CHEW is looking for your culinary history book reviews! If you have read a book or article that addresses an aspect of culinary history, you can send your musings about it to chewwisconsin@gmail.com to post it to the
website. We have particular interest in reviewing culinary history books, but reviews of cookbooks or other food books are fine. Please keep your review to under 250 words or thereabouts. We will print your name with the review unless you ask us otherwise. CHEW reserves the right to do light editing for length or other minor needs. No press releases.
***
Books Reviewed – In Alphabetical Order by Title
America’s Kitchens by Nancy Carlisle and Melinda Talbot Nasardinov. This is a compelling homage to the beloved room within the home that is central to our lives in so many respects. The authors recount the history of the kitchen in American life in six time segments covering over four hundred years and encompassing much of the country from New England to the Rio Grande. The book is the second in the remarkable Historic New England series of titles presented by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. It is so richly embellished with paintings, photographs and historic drawings that one might want to begin what will surely be a nostalgic exploration of the topic by first perusing the visual images and many captions and sidebars before settling in to read the informative text, while at the same time savoring the inevitable flashbacks of special moments that were spent in our own kitchens in the past. Pub info: Historic New England, Boston, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-88448-308-3. (Reviewed by Joan Peterson.)
Apple: A Global History, by Erika Janik (Reaktion Books). Did you know that apples were considered a luxury by the Romans? Ever wonder why apples appealed to Protestants more than any other fruit? And just how did New York come to be called the “Big Apple,” anyway? Apple history, folklore and legend are the stuff of this engaging, succinct book from Wisconsin Public Radio producer and freelance writer Erika Janik. She relays the story of cider and how the apple when from toxic threat to health hero, and from local specialty to global commodity. The book finishes with a selection guide and a dozen recipes that span time and international geography. (Reviewed by Terese Allen,
Edible Madison, Winter 2011.)
The Blue Grass Cook Book (1904/2005). This facsimile re-release of a compiled cookbook by Minnie Fox is a wonderful insight into turn-of-the-20th-century southern foodways. With the new Introduction for the 2005 edition by Toni Tipton-Martin, this book is a true resource for recipes and historical contexts. See full review here in PDF form. (Reviewed by Traci Nathans-Kelly.)
Bread and Oil: Majorcan Culture’s Last Stand. “The most effective culinary escapes are not just recipe collections; they incorporate memoir or travel stories, history or even social commentary. Take Bread and Oil: Majorcan Culture’s Last Stand, by Tomás Graves, which has all of the above. This new release from University of Wisconsin Press is the English edition of a work first published in Catalan, Majorca’s major language. Written by the son of British poet and classicist Robert Graves (of I, Claudius fame), Bread and Oil has the makings of a fine novel: a strong sense of place, a genuine voice, vibrant characters and a metaphoric focus.” Read the full review in Word format here. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.)
Cluck: From Jungle Fowl to City Chicks, by Susan Troller (Itchy Cat Press). The tales herein are not so much about chicken as victuals, but chicken as fellow creature. You’ll meet factory fowl rescued from the landfill and hens that swoon for a rooster named Big Tiny. You’ll learn about heirloom breeds, poultry language and chicken jackets (yep, you read that right). You’ll also get recipes for the perfect hard-boiled egg, essays by Jane Hamilton, Ben Logan and Michael Perry, and S.V. Medaris’s arresting artwork. The Capital Times’ Susan Troller pulls it all together with affection and humor, and with her own observations about the backyard chicken phenomenon, and the pleasures of a life with laying hens. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison, Winter 2011.)
Cooking with the Seasons, by Monique Jamet Hooker. The great British food writer Elizabeth David, in her authoritative French Provincial Cooking (1960), began her section on Brittany and the Loire by saying that “the traveller in search of good food will find some of the most lovely and typical dishes in all French provincial cookery. Not extraordinary or spectacular dishes, perhaps, but, based as they are on raw materials of very fine quality and cooked in quite simple traditional ways, they make a strong appeal to English tastes.” This culinary connection between Provincial tradition adjusted for English taste set out by David couldn’t be more on display than in Cooking with the Seasons:A Year in My Kitchen (Henry Holt 1997), an under-the-radar masterpiece of seasonal, farm-to-table cooking by French American cook and educator Monique Jamet Hooker.
Cookbook shelves today are stocked with wonderful compilations celebrating ideas of natural ingredients, fresh farm markets, foraging, and simply put, slow food, but it is very compelling to read that some of their historical roots come from the likes of Hooker who grew up on a seventeenth century chateau-farm in Brittany France. She says in her introduction “The Philosophy of Seasonal Cooking” that “Our daily life and many celebrations may seem to speak with the voice of another era, but it is only the echo of joy I continue to find a` table with my family and friends…By inviting the seasons into the kitchen, I know you will soon find your own joy a` table.” Monique’s masterpiece becomes a poetic testament to Provincial, familial and farm fresh recipes. “They are inspired by the dishes and techniques I grew up with in Europe, but they are uniquely American because I’ve adapted the recipes to the range and ingredients available to us here.” As the cookbook moves through the seasons, month-by-month, each includes a sort of nostalgic homage to her homeland. Black and white family pictures going back as far as her father’s father, Louise, highlight this sort of personal album as cookbook.
But it is the great matriarch of the French family, admiringly ‘Maman,’ who the book is really dedicated to. Hers was a life spent cultivating the daily ritual and joy of the French countryside farm table. For a November recipe of Chicken and Sage Soup, Hooker prefaces, “Making a soup from the broth a hen cooked in was one way Maman turned today’s fare into tomorrow’s supper. Meat from the hen was served with a cream sauce for lunch, then the next day the extra meat was shaped into little meatballs and served with the broth as a soup for supper.” The recipe is ended by a ‘sidenote’: “Medieval tradition claims that a strong woman rules the household of a garden where sage is grown.”
As of 2016, Hooker works with “Moses” on the annual Organic Conference, overseeing all aspects of the food service for the conference and is a board member of the “Healthy Kids Task Force” and “Farm to School” for the Vernon County, Wisconsin area school district. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, http://riversidedrivefive.blogspot.com/)
Dorie’s Cookies, By Dorie Greenspan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). Three-quarters of the way through the 2017 James Beard Award-winning Dorie’s Cookies (HMH 2016), there is a wonderful section titled “the beurre & sel story” that I really feel captures the essence of this cookbook and lends to its appeal and relatability throughout. It is the story of Dorie, renowned culinary expert, and her son, Joshua, who struggled through the process of learning how to turn their home baking passion to a storefront enterprise. “Before we officially opened Beurre & Sel (French for ‘butter and salt’), Joshua and I did a series of pop-up events. To get ready for our first, I tested all of the recipes at home before I had to bake them in a commercial kitchen with equipment I’d never used before and on a scale that rattled my nonmathematical mind. Everything I baked tasted great, but none of the cookies were the same size. The look was unprofessional, and it was impractical too.” It took some time, but as the result of endless experimentation by the mother and son duo, they finally made their breakthrough….Five years later, when the cookie shop partners decided it was time to ‘retire,’ the list of concerned loyal customers became very loud and Dorie grew her cookbook vision….
Obviously, not all home cookie bakers will open their own boutique cooking business, but the book reminds us over and over again that the spirit of the cookie lives in most of us at some level, and takes us back to our own times spent in the kitchen with children, family and friends, scratching out notes and advice, envisioning, just maybe, that day when we might open our own little cookie company. We would hope that we would have in front of us such a bright, enthusiastic and precise guide as Dorie’s Cookies to guide us through the process. Beginning with the revelatory section “the perfect-cookie handbook: techniques, ingredients and gear” (always use cookie scoops to shape!), the book is filled throughout with thoughtful tips and tricks in familiar sounding sections like “brownies, bars, break-ups and biscotti,” “cookies for every day, any day” and finally “cookie go-alongs and basics.” (Reviewed by Troy Hess, March, 2018)
Cooking Under Pressure, by Lorna Sass. Years ago as a newly married, utterly inexperienced cook, I often used a pressure cooker because my mother had used one, but then I moved on to other methods of preparing meals. Lorna Sass’ excellent 20th anniversary edition of Cooking Under Pressure, however, has rekindled my interest in using a pressure cooker to prepare meals.
I’m impressed that an amazing range of dishes can be done to perfection in the pressure cooker. It’s not just all about old-fashioned pot roast! How about Moroccan lamb tagine or Rock Cornish hens stuffed with apricots and prunes, just two of the many appetite-inspiring recipes contained in Cooking Under Pressure. Indeed, the cookbook contains many delicious preparations I wouldn’t have dreamed could be made in a pressure cooker. Imagine risotto, for example. This divine preparation of rice is done in 4 minutes without stirring. It is also worth pointing out that there are other reasons for pressure cookery besides minimizing cooking time. The conservation of fuel it allows is vital in today’s environmentally conscious world.
