On Thursday, June 24, the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State Street, hosted Bourdain for a book reading and signing. The sarcastic author read an excerpt from the book discussing his opinions on Food Network celebrity hosts, cracked more than a few jokes about everyone from cooking celebrity Sandra Lee to himself and answered questions from a crowd of roughly 250. Selected audience questions and Bourdain’s responses have been condensed below.

Katherine Sacks

If you had to eat one style of food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
If I was going to a desert island and had to eat one genre of food everyday for the rest of my life, then I would travel with a really high-end sushi chef. If I could eat good sushi everyday for the rest of my life, I would not be unhappy about that.

Of all of the places you’ve been to, if you could only go to one of them again, where would it be?
It would depend where I’m at in my head. If everything in my life went horribly wrong, and I wanted to end up someplace as the tragic hero- the fantastic, poetic end to my life, I would go to Vietnam. If I ended up a broken man, alone, at least I would be eating delicious pho and watching life in Vietnam around me. That would be the consolation prize to an otherwise misspent life. I would be very happy there. The plan is, I want to go like Marlon Brando in the Godfather, but in Italy. I re-married an Italian woman, my daughter is a dual citizen. If everything goes perfect, I’m going to retire to Italy or Sardinia. I want to grow tomatoes in my backyard; I want to make really crappy wine. Someday chasing my granddaughter and grandson around the tomato vine I’m gonna keel over from a fucking heart attack. Right now, ask this question of ten really great chefs, a whole hell of a lot of them would say San Sebastian, they would say a restaurant called Etxebarri up in the mountains outside of San Sebastian with this dude, he just grills stuff, little eels, homemade chorizos, beautiful ham, two or three ingredients, cooked up in a little pub outside Basque country. You know keeling over stone dead with a half eaten piece of Iberico ham in your mouth, there’s worse ways to be.

What is a good cookbook to learn to cook from?
Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it’s the Bible. When all else fails, go to Julia. I mean I love it. That’s it. You can barely do better than that. It’s just a terrific, terrific, terrific book. If you don’t trust a recipe or another recipe doesn’t work, those will always, always work.

Can you talk about your writing process?
Everything I learned as a dishwasher, no joke. I learned to show up on time and do the best you can. Given the opportunity to write a book I will deliver it on time and wake up early everyday and do the best I can to write it. What is my writing process? I don’t give myself anytime to think about the million and one reasons why I can’t or shouldn’t write the book. If I was sitting around staring at the ceiling thinking about, ‘Gee, what do they expect?,’ ‘What is the market like right now?,’ I’d never be able to write a word. I wake up, immediately start writing, write as long, as fast as I can, shove it in a drawer, don’t read it for weeks, because if I read it right away I’ll become miserable and critical and edit myself out of existence. I just go and I go and I go. I come from an oral tradition of storytelling. I’m not agonizing, I’m not Marcel Proust agonizing over sentences. You know, I write the way I talk.

Why this book, why now?
I wrote this book because it had been ten years since I wrote Kitchen Confidential, which is still selling like crazy, which I’m happy about but on the other hand I felt it was important to state publicly that I am no longer a working chef. In fact, it’s been ten years, I’m no longer in that tribe. It would be a mistake to assume that I am. I don’t work everyday, I wouldn’t be good at it anymore.

Where haven’t you been that you want to go in your travels?
I haven’t been to Cuba. I try every year and something always goes wrong. I really want to go before, you know. I assume that as soon as Castro hits the floor, they’ll be opening a W Hotel there. So I kinda want to see history, I want to go to Cuba and I want to see the greatest baseball players of the world play for $29 a month. So that’s a place I really want to shoot that we haven’t been able to. They’ll let us in, we’ll let us out, but it’s always getting the permits to move as freely as we want to that’s the problem.

In your opinion, what will it take to see a shift away from the Rachel Ray food culture?
An alternate universe. It won’t happen. It’s a spectacular success, people love that stuff, Food Network is putting up bigger and better numbers. Look at all the great newspapers that have been closing down in this country, all the great magazines that are evaporating.  All those Food Network magazines are a huge success story, so people like it, it’s the way it is. It’s Rachel’s world, I just live in it now.

