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NonfictionHistoryFood & DrinkCultural History

Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World

Review by Jessica Wakeman

It may seem impossible to ascertain what fish sauce, cardboard and volcanoes have in common, but as Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World: A History reveals, the answer is, well . . . tomatoes.

Author William Alexander takes readers on a world tour through history, from the tomato’s regional origins in Mexico to its ubiquity in the present day. (Thanks to pizza, the tomato is now the most famous fruit in the world.) Much of each chapter relies on historical research, even as Alexander frequently questions the veracity of what he uncovered during said research; after all, everyone wants to be celebrated for having invented some of the world’s favorite foods. But Ten Tomatoes is also a travelogue of sorts, as Alexander visits important locations from the tomato’s history, especially Italy, and enjoys many culinary experiences firsthand.

Alexander’s playful sense of humor—perhaps best described as “dad jokes about vegetables”—makes Ten Tomatoes a delight to read. It’s this humor that takes a range of disparate and unexpected topics, such as legends about who first brought tomatoes to North America and rumors that circulated during the 1800s cholera epidemic, and makes them equally digestible. (Yes, that was a tomato pun.)

However, Ten Tomatoes isn’t just filled with tidbits that will help readers dominate at pub trivia night (especially if “pasta” or “ketchup” are categories). More broadly, the book proves that food history isn’t a niche topic. Through entertaining stories and fun facts, Alexander shows how culinary decisions have often been made based on the politics or business interests of the day, rather than anything to do with flavor or health. Taken all together, this book about the history of this beloved fruit (or vegetable—it’s debatable!) is endlessly surprising.

With a combination of offbeat history, travelogue and dad jokes, William Alexander takes readers through the endlessly surprising history of the tomato.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooksBody, Mind & Spirit

Lifestyles: May 2022

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ Wild Witchcraft

A while back I let my social network know I was interested in learning more about magic, herbalism, astrology and the like. It felt naive to group these things together, but I’ve since discovered there’s more than a little overlap. In Wild Witchcraft, North Carolina-based forager-witch Rebecca Beyer provides a well-researched history of European witchcraft and American folk healing practices, followed by a solid introduction to growing and foraging healing herbs. Readers learn how to use herbs in rituals and remedies and in harmony with the Wheel of the Year, a series of seasonal observances including the fall and spring equinoxes. Beyer covers much ground efficiently and makes a strong case for why these practices are especially necessary now. Amid rapid and cataclysmic climate change, “inspiring people to see value in plants and ecosystems can help to preserve them,” she writes, and “combat the total divorce of humans from their fellow animal, vegetable, and mineral kin.”

Booze & Vinyl 2

During the COVID-19 pandemic, vinyl record sales outnumbered those of CDs for the first time since the 1980s. This vinyl renaissance presents a timely backdrop for Booze & Vinyl 2, which builds on the genius of sister-and-brother duo André and Tenaya Darlington’s 2018 volume of album and craft cocktail pairings, Booze & Vinyl. How about a glow-in-the-dark vodka tonic paired with Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine or a moonshine-based sipper with Van Morrison’s Moondance? Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstong get a “Silver Fizz” to match Ella’s “silvery voice,” and citrus meets prosecco and brandy for two drinks inspired by Beyoncé’s Lemonade. There are even a few themed appetizers, such as “Deeez Nuuuts” for munching while spinning Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. The design freak in me loves how the book’s aesthetic shifts with each album, each turn of the page setting a vibe. Dim the lights, drop the needle and sip to the sounds. 

My America

In My America: Recipes From a Young Black Chef, a follow-up to his 2019 memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, James Beard Award winner Kwame Onwuachi filters the cuisine of the African diaspora through the lens of his family, his travels and peripatetic childhood, and the journeys of his ancestors. As Onwuachi notes, a close look at the cuisines of the American South, the Caribbean and Nigeria reveals many common threads and flavor echoes—from the jambalaya of Louisiana to the jollof of Nigeria. Black food tells a story—from groundnut stew and callaloo to crawfish pie and baby back ribs—and the recipes collected here tell it powerfully.

Reconnect to food, music and nature with this month’s best new lifestyles titles.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

The 5 best cookbooks to help you eat, drink and be merry

Feature by Susannah Felts

New Native Kitchen

Perfect gift for: Your foodie spouse who loves gardening and open-fire grilling

In New Native Kitchen, Navajo chef Freddie Bitsoie, previously of the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, celebrates the cuisines of Indigenous cultures while respecting and revering “hyperlocal” regional distinctions in these foodways and traditions. Bitsoie, who came to cooking via cultural anthropology and art history, aims to tell “edible stories that allow people to appreciate the living artifact of food.” Here, with the help of James Beard Award-winning author James O. Fraioli, Bitsoie introduces readers to key elements of the Native pantry, such as nopales (cactus paddles), Navajo steam corn, sumac powder and tepary beans, many of which can be ordered online or found at specialty spice shops. From a sumac Navajo leg of lamb with onion sauce, to a Makah crab boil, to Choctaw bison chili, Bitsoie covers the vast North American continent and its islands in this important book.

