Al Dente

Salmon In The Trees Evokes A Strong Sense Of Special Place

As soon as noted seafood authority Jon Rowley opened Amy Gulick's beautiful new book, Salmon In the Trees, he was ready to jump on a plane: "That country really got into me," said Rowley, former contributing editor for Gourmet and now a contributor to Saveur.
"When I opened the book and started reading it and looking at the photographs, it immediately brought back the smells and the mist. I could feel the mist on my face. The sounds and the taste of the berries," Rowley said.

He spent 25 years in Southeast Alaska, fishing, foraging, living off the land. This gorgeously photographed book is a must-read for everyone who loves salmon and for those who manage the lands in that pristine habitat in and around the Tongass rain forest, Rowley said.

"I hope people find this book because there's an important perspective in there," he said. "One thing I remembered about the forest up there is that they are very healthy. It's a very rich ecosystem. The salmon really are in the trees and the trees are in the salmon. You see the lushness and the size of the trees."

The book features essays from renowned conservationists and is ultimately a call to action to protect these wild lands so we can continue to enjoy salmon.

Though there is a small section of the book dedicated to the tradition of preserving the catch, "it's not really a food book. It's about showing salmon as an essential part of the ecology," Rowley said.

In this era of celebrating farmers and fishermen, consumers searching for farm-to-table experiences and celebrity chefs starting delicious food revolutions, Salmon In The Trees stands tall.

-- Leslie Kelly

Making The Perfect Mimosa Starts With Great Juice

I went to my culinary book group yesterday, which is something I look forward to all month because everything centers around food. Naturally.

We started with an amazing brunch made by the incredibly talented Darlene: smoked salmon-stuffed deviled eggs, chicken and bacon strata, yogurt with homemade granola. I brought my homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam. Rebecca brought gobs of yummy cheese. We all brought healthy appetites and talked about Elizabeth David's An Omelette and A Glass of Wine.

Speaking of wine, it was the Mimosa that really grabbed my attention. "What kind of juice is this?" I asked. Fresh squeezed, Darlene said. She bought a juicer after reading how OJ is typically processed, stripping out the pulp and flavor only to inject it back in when it's ready to go to market. There's a book that explores that juicy topic. It's called Squeezed. But the fresh juice was so vibrant, so alive.

Darlene did her research and found the best juicer, a Black and Decker model, was also one of the most affordable, around $20. Why, that's the cost of a pair of Mimosas at a fancy weekend brunch. I'm sold!

Now, if I can find room for my new toy in my increasingly crowded kitchen...

-- Leslie Kelly

Love Apples Are in the Air

I will admit I am obsessed with tomatoes. In Italian, tomato is pomodoro. I suppose it was no accident that during my stage last year I ended up chopping, slicing, dicing, saucing, and roasting literally thousands of tomatoes, hence my moniker pomodorista. By the way, my seedlings are going on week two in the garden, and they look to be thriving already. (Yeah!)

Well, it's that time of year, and love apples are in the air. And on the air. I enjoyed listening to Arthur Allen talk about his new book Ripe: The Search for The Perfect Tomato on the radio last week. I just ordered my copy. I will let you know what I think! Click here to listen to the interview.

Speaking of love apples, and apples, I wanted also wanted to pass along this tidbit that I learned from Karen Caplan, CEO of Frieda's Inc., The Specialty Produce Company, whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting. (From her blog):

"...I believe that the No. 1 reason tomatoes don’t taste good is that they are NOT supposed to be refrigerated! And I’ve visited too many friends and gone into their kitchens to find them putting their lovely fresh tomatoes in the refrigerator and their apples on the counter. REVERSE THAT! If you put tomatoes in the refrigerator, you kill the flavor. And apples – well, they SHOULD be refrigerated to keep their crispness."

And there you have it.

--StellaCadente*

Follow me on Twitter @pomodorista

The French 75: ReadyMade for Spring

Food magazines have been crumbling around us, so it's a nice surprise when a non-food publication serves up a food issue--as is the case with ReadyMade magazine's April/May edition. Why not grab it!

ReadyyMade is a do-it-yourself lifestyle magazine for today's young hipsters, and this month's pieces on how to roll out your own pasta, bake your own bread, and keep your own honeybees are fun for the curious cook of any age.