If you were starting again, would you go into again?
Would I do it all over again? Yes. I wouldn’t change anything, I would do everything exactly the same again. I wouldn’t miss any of it, the good and the bad. I’m quite sure that if I could go back in time and confront myself at age 17 and say, listen the following really, really bad things are gonna happen. You know, heroin is gonna cause you a problem a little bit down the line, this is a bad career move, this and that, I’d do the same things. I’d ignore my own advice, from me.

What was the last thing you cooked?
Hmm, that was a long time ago. I think I made spaghetti alla bottarga, you know at home.

Favorite places to eat in Chicago?
I have a very narrow view. Anything Paul Kahn is associated with is worth paying attention to. I’m a big fan of the hot dog place I’m not going to mention because the line is already too long. And I really hate your fucking pizza.

Food has been center stage in artwork for centuries, originating with cavemen drawings of hunting scenes and bison. The still life medium emphasizes food, and dates back to ancient Greece and Rome. Throughout time, platters of bright round fruit, bowls of soured tomatoes, and spreads of cheese, wine, and meats have splashed across canvases. Fast forward to the 1960s and the modern art movement’s fascination with Campbell soup cans and Wayne Thiebaud’s cake paintings. Through every medium, photography, sculpture, painting and the like, food has been a concurrent theme.

Andy Warhol

M.F.K Fisher, in her tome The Art of Eating puts food forward as the art. “Cooking is an art, but you eat it too,” cookbook author Marcella Hazan once said. From France’s detailed Michel Bras to Chicago’s own Grant Atchaz, chefs all over the world create elaborate artwork on the plate, artwork gone as quickly as it is consumed.

Food as art from chefs Grant Atchaz and Michel Bras

The January release of the book Food in the Louvre is a combination of culinary artwork and recipes. With a forward from Michelin-starred chef Paul Bocuse and commentary from the museum’s head chef, Yves Pinard, the book serves as a tour of the legendary museum’s still life’s and gastronomic artwork feasts.

The narrative spans 40 of the Lourve’s works, from ancient Greek and Egyptian tomb carvings through the oil paintings of the mid 1800s. Along with commentary on the artwork, Pinard provides recipes to accompany many of the pieces. Alongside Eugene Delacroix’s Still Life with Lobsters(pictured below), the book offers directions for lobster thermidor and pheasant salami. A recipe for Fig and Pain Dore, a fig and bread pudding style treat, accompanies Luis Eugenio Meléndez’s Still Life with Figs, an 18th Century print of green figs and bread.

You may not be able to afford a tip to Paris for a stroll through the hallways of the Louvre and have lunch along the Seine, but an afternoon spent reading Food in the Louvre is almost as good.

Planning my trip to stage at The Fat Duck restaurant last summer, I had so many questions. How many chefs jackets should I bring? Which knives I would need? How could I possibly escape making a fool of myself in front of the heavy-hitting cooks I would be training under?  I also couldn’t help but deliberate over whether to purchase the massive tome of The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, which had been released earlier that year(November 2008). Flipping through a friend’s copy, I fell in love with the words, the history of the place, the imaginative photographs and the bright, playful artwork. I dreamed of bringing the book along with me; having each cook I worked with sign it. (I secretly hopped I would meet Heston Blumenthal, the infamous chef behind the restaurant, and have him autograph the book as well.) At $250, the price of the book dug deep into my Europe spending money and the thought of lugging an 11-pound book around Rome and Paris in my backpack for two months was simply frightening. And so I refrained, deciding to pack lighter instead.

My week at The Fat Duck was a whirlwind of watching some of the world’s best cooks prepare some of the world’s best food.  The system of the Fat Duck is one with a million tiny little components; each job done with the up most care. From a perfectly centered sticker on a treat bag to vanilla beans cut into “cherry stems” with an exacto knife to cleaning and pureeing cases of parsley at a time, an army of stages was grease for  the machine of cooks who made Blumenthal’s recipes come alive. Near the end of the week, one such stage mentioned the discount we would receive on the book, and the offer to have Blumenthal personally autograph it. At a discount of 70 GBP($113), I forgot about the weight of the book and pre-paid for a copy. Unfortunately it was Saturday, and the office holding the books was closed. I left England on Monday, hoping to arrange a way to recieve my book. After weeks of mis-understandings and my reluctance to pay shipping fees, I sadly left Europe just as I had been when I arrived, without a copy. For the time being, it would simply be a sour note in my European experience story.