★ Wild Sweetness

Perfect gift for: Your boho friend with a shortbread obsession

With full-page photographs of winter branches, gently wilting roses and foggy ponds, Thalia Ho’s Wild Sweetness is as much a moody evocation of nature’s evanescence as it is a sumptuous celebration of dessert. Grouped by season, the recipes range from comfy American standards like cinnamon buns and gingersnaps to frangipane tart and a fig clove fregolotta. All possess a delicate quality and some flower, spice or other ingredient redolent of the natural world. Cream seems a visual motif, showing up, for example, in a juniper ice cream, a frosted chamomile tea cake, a lemon curd streusel cake and amaretti. But deep, dark chocolate is at play too—in ganache thumbprints, drunken fig brownies and a beetroot mud cake, among others sheer delights.

À Table

Perfect gift for: The hip newlyweds next door with the adorable dog

Is anything sexier than a good French cookbook? Rebekah Peppler’s À Table reveals and revels in the charms of long, casual French dinners with friends, and Peppler leads with blithe wit as she shares a modern take on entertaining. (She won me over instantly with the words “Hemingway was a supreme ass” in a recipe for Chambéry cassis, an aperitif.) Women are at the center of Peppler’s vision, one in which we dispense with yesteryear’s formalities in favor of long, carefree nights of smart conversation, mismatched plates and zero pretension. Ouais, cherie. On to olives with saucisson and roast chicken with prunes! On to daube de boeuf and (vegan!) French onion soup with cognac! You’ll love the mellow-but-decadent vibe, even if you feel un petit peu jalouse of Peppler’s Parisian coterie.

★ Black Food

Perfect gift for: Cultural mavens, globetrotters and aesthetes

Chef and Vegetable Kingdom author Bryant Terry assembles a large all-star team for his glorious new Black Food, “a communal shrine to the shared culinary histories of the African diaspora.” I love this trend of cookbooks that are so openly ambitious, with essays and poetry, visual art and historical context, all of it standing strong alongside the food. Structured by themes such as motherland; Black women, food and power; and Black, queer, food—each with a corresponding playlist—this vibrant, immersive book pulls from many foodways and regions of the globe, with Black chefs, intellectuals and tastemakers leading the way. We encounter dishes as diverse as Somali lamb stew, Bajan fish cakes, Ghanaian crepe cake, vegan black-eyed pea beignets and, at last, for the perfect finish, Edna Lewis’ fresh peach cobbler. Terry also shares a recipe for Pili Pili oil, which adds an herbaceous, spicy kick to anything you drizzle it over.

Tables & Spreads

Perfect gift for: Your sister-in-law who loves to host and is always leveling up

I am not a big entertainer, but I love a good snack-meal. And there’s something delightful about artfully arranging a table full of nibbles for guests: curious cheeses, spiced nuts, tangy jams, decadent dips and a handful of rosemary sprigs plucked from the garden. Whether this sounds fun, anxiety-producing or a bit of both, Tables & Spreads is here to help you party. Shelly Westerhausen, master of Instagram-worthy tablescapes, shares themes for every occasion, from dips for dinner, to a savory focaccia party, to a Christmas morning Dutch baby party. Special attention is given to what Westerhausen dubs the “wow factor”: decorative and mood-setting details such as color themes, decanters and candles of varying heights, along with floral arrangements. Informational charts abound with practical assists; my favorite may be “Portioning a Spread,” right down to tablespoons of dip or pieces of crudites, so you don’t over- or under-buy.

This holiday season, whether you’re hosting or showing up with a single covered dish, let one of these outstanding cookbooks be your guide.
Food & Drink

Review

Review by bookpagedev

aps nothing is so ubiquitous in 21st-century America as fast food. Fully one-half of the country’s food expenditures takes place in restaurants, and the large majority of those dollars is spent on fast food. It is no surprise that the two best-known brands worldwide are McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser examines fast food “as a commodity and as a metaphor,” and his new book a fascinating blend of cultural history and groundbreaking reportage should prove of interest to anyone who’s ever polished off a Big Mac and fries.

Fast Food Nation tours the slaughterhouses and potato farms that supply this country’s franchises. Readers get a look at the factories that develop and manufacture the smells that make Value Meals and combo specials so appealing. From nutritional content to labor practices, much of the book’s material is unsettling. Just as the nation’s sensibilities were shocked 100 years ago by Upton Sinclair’s vivid descriptions of meat packing practices in The Jungle, so too will today’s readers feel a bit squeamish about the slaughterhouses currently operating. As Schlosser reveals, fast food has shaped the nation’s landscape more than most readers would imagine, and his consideration of the fast food phenomenon as a cultural metaphor is especially intriguing. With sensitivity and insight, he explores the ways in which the explosion of franchised restaurants has contributed to the homogenization of popular culture. This proliferation, he posits, says something about our lifestyles. The increase in restaurant meals, for example, is surely symptomatic of a society organized less around the family than around obligations and activities outside the home. Eric Schlosser, a contributing editor of Atlantic Monthly, has created a narrative that is at once artful and eye-opening, humorous and uniquely significant. By examining this particular facet of American culture, he has shed new light on our nation as a whole.

Mark Rembert writes from Nashville.

aps nothing is so ubiquitous in 21st-century America as fast food. Fully one-half of the country’s food expenditures takes place in restaurants, and the large majority of those dollars is spent on fast food. It is no surprise that the two best-known brands worldwide are McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser examines […]
Food & Drink

Review

Review by bookpagedev

BETWEEN THE WINES Hugh Johnson’s pretty mini-coffee table book, Tuscany and Its Wines is purely an excuse to daydream over Andy Katz’s chiaroscuro-edged photographs of that lovely region. Castles, churches, vineyards, grapes, hearths, mists, and monasteries you’re unlikely to dawdle long over the text, but if you’ve ever visited the region, or longed to, you’ll nod along with his every compliment.

