American food writing An anthology with classic recipes

Review by New York Times Review

SHALL we begin with a little amusegueule? Thoreau on watermelon? Or, better, the remarkably sinless selection from Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which he tells of catching little bream from a stream that was dismayingly muddy (uh-oh) and of how savory (ah!) these small panfish were for breakfast, "directly ... from beneficent Nature." Followed by a sushi appetizer via Ruth Reichl: "The abalone was ... more like some exotic mushroom than something from the ocean, with a slightly musky flavor that made me think of ferns. Beside it the geoduck was pure ocean - crisp and briny and incredibly clean. ... Next to the pure austerity of these two, the Japanese clam seemed lush and almost baroque in its sensuality." Reichl then picks up a tiny crab with her chopsticks: "They had been deep-fried, and they crunched and crackled in my mouth like some extraordinary popcorn of the sea." No, this isn't going to work. Convenient as it might seem to review this book in menu form, there is too much here to digest in one banquet or bill of fare. Oh, I could list Calvin Trillin's remarks on the generic "Continental cuisine" at "La Maison de la Casa House" as the introduction to Wendell Berry's after-dinner speech in appreciation of real food's loamy, oinky provenance: "Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true." I might slip in Nora Ephron's account of "Food Establishment" backbiting as the juicy talk at one table; and, at another, Judith Moore's confessional "Adultery" (before ruining her life, it brought out the exultant cook in her); and, at yet another, Guy Davenport holding forth on "The Anthropology of Table Manners From Geophagy Onward": "There are dinner parties in Africa where the butter for your stewed calabash will be be milked from your hostess's hair. And you dare not refuse." If this imaginary menu were a DVD, the commentary extras might include James Villas's account of working as a waiter at Le Perroquet in Chicago and rushing up to Tennessee Williams's table: "I see that the drooping head of the guest sitting in front of the playwright is practically touching his salmon steak." But how would I squeeze in Edna Lewis's "Morning-After-Hog-Butchering Breakfast"? In this recollection from Lewis's childhood in late-1920s rural Virginia, several black families would gather to render pork at its freshest: "The hogs looked beautiful. They were glistening white inside with their lining of fat, and their skin was almost translucent after the scraping." More than a meal in itself, this piece is a saga: the peeling off of fine-textured "leaf lard," to be kept and used for biscuits and pie crust; and the carving of the meat, and the smoking of it, and uses found for all the trimmings. And "the taste of fresh bacon, sliced thin from the middling as soon as the meat was cold enough to carve," and also puffy sunny-side-up eggs (fresh from the hen, and each with a dash of rooster), and black raspberries with cream. And the consigning of one organ to the kids: "We would blow the bladders up with straws cut from reeds and hang them in the house to dry. By Christmas they would have turned transparent like beautiful balloons. We always handled them with care and made them part of our Christmas decorations." James Beard is one of the many luminaries anthologized in "American Food Writing." All this and more on one menu would overwhelm. In another of Molly O'Neill's inspired selections, M.F.K. Fisher tells of a repast urged upon her in wave after wave by "a young servant in northern Burgundy who was almost fanatical about food, like a medieval woman possessed by the devil. Her obsession engulfed even my appreciation of the dishes she served, until I grew uncomfortable." Eventually, Fisher turns dreamy, the many courses having each been so exquisite, but "I felt surprise to be alive still." Fisher's palate has at last earned the epicurean servant's approval, but the redoubtable diner is all but foundered, bodily, mentally and spiritually. And she has yet to earn the respect of the jaded (or down-to-earth) resident cat. Since I can't review this book in stages, every Sunday for the next several months, how may I serve it to you adequately without growing testy? I ask this in mind of the tartly comic selection from "Eating Together: Recipes and Recollections," in which Lillian Hellman and Peter Feibleman jointly portray Hellman's six days of tergiversatory preparation for a Martha's Vineyard dinner party. At length Hellman is reduced to outspoken resentment of the guests of honor, who hadn't wanted to socialize in the first place. To avert exhaustion, I might quibble. Avoid the S. J. Perelman piece, I might suggest, because it isn't primo Perelman. I can't forbear to point out that Thomas Jefferson's verbatim recipe for ice cream includes an "it's" that ought to be an "its." And I do believe more attention should have been paid to Southern barbecue. Or I might focus on theme. The introduction by O'Neill - a former food columnist for The New York Times and the author of cookbooks and a memoir - begins with reference to having been caught up in the "food revolution" beginning more or less in the '60s. That freshness-and-purity boom, she has come to realize, was just one more twitch in the "long and continuous history" of the "essential tension in the American appetite," which "mirrors a central conflict in American culture," "between the civilized and the wild." For more of such perspective, see the introduction, which is sound and lively. Winston Churchill would have been wrong to find fault with this anthology, as he is supposed to have done with an overelaborate dessert, by saying, "This pudding has no theme." Theme is nothing, however, unless sufficiently grounded in pudding. Alfred Kazin's recollection of Jewish mothers' force-feeding of their families in Brooklyn between the world wars thrums with cultural tension: "Eat! Eat! May you be destroyed if you don't eat! What sin have I committed that God should punish me with you! Eat! What will become of you if you don't eat! Imp of darkness, may you sink 10 fathoms into the earth if you don't eat! Eat!" But there is more exuberance than stress in Kazin's recalling of richly various delicatessens and celery tonic and the "warm and sticky ooze of chocolate ... through everything we touched." In his parody of SoHo restaurant fare, David Sedaris no doubt represents what O'Neill calls the American "populist counterpull" against sophisticated cuisine, but that posture is a hook for elegant fancy: "This is where the world's brightest young talents come to ... offer up their famous knuckle of flash-seared crappie served with a collar of chided ginger and cornered by a tribe of kiln-roasted Chilean toadstools, teased with a warm spray of clarified musk oil." In Corby Kummer's tribute to the Vermont cheesemakers Cindy and David Major, the banner of global-minded artisanalism is on high, but the pudding's proof is plain enough: "Oh my gosh," Ms. Major says of her first mouthful of the first batch of their cheese that they deem worthy of the annual conference of the American Cheese Society. "It tasted so rich, creamy and sweet. I just knew we'd finally figured it out." That cheese won a blue ribbon. So should this book. 'The hogs looked beautiful. They were glistening white with their lining of fat, and their skin was almost translucent.' Roy Blount Jr.'s latest book is "Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]