And then, this past October 2009, publishing house Bloomsbury decided to re-print a slightly smaller version of the book, presenting The Fat Duck Cookbook. With all the content of the original, at the reduced price of $50, it was like a gift from the cookbook gods. I finely managed to have my very own copy of the volume, albeit sans Blumenthal autograph. Never the less I was thrilled.

The Fat Duck Cookbook is all at once impressive, inspiring, and thought-provoking.  Beginning with an introduction by Harold McGee, a genius in his own rite, it is in essence three books: one covering the history of The Fat Duck and Blumenthal, one showcasing the recipes of the restaurant, and one explaining of the science used to create the innovative cuisine. The pages are dotted with bright, flashy drawings from artist Dave McKean and incredible photographs from Dominic Davies. It is a true introduction to the restaurant twice voted best in the world; flipping through its pages you can almost hear Blumenthal’s voice, smell the foods, touch the plates.

For a true gourmand, the details of the beginnings of this unconventional chef and his three-star Michelin restaurant are captivating. A young boy growing up in middle-class England, Blumenthal describes how his early interest in food led to a job trimming large piles of green beans to transforming a village pub into The Fat Duck. As a child, the self-taught chef poured through classic cookbooks, teaching himself technique and flavor. As an adult, he continued to look at books for the answers, only his questions became more complex. Sharing the experiences of building the restaurant, receiving Michelin stars and testing concepts beyond their conventional limits, Blumenthal’s first section of The Fat Duck Cookbook is a full of wonderful insight into the wizard of a chef and the restaurant he created.

Of course, their would be no history of The Fat Duck without the food. These are recipes that take months to develop in a special test kitchen at the restaurant. Reading through the recipes Blumenthal offers, you have the experience of sitting in the dining room and being personally served each dish by the chef himself. The minutia of detail and the thought process behind it is laid before you to enjoy. Every element of the experience is picked apart; from the flatware to accompanying sounds and smells, each is particularly chosen for the dish. Blumenthal explores every curiosity, testing sound, pairing an iPod playing ocean sounds with a sushi course; playing with temperatures, serving a half hot/half cold tea; and testing the mind, serving red jellies that taste like orange and orange jellies that taste like red beets. These may not be recipes you will whip up for Friday night dinner, but Blumenthal’s curiosity comes alive in the explanation of each; they sure are fun to read and understand.

The determined curiosity of Blumenthal is answered by combing science with food. The third section of his book explains the techniques, tools, and ingredients necessary for the scientific chef. Reading the theories of cookery, viewing the laboratory-like equipment, and reading about the chemicals Blumenthal uses, you can really understand the difference in approach this restaurant takes than most others in the world. The section ends with articles written by scientists throughout the world, reporting on the theories of flavor, smell, and taste.

Not only an autobiography of one of the world’s most innovative chefs and restaurants, a cookbook, and a scientific exploration, The Fat Duck Cookbook is also a beautiful piece of art, a mash-up of chef and style. Creative photographs place Blumenthal’s dishes in a mossy woods scene, a dry dessert, or a sky of fireworks. Colorful art swooshes in and out of the prose: a world of birds with human hands for heads and flying chefs is created in the text. Comic strip stories and the drawings of adult and child Blumenthal interspersed throughout the chapters show the chef can let loose and not take life too seriously.

While it may seem a cookbook for food geeks, anyone interested in the history of one of the worlds greatest restaurants, the rise and complexity of innovative cuisine, or simply a lavish, colorful book filled with beautiful photography and artwork, can appreciate The Fat Duck Cookbook. It’s a wonderful book to own, even if it merely sits on your coffee table as a means to spark conversation, and the story it tells is captivating. Totally worth all $250 for the original, this newer version puts it grasp of those on a budget, making it available for almost anyone. At that price, it should be on the shelf of every would-be chef, gastronome, and interested eye.

