Newcomers to the bookshelf

A couple of days ago I talked about digital food.  The actual incident that got me thinking about ebooks, recipe managers, and all other kinds of ways that food intersects with the new digital era was buying and reading Cooking with Spices by Mark Stevens.  It’s not a cookbook, exactly, but more a guide to spices and spice combinations with dozens of recipes for spice blends, pastes, rubs, and sauces.

I was reading it on the bus on my way to work and kept seeing recipes and ideas that I wanted to note for future reference.  If I was reading a book, I could turn down the corner of a page, add a post-it, pull out a highlighter, or whatever.  I couldn’t quite figure out how to mark the recipe for Gomasio Lemon Dressing Marinade for quick reference.  By the way, this is only  one of dozens of recipes that look like they’d be delicious.  Sesame seeds, sesame oil, dried lemon peel (I’d substitute sumac), ginger, rice wine vinegar, lemon juice, and lemon zest – how can that not be great.

Cooking with Spices is part encyclopedia of spices (and very valuable in that regard) and part traditional cookbook.  For a simply unbelievable encyclopedia, consider Oretta Zanini de Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta.  I heard about this amazing book on a podcast (unfortunately I forget which one).  It is a catalog of 310 different types of pastas native to Italy, providing the recipe and, more critically, the history of each one.

At first glance, this might appear to be a bit obsessive but the book tells a story about just how local pasta is.  Each one of these 310 pastas came from a specific set of local conditions and has become a source of local pride.  The stories are fascinating and while there is absolutely no chance of me ever making more than three or four of these, I am enthralled by this book. It’s a work of art, in the same way that fisckariedd’ (a pasta from Basilicata) is a work of art.

Empires of Food by Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas  is more polemic than encyclopedia but it is equally fascinating.  Fraser, a Professor of Global Food Security at the University of Guelph and Rimas, a journalist, have written an engrossing book that uses the travels of a 16th century Portuguese merchant as a framework for examining empires of food.

As their story evolves, two major themes emerge.  The first is just how intimately connected food is to the rise of empires.  I found their story of the development of the Roman Empire through the lens of food to be a revelation.  I had never encountered this particular take on Roman history before but it makes sense.  I had the same experience several years ago when reading Lizzie Collingham’s Taste of War, a book that interprets World War II as a conflict based on food security.

Fraser and Rimas do this over and over again, examining the rise of empires through technological and agricultural improvements that provide an economic advantage that leads to economic and ultimately political dominance.   At that point, the second theme emerges – the inevitable exhaustion of the land through over production.  It’s not quite the same argument as Thomas Malthus, but more that the very things that create economic advantage through agricultural production lead to exhausted land and economic collapse.

Even if you don’t buy their thesis, Fraser and Rimas have written a book that is intensely interesting and provocative.  It is one that is instructive, even if you look at the thesis with skepticism.

The last book I want to talk about today is more of a traditional cookbook. As someone who cooks for one or two people and after coming home from a full day of work, I rely heavily on sauces and condiments that can make simple preparations of vegetables and proteins interesting. That means I spend a lot of time investigating sauces and condiments.  Vanessa Seder’s [Secret] Sauces is one of the best books I’ve come across recently on this topic.

It’s one of few books I’ve read that doesn’t start with the concept of “mother sauces.”  Instead, it reinvents the concept of mother by calling mayonnaise, vinaigrettes, pesto, pomodoro, tahini, chili, salsa, and ganache mothers and then explaining how to improvise from there.

I’ve had this book for a little over a week and I’ve already used it three times.  The lemon and herb mayo was perfect for artichokes last night, walnut and sage bagna cauda was a great way to add depth to carrots, and the Ethiopian berbere sauce an eye-opening addition to rice and chicken.