Lorna Sass’ 20th anniversary edition of Cooking Under Pressure not only brings back to print the popular first edition, its recipes have been adjusted to reduce their fat content. In addition, the amount of liquid required has been reduced because technology has made it possible for today’s cookers to come to pressure with less water. And if you are still a holdout, there are electronic pressure cookers available. (Reviewed by Joan Peterson.)
Eat Smart in Germany, by Mary Bergin (Ginkgo Press). “Hearty people and hearty fare” is one phrase Madison journalist Mary Bergin uses to describe German culture in this very readable, very usable food guide for travelers. Yet “hearty” herein refers not just to gastronomic gusto but to a generosity of spirit. German food is much more than sausage, kraut and beer, says Bergin—it’s near-endless variations of them, plus it’s pastries, dumplings, pickles, fowl, venison, wines, condiments, and on and on. Whether you’re headed overseas or just interested in learning more about a major influence on the food traditions of our own state, this is a one-stop shop for getting a genuine taste of Deutschland. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.)
Easy Tagine: Delicious Recipes for Moroccan One-Pot Cooking by Ghillie Basan (Ryland Peters & Small, 2012). After buying my own tagine and then spending time moving through Basan’s wonderfully diverse recipes in easy tagine: Delicious recipes for Moroccan one-pot cooking (Ryland Peters & Small), I’m left to wonder why it’s not the tagine that is currently enjoying its own fully realized cooking revolution. Both the insta-pot and the traditional slow cooker are fine and useful appliances – one promises a tender meal in under 20 minutes, the other in 5-8 hours, take your pick depending on your prep time schedule and tastes. But they are both electrical appliances, lacking their far simpler and more rustic counterpart’s cultural heritage, sheer aesthetic appeal and, somewhat ironically, convenience: the tagine cooks relatively quickly, it becomes its own decorative serving dish, and is extremely easy to clean, no cords.
Ghillie Basan describes the tagine as a magical sort of cooking pot – it’s name not only a style of ethnic cuisine but a reference to the earthenware, two-piece, conical pot – producing “a glorified stew worthy of poetry – aromatic and syrupy, zesty and spicy, or sweet and fragrant are just some of the words that come to mind.” Its ‘secrets,’ as Basan describes in the introduction to her celebration of North African flavors, have to do with the fact they are “Colorful, decorative, scented and a feast for the senses – the food of Morocco reflects a fascinating mix of cultures that have left their mark on the region.” The root of Moroccan cooking “can be traced back to the indigenous Berber tribes. Steeped in tradition, the rural Berbers are proud of their ancestry. They have lived in North Africa, between Egypt and the western coast of Morocco, as far back as archeological records go.”
When making ‘chicken tagine with preserved lemons, green olives and thyme,’ cooking with the magical pot allows the Western cook to quickly enter into the culinary history of this rich and traditional Moroccan cuisine – a marinade of onion, garlic, ginger, cilantro, saffron, and lemon juice serves as the base stock which cooks from the bottom first then rises up into the conical lid and rotates back down to steam the chicken thighs. Covered with lemon strips, olives and carrots tossed with fresh mint, we are transported temporarily to another continent. (Reviewed by Troy Hess.)
Eat Smart in India (Ginkgo Press, 2004) is the seventh book in Joan Peterson’s brainy food travel series. Like her previous guides, it’s small enough to slip into a carry-on and dense with wisdom about how to eat and drink like a local. Peterson and her Indian-born co-author, Indu Menon, neatly handle the history and development of a very complicated cuisine, provide useful food and phrase glossaries, and walk readers through the culinary regions of India dish by dish. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.)
Eat Smart in Norway, by Joan Peterson (Ginkgo Press). This is the tenth food travel guide penned or co-penned by Peterson, who just might be Madison’s most well-fed traveler. I don’t know how she keeps her cochinita pibil, tamarrat and poriyal straight, not to mention the barbragrøt and får-i-kål she now has added to the every-growing repertoire. I bow down to her taste buds and to her talent for researching and clarifying foreign foods. (Note: Peterson spoke about Norwegian food at the December, 2012 meeting of the Culinary History Enthusiasts of Wisconsin (CHEW) in Madison. (Reviewe by Terese Allen, Edible Madison, Winter 2011.)
Eat Smart in Portugal, by Joan Peterson and Ronnie Hess (Ginkgo Press, 2017).
I love everything about the Eat Smart travel guides, which, instead of telling you what to see and where to sleep in a country, describe the very heart of a culture, its food. They’re compact–small enough to fit in a shoulder bag–and jam-packed–crammed with history, regional cooking styles and specialties, tips for negotiating outdoor markets, and tested recipes. One section covers resources like tours and travel advice; another offers translated phrases to use when dining or ingredient-shopping. Probably the most useful chapters are the sizable glossaries–conveniently located at the back of the books–which translate everything from well-known specialties to obscure ingredients. The guides aren’t just about making you feel comfortable in a foreign restaurant; they help you connect to a location in a deep way.
I’ve never been to Portugal, but now that there’s an Eat Smart guide for it, I want to go more than ever before. But even if I never do, I can still enjoy a learning and tasting adventure to the land of bacalhau, enchercada and porto. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.)
The Edible French Garden, by Rosalind Creasy (Periplus Editions Ltd., 1999)
It’s very impressive the amount of ground that Rosalind Creasy is able to cover in The Edible French Garden, one of several installments from her Cooking from the Garden series (Periplus Editions Ltd. 1999). In a matter of a hundred pages, she manages to introduce us to what is considered in France one of the very finest of arts, the parterre garden – one that purposefully grows kitchen vegetables alongside flowers in formal settings. We are taken on a brief tour of what some consider the most beautiful ‘vegetable’ garden in the world, Chateau de Villandry in the Loire Valley, so that we can come to understand the roots of French edible design. What sets the French garden apart from others is that it has always been maintained for the sake of the daily harvest and for decorative pattern not necessarily for bulk production or preservation.
Creasy identifies two specific gardening techniques that distinguish the potager, traditionally called a ‘soup’ garden, from others: the growing of mesclun salads and blanching, both considered a more finely calculated approach to tending. Next comes a wonderful little encyclopedia listing those vegetables that might flourish most under the conditions of the daily tended French style, beginning with Artichokes, Asparagus and the all-important Haricots Verts (variety of filet beans), and finishing with Summer Squash, Alpine Strawberries and tomatoes, themselves ranging from varieties of ‘Oxhearts,’ ‘Early Girls,’ and ‘Principe Borgheses’ among others.
Each of these sections serve as a lead-in to a selective but useful preparation and recipe section which showcases a handful of classic French soup and salad recipes in a tone and style from a gardener and cook who is herself learning along the way. “I had never heard of eating carrot tops until I met Tom McCombie. I was actually a little skeptical, so before I asked Tom for the recipe, I checked to make sure carrot tops were edible. The reports deemed them safe to eat, and after I tasted and loved them, carrot tops became a must for this book.” As we read through a recipe like this one, we can begin to see that in some ways the edible French garden as a concept holds a lot of ancient secrets that are once again finding their way back in several contemporary American food themes. In a hopeful spirit, we read articles that are trending now about using the whole vegetable, and sustainability practices centered on self-harvesting as a way to reduce one’s carbon footprint and for ensuring clean organic nutrition. As we look at another garden recipe for the famous Salade Nicoise, we also recognize those past patterns of European eating habits emerge – what was fresh that day was on the plate, often unadorned, but for those very reasons no doubt more delicious. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, June, 2019)
Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods, by Jennifer A. Jordan (University of Chicago Press). Passion combined with scholarship make this an unusual study of the ways nostalgia, food fashions and food politics intersect and shape each other. UW-Milwaukee sociology professor Jennifer Jordan delves into not only the darlings of the heirloom scene—tomatoes and apples—but also an array of foods that have less cache or have lost favor over time, such as turnips, kale, parsnips and even Jell-O. Both warmly written and much-documented, her book succeeds in illustrating how our “deep culinary connection to the past influences not only the foods we grow and consume, but the ways we shape and imagine our farms, gardens and local landscapes.” (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, Dec. 5, 2015)
Eggs, By Michel Roux (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005). For those great chefs who have come to master the fine art of cooking eggs, the rest of us would like to learn their magical secrets. This is the gist of one of the classic articles written by the great food writer Elizabeth David, “An Omelette and a Glass of Wine,” in which she shares with her readers a few of her own secrets found along the way while sampling eateries in France. “Quite a few of these customers subsequently attempted to explain the particular magic which Madame Poulard exercised over her eggs…She mixed water with the eggs, one writer would say, she added cream asserted another, she had a specially made pan said a third, she reared a breed of hens unknown to the rest of France claimed a fourth.”
