On Food-Related Books

Spoiled, Fast Food Nation, and McLibel are all concerned with the sobering consequences of our ever-increasing consumption of fast food and concentration of food production in the hands of larger processors. Spoiled is particularly grim about the increased likelihood of epidemic food poisoning, recognized or unrecognized. It would be agreeable to dismiss Fast Food Nation as not relevant if you only eat "slow food", but unfortunately the side effects of mass production, combination of meat from various sources, and breeding vegetables for long-distance shipability extend well into the realm of the foods we can readily obtain from our local supermarkets. McLibel is the lightest read of the three. The details of the David-and-Goliath struggle between two U.K. activists, who represented themselves for lack of funds, against battalions of McDonald's lawyers to demonstrate that their homemade flyers' accusations against the fast foot giant were substantially true, is a hoot.

The Cookbook Decoder is almost unique in offering a digestible (sorry) amount of the science behind why cooking procedures are the way they are, and what you can do to fix it when things go wrong in the kitchen. Entertainingly humorous. Fashionable Food describes not only the major food fads for the last century, but also the social conditions that brought them about (like the fad for Jello molds when refrigerators became common). Some of the recipes are good too, and nostalgic if you lived through that decade, though some, particularly "1924 Italian Spaghetti", are clearly reprinted for amusement value only.

Many of the other books are memoirs by restaurant critics, travelers, and people who worked inside the restaurant business. The Winston book helped me immeasurably in setting up my small Manhattan kitchen so it's well-organized ans a pleasure to work in. The Roth & Glassman/Fields & Honore books are more concerned with self-nurturing and philosophy of life, often as reflected in food and cookery. Finally, 900 Days and Endurance, while by no means food books, contain descriptions of people in extreme conditions trying to eke out enough sustenance to survive, and are scary and fascinating.

Books the Happy Foodie staff has enjoyed:

• Spoiled: Why Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It - Nicols Fox
• Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
• McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial - John Vidal
• The Cookbook Decoder - Arthur Grosser
• Fashionable Food - Sylvia Lovegren
• The Rituals of Dinner - Margaret Visser
• A Meal Observed - Andrew Todhunter
• Tender at the Bone - Ruth Reichl
• Cooking for Mr. Latte - Amanda Hesser
• Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater - Alan Richman
• A Year in Provence, Encore Provence, & Toujours Provence - Peter Mayle
• Consuming Passions: a Food-Obsessed Life - Michael Lee West
• How to Cook a Wolf - MFK Fisher
• Waiting: the True Confessions of a Waitress - Debra Ginsberg
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America - Barbara Ehrenreich
• Wife of the Chef - Courtney Febbroriello
• Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen - George Lang
• I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking - Alton Brown
• Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
• Home Cooking - Laurie Colwin
• When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair - Geneen Roth
• Getting organized - Stephanie Winston
• Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life that Matters -Bernard Glassman & Rick Fields
  (only tangentially about food, but it does concern simplicity and other lessons absorbed while working as a chef)
• In Praise of Slowness - Carl Honore
• The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad - Harrison Salisbury
• Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing

Foodie books we're looking forward to:

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• If You Can Stand the Heat: Tales from Chefs and Restaurateurs - Dawn Davis
• The Last Days of Haute Cuisine - Patric Kuh
• French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew - Peter Mayle
• Comfort Me With Apples - Ruth Reichl
• Garlic and Sapphires - Ruth Reichl
• The Making of a Chef - Michael Ruhlman
• Why We Eat What We Eat - Raymond Sokolov
• The Way We Eat - Margaret Visser
• Much Depends on Dinner - Margaret Visser
• and anything else by MFK Fisher

 

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