The WELL: inkwell.vue.304: David Kamp, "The United States of Arugula"

#125: Lisa Hirsch (sunbear) Wed 5 Sep 07 16:07

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:07:00 PDT

Hmm. I have been lurking and see that David hasn't answered that question. I will ping him by email and see if we can persuade him to come answer! [Read entire topic]

#124: John Ross (johnross) Wed 8 Aug 07 14:47

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:47:00 PDT

Another question for you, David: How does the "Slow Food" movement fit into the bigger picture? It seems like they're doing some interesting things in terms of creating more awareness of quality food, but in my experience, they're dominated by True Believers. [Read entire topic]

#123: David Kamp (davidkamp) Wed 8 Aug 07 12:41

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:41:00 PDT

Ed Behr and "Art of Eating"? I haven't seen that many issues, but I think it's a noble undertaking and I've more or less liked what I've seen. Also, the journal "Gastronomica" mixes some good food writing with more serious, academic-style enquery.

But I think that we need more good, lively food writing smack dab in the middle of the mainstream--not just in little quarterlies and small-press publications, as wonderful as they are. I daresay Vanity Fair should have food writing in it, which it really doesn't. Maybe I can do something about that...

Anyway, thank you, Cynthia, and thank you, Lisa, the kindest and most welcoming host and moderator a WELL novitiate could hope for. And thanks to all of you who chimed in, asked questions, or lurked anonymously--I appreciate your interest in my book and implore you to get the word out. Unless you disliked my book; then, I implore you to keep mum.

I am happy for the Inkwell to keep this topic going, though I won't be able to check in as often as I've been doing--other things beckon, including, theoretically, a vacation.

[In warbly Julia Child voice]: "Bon appe-teeet!" [Read entire topic]

#122: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Wed 8 Aug 07 09:57

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:57:00 PDT

I'm not familiar with Ed Behr, and I look forward to David's response to gower's question, since it'll undoubtedly be as illuminating as the rest of what he's been saying here for the past two weeks.

We've just launched a new interview here in Inkwell, but that doesn't mean this one has to stop, Lisa and David. This topic will remain open for further conversation indefinitely. If you're able to stick around, we'd love to have you stay on as long as you want.

If you've got to get on to other things, The WELL would like to thank you for joining us. It's been a wonderful discussion! [Read entire topic]

#121: Eric Gower (gower) Tue 7 Aug 07 16:33

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:33:00 PDT

David might not confirm or deny but I'm betting the unnamed magazine has the initials BA, based on my experience with such an unnamed magazine.

Buford is providing some awfully good food narratives, don't forget him.

What do you make of Ed Behr and his "Art of Eating?" I find it totally hit and miss, with the "hit" making up for the misses and making it worth the subscription, cause when it sings, it hits some lovely notes. [Read entire topic]

#120: David Kamp (davidkamp) Tue 7 Aug 07 16:22

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:22:00 PDT

Even before Ed Ward asked his question about food magazines, I was going to share a food-magazine anecdote, because it ties into what Renee, among others, was saying about the new wave of right-minded small farmers, many of whom are second-career people who got into farming not out of some burdensome familial obligation (e.g. "This land was farmed by my daddy, his daddy, his daddy's daddy, and I'm just barely holding on") but becasuse they wanted to do something good (e.g. "I want to grow food that tastes better and is produced in a way that doesn't disgust me or desecrate the environment").

Anyway, in the wake of "Arugula"'s original hardcover publication last year, some of the food mags got in touch asking if I wanted to write for them, and if so, what about. I responded that I was most interested in writing about farmers--particularly this new breed of small, first-generation farmer who is farming for *taste*, to make a superior product. (This isn't some imagined, wishful phenomenon--the number of small farmers is on the rise, and lots of them are young couples with babies.)

A certain food glossy, which shall remain nameless, seemed to like this idea. They told me to go ahead and do it. The one thing: Because of onerous scheduling requirements, the mag would need to photograph some of these farmers way ahead of publication, possibly before I even interviewed them. Fine. I canvassed my network of friends in food and farming, and got names, numbers, and Web sites of various first-generation farmers across the country who were doing inspiring things.

I sent all this info, including links to the farms' Web sites, to the magazine for which I was going to write the article. The editor got back to me a few days later and asked if I could come up with more farmers. Why? Because, while the farmers I'd mentioned were noble and admirable, "Unfortunately, they're not photogenic enough."

(I've saved the e-mail in which the editor wrote this, just in case someone doesn't believe me.)

Needless to say,I pulled the plug on the article. That episode shook me to the core--an unwelcome wake-up call re: food-glossy values. Listen: I write chiefly for Vanity Fair, and for all the crap that VF gets about being celebrity-obsessed and superficial and so on, it actually features first-rate journalism, and I have NEVER experienced an episode remotely like this. I simply could not believe how baldly shallow and stupid this food magazine was. And it's a major magazine.

On to Ed's question. I like Cook's Illustrated a lot--the body of it, the practical advice and recipes, the consumer tips, the step-by-step illustrations. I think they must be a bunch of loons, testing a smothered pork-chop recipe 57 times in different versions over the course of three weeks, but I admire their industry. The only thing I don't like is Christopher Kimball's editor's letter, which is trying to go for an adorably eccentric New England flintiness but actually comes off as insular and contemptuous of the rest of the country.

