More Praise for the Best Food Writing Series
“This is a book worth devouring.”—Sacramento Bee
“The cream of the crop of food writing compilations.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“An exceptional collection worth revisiting, this will be a surefire hit with epicureans and cooks.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“If you’re looking to find new authors and voices about food, there’s an abundance to chew on here.”—Tampa Tribune
“Fascinating to read now, this book will also be interesting to pick up a year from now, or ten years from now.”—Popmatters.com
“Some of these stories can make you burn with a need to taste what they’re writing about.”—Los Angeles Times
“The book captures the gastronomic zeitgeist in a broad range of essays.”—San Jose Mercury News
“The next best thing to eating there is.”—New York Metro
“Stories for connoisseurs, celebrations of the specialized, the odd, or simply the excellent.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Spans the globe and palate.”—Houston Chronicle
“The perfect gift for the literate food lover.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“With this typically delectable and eclectic collection of culinary prose, editor Holly Hughes proves her point made in the intro that the death of 68-year-old Gourmet magazine a year ago didn’t lead to the demise of quality food journalism . . . There’s a mess of vital, provocative, funny and tender stuff . . . in these pages.”—USA Today
ALSO EDITED BY HOLLY HUGHES
Best Food Writing 2011
Best Food Writing 2010
Best Food Writing 2009
Best Food Writing 2008
Best Food Writing 2007
Best Food Writing 2006
Best Food Writing 2005
Best Food Writing 2004
Best Food Writing 2003
Best Food Writing 2002
Best Food Writing 2001
Best Food Writing 2000
ALSO BY HOLLY HUGHES
Frommer’s 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers
Frommer’s 500 Places to See Before They Disappear
Frommer’s 500 Places to Take the Kids
Before They Grow Up
Edited by
HOLLY HUGHES
A Member of the
Perseus Books Group
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Da Capo Press was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial capital letters.
Copyright © 2012 by Holly Hughes
Pages 380–384 constitute an extension of the copyright page.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02210.
Set in 11 point Bembo by the Perseus Books Group
Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
First Da Capo Press edition 2012
ISBN 978-0-7382-1619-5
Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
www.dacapopress.com
Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 255-1514, or e-mail special.markets@perseusbooks.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Introduction
By Holly Hughes
FOOD FIGHTS
On Killing, From HunterAnglerGardenerCook.com
By Hank Shaw
The Gumbo Chronicles, From Outside
By Rowan Jacobsen
Serving Up Sustainability, From Edible Boston
By Erin Byers Murray
Kids Battle the Lure of Junk Food,
From Pacific Northwest Magazine
By Maureen O’Hagan
Pastoral Romance, From Lapham’s Quarterly
By Brent Cunningham
FARM TO TABLE
Sweet Spot, From Alimentum
By Paul Graham
Snowville Creamery Has a Modest Goal: Save the World,
From Edible Columbus
By Eric LeMay
Matters of Taste, From Tomatoland
By Barry Estabrook
Olives and Lives, From Extra Virginity
By Tom Mueller
This Little Piggy Went to Market, From Memoir Journal
By Laura R. Zandstra
HOME COOKING
How to Live Well, From An Everlasting Meal
By Tamar Adler
Still Life with Mayonnaise, From At the Kitchen Table
By Greg Atkinson
The Fried Chicken Evangelist, From Leite’s Culinaria
By Lorraine Eaton
Lasagna Bolognese, From SmittenKitchen.com
By Deb Perelman
The Forager at Rest, From Bon Appetit
By Christine Muhlke
Better Cooking Through Technology, From Technology Review
By Corby Kummer
FOODWAYS
The Pastrami Dilemma, From Chow.com
By John Birdsall
Passover Goes Gourmet, From Sunset
By Rachel Levin
The 2011 Dyke March Wiener Taste Test, From The Stranger
By Bethany Jean Clement
The Missing Link, From The Times-Picayune
By Brett Anderson
Foraging and Fishing Through the Big Bend, From Desert Terroir
By Gary Paul Nabhan
Italian America, From Saveur
By John Mariani
What Makes Sushi Great?, From GiltTaste.com
By Francis Lam
Food for Thought, From the New York Times
By Jeff Gordinier
DUDE FOOD
Learning to Barbecue Helped Make Me a Man,
From Food & Wine
By Joel Stein
Memphis in May: Pork-a-Looza, From Garden & Gun
By Wright Thompson
Truffle in Paradise, From Gastronomica
By John Gutekanst
A Slice of Family History, From Food & Wine
By Daniel Duane
Barbecue Road Trip: The Smoke Road, From Garden & Gun
By John T. Edge
THE FAMILY TABLE
The Food-Critic Father, From The Washingtonian
By Todd Kliman
The Legacy That Wasn’t: Wonton Soup,
From A Spoonful of Promises
By T. Susan Chang
Curious Cookies, From Edible Vancouver
By Eagranie Yuh
Chicken Brick, From Fire & Knives
By Henrietta Clancy
Angry Breakfast Eggs, From Poor Man’s Feast.com
By Elissa Altman
Sweet Southern Dream, From Saveur
By Ben Mims
SOMEONE’S IN THE KITCHEN