This is not a wine book in the usual sense: There isn’t much in the way of description or even label definitions, though there are tributes to the ancient palaces and vineyards of the older families. This is an elaborate postcard collection, with a bit of history about varietals and a few palate-sharpening whiffs of wild mushroom and artichokes and olives. But as a gift book, an invitation or a personal indulgence, it practically demands a drinking partner, and a rich, earthy, dreamy one, at that.

Because the American distribution of Tuscan wines is so uneven, we offer a short course in our favorite styles instead of listing a specific wine.

In recent years, the big push in Italian wines has been for the so-called Super Tuscans, a term that refers to blends of Sangiovese given depth, a little steel, and stamina by the addition of Merlot and dashes of Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon or Franc. Super Tuscans offer lots of body and fruit without lengthy aging five or six-year-old vintages are ripe and rewarding, although some, particularly the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, can take another year or so and more often play up the sunny Sienna tones (berries, aromatic woods) rather than the shadows (mushroom, burnt sugar).

The Mondavi-Frescobaldi collaborations, the more expensive Luce (a reference not to that painterly Tuscan light but to the brilliant color of the Sangiovese wines) and the slightly more reticent Lucente, have helped lift the profile of Super Tuscans in American, just as the Mondavi-Mouton Rothschild collaboration, Opus One, sparked a new interest in meritage wines in California. Luce, like many of the Super Tuscans, is fairly expensive, around $50, but the blend of Brunello (the Sangiovese clone dominant in Montalcino) and Merlot is sumptuous and luxuriantly aromatic, worth saving for a special occasion.

The Tignanello wines from the ancient house of Antinori are similarly priced, but even more impressive, especially the older ones (buy now, put down). Unusually long and strong, they have layers of chocolate, cassis, cedar, and tobacco, and in some vintages even allspice and vanilla. Antinori makes several Chianti Classicos, ranging from as little as $10 or $11 to $38 or $40, that frequently show more spice and anise at the lower end, and grow up gracefully.

Montepulciano is a narrow, clay-colored town high on a ridge Henry James likened it to a ship riding the hill, and if the James doesn’t make you want to drink deep, you shouldn’t be reading this column best known for its Vino Nobile (named not for its pretensions but for its aristocratic admirers).

Five centuries back, Pope Paul III’s sommelier was calling the region’s wines “absolutely perfect,” and while it’s hard to gauge the competition, it has a nice sort of blessing to it.

Like Brunello di Montalcino, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is a big and somewhat pricey Sangiovese made there from a clone called Prugnolo Gentile. But the lesser designation, Rosso di Montepulciano, often made by the same winemakers, is less expensive, aged only a year or so and thus lighter, with softer tannins and a bit fruitier, which many people like. Antinori also makes both a Vino Nobile and a Rosso, via its La Braccesca label; and the Folonaris of Ruffino own a label called Lodola Nuova.

And if you stumble on the Danzante Sangiovese, grab it: It’s a bright, accessible $10 table offshoot of the Mondavi-Frescobaldi merger.

Eve Zibart is a restaurant critic for the Washington Post.

BETWEEN THE WINES Hugh Johnson’s pretty mini-coffee table book, Tuscany and Its Wines is purely an excuse to daydream over Andy Katz’s chiaroscuro-edged photographs of that lovely region. Castles, churches, vineyards, grapes, hearths, mists, and monasteries you’re unlikely to dawdle long over the text, but if you’ve ever visited the region, or longed to, you’ll […]
Food & DrinkCookbooks

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Sampling a tasty collection Drinking for me means only wine. . . . I believe in wine as I believe in Nature. I cherish its sacramental and legendary meanings, not to mention its power to intoxicate, and just as Nature can be both kind and hostile, so I believe that if bad wine is bad for you, good wine in moderation does nothing but good. This passage, from a short essay called When I Became a Gastronome by journalist Jan Morris, looks back to the meal during which the subtle and intricate force of flavors suddenly broke over her, like an inaugural bottle itself. The meal itself was, as she recalls, nothing elaborate fresh rolls, patŽ of some sort, cheese, I think, apples and a bottle of local white wine. And yet for the first time, Morris, who had always been so sensitive to the undercurrents of cities and cultures and morŽs, was gripped by the voluptuousness of patŽ, the assertive confidence of bread, and the concentrated abundance of wine.

Morris’s piece is one of more than 50 pieces, many published for the first time, in a collection called The Adventure of Food: True Stories of Eating Everything. Collected by Richard Sterling, they include memoirs, magazine articles, semi-fictional musings, and even a few nutritional polemics, most of which take place in foreign countries and which are frequently as intriguing for what they say about Americans abroad as about the foods themselves.

Foods, and drinks, are explored a bit squeamishly by Mary Roach in The Instructress, a rueful recollection of facing down rodent knees and a pre-chewed, fermented manioc brew called chicha prepared by her Amazonian hosts. Or romantically, as in Taras Grescoe’s pursuit of absinthe, the hallucinatory and potentially fatal Green Fairy linked to Toulouse-Lautrec and Oscar Wilde. (That Grescoe slanders Edgar Allan Poe is the piece’s one failing.) Or nostalgically, like Marguerite Thoburn Watkins’s recollection of drinking old-fashioned North Indian Chai in an Unglazed Cup, a eulogy that must have been written prior to the commercialization of chai by American coffee society. Or seductively, as in artist-author Heather Corinna’s prose-poem fantasy, Eat Drink Man Woman ( We describe so very little of what we feast upon when we merely call it food ).

