This was a unique way to write a food book. It's a Soviet food history told from the perspective of the cooks. There is a little about the cook of theThis was a unique way to write a food book. It's a Soviet food history told from the perspective of the cooks. There is a little about the cook of the last tsar and about cooks of the leadership in the post-Soviet era, but it's 95% USSR. There are a couple of recipes, but it's way not a cookbook and the recipes are mostly things that you wouldn't want to eat. Most of the featured cooks are professionals, but not all of them. Some of them cook for the great leaders or for the cosmonauts for other important people, but we also get army cooks and small restaurant cooks and a cook at a cafe for the Chernobyl cleanup team. They are all essentially simple people whose lives revolve around their food. And then there are excursions away from the cooks' stories into stories about times when food was scarce - the siege of Leningrad and before that the mass starvation in Ukraine known as the Holodomor. It could almost be written by Svetlana Alexievich or, if it had been more positive about the Soviets, it could have been a work of Socialist Realism in that its main characters are all common people who are heroes of labor in an ensemble story. It certainly gave me a new perspective on the Soviets and their food. I loved it....more
I have enjoyed Michael Pollan's books ever since I discovered The Omnivore's Dilemma in a university bookstore on my college trip with my oldest daughI have enjoyed Michael Pollan's books ever since I discovered The Omnivore's Dilemma in a university bookstore on my college trip with my oldest daughter many years ago. He writes well. He is thoughtful. He writes about things that are close to home for all of us but are often overlooked. He cares about people and the planet. Whenever I read his books, I feel that I come away better for the experience, even when he is telling me things that I already know. It's hard to ask for more than that.
This one is more of the same, but in the case of Mr. Pollan, that's a recommendation, not a criticism. What he writes bears repeating. His opening line sums up the whole book beautifully, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." You could stop there, but don't because his elaboration of this theme over the rest of the book is well worth the time of reading.
I'm not prepared to completely give up meat, not even to reduce to the levels that Mr. Pollan suggests, but I could certainly take a further step back from it. I don't think that we can afford to abandon the wonders of the green revolution in farming that has been enabled by mechanization and chemical fertilizers, though we definitely need to curb a lot of abuses in industrial farming and to consider tradeoffs between cost reduction and high yields, on the one hand, and healthy eating of good food that will help us to flourish, on the other. I'm also not prepared to completely abandon my ultra processed foods. Convenience and those wonderful oily, salty (or sugary) and junky tastes are too good to abandon entirely, but, again, scaling back is in order. If you were to look carefully and analytically at the footprint my eating leaves on the environment and the net of what makes its way into my body through my mouth, I'm sure that the conclusions would be appalling and that they would only be a little better if my program of moderation were to be put into action. Sigh. In too many ways I'm just another spoiled and privileged first world rich person who is incapable of true change. But even a baby step in the right direction is better than no step at all....more
I'm not in the main target audience for this book. I have a generally healthy relationship with food, and I have only consciously dieted a few times iI'm not in the main target audience for this book. I have a generally healthy relationship with food, and I have only consciously dieted a few times in my life. I learned a long time ago not to make moral judgments of myself based on what I did or did not eat. Still, there are plenty of areas in which I could improve my eating behavior. I give myself servings that are more generous than necessary. I eat too often by myself. I have an addictive need to keep eating once I have started, and I don't make a habit of stopping when I am full. So there was lots of good material for me here that could be a basis for improving my eating habits.
Everything in this book made good sense to me. I kept telling myself as I read that I already knew all of it, but I also know from long experience that that is only one of the mental tricks my brain plays on me to get me to accept good advice despite my stubborn tendency to reject everything that I did not come up with on my own....more
I like to read while I eat, though it probably makes my eating less than the optimal experience it might be if I wasn't distracted by the reading. On I like to read while I eat, though it probably makes my eating less than the optimal experience it might be if I wasn't distracted by the reading. On the other hand, I try hard not to eat while I read. Sitting on the couch with a book while I snack is a recipe for overeating unhealthy foods.