There are no doubt many secrets to be gained by cooking folklore, but if we are seeking a more thorough examination of these “conjuring tricks,” as David calls them, for creating perfect eggs in all of their various forms, then Michel Roux’s cookbook, Eggs, (Wiley 2005), reads like a much needed definitive guidebook. Even though Roux is considered one of the most highly acclaimed chefs in the world, “who has held three Michelin stars at The Waterside Inn near Windsor in England for an astonishing 21 years,” the tone of his shared secrets are wonderfully down to earth, drawing on his stated respect for the egg’s “genius in all forms of cooking,” and on his humble farmhouse origins. “At the age of barely three, I would rush outside whenever I heard Julie, our family hen, cackling to announce that she was about to lay. I would gently collect the still warm new-laid egg and hurry to the kitchen with it. My mother collected the eggs in a large bowl, which would be kept full during the summer; in winter Julie laid one or two eggs a week – but we loved her just the same.”
Every chapter of this elegantly photographed cookbook, from the more standard egg recipes of boiled, poached, fried, scrambled, baked, and omelet (Roux had been asked to write a foreward to David’s article), to the more sophisticated crepes, pastas, meringues and dressings, all are warmly revealed by a master technician with a warm heart, “Nowadays, I love making crepes and waffles with my grandchildren. They all help to prepare the batter and join in with the cooking.” The Pavlova with berries, mango & Passion Fruit…“undoubtedly one of the finest desserts in the world. My Australian wife, Robyn, and Bette, her mother, make the best pavlovas I have ever tasted. The fruits you use must be ripe, very sweet, and full of flavor.” As for the omelet, Roux prefers his baveuse, runny in the middle, the color very light and golden, “delicate to touch, squidgy and soft.” (Reviewed by Troy Hess, Feb. 22, 2018.)
The Farmstead Chef, by John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist (New Society Publishers). In the acknowledgments of their book about cooking sustainably, the authors thank dozens and dozens of kindred spirits who have influenced or partnered with them. My guess is that those same people are themselves thanking Ivanko and Kivirist for this proficient new cookbook-guide. Chock full of good cooking and good thinking, it blends inventive, low-on-the-food-chain recipes and preservation techniques with inspiring essays and portrayals of fellow visionaries. I don’t think there’s anyone writing about local foods these days with more open-heartedness and finesse. (Reviewed by Terese Allen,
Edible Madison, Winter 2011. )
The Flavor of Wisconsin: An Informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State, Second Edition. Harva Hachten and Terese Allen
Wisconsin: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2009
xxii + 392 pp. Illustrations. $29.95 (cloth). Reviewed for Gastronomica, Spring 2010, Vol. 10, Issue 2 by Joan Peterson.
Cookbooks that provide a sense of place—ones that link food and culture so you can grasp the flavor of a place and the daily life of its people—are not so uncommon today, especially those that concentrate on less-known cultures around the globe.
Harva Hachten, however, was well ahead of the times by moving away from the standard ingredients/method model of cookbook writing almost thirty years ago with the publication of her seminal, state-focused cookbook, The Flavorof Wisconsin: An Informal History of Food and Eating in the Badger State. She interwove Wisconsin’s distinctive culinary history with over four hundred original recipes and reminiscences
carefully selected from those submitted by residents of the state in response to an invitation from the Wisconsin Historical Society to participate in a book project. The extensive collection reflected the considerable agricultural and ethnic diversity of the state and was liberally laced with food lore, photographs, and scholarly essays from a variety
of sources, including the publisher’s extensive archival and manuscript holdings.
Out of print for many years, the groundbreaking cookbook has recently been superbly updated, expanded, and retooled by Terese Allen, who as a cooking teacher, food columnist, former chef, and author of several authoritative books and articles on Wisconsin’s culinary legacy, is eminently qualified for the task. Allen and Hachten began their collaboration on the cookbook revision in 2005, but Hachten’s death less than a year into the project gave Allen a daunting challenge to complete it alone.
The second edition of The Flavor of Wisconsin brings the book up to contemporary times; it also provides revisions of the original material and adds several new topics. In the first edition Hachten had covered the state’s food traditions from the late nineteenth century up through the mid-twentieth century, discussing in considerable detail the lives, the foods, and the recipes of early settlers: pioneer communities established around the fur trade, Yankees and New Yorkers who migrated west looking for greater opportunities, and Old World immigrants. This first edition also included a comprehensive review of the foodways of Native Americans residing in Wisconsin and, amazingly, also touched on the topic of food availability as far back as prehistoric times.
Terese Allen’s most compelling addition to the second edition is a chapter entitled “Fresh Age.” It delineates several dramatic changes in Wisconsin’s food culture that have occurred since the latter part of the twentieth century, examining in detail the continuing evolution of the flavor of Wisconsin. Among these changes are the rapid growth of organic farming, the proliferation of farmer’s markets, and the concern for sustainable agriculture. In the last several decades Wisconsin has moved to the forefront of the local and sustainable food movement. The state has the country’s largest producer-only farmer’s market (in Dane County), at which all vendors must be the producers of the products they sell. Other changes to emerge within the fast-growing food revolution are food sophistication, which has fueled the rise of distinctive, artisanal foods and beverages, the Slow Food Movement, and new foodways contributed by the state’s relatively recent immigrant populations.
About three dozen recipes augment the collection contained in the first edition. While Allen limited the number of additional recipes because numerous other recipe sources are available either online, in blogs, or in cookbooks and magazines, her adroit selections include preparations that would allow meal choices for people who want to eat more sustainably, classic recipes she felt ought to be in the book, and recipes representative of the new ethnicities in the state.
Besides superbly chronicling the recent changes in Wisconsin’s foodways, Allen has strengthened the text’s culinary history throughout and at the same time revamped the book’s format. Some of the original as well as new text is presented in sidebars, and subheadings have been added, which provide both a fresh look and a much more readable book. This incredible compilation ought to be in every home, library, and classroom in the state, and in the hands of culinary historians and other foodies everywhere.
What would Harva Hachten think about the new edition? I’m betting she’d be proud as punch. (Reviewed by Joan Peterson, PhD, Madison, WI.)
Food for the Settler, by Bobbie Kalman (Crabtree Publishing Company, 1989). Sometimes it can be surprisingly educational to pick up an old cookbook at a used bookstore even if it is ‘faux vintage’ like Food for the Settler, by Bobbie Kalman. This black and white childrens’ cookbook, a hodgepodge of styles and intentions, does in a roundabout way answer some questions that I’ve had ever since going through The New Midwestern Table by Amy Thielen, which takes a modern and well-trained approach to hand-me-down recipes from upper Midwestern ‘settler’ family collections. What did kitchens look like and what were some of the staple ingredients found in a common two-room homestead cabin? How was food preservation handled pre-refrigeration? (think pemmican and pickling). What were some of the kitchen gadgets like compared to our own modern versions? How much time did householders actually spend on food preparation anyway?
These are interesting questions for all kinds of cultural reasons, not the least of which is the common modern sentiment that we just wished we had more time to prep and cook! A section midway into the book is a great example of the romanticized settler cookbook as two things at once – mildly informative but also so unrecognizably innocent and patient that it appears be a spoof on history. “Bread made with a loving touch” is shown as a costumed role-playing sequence. “Making bread the pioneer way is a good way of reaching back into the past. We spent a day exploring the warm, friendly, kitchen of Gibson House, which was the home of settlers in the 1850’s. It took nearly a whole morning to make bread and butter. But what a wonderful time it was!” The dough is shown to be made by the children and grandmother at an old farmhouse table then let to sit to rise near a smoldering fire on the hearth. The removing of the bread from above the fire ‘on a peel’ is very fascinating considering the likely difficulty of maintaining an even temperature and then the delicate slipping of the peel under the brown loaf. It’s quite a history lesson looking at the ‘Gadgets galore’ section. We can easily see the origins of many small kitchen accessories and staple pantry items. There is a nutmeg crusher, no larger than a small child’s hand, cones of sugar (that is how they were sold in those days), a lard press (used for cutting), also used to smooth flower petals, sweetly useful cinnamon sticks, elaborate tin molds, wooden lemon squeezers and even a mechanized apple corer. We are really left to wonder if they weren’t a little more useful then than now. We are also left to wonder how many food trends today are attempts at harkening back to those basic “Dishes brought from different lands?” Recipes like “Dandelion greens salad,” “French Pea Soup,” “Scotch Eggs,” “Ukranian cabbage rolls” and “Dutch Apple Pudding” seem like familiar modern menu fare. ((Reviewed by Troy Hess, June 2018, http://riversidedrivefive.blogspot.com/).
French Regional Food, By Joel Robuchon & Loic Bienassis (Frances Lincoln Limited, 2014) Review by Troy Hess.