In fact, reading this collection, one is reminded that poetry is in the eye of the consumer. Jonathan Raban discovered this while sailing down the Mississippi River for the book Old Glory. ÔPeople eat squirrels around here?’ I asked.

ÔEat squirrels?’ the old man shouted, banging his stick up and down on the bar floor. ÔWe do not eat squirrels, sir. We may regale ourselves upon them. We might be described, on occasion, as consuming them. We do our humble best to honor the noble squirrel. We make, at the very least, a repast of him.’ One incredibly rich entry (or entree) is the recreation by Michael Paterniti of the illicit last banquet prepared for the terminally ill former French President Francois Mitterrand, the highlight of which was ortolan, a tiny songbird whose consumption had already been outlawed. The entire piece, which originally ran in Esquire, is almost overripe with culinary description, including a fine bit on foie gras; but the description of ortolan, which Paterniti persuades a chef to prepare for him and his girlfriend, is spectacular. The bird is surprisingly soft, gives completely, and then explodes with juices liver, kidneys, lungs. Chestnuts, corn, salt all this in an extraordinary current, the same warm, comforting flood as finely evolved consommŽ. . . . I put inside myself the last flowered bit of air and Armagnac in its lungs, the body of rainwater and berries. In there, too, is the ocean and Africa and the dip and plunge in a high wind. And the heart that bursts between my teeth. This is truly a seductive collection, one that can be grazed in, consumed in large chunks, or nibbled at a course at a time. It could easily be enjoyed with an escalating series of wines, from the aperitif to the sauterne; but in honor of Jan Morris’s epiphany, we recommend Penfolds’s brilliant Koonunga Hill SŽmillon-Chardonnay blends wry, lithe wines with a courteous but not modest balance of acidity and aromatics.

Opening formally with green-apple crispness and a hint of apricot, it gradually softens into a graceful and yet tightly fermented spin of pistachio, balsawood, and secret peach and ends with a low sweep of praline. And although vintages vary slightly, the quality is always dependable and, year after year, the prices a blessed $8 or so give even more meaning to the word sacramental. In fact, I apply it ritually.

Eve Zibart is a restaurant critic for the Washington Post.

Sampling a tasty collection Drinking for me means only wine. . . . I believe in wine as I believe in Nature. I cherish its sacramental and legendary meanings, not to mention its power to intoxicate, and just as Nature can be both kind and hostile, so I believe that if bad wine is bad […]
Food & Drink

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Wined and dined Oxford University Press has just released greatly revised second editions of their already classic encyclopedias on wine and food. The Oxford Companion to Wine ($65, 019866236X), edited by well-known international wine critic Jancis Robinson, addresses not only the expected topics such as the history of champagne, the faddish popularity of merlot, and tours of Provence and Burgundy it also offers fascinating entries (and charming illustrations) about such topics as the importance of wine imagery in the pre-Islamic Arab poets, differences in vineyards as far apart as Argentina and Australia, and the wine-related origin of the term symposium. Although encyclopedic and exhaustive, the book assumes no prior knowledge of wine, and therefore becomes a gift to both the connoisseur and the novice. The same unassuming breadth characterizes The Oxford Companion to Food, edited by English food writer Alan Davidson. This gorgeous book reminds us that the world is our gingerbread house, that over the centuries adventurous cooks have popped practically everything on earth into their mouths, tinkered until they found the best method of preparation, and passed along their judgments. Entries cover topics ranging from potatoes to aphrodisiacs, from escargot to bats. What is mold and what is its relationship to food? Why do we eat dogfish but not dogs? How do salt and sugar work? The answers to these and thousands of other questions are in this single volume.

Wined and dined Oxford University Press has just released greatly revised second editions of their already classic encyclopedias on wine and food. The Oxford Companion to Wine ($65, 019866236X), edited by well-known international wine critic Jancis Robinson, addresses not only the expected topics such as the history of champagne, the faddish popularity of merlot, and […]
NonfictionHistoryFood & Drink

The top 12 weirdest moments in food history

Behind the Book by Matt Siegel

In his debut book, Matt Siegel takes intel from nutritionists, psychologists, food historians and paleoanthropologists and weaves together an entertaining account of the food we eat. These 12 surprising food facts offer a taste of the weird, wonderful backstories you’ll find in The Secret History of Food.

1. In 1893, the Supreme Court had to rule whether tomatoes were a fruit or a vegetable. This happened not long after people finally decided that tomatoes weren’t poisonous (a belief that lasted for hundreds of years, owing largely to their botanical relationship to mandrakes and deadly nightshade) and that they weren’t used to summon werewolves (the tomato’s scientific name, Solanum lycopersicum, literally means “wolf’s peach”).

2. People used to think potatoes caused syphilis and leprosy. This was chiefly because of their resemblance to the impacted body parts of the afflicted. Now, of course, potatoes are America’s favorite vegetable, largely thanks to french fries. (Tomatoes are in second place, owing largely to their use in frozen pizza and canned tomato sauce.)

3. Vanilla isn’t very “vanilla.” While vanilla has unfortunately become a synonym for “ordinary,” it’s really anything but. For starters, it’s the only edible fruit to come from orchids, even though they’re the largest family of flowers. Vanilla gets its name from Spanish conquistadors, who named it after the Spanish word for “vagina.” It has to be pollinated by hand using a technique developed by an enslaved 12-year-old named Edmond Albius. And it’s the world’s second most expensive spice behind saffron.

