the United States or in France, and even a little pre-history of how that way of living came to be too.

I appreciated the rich context that it gave to some of the interesting facts, but it also became a lot of noise as well, sort of if that history professor was drinking whiskey with you and would go off on these long tangents before coming back to the story.

The result was on one hand, I did enjoy some of the information that I learned. On the other hand, there were times I felt like I was being forced to get through sections politely, and it was as dry as assigned reading given as homework.  Although the book provides limited information on James Hemings, you can find a bit more here on the Monticello website.

Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC

Lucky for you, I’ve decided to pull out some of what I thought was the best stuff.

We start off in the book when Thomas Jefferson, who by the way if you didn’t know was not only a founding father but  a great lover of food, is first assigned overseas. You also learn about what dining is like in America at this time and France.

Food at this time was cooked by women, many of them slaves, with an open hearth. The food itself consisted mostly of meats (salted, seasoned with garden herbs and very few spices are used, roasted, boiled, baked or stewed), overcooked vegetables, breads, and heavily sweetened desserts.

An example of some colonial food: These two appetizer dishes below. One is a baked brie en croute in puff pastry stuffed with cardamom spiced apples and finished with raspberry coulis and sprinkles of cinnamon and sugar. The other are hot smithfield ham biscuits with mascarpone cheese and raspberry puree dip. Both of these dishes are example colonial dishes which I had a chance to try at Gadsby’s Tavern (which specializes in a colonial experience) in Alexandria, Virginia.
An appetizer of hot smithfield ham biscuits with mascarpone cheese and raspberry puree dip at Gadsby's Tavern

This sounds crazy now thinking about how plentiful the colonies’ seafood access could be, but except for sturgeon and oysters, no one ate it! Clams and mussels were fed to pigs, and governor of the Plymouth Colony in 1662 William Bradford lamented once about having nothing to feed the new colonists but all lobster. As late at 1796, the author of the first published American cookbook Amelia Simmons suggested garlic, though used by the French for cooking, was only suited for use as medicine. Plain food was seen as a virtue, and as honest. Hospitality was based on abundance of food, not flavor.

This is different than in France, where a culinary renaissance had moved from the cookery of the Middle Ages reliant on spices and sugar to stocks and sauces to build layers of flavor. Rather than trying to fill the table to brimming with options, serving meals in courses which were a progression was the process for a meal. It was also in Paris that the word restaurant changed from a place that sold restoratives like consommes and bouillon to offering food. Before this, the only restaurants as we know today were inns and taverns. In Paris, the city apartment-dwellers who did not have kitchens also helped encourage the boom of retail food shops.

In a fun little fact, even though potatoes were brought back by the Spainards from South America in the 16th century, it was not until 1785 that potates accepted them as safe to eat. The convincing came from a sly trick where Frenchman Antoine-Augustin Parmentier schemed and had 40 acres planted with potatoes and then guarded by troops. The fact this was guarded made the local people curious and so they stole them and ate them and so started the potato craze. The pomme frites of France would later travel with Thomas Jefferson and James Heming as french fries.

truffle fries from Violetta in Portland

We also learn in the book that the slave to turn apprentice chef James Heming is a slave, but is also actually one of the half-siblings to Martha, Thomas Jefferson’s wife (who has already passed away at the time of his overseas appointment). Upon his father in law’s passing, the Hemings family of slaves/half-siblings were then inherited by Thomas Jefferson.

Slavery is unknown in France, and so any black person, including James Heming , could have claimed his freedom. Thomas Jefferson paid a generous monthly salary to James Heming while he lived in France, gave him freedom of movement, and promised emancipation at the end after he returned to America with him and taught the skills he learned to apprentices (which it would turn out, would be his brother).

In the end, some of the dishes that James Hemings mastered for Thomas Jefferson have since become American classics: French Fries, Creme Brulee, and Macaroni with Cheese! These were among the humbler dishes that had easier recipes to teach to apprentices. Jefferson’s recipe is the earliest recorded recipe for ice cream as well. Thank you Thomas Jefferson and James Hemings!
The beautiful deluxe mac and cheese from Violetta in Portland At my Hipcooks Class, this is my Creme Brulee with vanilla and raspberry (we each torched our own to our liking). We also made one with orange ginger and Patron Citronge Orange Liqueur. It was so ridiculously easy to make

For 4 months, Thomas Jefferson took a special grand tour by carriage to visit farms and wineries, scouring for local ingredients to take back home to America. Things he collected and introduced back in America (and in some cases smuggled back) included Champagne and other French wines, Italian rice, Olives, Capers, Almonds, Pistachios, Broccoli, Figs, Parmesan, Maille mustard, apricots, a pasta making machine, and more. He brought back plants including cuttings to grow wine, and cork trees to have stoppers on hand when he bottled his first vintage. Jefferson journeyed with a corkscrew in the same little case he carried with him that held his toothbrush.

He also brought back a new way of serving dinner in which servants presented serving dishes but then left the room, leaving guests to serve themselves, a process in which he believed encouraged open conversation. On multiple occasions, the book refers to various parties of opposing views meeting for a meal at Jefferson’s and that the cuisine and wine put men in an amiable and reasonable frame of mind to negotiate and unite on measures.

Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC

There were other little tidbits of stories as well-  as a widowed father for instance, how he tricked his remaining middle daughter that he had left in America after his youngest died to come to France. He had her and her friends play on a ship as long as she wanted, and when she fell asleep her friends left and the ship took off for France! Later, when his oldest daughter wanted to join the Catholic nuns, he took her shopping and let her attend balls and other entertainments, and she abandoned the thought of changing religion and becoming a nun. Yes, Thomas Jefferson was skilledb at negotiating the complexity of politics and daughters!

If you’ve read this book before… do you agree that these were parts you found interesting? Was there a unique side story that I missed?

For September the selected book subject is Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History) by Herve This.

Interested in joining us? All you have to do to join our book club is sign up at the online book club Kitchen Reader, read the book (or part of it) and post your thoughts on your blog during the last week of the month.

 

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