We might be currently limited in our ability to culinary travel but that doesn’t mean we can’t still draw from the wonderful gift of the culinary imagination. French Regional Food (Frances Lincoln Limited 2014), assembled and written by the world-famous French chef Joel Robuchon, is nothing else if it isn’t a vintage homage to the culinary imagination inspired by the interconnected but distinct regions of France. Robuchon himself, very much a part of that renowned heritage, enlisted at twenty to apprentice the prestigious Compagnons du Tour de France, which offered him a seemingly fictional life as a young traveling chef “departing from Paris and travelling through Montpelier, Nimes, Tours and Nantes” to learn his trade. This mobile and native understanding of the diversity of the essential–-and often ancient–-French cuisine comes through in how French Regional is put together as a tour really, along the countryside or cityscape alike. Photos as precise as the recipes accompany: oyster farms off the coast of Brittany, lush apple trees and cows in Normandy, or a rich ‘food-shot’ of a dish such as Gardiane de Taureau (similar to a stew) that comes out of the Camargue in south-east France. Here Robuchon, a wonderful writer to boot, describes as he frequently does the landscape first, then zooms into recipe, interlinking them, “The marshlands of the Camargue offer a succession of tranquil scenes of undisturbed nature. Wild birds fly and breed in the protected regional park … From the ewe’s milk of the district, tome cheese appears either as soft, fresh curd cheese or as matured dried cheese. The local saucisson is good.”
The cookbook tour guide is a culinary historian’s dream. Recipes are announced as extensions of past honed techniques, shaped by craftspeople who may still be trying to hang onto fading arts. Of the Alsace ‘pay,’ Robuchon easily drifts back 300 years, “historical texts show that a vast range of sausages already existed in the sixteenth century: Knackwurst, the ancestor of Strasbourg sausage … The descendants can still be found on today’s market stalls.” At home, we might not make homemade sausage anytime soon, but to see its locally harvested component parts and the process takes us right to the locals, a universal recommendation for any travel. A few pages later, a more approachable Kougelhopf (“probably the most famous cake of Alsace) is far more approachable and could easily be sitting at any of our own kitchen tables. Either way, ancient craft or quick cake, it is France in a book and makes for a nice tour without leaving home.
For additional reflections, writings and workshop opportunities (including food-writing), visit On the Yahara: https://www.yaharawritingservices.com/ or contact Troy at info@ontheyahara.com
Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie: Midwestern Writers on Food, by Peggy Wolff (University of Nebraska Press). Thirty essays and fourteen recipes delve into Midwestern foodways; we hear from editor PeggyWolff on the Door County fish boil, from Jacquelyn Mitchard on sweet corn and from Molly O’Neill on the Midwest as the center of the next food revolution. There are pieces on Cincinnati chili, rhubarb kuchen and meatloaf (of course), foods that heartlanders identify with and argue over, wrapped in stories that will make you laugh, learn and amaze. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, December, 2103)
Good Seeds: A Menominee Food Memoir, by Thomas Pecore Weso (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2016). “This is how I understand cooking, as part of a family process that includes spirit, the forest environment and fuel for cooking—all before the meal can be prepared.” Sentences like this, from a lovely new regional food memoir, elegantly express the author’s multiple perspectives as anthropologist, artist, Menominee Indian, family member, cook. Raised in the big, multi-generational home of his matriarch grandmother and medicine-man grandfather, Tom Weso grew up eating (and hunting, gathering and growing) labor-intensive traditional foods along with modern, open-a-can fare. Everyone, even children, for example, drank ko-peh (coffee), to battle the ever-present northeastern Wisconsin cold. But breakfast, an enormous meal his grandmother started before dawn each day by “making fire” in the wood stove, hot cereal was typically cornmeal mush, not the oatmeal white people ate. The morning meal could also include fish, game, bacon, eggs, potatoes, cornbread, fruit pies and cottage cheese from a nearby dairy that delivered to the rez.
The book is organized by ingredient—beaver, wild rice, corn, maple syrup, etc.—with chapters, too, on German beer, Wisconsin diner meals and the concession foods at county and tribal fairs. Each section ends with one or more recipes, some familiar (baked walleye), some exotic (roast porcupine). But Weso’s stories are much more than culinary tales or instruction; plain-spoken and occasionally hilarious, they open doors of appetite, understanding and connection.
A contemporary of Weso who grew up less than an hour away from the Menominee reservation, I learned more about tribal food, culture and family life reading this single slender book than I did in more than two decades as his regional neighbor. Good Seeds is a poignant, important book. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Isthmus, Dec. 1, 2016.)
Gudrun’s Kitchen: Recipes from a Norwegian Family, by Irene O. Sandvold, Ingeborg Hydle Baugh, Edward O. Sandvold, and Quinn E. Sandvold (Wisconsin Historical Society Press). A family food memoir devoted to the life and cookery of immigrant Gudrun Thue Sandvold. Gifted in the kitchen, Gudrun blended traditional Norwegian fare with interpreted American dishes. She left a legacy of good eating that has been lovingly captured, along with Gudrun’s life story, by four family members. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison, Winter 2011.)
Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking it all with the Greatest Chef in the World, by Jeff Gordinier (Tim Duggan Books 2019). Part 1 of 4.
To create a culinary biography that not only informs readers of the chef being profiled, but becomes something of an adventurous page-turner is quite a feat, but that is exactly what Jeff Gordinier, food writer for Esquire and the New York Times, has managed to create in Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking it all with the Greatest Chef in the World. One part episodic adventure and other part a meditation on what it means to be both literally and figuratively hungry, the book transcends the more commonly produced genres of celebrity cookbooks and various TV programs – even many food magazine articles – which can often seem more caught up in the swirl of celebrity itself than capturing the original fire of art underneath the culinary expression that so often propels many famous chefs in the first place.
Gordinier does all of this by entering directly into the life of Rene Redzepi over a period of four years, seeking answers to what it means to reach the epitome of one’s craft only to be overcome by the realization that it is time to reinvent one’s vision of food and life and hope to apply it all to the next restaurant. In other words, this isn’t going to be your average subject or approach to storytelling: “I have landed here in Tulum because of the stubborn coaxing of a man named Rene Redzepi. Within the close-knit world of global gastronomy, Redzepi is a figure whose influence might be compared to that of David Bowie’s in music in the 1970’s, or Steve Jobs’s in technology in the 1980’s, or Beyonce’s now. He is the chef behind Noma, a restaurant in Copenhagen that has – for those who follow and chronicle these things – changed the way people think about food.”
Throughout the biography, chef and writer, among other entourage, travel to all corners of the globe – Sydney, the Arctic Circle, Copenhagen and Tulum, Mexico – where in the very first scene of the book we find the author seemingly stranded on the beach as he wakes up “with sand in my mouth and a glare in my eyes. A man is speaking Spanish and waving a flashlight. I try to remember where I am and the details wobble into place, like a wraith making its form more visible.” So begins his parallel journey toward reinvention with Redzepi. To be continued….
Reviewed by Troy Hess, https://www.yaharawritingservices.com/
Ice Cream Adventures, by Stef Ferrari (Rodale Wellness, 2016). Reviewed by Troy Hess
One of the ongoing themes of many of the recent CHEW cookbook reviews is that cookbooks don’t have to be used merely as collections of recipes that guide us toward sustenance, but that they can also be seen as a series of little maps offering up newfound daily domestic adventures. And like any mini-adventures, it’s not only about those we have experienced, but all those that are out there waiting for us, which makes Stef Ferrari’s Ice Cream Adventures (Rodale Wellness, 2016) an abundant source as the season for ice cream is bound to come along soon, and why not fill it up with a little fun like ‘Pretzel Honey Mustard’ ice cream, ‘Mushroom-Thyme Ice Cream Sauce,’ or, a little further out on the edge of experimentation, a scoop of ‘Feta Tomato Swirl’ over a plate of watermelon, a recipe Ferrari says “is loosely based on a salad my mother-in-law makes in summertime. It’s one of my favorite bowls on the buffet at her backyard barbecues, and usually I find myself hovering over it, hoping to intercept other guests’ attempts to access.”
After looking at a few of the more outlandishly wonderful ice cream concoctions, it helps to know that these recipes are not random dabblings but come from a true and passionate pro who learned and honed her craft at the nationally famous Penn State University’s Ice Cream Short Course, “a famed 120-year program that has played host to everyone from Ben & Jerry to Jeni Britton Bauer – ice cream icons across generations.” The foundational flavor pairings found in recipes like the ‘Sriracha Popcorn Ice Cream’ are tested winners, as salty and crunch meets vinegary hot sauce, which has a conveniently built-in frozen dessert to counterbalance any excessive heat. But not all adventures have to be complex to celebrate. A favorite here is the ‘Key Lime Vanilla Bean Softer Serve,’ a near-silk and subtle lime combo perfect for those who don’t have an ice cream maker at home, as the ice cream base is nothing more than a ‘folding’ together of whip cream, sweetened condensed milk, a touch of key lime juice and a scrape off a vanilla bean. Once fully frozen and the texture set, this, along with all the rest of the other fantastically wild ideas, is as difficult to release the spoon from as anything imagined store bought.