Musing about eating and reading was an interesting idea for a book. I liked Mr. Garner's omnivorous tastes in both books and food. He likes the fine quality items in both arenas, but does not shy away from the pleasures of junk. I also liked his Southern voice. It felt like home to me.
But in the end, this book is just an endless compendium of bits and pieces of books that deal with food and eating. It must have taken a ton of research to find and organize all of this material. But in the end, the overall effect is very light weight. It was tasty, but not nutritious....more
I halfway knew most of the information in this book already - how bananas are our most popular fruit, how all commercial bananas are clones of each otI halfway knew most of the information in this book already - how bananas are our most popular fruit, how all commercial bananas are clones of each other so that they are remarkably uniform and susceptible to disease, how a fungal disease threatens to gradually wipe out all existing commerical banana plants, and the long history of bananas as a vector for colonialism and oppression, the story of Yankee Imperialism and Banana Republics. But in addition to reenforcing my background knowledge, this book provided a wealth of detail and additional information that I did not have, and it is all presented in an engaging, informative style.
It will be interesting to see if there is a change in my lifetime to a totally new type of commercial banana. More likely the change will only be to a GMO hybrid that is almost entirely the same as current bananas, but is fungus resistant. Whatever you think of GMOs, bananas seem to present an opportunity where GMO technology can be usefully and safely applied. Since bananas already only can multiply through asexual cloning, the GMO plants don't present the same risk of getting out into the wild that some people fear with corn, soy and other food crops raised from seed....more
The modern supermarket is a wonder of convenience and choice with thousands of items at reasonable prices. It's great. It would be terrible to lose itThe modern supermarket is a wonder of convenience and choice with thousands of items at reasonable prices. It's great. It would be terrible to lose it. But it takes a lot of bad practices to get that food to the retail shelf, with oppression, exploitation and unhealthy practices up and down the supply chain. It's not about food so much as it is about food products. Moving the stuff in and out. Driving sales with a lot of marketing and focusing more on appearance than substance. And short of growing your own food, which isn't a practical alternative for most of us, there is very little that you can do about it. We can choose to not eat the worst junk food, but there really isn't any way for individul consumers to do anything about sourcing. Most food items that are labeled as being organic or ethically sourced are not, and the small part of the population that is willing and able to pay more for ethical sourcing isn't a big enough part of the market to drive it. We all have to eat, and most people need to eat inexpensively to stay within their family budgets. It's a bit depressing. Maybe it's better to try to get more of my food from farmers' markets and avoid the supermarkets, but I'm sure that farmer's market foods have their issues too....more
This is an easy fun read, and I learned a few things. Most of us already know the broad outlines of what is presented here - the invention of the modeThis is an easy fun read, and I learned a few things. Most of us already know the broad outlines of what is presented here - the invention of the modern restaurant in Paris, the long enduring equation of fine dining with French cuisine, the growth of the restaurant business in the United States, particularly in New York and then its spread across the country, the development of clean, predictable chain restaurants targeted at women and families, the growth of ethnic restaurants, and then modern trends such as local ingredients, farm to table, celebrity chefs and molecular gastronomy.
It's certainly possible to question the choice of the ten restaurants featured here. When I named them for my wife, she immediately came up with two other important trendsetting restaurants that were not on the list. It would have been possible to tell an equally true and compelling story of American restaurants with a completely different list, but I didn't feel that there was any omission so glaring that it made the story materially incomplete.