I’ve just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I’m a bit behind, as most people read this book when it was published in 2007. I could have done the same, when my mother gave a copy to both me and my sister that year as Christmas gifts. My sister had already jumped on the band wagon of reducing her carbon footprint, using recycled paper towels and changing all the light-bulbs in our house to energy saving ones, and she read the book almost as soon as she tore the wrapping paper off. As a student in culinary arts school, all I could think about was food, but my mind was far from the food system and I tossed the book aside. I was more concerned with how to de-bone a chicken then how it was grown, and as far as I knew, produce came off a truck, straight from the company our school bought it from.

After moving to California, my thoughts changed a bit. Tasting strawberries and tomatoes that lacked the starchy, cardboard substance of those found in East Coast grocery stores, I adopted a farmers market focus in my palate. I ate my first persimmons, chard, and fresh figs, purchased directly from the farmers who grew them, and I couldn’t get enough. Living on three years of California produce, I finally traveled to Europe to work on two organic farms, furthering my understanding of the importance of quality produce. After watching the documentary Food, Inc, I realized how this farmer focused produce fit into the picture of our food system. And how corn and soybean additives and government-subsidized, corporate agriculture should not. I changed my food ways, trying to buy goods from stores that supported local, sustainable companies and shopping more at the farmers market.

It wasn’t until I read the first few chapters of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, however, that I realized just how important knowing what you eat, where it comes from, and how it affects out food system, really is. The book tells the story of Barbara Kingsolver, who relocates her family from the dry and arid landscape of Arizona, to rural Appalachian Virginia. There, surrounded by a sprawling farm, the family of four embarks on a mission to eat only locally produced items, found within 150 miles of them, for one year. Throughout the prose of the Kingsolvers raising chicken and turkeys, gardening everything from apples to asparagus, and making bread, cheese, and pasta, is the literature that sticks in my mind: the why. The book tells why the family is growing their own food(because they can, and because food travels on average 1500 miles to get to your local store). It explains why the family raises their own turkeys(because almost extinct heritage varieties can reproduce on their own unlike the genetically modified grocery store version that must be fertilized with human help). And it answers why the family choose to do this at all(because living off of their land means growing vegetables in a way that nurtures their surroundings, creating products without additives). It’s enough to make you want to buy your own plot of land and start fresh.

One of Kingsolver’s main focuses is eating what is in season, because those of us who don’t have the luxury of our own farms must buy from the store or market. When you eat what is in season(i.e. tomatoes in July and August), it is likely the produce has been grown locally and not stored in electricity-draining refrigeration or shipped from a warmer climate. Asking your supplier, where and when the produce is grown is even better, as Kingsolver repeatedly discusses how most produce found in grocery stores nationwide is shipped hundreds of miles from California.

California. Where I am lucky enough to live. As much as I have focused on farmers markets and shopping sustainably, the fact of the matter is, I live in a state and a region, where I can find the best of the country’s produce available for the most amount of time. Produce that makes a New England farmer jealous. Right here, everyday, I can shop at one of the many Los Angeles farmers markets. Unlike other areas, most of the produce sold in California grocery stores is local, because it can be. And all this time, I’ve just been taking advantage of it. Shopping at stores who may not offer me local goods, buying produce with a blind eye.

And it’s almost over. As I close in on my last weeks in Los Angeles, reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I realize how spoiled I’ve been. While it may be only a few days, all I can do is make up for lost time and try to go local. This week I’ll eat only farmers market produce, buy my chicken and beef from local, sustainable producers, and make my own bread and cheese. In every way I can, I’ll buy local, sustainable products, savoring the fact that it is so easy to do in California.

What does going local really mean?It’s simply doing what you can to buy goods from people producing near you, shopping at farmers markets, and eating in-season produce. It may not be possible to do as the Kingsolver’s and move onto a rural farm to produce your own food, but you can grow your own herbs, buy local produce and meat from markets, and make many of your own products. Even in areas not as blessed with sunny weather as California, you can ask your grocery stores for local items, and buy more from these sections. Sustainable producers treat the land in a way the enriches minerals and keeps it healthy. These farmers grow heritage and heirloom varieties, not genetically modified produce and meats. They treat the land better, and in the process create better products. By supporting local, sustainable producers, you are helping the environment, eating better, and positively affecting our food system. So why not choose local?