My husband was particularly taken with the magazine's story about aperitivos, northern Italy's answer to the cocktail. The French 75, one of several recipes, seems like the perfect way to welcome spring: lemon juice, simple syrup, sparkling wine and gin.

Speaking of gin, why not grab the April issue of Saveur along with that ReadyMade and read "Revolutionary Spirit" by David Wondrich, a terrific piece about gin's "particularly flamboyant renaissance." 

Then make a French 75, sit back, and drink in Spring!

French 75

Ingredients:
1 oz gin
1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 ounce simple syrup
Ice
Sparkling wine

Directions:
1. Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a champagne flute. Top with sparkling wine.

The Ringleader of Le Cirque

You know, when I die I hope that is all they say about me: that I made it respectable to be a waiter." --Sirio Maccioni

A few weeks ago I mentioned watching a documentary about Sirio Maccioni (and family), proprietor of the famed eatery Le Cirque. The film piqued my curiosity enough to pick up this autobiography on Sirio to learn more.

Sirio: The Story of My Life and Le Cirque chronicles Maccioni's rise to the top of the restaurant business from his childhood in Montecatini (he was a kid during World War II). He started out a waiter in luxury Italian hotels, then honed his skills in top establishments in Paris, Hamburg, Havana, and eventually New York, where he became the world's most prominent restaurateur. If you've eaten in a restaurant in the past thirty years, chances are you've been unwittingly privy to Sirio's influence on the industry. He is that good at what he does.

Maccioni has counted among his customers Reagan, Nixon, Pope John Paul II, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Frank Sinatra, Martha Stewart, and Henry Kissinger, to name only a few. Despite playing social ringleader to the world's movers and shakers, he comes off likable and down to earth, always conscious of his humble beginnings in poverty-stricken, war-torn Italy. And that is perhaps all the motivation he needs to keep him striving for the top.

Recommended if you like: Biographies, Italians, eating in restaurants, restaurant management, celebrities, chefs, food, war stories, success stories, immigrant stories, chutzpah, name dropping

Have you ever eaten at Le Cirque? What was your experience like? I have yet to go, but I want to check it out for myself on my next trip to New York.

--StellaCadente*

Follow me on Twitter @pomodorista

The Butcher and the Vegetarian

Tara Austen Weaver got her start in travel writing, so perhaps it's no surprise that her new book, The Butcher and the Vegetarian, reads like an expedition into a foreign land. In Weaver's case, it's the land of meat, a new frontier after her '70s upbringing in a counter-culture California home filled with plain steamed vegetables and "a distressing amount of alfafa sprouts, which grew in glass jars on the sunny kitchen windowsill."

My parents also embraced the '70s petri dishes of bean sprouts (our own glass jars were reserved for the homemade yogurt, which of course we did not flavor or sweeten). We did eat meat, though, until my brother flirted with vegetarianism as a teen. It hadn't occurred to me before reading "Tea's" book just how many vegetarians go that route by choice, after starting out as omnivores. It's a decision they make for themselves, with full knowledge of what they are giving up. As Tea told the crowd at a recent book reading, she was instead part of that first generation of Americans born into a "Diet For a Small Planet" world, with parents choosing those eating habits for children out of moral certainty rather than religious or financial reasons. In her case, she was an adult when a doctor ordered her to start eating meat, and she had to navigate a mystifying new language. 

Corned beef? Does that have corn in it?

What does chicken have to do with chicken-fried steak?

London Broil? Does it have to be broiled?

Carnivore conundrums also invaded her home kitchen, as when she discovered she had no "meat plates". Bowls had sufficed just fine for her years of tofu and noodles and vegetables, but beef required a flat surface for slicing.

Tea investigates animal slaughters, sustainability, health questions, and a place called "Meathenge". She comes to understand that, as one of my favorite lines put it, "I don't want to be the buzzkill at the bacon party." But the book really is -- as all the best food books are -- about much more than food. I liked it so much after seeing an advance review copy that I wrote a blurb for the back cover, and I liked it even more on my second read-through after seeing the finished hardcover. (Caveat: The cover calls it a "romp". I don't think it's a romp at all, I think it's a journey.) Full disclosure: I've been a Tea and Cookies fan for a while, and I've recently come to count Tea as a friend. But if you meet her on her book tour, or even just meet her on the page, you might well also count her as one of yours. 