Mr. Freedman's strongest point is that none of the restaurants that he describes are true exemplars of the kind of cuisine that they purport to serve. Every American French, Italian or Chinese restaurant is always before all else an American restaurant and can never be fully authentic, first because the locally available ingredients are always different, but also because local customer tastes are different, because the commercial requirements of every town and every business are different from one another and most importantly because every successful restauranteur has his or her own individual style. This is actually a great thing because it produces innovation and excellence....more
A few years ago I read another Bourdain book and remember liking it. I think it was A Cook's Tour. And I have seen Bourdain on TV. He was definitely aA few years ago I read another Bourdain book and remember liking it. I think it was A Cook's Tour. And I have seen Bourdain on TV. He was definitely an amusing guy. But this didn't fully prepare me for his best known book, Kitchen Confidential. It's not just the fun characters and the outrageous expose of the restaurant business, with more restaurant shockers than I remember in a cooking book since reading Orwell's Down and Out in Paris In London (which, by the way, Mr. Bourdain cites as a classic restaurant book). The thing that really makes this book sing is Bourdain's writing style. He was good. He wrote with a rat-a-tat-tat machine gun style that drives forward relentlessly like a bulldog on crystal meth. It's like Saul Bellow in The Adventures of Augie March or Hunter Thompson or William Burroughs (he also cites Thompson and Burroughs as writers he likes) or an Oliver Stone movie, but in this case almost more than in the works of those others, the style is perfect for Mr. Bourdain's personality and subject matter. His take on the restaurant business is that it is a hard driving non-stop affair that pushes you until you collapse, and it's pretty clear that's the way that he lived and would probably have lived even if he had chosen another career. This one is worth reading....more
It was very interesting to learn more about how the ancient Greeks cooked and ate.
The book starts, as you would expect, with Homer, and suggests thatIt was very interesting to learn more about how the ancient Greeks cooked and ate.
The book starts, as you would expect, with Homer, and suggests that the society depicted in The Odyssey may be much later than The Iliad, because in The Iliad, all of the eating is simple roast meats whereas in The Odyssey, there are feasts with a variety of foods eaten by people reclining on couches. Ms. Ricotti tantalizes us with this thought without further analysis or explanation, but I was fine with that, as this is a book about food, not literature.
The first half of the book is a history of Greek eating -- the style, customs and foods of the banquet table and some information about what went into simpler meals. There was a very heavy emphasis on meat. Seafood, fruits, vegetables and sweets were eaten, but they were a secondary part of the cuisine. The style of the banquets was to serve one dish after another, with the guests sampling each and then leaving the rest for the slaves. It was a sort of potlatch culture, which sometimes also included extravagant gifts from the host to his guests. Each of the city states had its own distinctive food stylings, though from the descriptions, the main cities had mostly bad food. In Athens they had meals made up of many unnourishing tidbits; as you would expect, Sparta was worse with crude unappetizing mandatory communal meals; Thebes was worst of all because the Thebans were so cheap. Ms. Ricotti had to go to the Greek colonies in Italy to find a food style that she could praise.
The second half of the book was the recipes. It was good to read them because they gave a sense of what the food was like that the descriptions of foods and dining culture in the first half of the book could not match. The foods were cooked in a variety of styles -- roasting, boiling, frying and baking. There were seasonings and ingredients for flavoring, but mostly they were very simple - bay leaves, coriander, parsley, onion, celery, carrots. There was much use of vinegar, garum (fish sauce) and olive oil, but surprisingly little use of wine as a recipe ingredient. Organ meats were popular. I could see myself eating almost all of the recipes, but not a single one stuck out for me enough to make me want to try it.