4. The first breakfast cereals were intentionally bland. Ready-to-eat breakfast cereals were created in the 1800s by religious health reformers who believed sugar and spices were sinful and that consuming them incited bodily temptation, leading to such sexual urges as chronic masturbation and adultery—and ultimately resulting in eternal damnation.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Secret History of Food.

5. Our affinity for certain comfort foods begins in the womb. Research suggests many of our adult food preferences are influenced by flavors (e.g., vanilla) present in breast milk and amniotic fluid, which absorb flavors and odors from the parent’s diet. Meanwhile, other food preferences, such as people’s polarized responses to cilantro, go back even earlier to the genetic inheritance of specific taste receptors.

6. People used to believe personality traits and intellect were passed on through breast milk. As a result, early wet nurses were screened for things like breast shape, manners and vices such as day-sleeping and gambling addiction to ensure their milk was “child friendly.”

7. An entire ear of ancient corn used to be about the size of a cigarette. Over thousands of years, corn was selectively bred from a nearly inedible weed into the modern staple many cultures now depend on.

8. There’s a decent chance the honey in your cupboard comes from lawn weeds or poison ivy. And that’s OK. (Though there’s also a chance it’s not honey at all but a mixture of corn syrup and yellow food coloring . . .)

"Cinnamon, it was said, came from giant bird nests and had to be transported using rafts without oars on a treacherous journey that took five years and was powered by courage alone."

9. Fidel Castro was obsessed with American dairy. He spent decades funding the genetic manipulation of a dairy “supercow” named Ubre Blanca (“White Udder”) that produced four times the milk of American cows, was assigned a security detail in an air-conditioned stable and was eulogized with military honors and a life-size marble statue after her death.  

10. No one wanted to eat Patagonian toothfish until they were rebranded as Chilean sea bass in 1994. Now they sell for $29.99 a pound at Whole Foods. 

11. Spice traders used to make up stories about the exotic origins of spices so they could sell them for more money. Cinnamon, it was said, came from giant bird nests and had to be transported using rafts without oars on a treacherous journey that took five years and was powered by courage alone. Black pepper was said to grow in forests guarded by serpents that had to be scared away by setting the trees on fire, which explained why black pepper pods were the color of ashes.

12. The adage “you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar” isn’t really true. Rather, catching flies depends on a host of complex variables including the age, gender, sex drive, mating status, thirst and stress level of each fly—as well as the concentration of the vinegar, the time of day and the season. (Even then, some research suggests you’ll catch even more flies with beer or human semen, with one scientist calling semen “the crack cocaine of the fly world.”)

Everything you never knew about Patagonian toothfish, Cuban supercows and cinnamon sticks
Food & Drink

Vintage selections to please any wine lover

Feature by Eve Zibart

For several years now, the holiday batch of wine books has become increasingly divided between the “elitists” and the “populists.” The former are the critics, who toss out bushel baskets of flavors (tar, black fruit, chocolate, licorice and old leather) and anthropomorphize wines. The others are the proud wine amateurs (aka “wine lovers”), whose diatribes against the “Parkerization” of wines—the reliance on numerical scores for wines and the trend toward bigger, fruitier, mine-is-bigger wines preferred by Wine Advocate founder Robert Parker—can be as stringent as their own self-promotion.
This polemical tug of war can easily bewilder those looking to give a wine book as a gift (which side are your friends on?), but there are some new volumes that can safely be delivered to any wine lover. Along with a bottle, of course.

Many guides to appreciating wine veer from cutesy to condescending, but food mag columnist Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl’s Drink This: Wine Made Simple, finds a happy medium, keeping the catchphrases to a minimum while gently prodding wine newbies through the nine varietals that dominate American shelves and restaurant lists. Each chapter winds through the pros and cons (what’s to love, what’s to hate) of each varietal, a brief history, major taste markers and a comparison of bottom-shelf and top-shelf styles. Each chapter ends with a quick cheat sheet and suggestions for gifts, from inexpensive to “knock-their-socks-off” labels.

Entertaining sidebars (what really causes the famous “cat pee” smell in Sauvignon Blanc?) and interviews with respected winemakers, along with sensibly straightforward tips on hosting low-key wine tastings (example: put a tablespoon of peppercorns or some shaved chocolate in a wine glass and sniff before tasting a Zinfandel or Pinot Noir), make this a solid primer. And, unlike most guides, Drink This occasionally includes pronunciations of wines (rhyming Shiraz with pizzazz, for instance).

Can’t-miss bargains
It’s a serious sign of the economic times that Robert Parker and his Wine Advocate team have produced Parker’s Wine Bargains: The World’s Best Wine Values Under $25. It’s a paperback, described as Zagat guide-sized, though in fact it’s a little hefty for the pocket. It reveals a little about the magazine’s biases—France is divided into eight regions, while all the regions of Italy are lumped together; and only California, Oregon and Washington wines are covered in the United States. Nevertheless, this might be a great book for someone looking to acquire collectable wines without breaking the bank. Wines are marked by price ($ for under $10, etc.) and relative dryness.

The guide’s other concession to more modern wine culture is its emphasis on the fact that less expensive wines need much less aging than the big names, so that most whites and rosés listed should be consumed within a year or so and the reds within three to five years. In other words, you can stop fretting about laying it down and start drinking it up.