Staring down at the October issue of Gourmet magazine, my heart is heavy with the knowledge that this is the second to last issue to be printed. The mega-publishing company Conde Nast announced this week that it will close Gourmet with the November issue, and sent its 180 employees, including famed editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, packing.

This is a move sure to sadden many food readers. First published in December 1940, Gourmet stood apart in food journalism. Reading its pages, full of award-winning writing and photography, was like slipping into a carefully planned foodie’s dream. Each issue told endearing stories of culture, taking readers to a farm in Italy, a beach in the Caribbean. Gourmet’s stories spoke of food history, told of the restaurants, chefs, and people who formed and changed the industry. The recipes that came out of the illustrious test kitchen were smart, creative, and inspiring. You never had to question if a recipe from Gourmet would work, it just did.

I first read Ruth Reichl’s memoir, Tender at the Bone, in high school, and I fell in love with Reichl’s charming, sophisticated food writing. She made me want to write about food. With each successive novel, I learned more about the woman and became more enthralled with food writing and working with Reichl. When she took over as Gourmet’s editor in 1999, she brought the charisma of her writing into the magazine. Reichl enhanced the face of the magazine, making it truly the front runner in food journalism. Each issue was a gift; there was always a story to fall into, a menu to dream about, a recipe I had to get into the kitchen and try. With the creation of gourmet.com in 2008, suddenly there was a definite online place for food information, with articles I could spend days reading. Gourmet could be trusted, unlike so many other publications and websites. It wore creditability like a crown.

The magazine was the forerunner of long form food journalism. Each issue contained intense, well researched, and thought out articles on the future of food, politics of the food industry, and seasonal recipes and ideas. Like a beacon of standards in the food writing sector, Gourmet’s pages never fell to the glitter of celebrity chefs, trends, or quickly written, poorly researched prose. It’s closure leaves a hole in food journalism that no other magazine has yet to fill. Conde Nast will focus their food coverage in their additional food magazine, Bon Appetit. Recipe and trend based, the magazine is full of pictures and light, casual articles. While Bon Appetit is necessity in the food world, it is not the behemoth of Gourmet.

In such troubling times, newspapers and magazines in every sector are facing the chopping block. Ad revenues, the stone upon which publications stand, have fallen by the wayside in the gloom of the recession. With periodicals being sold, turning to publishing exclusively online, and facing the chopping block completely, what is the future for publication and journalism? Online publication is instantaneous, can be quickly edited, changed, and updated. News can be reported around the clock; the front page of a newspaper can change its headlines hourly if need be. Still, holding an issue of Gourmet, circling recipes, feeling the print, means something to readers, doesn’t it? Are we heading too quickly to a time when print will cease to be? With the closure of Gourmet, and newspapers and magazines around the country, it looks that way. And this reader, for her part, is very sad about it.

With 2006’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan sets the tone for the way we eat, calling his readers to look at labels and understand what makes up our food. Three years later, the phrases organic, sustainable, and free-range have become more common place, and yet Food, Inc is still a startling, eye-opening look at the food industry, intended to show, not just tell, what the trouble is all about.

The movie asks the prime question “How much do we really know about the food we buy and eat?” Throughout the 93 minute film, journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan, and an array of farmers, meat producers, politicians, and citizens, shed light on that question. Scenes shift from unkempt chicken coops to employees struggling in unfair labor situations in slaughter houses; watching scenes of farmers who are left with little choice but to follow unsettling corporate policy, it is hard to not demand change.

Food, Inc insists that Americans are eating without thinking, and eating choices affect the environment, the food industry, politics and labor practices. The film discusses new strains of E.colli, caused by feeding cows corn(when they naturally feed on grass), which is spread into the water through their feces. It showcases the politics of subsidizing the corn industry and the dismay caused by patenting a crop and controlling individual farms. The film highlights the poor practices that arise when 80% of a market is controlled by four companies and details these companies’ unfair labor policies and treatment of employees.