Ancient Greek cuisine was the main basis for Roman cuisine, which gave birth in turn to the cuisines of France and Italy. It's not hard to see some of the basics of French and Italian cooking in these recipes and to see the beginnings of an appreciation for fine cooking and eating, but we have come a long way in terms of ingredients, sauces and inventiveness in food. I am much happier eating contemporary foods than I would be if I were relegated to eating the foods described here....more
Some of this book was fascinating. I was very interested to learn about how people develop their taste in food as young children and the strategies foSome of this book was fascinating. I was very interested to learn about how people develop their taste in food as young children and the strategies for imparting healthy eating habits to at an early age. It made a lot of sense. I was also interested in some of the later material about how adults can change what they like to eat to refocus onto a more healthy diet at any age, even if they developed bad eating habits as children. But there was a lot of material in the middle about junk food and eating disorders that I just didn't care about. And the author's overall tone felt to me like a fussy English lady from fifty years ago -- very nice and well meaning but I'd roll my eyes and make an excuse if she invited me over for tea, even if I liked her scones....more
This book puts forth the interesting proposition that all of the new high tech foods that are being developed under the banner of helping the environmThis book puts forth the interesting proposition that all of the new high tech foods that are being developed under the banner of helping the environment and making us more healthy are often just another form of highly processed pseudo food that may be no better for our bodies or our planet than a Dorito. The book gives us a grand tour of all of the different kinds of high tech health foods from algae, fungus and soy derivatives to artificial milk, Impossible Burgers, Beyond Meat and cultured meat. It also covers topics such as vertical farms and recycling of waste food. Sometimes the ingredients are suspect. Sometimes these products are too expensive and can't scale. Sometimes things that are good ideas on a small scale may have hygiene risks and environmental damage when scaled up to mass production, so that what seemed like a promise of progress may become a curse. And in every case there is a doubt as to whether these products really are nutritionally equivalent to natural foods, which have qualities that may never be matched by a brew of isolated and purified proteins supplemented with vitamins and minerals. It does make you pause. Maybe we are better served by just trying reduce the impact of industrial farming and rejiggering our diets to cut back on meat without eliminating it. But I think that the right takeaway from this book is not that high tech foods are bad, just that they are not the Holy Grail and that we need to proceed with caution, not counting on them replace our current foods but only to supplement them....more
As a layman, I really don't know what to make of nutrition science. It is nearly impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. I suspect that Ms. TAs a layman, I really don't know what to make of nutrition science. It is nearly impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. I suspect that Ms. Teicholz is probably right in telling us that the received wisdom about low fat diets was never all that sound and that meat and animal fat are probably not as bad for us as we have been told for years. But this book is also very clearly an advocacy piece written by a journalist with a strong point of view, so I hesitate to completely buy into all that she says, no matter how persuasive it sounds. It seems that the only sane choice is to focus on eating a variety of foods, all in moderation. And it has to be better for our bodies to eat mostly fresh unprocessed foods. I love to eat so I'm never going to cut back to severely limited calorie intake or flavorless foods. As the king of self-justifying philosophers, this approach lets me eat the way I wanted to anyway, so it makes me happy regardless of what the experts say....more
Mr. Paarlberg makes some important points that I believe are essentially correct. As much as we may like to bash agricultural science and large scale Mr. Paarlberg makes some important points that I believe are essentially correct. As much as we may like to bash agricultural science and large scale commercial farming, they have brought us an unprecedented bounty of food so that today we feed more people in the world better than we have ever done in history. If we were to go back to the ways of the past or to mandate widespread organic farming or implement some of the other parts of the progressive agenda for agriculture, the result would be less food, higher prices and a greater negative impact on the planet. And the people who would suffer the most would be the poor. What we need to do is to keep implementing the science better to continue to improve yields and quality, to spread these benefits to parts of the world where old methods are still followed and hunger is still a problem and to keeping finding more ways to reduce the environmental impact of farming. Mr. Paarlberg acknowledges some of the problems of industrial agriculture - runoff, carbon emissions, unequal benefits for the rich, and the end of the cherished (but hard) way of life of the small scale family farmer, but I agree with him that trying to turn back the clock isn't the answer. I'm fine with GMOs though I do think that they need to be regulated. I like to buy and eat organic locally grown foods, but I agree that they aren't ever going to be the way to feed the world. And I'm frustrated when compassionate smart people who I usually agree with take unscientific positions that, if realized, may do more harm than good to the people who they champion.