For additional reflections, writings and workshop opportunities (including food-writing), visit On the Yahara: https://www.yaharawritingservices.com/ or contact Troy at info@ontheyahara.com
Jasmine in Her Hair: Culture and Cuisine from Pakistan. “We can be culinary tourists without actually leaving home,” writes folklorist Lucy M. Long in Culinary Tourism (University Press of Kentucky). “Cookbooks…offer mental and emotional journeys to other food worlds. Jasmine in Her Hair: Culture and Cuisine from Pakistan (White Jasmine Press, 2004) is proof of that pudding. It’s a memoir by Huma Siddiqui, a Madison, Wisconsin-based CPA who grew up in Islamabad. She wrote this collection of family stories, foodways descriptions and recipes as a heartfelt means to an end–that is, keeping Pakistani food traditions alive. The book is inadequately edited (I’m a stickler for things like listing ingredients in the order which they’re used), but it’s a beauty to behold, with photos of rural scenes, table settings and completed dishes. Most of the recipes are easy to follow, but if you’re a novice at such things as making samosa dough or deep-frying shaaker paras, consider taking one of Siddiqui’s cooking classes to watch and learn (visit whitejasmine.com for a list of classes).
What I like best about Jasmine in Her Hair is how well it illustrates that foods–and other customs–considered alien by some are dearly familiar and deeply personal to others. Siddiqui’s vignettes have a guileless, almost haunting tone, as she recalls everything from the choori wali (woman with bangles) fascinated by the contents of a refrigerator to the meaning of food and family in Pakistan. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.)
A Literary Feast: Recipes and Writings by American Women Authors from History. “The book takes a unique approach to culinary history: it juxtaposes nineteenth-century recipes with passages about food preparation and dining from literature written by women of the time. By pairing the “food-talk” of women’s literature with recipes, A Literary Feast, authored by Yvonne Schofer offers an entertaining and illuminating way to experience the culture of a by-gone era.” See full review here, a version of which appeared in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, October 22, 2003. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.)
The Little French Bakery Cookbook, by Susan M. Holding (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014)
If there’s a little part of each of us who cook that has dreamed about one day leaving our regular job and moving to Paris to enroll in a culinary school, The Little French Bakery Cookbook (Skyhorse 2014) by local Madison chef Susan M. Holding, is a must read because that is exactly what she did. This culinary dream come true captures at once a very charming yet sophisticated tone throughout the book. The longing nostalgia of Holding’s Parisian culinary education comes across in short anecdotal stories in between always succinct, viable, sometimes simple and sometimes sophisticated series of French-based recipes. As readers, we get to take our pick of our desired level of entry. ‘Catering Chicken,’ from the “Favorite Meals” section, is a great example of a recipe that might harken back to some French inspiration, but that is relatively uncomplicated and no doubt a much-repeated crowd-pleaser. Two pages previous is the more classically French dish ‘Boeuf Bourguignon.’ “When I think of a classic French meal, I think of this recipe. It’s one of the most satisfying, comforting dishes I’ve ever made.” Flip ahead a few pages and we find homemade ribs and bbq sauce, then to the soups chapter, where we find “Soupe De Poisson with Rouille and Croutons” for which we again need a little more special step-by-step instruction.
These might be thought of as substantial standards – meat dishes, a nod to homemade bbq, a fish soup. In many ways though, it’s two other portions of the cookbook that really seem to elevate it to the truly ‘charming’ status. Short stories such as “The Belly of Paris” transport us to the source of French food while allowing us to get to know the chef, “I’m very sentimental about historical treasures and places. I have a treasure to share with you. There’s a neighborhood in Paris called les Halles…” She goes on to tell us that this story in full was told her by one of her pastry school chefs, “in the wee hours of the morning cleaning, slicing, sorting, and butchering.” We’re quickly pulled out of our Midwestern home kitchens and offered an eavesdrop behind the doors of a Parisian kitchen. Finally, as the cookbook cover and title reveals, it’s the ‘bakery’ that stands apart in chapters on Breads, Cookies and Bars, Tarts and Pies, and Cakes such as “The Perfect Birthday Chocolate Cake,” a truly elegant visual anchor as the cover art. “This chocolate cake is by far the most popular selling cake at the Little French Bakery for wedding and special occasions. I think it’s the perfect cake. It’s inspired by the famous recipe on the Hershey cocoa can. Yes, that’s true.” By the end, after spending some time with the Little French, we get to know the chef much in the same way we would if we were enrolled in one of her own local cooking classes. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, for CHEW, October 18, 2018.)
Midwest Foraging: 115 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Burdock to Wild Peach, By Lisa M. Rose (Timber Press, 2015)
A great picture of author Lisa M. Rose – herbalist, forager, urban farmer, and writer – enthusiastically signing one of her books with the inscription “Eat Well, Eat Wild!” really seems to capture the next progression in the local food movement. Following contemporary trends in culinary history, it’s always fascinating to consider what, if anything, is actually new, what is old, or what is merely a re-presentation of both. This contemporary trend toward foraging is especially interesting because, when we think about it, there really is no more ancient means of feeding ourselves than heading out into the forest and finding “wild and flavorful edibles.” As we read through Midwest Foraging (Timber Press, 2015), a book that Rose has herself called “part field guide, part culinary treatise and part memoir,” it’s hard not to in some long lost way make these connections ourselves and immediately identify with the simple art of using the likes of acorns, fiddleheads, ox-eye daisies, or the unique paw-paw, among a hundred others, for raw or supplemental ingredients.
Each edible is introduced to us first by describing identification techniques, then we are told how and when to gather them and finally how to prepare them. Midwest Forage becomes is a little like reading a lost but common culinary archive, enthusiastically inspiring us to re-enter a natural resource that is still there if we choose and are willing to steward. The section on violets is a great example. Rose writes in her introduction that, “Violet leaves have a mild, bright, slightly lemon flavor and are an easily foraged gateway food to get friends and family interested in ‘eating weeds.’ Its flowers are pretty and delicious too.” A vivid photograph taken by the author of freshly foraged violet flowers in a bowl ready to be added to salad is a tempting visual. “Violet leaves are high in vitamin C and are delicious as a raw vegetable. Add them to salad or as a supplement along with chickweed to make a ‘foraged green smoothie blend.’” The idea of ‘gateway’ in foraging is key as the book also serves as a guide to another important trend in culture, as a means for “Cultivating a Sense of Place.” She hopes that we are seeing the bigger picture as we become more active agents in finding our place in the natural world. “So many of us are seeking a connection to the land and to each other…That need for escape into the wild is very real: we desire space and clarity. This is one reason foraging is gaining in popularity.” (Reviewed by Troy Hess, Oct., 2018)
Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland, by Cynthia Clampitt (Heartland Foodways). Food historian Cynthia Clampitt explores the astounding story of how corn developed from a humble grain into one of the greatest achievements in history. This a likeable, deeply-researched book that deftly covers a great deal of territory for its size, including: how a Mexican weed came to feed—literally and culturally—two continents; how it went from being distained to dominant in the U.S.; how it built cities, industries and our very food supply; and the many ways it is intimately linked to Midwestern development and culture. The serious stuff is balanced, too, with sections on popcorn, corn festivals, corn cuisine and more. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, Dec. 5, 2015)
My French Kitchen: A Book of 120 Treasured Recipes, by Joanne Harris & Fran Warde (William Morrow, 2006)
We’re probably not supposed to fall in love with a cookbook because of its ambient photography, but My French Kitchen by Joanne Harris (Morrow 2006), could entice us to do so easily, as it artfully matches pictures of French cottages, farms, street corners, seaside beaches, bistro signs, and children on pastel tricycles with what we might call deep-home French cuisine. Luckily for readers, Harris, author of novels like Chocolat (made into the popular food film with Juliette Binoche), serves us more than capable prose to entice us back onto the written recipes. Harris makes it very clear in the introduction that she is not an advocate of hyper-sophisticated recipes, but instead those she remembers making with her family, who happens to be half French and half English, “Many of my earliest memories are about food. I remember making pancakes with Memee, my great grandmother, in her house in Vitre when I was three years old…I remember my Yorkshire grandmother’s rhubarb and apple pie, and my French grandmother’s green fig jam…holidays on the island of Noirmoutier, going around the markets in the early morning or cooking sardines on a charcoal brazier on the sand…”
Authentic French memories develop into a crisply interpreted and common sense approach to family recipes accompanied by snapshots that capture the modern scene as well as it does impressions of memory. ‘Jean Sorin’s Fisherman Stew,’ inspired by Harris’s great-uncle Jean, includes s photoset showing a bright bowl of the stew, as well as an out of focus impression of a blue seaside cove, and a wonderful little introduction by Harris, “Soupe du Pecheur is an extrovert, a sociable dish impossible to eat without a certain amount of mess.” ‘Lamb Chops Vert Pre’ is accompanied by a farm scene in Mont Saint-Michel, and a photo of “lambs grazing on the very green marshland by the water’s edge, or even on the seaweed growing on the rocks.” ‘Seafood Platter,’ although maybe out of reach for many Midwestern cooks, is introduced, “If I were to plan my last meal, ‘Fruits de Mer’ would be the main course. To me it evokes everything good about food.” By the time we reach the final section of My French Kitchen, aptly “Chocolate,” we come to realize that what we are reading certainly is not merely a commercial enterprise but a personalized interpretation of 120 such treasures. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, August, 2018)
Milwaukee Frozen Custard, by Kathleen McCann & Robert Tanzilo (American Palate). This combination local history book-travel guide is full of proof that frozen custard in Milwaukee is, as the back cover states, “a culture, a life-style and a passion.” Kathleen McCann and Robert Tanzilo are Milwaukee-based writer-editors, and here they offer vignettes of more than fifty custard stands located mostly in and around Milwaukee. (The places are alphabetically arranged, but a geographical map added here would have been handy for travelers.) They also furnish extensive coverage to four “stand-out stands”—Gilles, Leon’s, Kopp’s and Culver’s—because of their high standards, creativity and historical significance, and for their role in spreading custard love across the nation. The book’s last chapter gives attention to dozens more locations that have come and gone.