I like Ruth Reichl's Gourmet more than I like her predecessors' Gourmet. I think she has recognized that food has entered the realm of popular culture, and her themed issues (the TV issue, the music issue, etc.), while considered abominations to the old-time readership, are to me a savvy embrace of what's happening now. I only wish she was more committed to long-form food writing, which the 1940s and 50s Gourmet under Earle MacAusland did quite nicely--there's simply not enough to *read* in the magazine. People are surprised that I defend Reichl as an editor, because I found her last memoir, "Garlic and Sapphires," just too full of it, and she too full of herself. (I reviewed the book for the NY Times Book Review.) But I think she's a smart editor and first-rate food journalist when she's not exulting in whatever wig she's wearing.

Saveur is usually quite beautiful, probably the best in terms of food photography--a tricker, less automatic enterprise than you'd imagine--but it's kind of hit-or-miss content-wise. I still read every issue, though.

There's still not enough narrative food journalism out there, though--in any magazine. We're still just only getting there, apart from Calvin Trillin's occasional pieces. Bourdain shows great promise, but he has to get over the bad-boy posturing and reflexive cussing; he has to get back to the authentically contrary person he was when he wrote "Kitchen Confidential," not the foaming caricature of himself that he now presents to the world.

I loved an eccentric little food journal that used to be published sporadically in England by the late Alan Davidson and his wife, Jane, that was called Petits Propos Culinaires. The Davidsons were the English couple who spent years preparing "The Oxford Companion to Food." I met them once--they were wonderful people. They ran this oddly named little journal on the side, with fantastic, esoteric articles, some by name people, like Elizabeth David and Richard Olney in their last years, and some by unknowns. (One guy wrote an article about cooking food under the hood of his car while driving.) Ed Ward's old Rolling Stone compadre Charles Perry wrote a very funny article for Petits Propos Culinaire about trying to recreate medieval Arabic condiments made from rotted barley.

There's a great compendium of Petis Propos Culinaire's greatest hits called "The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy." It's well worth picking up. [Read entire topic]

#119: Berliner (captward) Tue 7 Aug 07 13:06

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:06:00 PDT

Hey, David, your book deals with the celebrity chef phenomenon, but there's a parallel phenomenon at the moment which sometimes intersects this, the world of food magazines.

Are there any food mags you particularly like (in print or on the net)? More specifically, I'd like your take on Cooks Illustrated, Saveur, and Gourmet in its current incarnation (not to mention its historical function in bringing America into foodie-dom). [Read entire topic]

#118: poop eradicated from (cjp) Tue 7 Aug 07 12:08

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:08:00 PDT

Thanks for the pseud.

Another question: I'm confused as all get out about the different kinds of eggs for sale now. What's better for us, for the environment, and for the chickens themselves: vegi-fed, free-range, or organic? [Read entire topic]

#117: will work for food (rwilmeth) Tue 7 Aug 07 11:52

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:52:00 PDT

And I wasn't trying to be snotty, Betsy, at all. But my experience with meat has been *exactly* what David says above. So many producers are doing 100% grass fed, with no antibiotics, no hormones, etc and (and even a few really great ones are doing this and still corn finishing their beef), and could be certified organic if they wanted. Ask a ton of questions -- and find out what it all really means. There is no regulation for any of these terms (except for certified organic). I've learned more thsi summer about what I will and won't eat -- and like before, I pretty much eat anything that tastes really great -- but I've also learned about places that pray on people's worries. One of the worst producers of meat from true quality terms is our states 100% certified organic producer. The meat is just crap. But people flock to eat it. Is it really that important that the land is certified, the grass the cows eat is certified, and they're certified 2nd generation organic cattle? Not when I can better tasting, 100% grass fed, hormone-free, antibiotic free beef from a local producer who just can't afford the hassle of the lable.

Some of the smartest people in the food business I've met in the past six months are farmers. Many of them on second very sucessful careeers. (One natural beef producer I've become friends with was running the energy trading desk at Canterfitzgerald on 9/11. She was out on maternity leave. She and her husband are farmers, happy and wonderful at it, but some of the smartest business people I know.) [Read entire topic]

#116: David Kamp (davidkamp) Tue 7 Aug 07 10:59

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 10:59:00 PDT

All this speaks to my comment earlier that I don't think it's a bad thing for the rest of America to eat California salad greens in the dead of winter. Cali is more efficient and prolific at growing this stuff than any other region. Now, as the e. Coli scare of last year showed us, there's still lots of work to be done to ensure that farming methods are improved, and poop eradicated from the produce section. But I will never make virtuous show of eating nothing but kale and root vegetables in the dead of Northeast winter--even if it means being beaten by Alice Waters with a Fair Trade vanilla pod.

Betsy, I think the answer to your question is to not get too hung up on the labels--"organic," "local," "biodynamic," etc. It's best to apply a combination of intellectual curiosity, which you've already demonstrated, and good old common sense. Niman Ranch stuff, for example, is not certified organic, because, Bill Niman tells me, it wasn't worth the hassle and expense of getting the certification. Yet he makes very clear, with no fuzzy language, that he only sells pastured meats that are hormone- and antibiotic-free. Likewise, lots of your local farmstands (and mine) aren't paying up to be organic, but I find that these folks are happy to talk about their farming methods, if you really care to find out. And more and more of the farmers I know in rural CT, where I am right now, are trying to cut back on the toxins and pesticides. Small farmers are getting VERY smart about this stuff.

Finally, be smug. Be a food snob. Trumpet your virtue and make others feel small. [Read entire topic]