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Review by Booklist Review

In this comprehensive anthology from the Library of America, veteran food journalist O'Neill brings together some of the most significant short food writing from across the whole spectrum of American culinary history. From the eighteenth century, Joel Barlow offers a poem celebrating a breakfast specialty. A brief account of cooking at the outset of the nineteenth century comes from Henry Adams' renowned history. James Beard, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, and other contemporary icons record the great American food revolution of recent decades. Excerpts and articles from other writers bring the anthology up to date with concerns about food origins and sound nutrition. Good food writing being an effective tonic to arouse one's appetite, O'Neill has peppered the text with historical and modern recipes beyond those that appear within the texts themselves. A valuable subject index expedites locating topics efficiently within this very diverse set of readings.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2007 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This exhaustive collection of essays, anecdotes, and recipes spans three centuries of American food writing, from Meriwether Lewis?s account of killing "two bucks and two buffaloe" during his famous trek across the continent, to Michael Pollan?s up-to-the-minute account of the politics of organic food. In between are countless gems: Alice B. Toklas?s baroque recipe for lobster, Richard Olney?s meditation on pate and Edna Lewis?s poignant description of killing hogs on her family farm. Ably organized and edited by the former host of the PBS series Great Food, this collection features numerous accounts of foodways long since vanished in this country; take, for instance, Charlie Ranhofer?s thorough analysis of the thirteen-course society dinner, complete with "removes or solid joints," "iced punch or sherbet," and "hot sweet entremets"; or Maria Sermolino?s memories of the Italian meals served at her father?s Greenwich Village restaurant back when spaghetti was still a novelty. Famous food writers are well represented here (James Beard and Calvin Trillin, M.F.K. Fisher and James Villas), but perhaps even more rewarding are the wonderful but lesser-known players on the American food scene; either Elizabeth Robins Pennell?s discussion of the spring chicken or Eugene Walter?s tale of gumbo alone would make this volume a treasure. With so many wonderful ingredients, this rich, delectable treat is a must-have for American foodies. (May) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

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