The authors take on myths like, “Frozen custard was invented in Milwaukee,” and “It’s higher in fat and calories than ice cream,” and clear up such questions as why store-bought and homemade custard is never as good as the kind at custard stands. There’s a lot covered in a little space here—history, science, lore…and enough flavor varieties to keep custard lovers going for years. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Door magazine.)
My Pantry, by Alice Waters. It would be hard to imagine the history of the farm-to-table movement in America without the presence and guidance of Alice Waters. In two bits of culinary history trivia, among so many others to choose from, we can see how Waters and the movement co-evolved, so to speak. At 19, living in France as a student, she said she “lived at the bottom of a market street, and I took everything in by osmosis.” Years later, in the beginning stages of creating the local food market at her Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, it was Waters’ self-invented in-house ‘forager,’ Patricia Unterman, who received a call from another local food activist Sibella Kraus to see if she was interested in helping to revitalize the Ferry Market Building in San Francisco as a hub for bringing together farmers and restaurants and sell to the public as well. The rest is farm-to-table history. It seems very fitting then that Waters’ 2015 cookbook My Pantry: Homemade Ingredients That Make Simple Meals Your Own (Pam Kraus Books) anticipates yet the next progression in a growing niche by advancing the idea that “Simplicity and economy and ease in the kitchen all come from having a pantry you’ve made your own from ingredients you’ve mixed and made yourself.” The recipe book, made up of chapters like “Spice Mixtures and Condiments,” “Nuts,” Beans and Other Legumes,” “Cheese,” and “Sweet Preserves,” provides busy but conscientious home cooks with some simple recipes that allows us to rely less on processed recipe components and more on prepared staples. What better way to celebrate the treasure of the pantry than with her daughter, Fanny Singer, an art historian who happens to illustrate this artful and timely book. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, for CHEW, October 18, 2017.)
The New Midwestern Table: 200 Heartland Recipes, by Amy Thielen (Clarkson Potter). Amy Thielen has a philosopher’s sensibility about both the food and the landscape of the Midwest, which, she says, “may seem ordinary to outsiders looking in, but [feel] privately epic to those who live here.” Her dishes derive from her own experience with regional bounty or are “reengineered classics; I can’t wait to try the likes of Cracker-Crusted Panfish, Wild Plum Manhattans and Cardamom Caramel Rolls. Thiele intelligently, lovingly covers Midwestern food culture—its private nature and lack of easy definition; the enduring European peasant influences amid today’s new ethnic additions; the seasonality and rural sourcing; and the cadre of regional cooks who have been “directing the course of American cuisine for a long time.” (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, December, 2103)
The New Midwestern Table: 200 Heartland Recipes, by Amy Thielen (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2013).
In her masterful James Beard Award Winning The New Midwestern Table: 200 Heartland Recipes (Potter 2013), Amy Thielen does so many different things for her readers that we sense over time that we are being wonderfully spoiled. Originally an English major, first and foremost the cookbook is written and assembled with a writer’s sensibility for capturing character, family history, and a deep sense of the local as she has observed it from her “rustic nonelectric cabin on eighty acres near the unincorporated community of Two Inlets, twenty miles from my hometown in northern Minnesota.” As a chef, she had left the local for a handful of years to learn her craft in some of the more prestigious restaurants in New York City, only to very purposefully return to her Midwestern roots in order to apply these new techniques to old recipes. Along the way, the thoughts for this modern take on Midwestern cuisine culminate as the cookbook itself, something like a modern handmade recipe album, and provides us a much needed new working definition of what our food style means: “If Midwestern cooking has been hard to pin down, I think it’s because our best food has always been a celebration of this large, dynamic, plain spoken place. Like the food, the vast interior of this country may seem ordinary to outsiders looking in, but it feels privately epic to those of who live here.”
Re-engaging handed down family and regional recipes becomes the momentum of the entire book. From “Dips, Party Food & Drinks” to “Lakefish,” “Chicken Supper,” “Potatoes & Onions,” in recipes like “Smoked Whitefish Brandade” “Old Fashioned Pounded Cheese” or “Homemade Braunschweiger,” we get a strong sense for the original intent of the recipes as ways for gathering after long days in the fields, rice ponds or Minnesota lakes. “Something about the seesawing summer temperatures in the upper Midwest–the sticky days that plunge into refrigerated nights–causes a craving for a little braunschweiger,” which she says, “when made with good pork, heavy cream, sweet spices, and just enough liver for people to know that you’re serious, braunschweiger is a luxury.” In one of the final sections of the book, “Projects,” she says of the making of your own sauerkraut that “Like many of German or Eastern European heritage, I grew up eating fermented sauerkraut, the honest kind. I heard of stories of making it on the farm in crocks that couldn’t be budged…the most important part of this recipe is the cabbage, which needs to be freshly plucked from the ground and full of moisture.” The recipes are small town Minnesota nice, but directed by the tenacity of a New York chef. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, April, 2018.)
Old Farm Country Cookbook: Recipes, Menus, and Memories, by Jerry Apps and Susan Apps-Bodilly (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017.) Honey-glazed ham, pickled northern pike and strawberry sandwiches—if you think farm foods of the past made for uninteresting fare, think again. Just check out this memoir-cookbook by rural historian Jerry Apps (of Wisconsin Public Television fame) and his daughter Susan Apps-Bodilly. It’s a warm-hearted yet realistic study of food and farm life in days gone by, a time when the noon meal was called “dinner” and families left the back door unlocked for the ice man. Jerry’s story-telling guides us through farmhouse, fields, garden, barn, woods and community to reveal how food-related concerns and satisfactions infused nearly every aspect of country life. Susan’s family recipes—canned chicken, fresh peas in milk sauce, wild blueberry cobbler—channel beloved flavors and by-gone techniques. From ring bologna and whiskey slings, to feed-sack aprons and the green-stained fingers of cucumber pickers, Old Farm Country Cookbook is a literary way-back machine that vividly, lovingly and deliciously details the food culture of a younger time. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Door, Winter, 2017.)
Olives, Lemons & Za’atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking, by Rawia Bishara (2104). It seems many of the most memorable cookbooks by restaurant owners read and look like generous invitations not only to their restaurant tables but also to the tables of their childhood memories. Rawia Bishara, owner of the acclaimed Middle-Eastern restaurant Tanoreen in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn offers us just such an invitation. She begins her cookbook Olives Lemons & Za’atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking (Kyle Books 2014) by telling us that her name, Rawia, means storyteller in Arabic. “I was born into a food-loving Palestinian-Arab family in Nazareth, a beautiful town in southern Galilee. Though the words ‘organic,’ ‘locovore,’ and ‘sustainable’ were unknown then, my parents’ approach to food and cooking qualified on all counts. They were ‘foodies’ before the word was coined.” The rest of the cookbook follows as a stunningly colorful Mediterranean family photo album capturing Rawia’s dual tributes to her homeland in Nazareth, and to her mother, Monita Hanna. She was “an impressive and enthusiastic cook who whipped together meals for the seven of us…though she was influenced by the cooking traditions of her native Galilee, her approach was not rigidly authentic. She understood the value of bending the rules when it came to cooking, a practice we relished at the dinner table.” Each recipe in the cookbook recounts in some way this hearkening back to the remembered cultural rituals of Middle-Eastern cuisine based on her mother’s inspiration.