The King of Pop-Up, From GQ
By Brett Martin
Hot Plate, From Minnesota Monthly
By Rachel Hutton
Austria’s Culinary Ambassador, From Edible Manhattan
By St. John Frizell
Remembering Savoy, From Edible Manhattan
By Rachel Wharton
Appetit
e for Perfection, From Los Angeles Magazine
By Ed Leibowitz
Supper Clubs in Denver, From the Denver Post
By John Broening
Why Chefs Sell Out, From Chow.com
By Richie Nakano
A Chef’s Painful Road to Rehab, From the Chicago Tribune
By Kevin Pang
Bitter Start to a Life of Sweets, From Sacramento Bee
By Chris Macias
PERSONAL TASTES
Kitchen Confessional: Burnin’ Down Da House, From Leites Culinaria
By David Leite
Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?, From Texas Monthly
By John Spong
A Proposal for Feeding the Fat and Anxious,
From Gastronomica
By Josh Ozersky
The Bone Gatherer, From Saveur
By Mei Chin
They Don’t Have Tacos in the Suck, From Houston Press
By Katharine Shilcutt
I Won’t Have the Stomach for This, From the New York Times
By Anna Stoessinger
Recipe Index
Permissions Acknowledgments
About the Editor
INTRODUCTION
By Holly Hughes
I’m easily mesmerized when it comes to food shopping—inhaling the yeasty scent of the bakery, gently plucking ripe items from the produce bins, shivering in the frosty air of the freezer section. But lately it seems that all I do in the grocery aisle is pore over package labels. Yes, I’m following Michael Pollan’s sage advice in Food Rules (no food products with more than five ingredients, no ingredients you can’t pronounce, nothing your great-grandmother wouldn’t have recognized—you know the drill). But I have two other compelling reasons to vet the foods I feed my family.
Our kitchen now must be totally nut-free, after my college-age son went into anaphylactic shock from a dinner of Thai shrimp and cashews. A game-changer? Absolutely. So now I scrutinize the fine print on every package of food that enters our home. Even when the ingredient list doesn’t include nuts, there’s the dreaded caveat: manufactured in a facility that also processes tree nuts. Maybe it’s a slim chance of cross-contamination, but I can’t take that risk—put the Le Petit Ecolier cookies back on the shelf and choose Choco Leibnitz instead.
We’d just gotten used to that New Normal when my younger daughter threw another wrench in the works: She’s decided to go vegan three days a week, filling our refrigerator with tubs of tempeh, seitan, and Tofurkey. Usually I’m wary of any dietary regimen that’s so exclusionary, but I’m going along with this one, because A) this too shall pass, and B) until it passes, she’s been inspired to try all sorts of healthy foods she wouldn’t touch before. It’s actually expanding her culinary horizons instead of narrowing them, and I’m all in favor of that. But now I have to apply a second filter when I read food labels. And lo and behold, what’s the main source of protein in many vegan products? You guessed it, nuts. So my kitchen has become a bit of a battleground.
Sound familiar? When it comes to food, our entire society seems to be a battleground these days. Americans were once known as a nation of slapdash, thoughtless eaters; now it almost seems we think about nothing else. On the one hand, we obsess over food as entertainment, fetishizing “decadent” desserts and all-you-can-eat buffets and trophy high-end dining. On the other, we relentlessly worry about nutrition, health, and the environmental impact of what we eat. People feel so invested in their dietary choices that the age-old concept of sharing a common meal—breaking bread together, even if it’s gluten-free—gets short shrift. It’s almost impossible to throw a dinner party these days without negotiating a minefield of various guests’ food demands.
Enter food writers, who every year become more and more indispensable as guides to this shifting gastronomic landscape. Since editing the first edition of Best Food Writing in the year 2000, I’ve witnessed an explosion in the number of magazines, websites, newsletters, and TV shows devoted to food; the shelves of my local culinary bookshop (New York City’s esteemed Kitchen Arts & Letters) are crammed with expensively produced cookbooks, best-selling culinary memoirs, and scholarly works on all aspects of food. It’s been a thrilling metamorphosis to observe firsthand.
In those years, I’ve watched food stories move from the “women’s pages” of newspapers onto the front pages and op-ed pages. Check out the issue-oriented pieces in the opening section, Food Fights—stories like Rowan Jacobsen’s venture into post-oil-spill Louisiana fishing waters (page 7), Brent Cunningham’s questioning of farm-to-table as a cure-all for America’s food supply (page 36), and Hank Shaw’s defense of hunting (page 2). And here’s another sign of the times: Many of this year’s writers earned their stars as bloggers (Elissa Altman of PoorMansFeast, page 246; Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman, page 103; Katharine Shilcutt of EatingOurWords and SheEats, page 364), a source of food writing that was barely on anyone’s radar thirteen years ago.