Looking at the problems with the industry, Food, Inc also showcases farmers and companies who stand up to these practices. There is an insiders view of organic companies, sustainable farms, and farmers who stand up to corporations, even when it means loosing their jobs. The film emphasizes the burgeoning organic food industry, and promotes the men and woman who promote food safety.

In the end, the film asks it’s viewers to make choices about what they eat. While many people choose to shun fast food choices, they do not realize the meat they purchase from the supermarket is the same meat they would be eating at these chain restaurants. Colas and packaged goods packed full of preservatives and corn derivatives are supporting these industries, intentionally or not. The question is asked again, “What is in the food you eat?” Food, Inc’s answer is found in supporting local farmers markets, reading labels, buying locally, and eating at home more often. Food, Inc suggests these 10 simple things to change our food system.

This is a must see film, because changing the way we eat is not only important, it is imperative. With the state of our food industry, environment, and labor practices, this shocking film is sure to educate and change your mind about the way your eat and what you put on your plate.

]]> http://katherinesacks.com/2009/08/think-about-what-you-eat/feed/ 4 http://katherinesacks.com/2008/05/a-bite-of-eggplant/ http://katherinesacks.com/2008/05/a-bite-of-eggplant/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 06:21:35 +0000 Katherine Sacks http://lavitacucinare.wordpress.com/?p=220 A Bite of Eggplant

The thought of eating alone sits on the soul in a manner of ways. To some, it is a comfort. It may be a quiet time for mother to enjoy her own sublime cuisine, spent away from chicken fingers with ketchup. The gourmand may spend secret alone time devouring a guilty orange pleasure of microwave mac and cheese. For many, perhaps a Wall Street stock broker or a lonely mid-thirties career gal, the idea of eating alone means taking oneself out to lunch, spending money on good food and good wine. Others still find the idea repulsive; a schoolchild with few friends may spend as little time as possible eating lunch, not wishing to face seclusion. The solitary intake of food can be soothing, overwhelming, enjoyable, or even irritating. But no matter how one reacts to the event, dining alone is a simple fact of life. We have all, at one time or another, faced this necessity and reacted in a whole manner of ways.

As for me, dining alone is a bit of all of these things. On a cool night, all alone in my tiny apartment, I’m curled up in a blanket with a grilled PB&J, watching movies on the coach. A much needed day off is usually spent treating myself, sometimes to shopping or a movie, but almost always with a nice meal. Dressing up in fancy clothes and taking myself out for a date always makes me smile after long work weeks. And after a late night, chips, homemade salsa, and a beer is a great way to relax me down. I enjoy the quite time spent sitting at a table dining alone watching others around me, taking in the scene, and the lack of energy needed to eat tacos in front of the TV. Cooking for myself is usually simple but delicious, pasta or rice with salt, pepper, butter, fresh tomatoes. Sometimes a glass of white wine. When plans with friends fall through though, an unexpected dinner alone can turn into frustration and depression. A dinner date gone awry can make dinner for one downright miserable. Being alone in the kitchen indeed has it’s ups and downs.

These ups and downs of solo eating are chronicled in 2007’s collection of essays, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant. Included are essays from some of the best food writers, each with their own story to tell about the perils and joys of dinning alone. In each story, you connect with the author as they feel happiness, joy, indifference, depression, and despair over simply dining alone. I laughed with Phoebe Nobles as she conquered asparagus in “Asparagus Superheros,” all at once wishing to begin an asparagus only diet as she did. As Colin Harrison discussed his many options for going “Out to Lunch,” I imagined a solitary meal in the old New York haunts he visited. My salt and pepper white rice, paired well with Anneli Rufus’ “White-on-White Lunch for when no one is Looking.” I cried out for Haruki Murakami to eat something else as I read ” The Year of Spaghetti,” and I wished for love to be ditacted by potatoes as Nora Ephron suggests in “Potatoes and Love: Some Reflections.”

The book is a terrific read. Jenni Ferrari-Alder has brought together some powerful, insightfully humorous and touching essays on a subject that truly touches everyone. The essays connect with the reader and with each other, in many ways glorifying the art of eating alone, but also showcases it’s ability to bring out tears. Reading one, you may laugh out loud, and in the next few pages be flooded with sadness. Overall it is a book full of emotion, the very core of eating alone, and one that will, at the very least make you appreciate your last meal, solitary or not.