Readers learn about the tradition of Mezze in Middle-Eastern culture, “small plates of food served all at once, before the main course, to provide a bounty of tastes and textures.” Raw Kibbeh (usually the freshest and most lean cuts of lamb or goat, mixed with bulgur, rolled into balls and served), Hummus, Eggplant Pate`, Baba Ghanouj, and Mutabal, are all dishes that may ring with some familiarity from Middle-Eastern American restaurants. In Olives, they are offered with a sprinkling of special instructions from her mother. “Whenever a dish called for tahini, my mother tried leaving it out because she felt omitting it instantly lightened the dish.” We find out in the section “Big Dishes,” that the idea of eating the biggest meal of the day for dinner was foreign to Rawia until she moved to New York. “Back home in Nazareth, lunch, or Ghada, was the grand meal and it was always served late in the afternoon.” She describes her memory of the ritualistic making of Palestinian Couscous with Chicken, Chickpeas and Pearl Onions in a short section titled “The Romance of Maftool,” a wonderful little story about her mother and father sharing cooking responsibilities at a time when men were rarely if ever seen in the kitchen. By the last recipe, the reader gets the feeling that to visit Tanoreen would be in many ways a visit to those small towns surrounding Nazareth in Galilee. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, http://riversidedrivefive.blogspot.com/).
Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories and Recipes from the Upper Midwest, by Heid E. Erdrich (Minnesota Historical Society Press). Poet Heid E. Erdrich does not consider herself a cook or even a foodie, but you wouldn’t know it by the appetizing recipes and edifying tales in her salute to native foods of the Great Lakes and Great Plains. She submits a passionate, studied and hungry eye to wild rice, morel mushrooms, squash, smoked whitefish, Juneberries, maple syrup and much, much more. Her graceful volume also celebrates indigenous people via personal and community tales. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, December, 2103)
The Other Side of Russia. “Foodies in particular will relish award-winning author Sharon Hudgin’s magnificiently rich book about Siberia and the Russian Far East, The Other Side of Russia published by Texas A&M University Press (ISBN 1-58544-404-9). Teaching assignments took Sharon and her husband, Tom, to Asian Russia in 1993 as part of a new program established by University of Maryland University College. This book is an engaging personal narrative about life in the challenging early years following the fall of communism. The author discusses in fascinating detail her social, political and economic environment, but she is at her very best when recounting her extraordinary culinary experiences with Russian friends. Dinners, by necessity often pot-luck, were cobbled together under difficult and often harsh conditions. Ingredients were obtained piecemeal from numerous shops and vendors, following rumors of availability, and with luck were purchased after tedious waits in long lines. All goodies had to be trudged up many flights of stairs, typically in tall concrete apartment monstrosities with defunct elevators. Rarely were basic amenities—water, electricity and heat—simultaneously available for the comfort of the guests. Despite the hardships, the meals were amazingly sumptuous. This engrossing, informative book is a valuable resource and a great read.” (Reviewed by Joan Peterson, Ph.D. and author of EAT SMART series)
Pickled Herring and Pumpkin Pie. “In Jack Finney’s classic time-travel novel, Time and Again, the protagonist immerses himself in the study of a bygone era, 19th-century New York. By saturating his consciousness with its culture, language, objects and scenery–by becoming one with the environment of the past–he finds himself literally “there.” It’s an arresting notion, one that I very much wished were true recently as I pored through Pickled Herring and Pumpkin Pie, the 2002 reprint of a nineteenth-century German cookbook that was adapted for German immigrants to America. (Pickled Herring and Pumpkin Pie is a project of the University of Wisconsin’s Max Kade Institute for German American Studies and is distributed by University of Wisconsin Press.) Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, as I read about turn-of-the-century specialties like potato dumplings, herring salad and eel soup, if recreating the smells and flavors of historical recipes could transport you there? The book is so vividly authentic it almost seemed possible. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.” Read the full review in Word format here.
Preservation: The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation and Dehydration, by Christina Ward (Process)
Here’s another guide to preserving food, one that goes where Savory Sweet doesn’t—into a comprehensive exploration of the whys and hows of canning, fermenting and drying foods. A Milwaukee County-based certified Master Food Preserver who has taught thousands of home cooks and artisanal entrepreneurs, Christina Ward has an easy-going, friendly way of explaining the science of preservation. Whether you’re a novice who has always felt intimidated by canning and fermenting or a long-time preserver looking to deepen your understanding, you’ll find her Julia Child-like approach accessible, thorough and reassuring. With its deeply researched advice, some historical background about food preservation, and recipes—from garlic jelly and mak kimchi to spicy Guinness Stout mustard and green tomato pie filling— Preservation is a treasure. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Door magazine, Winter 2017)
Putting Down Roots: Gardening Insights from Wisconsin’s Early Settlers, by Marcia Carmichael (Wisconsin Historical Society Press). Imagine a time-traveling garden tour and you’ve just pictured Putting Down Roots. Carmichael is Old World Wisconsin’s historical gardener and her book is as entrancing as a stroll through the immigrant plots she designs and nurtures there. This is real-life, everyday history—not dates and titles, but seeds, tools, recipes and meals that illustrate immigrant hopes, values and traditions. Carmichael’s book is an heirloom feast for contemporary cooks, gardeners and food history buffs. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison, Winter 2011)
Soil Sisters: A Toolkit for Women Farmers, by Lisa Kivirist (New Society Publishers) Lisa Kivirist has done it again. Co-author of four books related to food and sustainability, she knocks it out of the park with a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind guide to farming that’s geared to the fastest growing group in agriculture—women. As founder-director of an award-winning resource center for rural women, and a farmer herself, Kivirist is well placed to instruct on the full spectrum of resources that today’s female growers need. She covers everything from risk management and raising livestock to business planning and body care. Along the way, she shares the stories of more than 100 very cool women who are transforming our food system. Soil Sisters is engaging, inspiring and practical. Damn, she’s good. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Isthmus, Dec. 1, 2016.)
Spaghetti Corners…and all that Sauce!, by Catherine Tripalin Murray.(Greenbush…remembered). The fourth and final self-published book about Madison’s long-lost Greenbush neighborhood, this is a loving tribute and a substantial achievement. Murray’s tome contains biographical sketches of the Italian and Sicilian men who lived in Madison’s Little Italy between 1990 and 1960, before it was razed by urban planning. Each grandfather, father and son vignette includes a photo, intimate tidbits of oral history and gotta-try heritage recipes. A book that will make you wish you were Italian…and digging into a platter of spiedini. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison, Winter 2011)
Spain: Recipes and Traditions from the Verdant Hills of the Basque Country to the Coastal Waters of Andalucia by Jeff Koehler (Chronicle Books, 2013) is a cookbook that could just as well serve as a great travel book. As a fifteen-year resident himself, and married to a Spanish wife, Koehler has written a cookbook that isn’t just a collection of recipes but a culinary family history that includes roots throughout the various regional countrysides. “The tastes of those rural landscapes, I have learned from living here, are not easily lost. They are still felt in the connection to the land and the cycles of the seasons: the seasonality of food; not wasting anything…long, multicourse meals; unfussy cooking styles and often unfussy flavors; the love of stews and hearty soups…in the traditions of curing and preserving that borders on obsession…these remain, making sure that the countryside is never far from any table in Spain, even in the cities.”
The cookbook is also a comprehensive recipe list of all of the major categories of Spanish food, including the iconic Tapas and Appetizers, Soups and Gazpachos, Vegetables, Fish, Poultry and Rabbit, all the way to Sweet and Savory Homemade Conserves, but it’s the cultural themes that Koehler never loses track of – like the principle las materias primas, or “fresh, high-quality ingredients cooks call the raw materials.” This principle emphasizes the simple preparation of primary ingredients, not the complexity of sauces, for example, and this is why the covered food market and small specialty shops in Spain are so important – so that the common Spanish cook can carefully go through primary local staples. “White Beans with Clams,” a favorite of the Asturias region, highlights the raw flavors of the north shore on the Atlantic. “Country Bread Rubbed with Tomato and Olive Oil (Pa Amb Tomaquet)” takes advantage of old dry bread and abundant summer garden tomatoes. “Grilled Lamb Chops with Honey” is nothing more than exactly those two ingredients, and yet, when well chosen, “is surely one of the most sophisticated Moorish influenced dishes in Andalucia.” As for the iconic traditional rice dish of paella, the emphasis becomes the communal cooking style. “One of the ‘aunts’ in the ancestral village of my mother-in-law…frequently prepares dazzling paellas (always outside over embers, and always served in the center of the table to be eaten from the pan with a spoon).” Visitors to Spain no doubt want to sample the food, but to learn about the history of the people who are cooking it makes all the difference. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, May 2018)
The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, by Dan Barber (Penguin Books, 2014)
The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food is not your standard cookbook in any way, and yet it might very well prove to be the most important cookbook in all of food culture this generation. With the very steep premise boldly stated on the back cover, that “Today’s farm-to-table revolution has a dark secret: The local food movement has failed to change how we eat. It has also offered a false promise for the future of food,” there is obviously a lot of ground for Dan Barber to cover in this 450-page, future of food manifesto, which has been called by other observers The Omnivore’s Dilemma 2.0. One of the things that separates The Third Plate from its famous predecessor is Barber’s greater hands-on participation in the subjects of soil, land, sea and seed, as both chef and co-owner of Blue Hill Restaurant in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, located within the nonprofit farm and education center, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. After years of menu experimentation at his own restaurants, much research, a dedication to relationships with other leading food experts, and a strong tie to food culture in Spain, among other places around the world, Barber makes the case repeatedly that the next step towards sustainability will have to do with taking at least one step back in time for the sake of observation along the way to making culinary leaps into the future.