-- Rebekah Denn

Books of the Decade: Cookbooks and Food Lit

Over at Omnivoracious we've been blogging about the Books of the Decade and today I naturally gravitated to the subject I'm most passionate about: food. Last night I scanned the shelves at home and then did some research on Amazon this morning to make sure I didn't miss any favorites. Of all of the books listed below there is one that I turn to regularly--at least weekly--and that's Matt Lee and Ted Lee's The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. I became friends with Matt and Ted after their book came out in 2006 but I promise this selection doesn't stem from any personal bias. And I'm not the only one who just loves this book--it won top honors at both the James Beard and IACP awards.

I was cooking from the early galley edition prior to publication and in the years since it remains my most reached-for cookbook in my collection. I've made grits every which way, along with fried chicken, pork butts, pickled peaches, pies (sour orange, sorghum pecan, buttermilk-sweet potato), biscuits, plenty of cocktails, corn cob wine, crab dip, hoppin' John, collard greens, butter bean pâté, pimento cheese, and many more spectacular dishes. The book also turned me on to so many new ingredients, like sorghum, Carolina gold rice, spicy Blenheim ginger ale (which I now order by the case), country ham, scuppernong grapes, and, of course, boiled peanuts (per the bumper sticker, I "brake for" them at any occasion).

When compiling these lists, I came back to the books I cook from the most in addition to a few that I simply enjoy reading, cover to cover, like a novel, for their narrative approach, to a couple that I'm too intimidated, still, to even think about cooking from, but remain a resource of inspired ideas.

My Favorite Cookbooks (and a Couple of Cocktail Collections) of the Decade: 2000-2009 (alphabetical by author)

• Alinea (2008) by Grant Achatz
• The Complete Meat Cookbook (2001) and Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork (2004) by Bruce Aidells
• Hot Sour Salty Sweet (2000) by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
• A16 Food + Wine (2008) by Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren
• The Babbo Cookbook (2002) and Molto Italiano (2007) by Mario Batali
• Mexico One Plate at a Time (2000) by Rick Bayless
• Big Fat Duck Cookbook (2008) by Heston Blumenthal
• Urban Italian (2008) by Andrew Carmellini and Gwen Hyman
• Momofuku (2006) by David Chang and Peter Meehan
• The Craft of the Cocktail (2002) and The Essential Cocktail (2008) by Dale DeGroff
• Dolce Italiano (2007) by Gina DePalma
• Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen (2000) and Tom's Big Dinners (2003) by Tom Douglas
• The River Cottage Meat Book (2007) by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
• Tasty (2006) by Roy Finamore
• Tyler Florence's Real Kitchen (2003) and Eat This Book (2005) by Tyler Florence
• Screen Doors and Sweet Tea (2008) by Martha Hall Foose
• Barefoot Contessa Parties! (2001), Barefoot Contessa Family Style (2002), Barefoot Contessa at Home (2006), Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics (2008) by Ina Garten
• Sunday Suppers at Lucques (2005) by Suzanne Goin
• Baking (2006) by Dorie Greenspan
• The Whole Beast (2004) and Beyond Nose to Tail (2007) by Fergus Henderson
• The Cook and the Gardener (2000) by Amanda Hesser
• Perfect Scoop (2007) by David Lebovitz
• The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook (2006) by Matt Lee and Ted Lee
• The Gift of Southern Cooking (2003) by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock
• Baked (2008) by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito
• Bones (2005) and Fat (2008) by Jennifer McLagan
• The Naked Chef (2000), The Naked Chef Takes Off (2001), Jamie at Home (2008) by Jamie Oliver
• Recipes from Home (2001) by David Page and Barbara Shinn
• The Flavor Bible (2008) by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg
• The Young Man and the Sea (2007) by David Pasternack
• How to Grill (2001) by Steven Raichlen
• The Joy of Mixology (2003) by Gary Regan
• The Zuni Cafe Cookbook (2002) by Judy Rodgers
• Charcuterie (2005) by Michael Ruhlman
• Appetite (2002) by Nigel Slater
• All About Braising (2004) by Molly Stevens
• A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes (2008) by David Tanis

My Favorite Food Lit of the Decade: 2000-2009 (alphabetical by author)