A browser’s delight
The third sort of wine book—after the how-tos and the must-haves—might be called the bedside wine book: collections of anecdotes or literary references or ruminations on wine, generally short enough to be consumed a few at a time (presumably over a nightcap). Is This Bottle Corked? The Secret Life of Wine by Kathleen Burk and Michael Bywater is one of those, a combination of fact (what is corkage?) and fiction. What color “wine-dark sea” did Homer really see? Could the Duke of Clarence really have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey? And what is Malmsey, anyway? The Bible, Beaujolais Nouveau, Omar Khayyam, Napoleon, Jane Austen, Pliny and (of course) Robert Parker; phylloxera, absinthe, unami, foot-stomping, silver wine goblets and the dreaded “winespeak”—these and scores of other characters and controversies cohabitate comfortably in this chatty little collection.

A classic returns
Grumdahl’s guide notwithstanding, it would be ungenerous not to toast one notable perennial on these lists: Kevin Zraly, onetime wine director at New York’s Windows on the World, who turned his master classes for the staff into a course that eventually graduated 19,000 people. (When the World Trade Center was destroyed on 9/11, it had nearly 100,000 bottles in the cellar; Zraly himself had taken the day off to celebrate his son’s birthday.) Zraly has been updating his eminently sensible and accessible Windows on the World Complete Wine Course on a pretty regular basis, but he’s just released the 25th anniversary edition. For someone who’s already a little more at ease ordering wine and wanting to expand his palate, or for a sentimental New Yorker, this might be the perfect choice.

Eve Zibart is a former restaurant critic for the Washington Post.

For several years now, the holiday batch of wine books has become increasingly divided between the “elitists” and the “populists.” The former are the critics, who toss out bushel baskets of flavors (tar, black fruit, chocolate, licorice and old leather) and anthropomorphize wines. The others are the proud wine amateurs (aka “wine lovers”), whose diatribes […]
Food & Drink

Dining with Scarpetta

Review by bookpagedev

Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the City of Richmond, State of Virginia. Armed with scalpel and saw, Scarpetta examines the remains of the recently deceased to determine the nature of their demise. So just what would you expect to find on Scarpetta’s Winter Table? A beautiful adulteress dispatched to her eternal reward by a jealous husband? A teenage boy riddled with bullets, the result of a drug deal gone bad? Wrong, bucko. Try pasta primavera, holiday pizza, eggnog, and key lime pie. For we speak not of Scarpetta’s examining table, but her dinner table, where, in a Bizzarro version of Home for the Holidays, Scarpetta and her entourage gather to embrace the Christmas spirit (and spirits).

The evening’s menu starts with Phil Marino’s "Cause of Death" eggnog. (Marino, as aficionados will remember, is Scarpetta’s wise-cracking police captain friend, whose t-shirt-straining girth is mentioned at least once per book.) Marino’s eggnog is a heady concoction, substituting "corn likker" moonshine for more mundane inebriants such as rum or brandy.

As the evening progresses, we are treated to one and then another of the dishes to which Scarpetta refers in passing in earlier Cornwell novels: her famous hearty stew, last-minute quick and dirty chili, mouthwatering homebaked cookies, made-from-scratch pizza, spicy Bloody Marys, and more. Between recipes, the events of the evening (and several successive evenings) unfold, and we are given an inside look at the workings of Scarpetta’s quirky extended family.

There is not a story here, per se, certainly not the thriller that frequent Cornwell readers have come to expect, but there is a wealth of background information for the Scarpettaphile, and the recipes — oh, those recipes. The holiday pizza and Lucy’s felonious cookies are over-the-top wonderful.

Part Murder She Wrote, part Like Water for Chocolate, Scarpetta’s Winter Table proves beyond a doubt that Patricia Cornwell can whip up a meringue or a mystery with equal flair.

 

Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the City of Richmond, State of Virginia. Armed with scalpel and saw, Scarpetta examines the remains of the recently deceased to determine the nature of their demise. So just what would you expect to find on Scarpetta’s Winter Table? A beautiful adulteress dispatched to her eternal reward by a […]
Food & Drink

Find renewal abroad

Feature by Eliza Borné

Whether you’re planning a trip, imagining a radical move across the globe or simply hoping to explore from the couch, travelogues provide entertainment and inspiration.

BON APPÉTIT
The premise of Lonely Planet’s latest anthology is one upon which we can all agree: “Wherever we go, we need to eat.” In A Moveable Feast, edited by veteran travel writer Don George, eating is something to relish on trips—sometimes it’s even the point of the trip. Thirty-eight essays will take you from a hospitable yurt in Mongolia, where Stanley Stewart happily samples sheep intestines and fermented mare’s milk, to barbeque capital Kansas City, where Doug Mack and his father have some long-anticipated bonding time over a plate of heavenly ribs. The essays are short and easily digestible—A Moveable Feast would be perfect for stop-and-go reading while you’re in transit to your next destination (or for anytime you want to fantasize about being somewhere more exotic). In one of my favorite essays of the collection, Alexander Lobrano writes of getting “almost teary” as he muses on a “magical meal” in Portugal—pork and clams in tomato sauce, juicy chicken, fried potatoes and rice. You may find yourself salivating as you read about these fabulous food experiences and charming international characters, and the stories will inspire you to remember your own magical meals while traveling.