The Third Plate concept becomes what is called whole farm cooking, an ancient concept that farmers have been doing for thousands of years, developing “cuisines that adhered to what the landscape offered,” not the other way around. The essential question no longer is how to coerce nature to the chef’s demands for the menu, but for the chef to relinquish control to the workings of nature and create menus accordingly. When produce, grains or meats are allowed to more truly express their surroundings, they begin to regain flavor and nutrition, their demand expands, and new but sustainable markets are formed. At the very end of the book, we do get some recipes, including both a carrot and a parsnip steak, as well as a “Rotation Risotto and 898 Squash” (named after an experimental winter squash with line number 898) among many other items for what Barber describes as “A Menu for 2050.” It begins with “Milky Oat Tea and Cattail Snacks.” Why oat tea? Many farmers grow oats as a crop cover, “mowing them down before maturity so they can enrich the soil and become fertility for the next crop. Without restoring fertility to the soil, delicious food is not possible.” This is a mini example, but reflects a new ‘take half, leave half’ equation. “If this works–which means if the tea is delicious and memorable–we may well create a market for cover crops, incentivizing more growers to incorporate them into their farms. But more important, we’ll create a consciousness about feeding the soil that feeds us.” (Reviewed by Troy Hess, http://www.yaharawritingservices.com/)
Whole by Natural Harry: Down-to-earth plant-based wholefood recipes, by Harriet Birrell (Hardie Grant 2019)
If your cooking passion tends towards wholefood recipes, as it certainly does for food blogger and lifestyle entrepreneur Harriet Birrell, it would be hard to conceive of a more engaging and creative presentation to take a look through than Whole by Natural Harry (Hardie Grant 2019). Rustic Australian seaside lifestyle meets an energetic next step in whole food daily eating in this consistently thematic cookbook by the pen-named Natural Harry. The subtitle of Whole, “Down-to-earth plant-based wholefood recipes” is more than a little fitting for, as Harry tells us in the introduction, most of these recipes were inspired by a four week long camping trip “on the shores of Fortescue Bay, enclosed by a wild Tasmanian coastline” where she and ‘Frase’ had nothing more than a “small stove, a knife and a chopping board….In getting back to basics in the Tassie wilderness I unknowingly created a new book.” It was here that Harry learned to “depend on food as close to its natural state as possible and look after yourself. But don’t be a goose about it!”
Between the sharp Australian slang, ever-present outdoor eating, and the creative insertions of natural ingredients such as plenty of tofu, miso, coconut aminos, and nutritional yeast, Whole isn’t quite like any other cookbook. It begins with the chapter “Brekkie” (breakfast) and introduces us to, among many other substantial recipes, the “Brekkie Bikkies Three Ways” (bikkies are the “ultimate breakfast in a biscuit”). These include rolled porridge, ripe bananas, tahini, shredded coconut, dates and frozen blueberries. It’s all about understanding the nutritional value underneath the finished product in these natural recipes. The oats, she tells us, hold iron, fiber, magnesium and zinc as well as being higher in protein and fat than other grains. The chapter also includes “Spicy Tofu Scramble” sided by avocado, another ever-present ingredient, which in a later recipe is placed over hash browns, a creation Harry invented in a pinch without toast available. Consider the “BBQ Tempeh Buddha Bowl” from the bowls chapter; the “Zucchini & Pumpkin Slice” in the mains chapter; and finally, the “Purple Sweet Potato & Vanilla Popsicles” in the sweet chapter, and you get a good sense for the many experiments that likely went into assembling this book. The results are recipes that always offer something bright and something new but with down to earth roots. (Reviewed by Troy Hess, September, 2013)
Wisconsin Agriculture: A History, by Jerry Apps (University of Wisconsin Press). Is there anyone who observes, documents or embraces the Dairy State’s rural heritage more than Jerry Apps? There is not. The beloved emeritus professor, writing teaching and author of dozens of books about barns, cheese, beer, gardening and farm life, Apps brings his signature focus to a handsome new book that examines the full spectrum of Wisconsin’s agricultural history. If you think farming here has been all about cows and corn, think again. Apps covers the obvious and the surprising: cherries, apples, cranberries, beef cattle, fur farming, Christmas trees, maple syrup, hemp, ginseng, sugar beets, mint, sphagnum moss, flax, hops, aquaculture, beekeeping, urban farming…and, well, you get the picture. Now go get the book, and join Jerry in celebrating the cornucopia-like splendor of our state. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, Dec. 5, 2015)
Wisconsin Supper Club Cookbook: Iconic Fare and Nostalgia from Landmark Eateries, by Mary Bergin (Globe Pequot). Long-time supper club aficionados (like me) are enjoying a resurgence of interest in this idiosyncratic and much-beloved regional tradition. They’re the subject recently of no less than three documentary films, two books and various radio programs. Now, respected food journalist Mary Bergin adds her perspective to the evolving story of supper clubs with this combination cookbook-travel guide. You’ll find recipes for Wisconsin beer cheese chowder, whitefish almondine and Door County cherry sauce alongside anecdotes from the Gib’s on the Lake, Altona Supper Club, and thirty-eight more rural and urban establishments around the state. I just might have to get another copy, so I can keep one in the kitchen and one beneath the driver’s seat of my car. (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, Dec. 5, 2015)
Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old-Fashioned Experience, by Ron Faiola (Midway) and The Supper Club Book: A Celebration of a Midwest Tradition, by Dave Hoekstra (Chicago Review Press). Not one but two hardcovers about supper clubs came out this year (2013). Ron Faiola’s shots showcase interiors, proprietors and classic dishes and—like his go-with essays—they are frank and friendly snapshots of beloved destinations. Hoekstra’s lens is wider—he covers the upper Midwest, emphasizing Wisconsin (the true epicenter of supper clubs)—and he uses oral history and evocative photography to reveal the character and meaning of supper clubs as place. “A contained little universe,” he so aptly calls them, “the fork in the road between yesterday and today.” (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Edible Madison magazine, December, 2103)
Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round, by Ron Faiola (Agate). One of my fondest memories of supper clubs is an early one, when several high school friends and I drove in a borrowed green Ford Mustang “up the coast” from Green Bay to the Club Chalet, an A-framed structure that sat on a rise near the intersection of Highways 57 and A, and boasted beautiful views of the bay. It was a rite-of-passage kind of adventure that included a swanky, out-of-town destination, Alaskan king crab legs and heavy-on-the-booze brandy old-fashioneds (illegal, but we got away with it). Countless supper club experiences later, I still get that grown-up, I-belong feeling, and I still relish the classic fare served up with heartland graciousness at such places as the ones in Ron Faiola’s new hardcover.
The book, as with his first tour of Wisconsin supper clubs, features fifty establishments arranged in geographic sections, with big, colorful local-flavor photos on every page. Faiola’s tone is easy-going and personal, and his stories blend supper club and family history with culinary and architectural description. I got a kick out the “My Take” sidebars, in which he covers extras like local folk legends (Rhinelander’s Hodag monster); house specialties (jaeger schnitzel and sauerkraut bread at Gib’s on the Lake, Kewaunee); and “it’s a small world” coincidences (overhearing a group at a nearby table discussing his first book). (Reviewed by Terese Allen, Isthmus, Dec. 1, 2016)
Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David (Ecco), by Artemis Cooper. David introduced England to Mediterranean food and became one of the world’s most influential food writers, but here we learn that she wasn’t exactly a nice person. She married for convenience, held grudges and was an unwavering perfectionist. In other words, she was human. It’s doubtful that David, who was intensely private, would have liked this book, but Cooper is sympathetic, even loving, and her book is as thoroughly researched and honestly written as David’s own works. (Reviewed by Terese Allen.)