• Kitchen Confidential (2000) by Anthony Bourdain
• Heat (2006) by Bill Buford
• Born Round (2009) by Frank Bruni
• Fried Chicken (2004), Donuts (2006), Southern Belly (2007) by John T. Edge
• Cooking for Mr. Latte (2003) by Amanda Hesser
• On Food and Cooking (2004) by Harold McGee
• Setting the Table (2006) by Danny Meyer
• The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006) by Michael Pollan
• Ratio (2009) by Michael Ruhlman
• Eat Me (2008) by Kenny Shopsin
• It Must've Been Something I Ate (2002) by Jeffrey Steingarten
• Imbibe! (2007) by David Wondrich

--BTP

Food Lit Pick: "Knives at Dawn" by Andrew Friedman

Best Books of the Month: December: Just when you thought you've read enough culinary memoirs and single-subject studies on every esoteric food topic imaginable comes Knives at Dawn, Andrew Friedman's sharp, insider account of America's quest to win the Bocuse d'Or--the epicurean equivalent of the World Cup, held biannually in Lyon, France. For over two decades, international teams have entered the arena, cooking for five-and-a-half hours from a glass-walled pod in full view of the intimidating judges and howling spectators (who add to the frenzy with chants and clanging cowbells). In 2009, Paul Bocuse himself enlisted legendary chefs Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller (well-known for his obsession with perfection) to field the U.S. team. French Laundry chef Timothy Hollingsworth and his commis, Adina Guest, continued to work their grueling day jobs over three-and-a-half months of intense training, and set the bar for future U.S. brigades. Hollingsworth loves cookbooks and it was fun to see my favorite husband-and-wife food writing team, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, name-checked as Hollingsworth first immersed himself in their kitchen classic, Culinary Artistry, when he first started at TFL, and later turned to The Flavor Bible for inspiration during training. As a prolific cookbook co-author (The Red Cat Cookbook, Welcome to My Kitchen, and Alfred Portale's 12 Seasons Cookbook, to name a few) and contributing editor at Tennis magazine, Friedman is the perfect writer to deliver the behind-the-line coverage of this intense culinary competition. If you don't already know the outcome, restrain yourself from Googling the results, and let Friedman sweep you up with his culinary page-turner.

Recommended for fans of The Fourth Star and The Soul of a Chef.

--BTP

"100 Words for Foodies"

Those with a curiosity for all-things culinary should set a place at the table for 100 Words for Foodies, the latest installment in the popular paperback series, 100 Words..., from the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. True food fans might take pause at the title. Over the past couple of years the phrase "foodie" has made many, including food lovers, cringe. Personally, I prefer food geek, but I'm holding out for gastronaut to catch on. While not as cheeky as David Kamp's The Food Snob's Dictionary or as practical a reference tool as The New Food Lover's Companion, 100 Words for Foodies would make a terrific stocking stuffer for the Top Chef fan on your holiday shopping list, or even a great host or hostess gift to bring to a dinner party along with a bottle of wine. Maybe people still require definitions for cilantro or ceviche, but there were a few surprises inside when I flipped around. Did you know that a "waterzooi" is a "thick stew of Belgian origin"? I didn't. If you don't know your mezze from your mezzaluna, then this book will be good to have on hand when you're watching cooking shows or flipping through cookbooks. And there's even a number of actual recipes sprinkled throughout the definitions.

Recommended for fans of The Food Snob's Dictionary and The New Food Lover's Companion.

--BTP

The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders

I still remember listening to Daniel Pinkwater introduce The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders to Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition some seven years ago. My whole family was hooked.

Jack Prelutsky's poems are delightful, and Petra Mathers illustrations are charming. So many of Prelutsky's poems feature food, it's hard for a foodie to choose a favorite, but here's one of them. 

Peanut Peg and Peanut Pete

Peanut Peg and Peanut Pete,
on a bright Atlanta street,
call in voices loud and clear,
"Peanuts! Get your peanuts here!"

"Peanut cookies, peanut cakes,
peanut butter, peanut shakes,
peanut ices, peanut pies,
peanut sauce, and peanut fries!"

All day long they gaily sell
peanuts still inside the shell,
peanuts salty, peanuts sweet-
Peanut Peg and Peanut Pete.

The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders, Jack Prelutsky, Tien Wah Press, 2002

--Tracy Schneider