GOT THE BEIJING BLUES
There’s a lot to love about Alan Paul’s Big in China, a story about plunging into life in a foreign culture—and rocking out with a Chinese blues band. Paul and his wife moved their three young kids to Beijing after she got a posting as China bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal. A journalist with a flexible schedule, Paul became one of the few male “trailing spouses” in their neighborhood in Beijing, an identity he embraced as it allowed him to pursue creative opportunities he never could have imagined prior to moving around the world. He wrote an award-winning column for WSJ.com titled “The Expat Life” and fronted a blues and jam band called Woodie Alan with three Chinese men and another American. The group rose to prominence in Beijing, and Paul writes poignantly about performing in a multicultural band that became like a second family. Besides telling a good story, Paul honestly addresses the complexity of uprooting kids, making career sacrifices for a spouse and living in a foreign land. He writes, “One of the lessons I had taken from expat life was that no one was destined to live by any single reality.” In Big in China, Paul learns that “home” is where the people you love happen to be.

THE HAPPIEST COUNTRY
Lisa Napoli’s Radio Shangri-La will undoubtedly be compared to Eat, Pray, Love—in both, women in the midst of midlife crises find peace on adventures far away from the U.S. But Napoli’s destination of Bhutan is no Bali. Americans rarely visit this small nation in South Asia because of a steep tourist tax and limited plane access, and the country is remarkably sheltered from outside influences: Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, is the only one in the world without a traffic light, and the king legalized television in the country just 12 years ago. Napoli was working for NPR’s Marketplace when a chance encounter led to an invitation to advise Kuzoo FM, Bhutan’s youth radio station. Sick of producing 90-second segments, Napoli “felt hungry for knowledge, deeper meaning, time to synthesize the world.” So she went to Bhutan in a time of great transition for the country: new king, new constitution, impending democracy. And though she initially envisioned a “media-free universe,” she quickly realized that new technologies in Bhutan meant that things were changing fast. Radio Shangri-La is as much about the charming characters at Kuzoo FM and the culture of Bhutan as it is about Napoli’s personal transformation. Readers will enjoy learning about a part of the world far different from our own, a place where success is measured not by GDP, but by Gross National Happiness.

NEW GUIDES FOR THE WORLD TRAVELER
Several travel publishers are introducing new series and destinations in 2011—here are some of the most notable additions.

•DK Eyewitness Guides: This popular series is getting an overhaul in 2011, with pull-out maps and a cleaner look. New destinations added this year include Back Roads Germany, Chile & Easter Island and Cambodia & Laos.

•Fodor’s Guides: Celebrating their 75th anniversary this year, America’s oldest travel guide company is adding Honduras & the Bay Islands, Prague & the Czech Republic, Venice & the Best of Northern Italy and Essential India to their roster of more than 600 destinations.

•Lonely Planet Discover Guides: Brand new in 2011, this series of focused, full-color, portable guides covers hotspots like London and Paris as well as less traveled destinations like Peru, China and Barcelona.

•Pocket Rough Guides: Billed as “slim, stylish and pocketable” these smaller versions of the best-selling Rough Guides are full-color and city focused—the 10 destinations include Barcelona, Prague and Rome.
 

Whether you’re planning a trip, imagining a radical move across the globe or simply hoping to explore from the couch, travelogues provide entertainment and inspiration. BON APPÉTIT The premise of Lonely Planet’s latest anthology is one upon which we can all agree: “Wherever we go, we need to eat.” In A Moveable Feast, edited by […]
Food & DrinkCookbooks

Delicious and drinkable delights

Feature by Eve Zibart

New wine books used to be a holiday staple, but these days, wine talk has been replaced by sophisticated (and occasionally cultish) culinary chat, haute beer debates and retro cocktail repartee–all easily indulged tastes when it comes to your gift list.

TOUR THE TABLE
Though playful in tone, and packed with the wordplay that (among other critical tropes) he both tweaks and enjoys, Adam Gopnik’s The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food is no mere “The Man Who Ate Everything and Then Considered It Philosophically.” It is more a sort of literate confessional, a series of meditations on cooking and, inevitably, consuming. Locavores, carnivores, gourmets and gourmands, historians, commentators, chefs and cooks all have their say, alongside Gopnik’s epigrammatic musings. What distinguishes dining from eating? What is morality (i.e., “who” or what should we eat) and is indulgence a sin? What is taste, the importance of the table or the value of tradition? And how did the restaurant, a relatively modern invention—created in Paris, just before the Revolution—become not simply a cultural icon but a kind of cult?

Much of The Table Comes First originated as pieces for The New Yorker, where Gopnik has glittered for a quarter-century, so this is a feast best consumed in discrete courses. Gopnick’s encounters with London snout-to-tail maven Fergus Henderson and the great Catalonian innovators behind elBulli, Ferran and Albert Adrià, are fascinating; his quixotic mission to prepare an entirely locavore, only-in-New York dinner is unexpectedly funny. His comments on food and wine critics are at once acute and sympathetic. And, of course, the writing is a pleasure (“the chastened, improved look of the egg yolks mixed with sugar”).

FRENCH FEAST
If Gopnik’s book is the menu de degustation, Balzac’s Omelette: A Delicious Tour of French Food and Culture with Honoré de Balzac is a lovely trifle. Written by the Paris-born, New York-based biographer Anka Muhlstein, and translated from French by Adriana Hunter, it uses quotations from the writer deemed a French Trollope (a pun he would have enjoyed) to portray a city and culture evolving alongside the restaurant. (Muhlstein and Gopnik disagree on a few facts, but they have historical sentiment in common.) Balzac’s characters eat in real-life cafes or in private homes, and the provenance of the fare, as well as its quality, reflect the new egalité (or not). The book’s French title is “Garçon, un cent d’huitres” (Waiter, a hundred oysters”); though Balzac ate almost nothing while working, between novels he could have given Diamond Jim Brady a run for his bivalves. Lovers of France, food and literature will find this a welcome gift.