In a food-obsessed culture, trend-spotting is always risky. Nevertheless, when you spend months combing through bookstores and magazines and websites, as I do, every year certain themes pop out. I think of 2012 as the Year of the Three F’s: fermentation, foraging, and fennel. What inspired the fermentation craze is anybody’s guess, but it’s a fair bet that foraging rose to the forefront thanks to Rene Redzepi’s Copenhagen restaurant Noma (see Christine Muhlke’s profile on page 111). The fennel? It may just be me, but ever since reading Tamar Adler’s How to Live Well (page 82), I’ve noticed roast fennel and shaved raw fennel on menus everywhere.
2012 also produced a bumper crop of pieces concerned with cooking as a Guy Thing. Hence our whole new section on Dude Food, congregating a tailgate party’s worth of male food writers, no less than two of whom—Joel Stein (page 180) and Daniel Duane (page 204)—have recently written entire books on the subject of Manliness.
Always looking for new frontiers, Americans have recently developed an avid curiosity about diverse food cultures. Our Foodways section examines a wide spectrum of those, from sushi (Francis Lam, page 169) to Passover seders (Rachel Levin, page 133) to red-sauce Italian-American (John Mariani, page 162). And because chefs are the new rock stars, Someone’s in the Kitchen profiles all sorts of chefs—from Kevin Pang’s cautionary tale of a chef on the skids (page 320) to Chris Macias’ inspiring profile of one redeemed (page 327).
Some pieces in this year’s Best Food Writing feature the very newest developments, such as pop-up restaurants (Richie Nakano, page 317, and Brett Martin, page 258) and the high-tech wonders of Modernist Cuisine (Corby Kummer’s review, page 117). But the Old always has a place alongside the New: witness Paul Graham’s lyrical essay on syrup making (page 48), Jeff Gordinier’s look at eating as an act of meditation (page 173), or Mei Chin’s musings on broth and bones (page 359).
Speaking of balancing the Old with the New, this year’s book features a number of writers who have graced these pages often: Deans of the food writing world such as Southern food champion John T. Edge (page 208), political watchdog Barry Estabrook (page 62), locavore crusader Gary Paul Nabhan (page 149), the always witty David Leite (page 336), philosopher of home cooking Greg Atkinson (page 92), and the man whose food writing helped save New Orleans, Brett Anderson (page 140). But the robust state of food writing ensures that there are always new personalities bursting onto the scene—writers such as Vancouver chocolatier Eagranie Yuh (page 237), San Francisco’s John Birdsall (page 128), New England’s T. Susan Chang (page 230), Londoner Henrietta Clancy (page 241), and transplanted Southerner and sweetaholic Ben Mims (page 250).
So while fretting over package labels has become a necessity for me, I gratefully turn to food writing to remind me that food should also be a pleasure. Instead of limiting their options, I’ve found ways to help my kids expand their food choices—teaching my son to make a stir-fry that’s better than risky takeout, surprising my daughter with a savory lentil salad full of diced raw veggies. Here’s hoping that this year’s Best Food Writing
will help you too navigate the gastronomic landscape with zest and an open mind. The food scene doesn’t have to be a battleground, after all—there’s room enough for all of us at the table.
Food Fights
ON KILLING
By Hank Shaw
From HunterAnglerGardenerCook.com
Foraging and fishing have gained hipster cachet recently, but hunters still are often shunned by politically correct foodies. Hank Shaw—former line cook and commercial fisherman, and author of Hunt, Gather, Cook—demands equal respect for those food lovers who slay their meat.
I have been dealing a lot of death lately. I’ve hunted five of the past eight days and have killed birds on each trip. My larder is filling, and Holly and I are eating well. Lots of duck, some pheasant and even a little of the venison I have left over from the 2010 season. That is the good side of all this, the side of hunting that most people can embrace. I hunt for a lot of reasons, but for me the endgame is always the table.
It is the journey to that table that can sometimes give people pause. What I do to put meat in my freezer is alien to most, anathema to some. In the past seven years, I can count on one hand the times I’ve had to buy meat for the home. This fact alone makes me an outlier, an anomaly. And that I am unashamed—proud, really—of this seems to cause a lot of folks I meet to look at me funny: I am a killer in their midst.
Not too long ago, I was at a book signing event for Hunt, Gather, Cook when a young woman approached me. She was very excited about foraging, and she had loved that section of my book. Then her face darkened. She told me she’d also read my section on hunting. “How can you enjoy killing so much? I just don’t understand it. You seem like such a nice person, too.” It took a few minutes for me to explain myself to her, and I am grateful that she listened. She left, I think, with a different opinion.
A few weeks later, I was at the University of Oregon talking about wild food to some students. When I mentioned hunting, I could feel the temperature in the room drop. It occurred to me that no one there was a hunter, nor were they close to any hunters. I called for a show of hands. One guy raised his. I asked him briefly about his hunting experience, and it was obvious that it had been traumatic for the poor kid. I let the topic slide and moved on to mushrooms.