I don't agree with everything that Mr. Paarlberg says. I think that he makes the proponents of local foods and organic farming and the opponents of GMOs look dumber than most of them really are. He takes their worst arguments as if they were their best and then knocks them down with ease. I guess it's a legitimate technique of persuasive writing, but not quite as even handed as it purports to be.
In the end Mr. Paarlberg's heart is mostly in the right place. He does care about the poor, the environment and animal welfare, and he makes a good case that people who share those values should support large scale scientific agriculture....more
I confess to a long fascination with Central Asia that I think arose from looking at maps when I was young. What could exist in this huge place in theI confess to a long fascination with Central Asia that I think arose from looking at maps when I was young. What could exist in this huge place in the middle of the world's biggest continent with all of those places with wonderful funky "stan" names? Endless steppe, monstrously big mountains and a brutal continental climate. And who could the inhabitants be with such cool national names? Uzbek, Tadjik, Kyrgyz and Kazakh. And then there are the great cities of the Silk Road - Samarkand, Tashkent, Bukhara, centers of trade and Islamic learning going back to before the time of Marco Polo. What are they like today? All of the answers can be found here.
The book is a mix of travel and cooking. Caroline Eden takes us from ancient cities to modern ones, from great natural beauty to post Soviet ecological ruin. Everywhere she goes she finds kind people, good food and something good to say about the place, even the most desolate and boring places that most people would dismiss out of hand. For me her visit to an evening feast at a mosque during Ramadan was the highlight of the book, but there are plenty of other scenes that are nearly as good. She has the most wonderful authorial point of view for this kind of book, being curious, appreciative and able to find the good in everyone and everything. I want to be her friend and travel with her.
The recipes look super good and relatively easy. They are just different enough from familiar foods to be exotically enticing. Only a few have unobtainable local ingredients and for those she kindly suggests substitutes. It would take a few months to cook your way through the foods that she offers up.
Finally, I have to comment on the physical construction of the book. It is beautifully made. It has a nice cover design and sturdy binding, high quality paper and printing in an appealing typeface. The book is filled with beautifully printed pictures in a contemporary layout, with no captions so that you are forced to make your own connections between the text and the images, which deepens the connection between the two. If every physical book could be this beautiful, I would abandon ebooks and go back to print and paper for all of my reading....more
There is a lot in this book that I agree with and like. We don't often think of the damage that agriculture causes to the planet, how it contributes tThere is a lot in this book that I agree with and like. We don't often think of the damage that agriculture causes to the planet, how it contributes to global warming, the destruction of ecosystems, the extinction of species and its own eventual demise. A vegetarian diet, particularly one heavy in carbohydrates, contributes to this problem as much or more than a diet that includes meat. We all know that most vegetarian diets are nutritonally incomplete, but we don't think about the extent of damage that this incompleteness can cause or how the general health of the population is brought down by high levels of carbohydrate consumption. And I agree with the author that the good fight is better fought by opposing factory agriculture as it is currently practiced and championing sustainable farming than in becoming vegan. So there is much to agree with here, though I suspect that there may also be much to disagree with. It's good to question received wisdom about eating -- lowering consumption of saturated fats is not necessarily the key to good health, but I felt that there was a lack of balance. The book was too much of a crusade. The tone of the author's voice was a rant. It made me trust the conclusions less....more
Nothing too much new here. The book covers GMO food, the impact of climate change, high tech agriculture, agricultural robots, vertical farming, artifNothing too much new here. The book covers GMO food, the impact of climate change, high tech agriculture, agricultural robots, vertical farming, artificial meat, sustainable farming, reducing food waste, etc. I have read it all before in other books that covered the same topics better. The author has a philosophy of optimism that cautiously favors technology. It's a stance that I generally agree with, but I wish that she had had more new things to say or at least a perspective that I had not previously considered....more
As a Kentuckian, I feel a patriotic obligation toward Bourbon. I have certainly drunk more than my share of Maker's Mark, Early Times and many other bAs a Kentuckian, I feel a patriotic obligation toward Bourbon. I have certainly drunk more than my share of Maker's Mark, Early Times and many other brands, good and bad, but I quit drinking 16 years ago, so I missed out on the resurgence of Bourbon's popularity and my current commitment to the drink of my home state is only in the abstract.