IN SEARCH OF SUDS
The Great American Ale Trail: The Craft Beer Lover’s Guide to the Best Watering Holes in the Nation, by Christian DeBenedetti, is an exuberant, if arbitrary, “Route 66” of a jaunt through brewpubs and craft breweries. It is also a series of snapshots of brewers (including the famously unruly and charming Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head) and worthy but beer-less landmarks (New Orleans’ Central Grocery of muffaletta fame)—a sort of beerlover’s verbal Viewmaster. There are detours into history, regulatory scuffles, brewpubs lost and found and more. The descriptions of various brews are almost amorously tasty, and will doubtless inspire lovers of microbrews to add some names to their “must try” lists.

CHEERS TO COCKTAIL HOUR
Brian D. Murphy’s See Mix Drink: A Refreshingly Simple Guide to Crafting the World’s Most Popular Cocktails is a Mr. Boston’s for beginners that looks like the prototype for a smartphone app. Each recipe is loaded with “intuitive icons” (shapes of the bottles, implements, garnishes and glasses required) that act out the drink-making process, plus an illustration of the glass filled with proportional layers of ingredients (see illustration). The additional pie charts—a Black Velvet clearly illustrated as three ounces of stout and three ounces of Champagne in a flute is also displayed as a 50% brown, 50% tan circle—have the virtue of displaying a calorie count, 96 in this case. While most of the ­recipes are classic, some are perhaps more “app-propos.” His rendition of a Ramos Gin Fizz uses egg white powder and makes no mention of orange flower water, its characteristic flavoring. And while Murphy feels the need to explain what a blender does, he doesn’t define many of the additional ingredients, such as orgeat syrup or orange bitters, that may be less familiar to newbies. Still, the lively presentation is likely to help wean the junior “Mad Men” off chocolate martinis—a worthy cause.

New wine books used to be a holiday staple, but these days, wine talk has been replaced by sophisticated (and occasionally cultish) culinary chat, haute beer debates and retro cocktail repartee–all easily indulged tastes when it comes to your gift list. TOUR THE TABLEThough playful in tone, and packed with the wordplay that (among other […]
MemoirFood & DrinkCookbooks

A moveable feast: food & travel

Feature by Robert Reid

Robert Reid is the U.S. Travel Editor for Lonely Planet. In a column written exclusively for BookPage, he highlights terrific travel books, both old and new. This month, he selects some of the best books for foodies who love to travel—or travelers who love food!

I’ve long considered the bulk of travel itineraries—going to an art museum, seeing a monument, climbing a tower for a city view—as merely “the space between meals.” It’s the food that anchors the days, be it sit-down chic off the Champs d’Elysses or 50-cent noodles on plastic stools on a cracked sidewalk in Hanoi. To eat! That is to travel.

Before you set off, there are amazing food-related travel books that cover the world or focus on some of the world’s most interesting destinations.

Food Lover’s Guide to the World is an indispensable new pictorial tour through the great cuisines of the world, including travel tips and recipes if you want to bring the world back home to your kitchen. For a more literary choice,  A Moveable Feast takes the Hemingway title literally, with a collection of bite-sized essays by well-known writers focused on the tasty fusion of travel and food experiences, including contributions by Anthony Bourdain, Pico Iyer and Elizabeth Eaves.

Italy always wins for foodie travel. Beth Elon’s A Culinary Traveler in Tuscany gives 10 off-the-beaten-track, recipe-filled itineraries around Italy’s most famous food and wine region. Elon arrives in lesser-known towns, like Filattiera during its July 1-4 festival La Fame e la Sete (the hunger and the thirst), where the aroma of sizzling meats hangs over the old village square filled with tables for that night’s feast.

Italian food continues in New Yorker staff writer Bill Buford’s Heat, which gives an illuminating behind-the-scenes look at a great New York Italian restaurant. After daringly inviting celeb chef Mario Batali over for dinner, Buford signs up to be a ‘kitchen slave’ at his acclaimed restaurant Babbo. The result is a fun and intimate book, where Buford learns to butcher a hog and jets off to Italy to learn more from Batali’s former teachers.

Pastry chef David Lebovitz had wanted a Paris home address since he learned that the French clip the tips of haricots verts (green beans) before tossing them in a pot—toujours! A couple of decades later his dream came true, when he left the restaurant business in San Francisco and moved to France. Lebovitz recounts his stumbles with life as an expat in Paris, along with dozens of new French-inspired recipes, in his memoir The Sweet Life in Paris. Warning: reading Lebovitz’s story may make you book a flight to the City of Light or induce uncontrollable chocolate urges.

Robert Reid is Lonely Planet’s U.S. Travel Editor. If he could choose his last meal on Earth, it would be a picnic lunch of Vietnamese imperial rolls at Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park.

Robert Reid is the U.S. Travel Editor for Lonely Planet. In a column written exclusively for BookPage, he highlights terrific travel books, both old and new. This month, he selects some of the best books for foodies who love to travel—or travelers who love food! I’ve long considered the bulk of travel itineraries—going to an […]

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