Food Snob n: A person whose slightly heightened gastronomic knowledge is in part thanks to reading The Food Snob’s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge by David Kamp and Marion Rosenfeld

I anxiously awaited my mail for a week. A package was to arrive, one that included a book sworn to be so informative and life changing I could hardly contain my excitement. Opening the small brown box from Amazon, I finally feasted my eyes upon the newest volume of culinary knowledge, one that would take me from merely an interested gourmand to the status of a true Food Snob. Turning back the pages of the tiny book, really no more a pamphlet of culinary facts than an encyclopedia of gastronomic knowledge, I quickly absorbed it’s mixture of random food trivia. Taking the book as seriously as say the authors, who jest not only at the odd facts but also at themselves for being the collectors of said facts, The Food Snob’s Dictionary is both informative and entertaining way to pass a few hours.

Traveling the alphabet, readers on their way to becoming Food Snob’s acquire a gastronomic education that spans cooking utensils, unusual produce, information about food celebrities and details about the highest quality producers. Some entries: Zest “The colored outer layer of the peel of a citrus fruit…” or Stone Fruit”…large pitted fruits…”are mainstream verbiage in this food obsessed day and age, making the Dictionary seem more an introductory guide for the culinary novice. The detailed descriptions of many of the world’s top culinary products and restaurant insider terminology argues otherwise. What true gourmand does not know the history and background of Berkshire pork(“Upmarket pork from purebred swine of British pedigree”) or Hudson Valley Foie Gras(“Upstate New York pioneer…manufacture of the traditionally French-made fattened-liver treat”). And doesn’t every line cook wear Bastad chef’s clogs and know that a Reefer is really a refrigerator. If they don’t, they certainly will after a quick study of The Food Snob’s Dictionary. The true gems of the Dictionary lay in the detailed descriptions of top influential culinary minds. Food Snob’s, if no one else, know that James Beard was not only the Buddha of twentieth-century American gastronomy but was widely known for his untidy personal life and that Washington DC pioneer chef Jean-Louis Palladin has poodle hair, comedy mustache, and Tootsie eyeglasses.

Finishing the Dictionary one can truly appreciate how vast culinary information is. Published in late 2007, the book already seems dated, although it’s sarcastic tone towards food snobs for whom the actual joy of eating and cooking is but a side dish to the accumulation of arcane knowledge about these subjects, allows at least this reader to relax slightly when faced with the overwhelming amount of knowledge the food worlds demands of its students. Written by David Kamp, the genius behind the very informative United States of Arugula, the book is at times almost laugh out loud funny while still succeeding to be educational. If only math text books could work the same way.

A Meal Fit for a Food Snob

Free-range Vegetarian-fed Egg Omlette with leeks, fingerling potatoes(pg 40), and Niman Ranch Bacon(pg 73) served with a salad of Wild Arugala, Raw milk(pg86) Buttermilk Blue Cheese, and Meyer Lemon( pg69)Vinaigrette

I first met Julia Child in the summer of 2002. I had just graduated high school and was headed to Philadelphia in the fall, where my culinary studies would begin at Drexel Univeristy. My mother, an ardent educator, introduced me into Julia’s kitchen and my eyes went wide. Peering at the piles of cookbooks and utensils, I daydreamed of the day when my kitchen walls would include the outline of where each individual pot and pan should hang apon it, just as Julia’s did. As my mother and I walked through the exhibit at the American History Musuem, showcasing the life and talent of this women, I thought there could be no greater lady. Later I found myself once again face to face with Julia as I began to Master[ing] the Art of French Cooking in my French Cuisine classes in culinary school. Just as Julia’s warmth had leapt from her kitchen, it now leapt from the pages of her book, teaching me the skills neccessary to create classic French cuisine. Although I never actually met the grand lady, her legacy was introduction enough.