I already knew a lot of the material that was presented here, but it was a fun refresher course that made me think of home. I was most interested to learn that Jack Daniel learned the art of distilling from a black man and that many of the historic names of Boubon brands are later day marketing inventions. I was also interested in Albala's prediction that Bourbon is now at its peak and will likely go into a downswing as we move into whatever the next trend is in eating and drinking.
I would have enjoyed something a little more in depth than what was presented here, but I guess the point of Audible Originals is to present material with a "lite" touch -- something more than documentary film, but less than a real book. That's not the best format for me, but as a freebie add on to my Audible subscription, I can't complain....more
I mostly try to stay away from books by journalists these days, but Michael Pollan is an exception. I always enjoy his books. He has a very engaging sI mostly try to stay away from books by journalists these days, but Michael Pollan is an exception. I always enjoy his books. He has a very engaging style, and food is a topic about which he can write with authority without years of specialized education and study. This short Audible Originals production continues in the same vein as Cooked and Omnivore's Dilemma, this time dealing with coffee and its principal active ingredient, caffeine. There are a lot of interesting tidbits, like that bees are more attracted to floweres with caffeine in their nectar, and a big takeaway, which is that the one major health concern about caffeine is that it disrupts sleep patterns, which doesn't sound so bad until you realize that poor sleep can contribute to Alzheimer's and take years off your life. It makes me think about cutting back, but as an acknowledged caffeine addict, I doubt that I will be doing that....more
This curious volume is one of the most famous food books ever written, and I found that it deserves its reputation. The only book that I can think of This curious volume is one of the most famous food books ever written, and I found that it deserves its reputation. The only book that I can think of as being even vaguely similar is The Compleat Angler.
The Physiology of Taste is a mishmash of style and purpose, combining science and pseudoscience about food and eating with anecdotes, recipes and social commentary. It is all great fun, and in a weird way hangs together as a cohesive whole. There is much here that is wise and well observed, but also a heaping helping of nonsense, which is served up to us with the same utter conviction of rightness as the wise parts of the book. Sometimes it is hard to know which is which, so the book is perhaps better viewed as a source for amusement than information, at least insofar as it purports to be scientific. It is safer to take Brillat-Savarin seriously when he speaks or matters of society, taste and food appreciation.
The book has many wonderful aphorisms, which is a hard compliment to wring out of me, as I generally have a strong distaste for aphorism. By far my favorite comes near the beginning, when Brillat-Savarin tells us that "A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye." Indeed!...more
I have a lot of cookbooks, but I mostly just use them for cooking, not reading. When I received this book as a gift, I started by browsing the recipesI have a lot of cookbooks, but I mostly just use them for cooking, not reading. When I received this book as a gift, I started by browsing the recipes, and had an initial reaction that it was nothing more than a bunch of faux Indian/American fusion dishes that would not interest me, but then I started reading the introductory patter that accompanies each recipe, and I fell in love with Priya Krisha. She has a lively, fun authorial voice. I want her to come over to my house and cook with me and then have dinner with my family. So this set me off on a journey of reading the entire book, cover to cover, loving the illustrations and design of the physical book and getting to know Priya's family. I don't think that I am going to start reading all of my cookbooks this way, but this one was worth the effort. The next time I decide to cook Indian food, I'm still more likely to grab Pushpesh Pant than Priya Krishna, but I did get well past my inital aversion to the recipes and found more than one that I want to get around to trying. I also came to appreciate the advice on combining flavors in Indian dishes, which may be more useful for me in the long run than any of the specfic dishes....more
Loading...