In her final work, My Life in France, is a further introduction to Julia and to the grand life she led. Her story begins in the early 1950’s, as Julia moves with her husband, Paul Child, to what she refers to as la belle France. Julia begins her love affair with France and with food, and the book is a whirlwind of the world of Julia’s tastes, sights, and feelings. Reading about her first bites of French cuisine in Rouen is almost comical. That the woman who brought French cuisine to the American cook may have at one point not known a shallot or had a taste for oysters seems absurd, but tasting it for the first time with Julia, the reader sees where this lady’s passion began. The book bounds through her true gastronmic journey, as she studied at Le Courdon Bleu and taught herself  how to really think and cook like a Frenchman. Her drive and unfailling ability to educate herself in any culinary feat is inspiring, and will be sure to get anyone, from the well seasoned chef to those who have never cooked before, into the kitchen.

My Life in France is a journey thourgh the Child’s life but also throughout Euope and the US. Traveling with the Julia and Paul from Paris, to Marseille, to Germany and back to the US, the reader is taught some of the great food lessons Julia had to teach herself. Learning to  cook fish on the Mediterranean, making pie dough and working out the differences in American and French flour, and recreating the atmosphere for baking French bread, the reader is included on many of the trials and tribulations Julia faced in research for her books and in learning her grande cuisine. A rigid and detailed writer, Julia’s acheievements are all the more admirable, as the reader understands with what degree the time and care that went into each of her books, television programs, and recpies.

A memior above all else, My Life in France, is emmaculate in detail, charming, and full of life. Julia recalls dates, times, places, and people in a way that allows the reader to experience them first hand. The reader is transported to a market in Paris buying rabbit or to Provence for dinner with James Beard. A truly grand story of a truly grand lady, the relationships she held most dear are illuminated in the prose. The book is the story of her love affair with Paul Child, who took pictures of Julia de-boning chickens and helped create the books she came to love and the life she led. It tells of Simone Beck, her French sister and co-author, with whom she battled about recipes and created a great masterpeice of a book. Julia’s story is that of her reltaionshop with James Beard, and with famous French food writer Curnonsky, and the many farmers, chef’s, and people who Julia touched and who touched Julia along the way. This prose is one that is enlightening, full of warm, heart felt stories about food and life, and it is a great hit. Although I have never truly met Julia Child, this book makes me feel one giant step closer to feeling as though I have.

My Life in France

Roland Mesnier, a tall, round French man, is in person a truly jovial sort, and the pleasant energy he carries comes across in the pages of his book. His rags to riches story is just as interesting, if not more so, as the time he spent creating elaborately plated desserts for the world’s leaders. There is a certain romanticism about Mesnier’s early childhood, growing up in the Comte region of France and entering his apprenticeship at age 14, to learn pastry arts like his brother. Reading about the Old World way, where a young pastry cook is taught by his chef in return for housing and a promise of work, Mesnier makes me feel a nostalgia for something I never knew myself. And he brings you along as he continues to learn and grow in some of the great hotels, from London’s Savoy to the Princess in Bermuda. His story is one to admire.

Mesnier’s story comes to America as his experience as a chef in Virginia, at the Homestead, and then he begins the tale of the Presidential sweets. For the second half of the book the focus shifts away from Mesnier and details vividly the First Families, their distinct idiosyncrasies towards the ending of the meal, and the many galas, parties, and dinners Mesnier was responsible for creating elaborately constructed desserts for. He shares with the reader his personal experience of the 25 years he spent as White House pastry chef, from creating birthday cakes for many members of five different First Families to tearing away chocolate chip cookies from allergic Bill Clinton.

As the story turns to tales of White House desserts, parties, and treats, the focus becomes slightly cloudy. In many sections, Mesnier jumps from one idea to the next in an almost irrational manner, so that in one sentence you are reading about Hilary Clinton’s team of women, coined Hillaryland, and in the next about an orange sorbet Mesnier molded for a state dinner. The facts are quite interesting, but often the ordering and way in which they are presented makes the book become a hard read.

“All the President’s Pastries,” ends quite nicely, with Roland Mesnier returning from retirement to help out the White House once more. The book tells a truly interesting story about an the life of an interesting chef and the lives of five of our nations First Families. The pastries and desserts that Mesnier created at the White House are captivating, both in prose as well as the pictures included throughout the book. “All the President’s Pastries,” proves another good read.

All The President’s Pastries