Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
And isn't kielbasa already smoked? It is around here. 
  

    

John, thanks for the recommendations. I also enjoyed your comment about
buying all the books about a certain dish. It's a classic example of the
principle of attraction.
  

    
Hi there, John, from a fan who has enjoyed your website for years and
absolutely loves your new book.  That story about the kielbasa casing
po' boy was wonderful, kind of like Homer Simpson meets Julia Child
meets my grandma who never wasted anything.  And I was so happy to see
your tale of the five-month-old croissant in the book... it was like
running into an old friend at the market.

I have to tell you that your recipe for eggs Florentine got me into a
real mood for them, and we soon had them for breakfast, much to
everyone's delight.  Thanks!

My question: what is the best thing you've ever eaten?
  

    
Ed, yeah, the kielbasa was already smoked, but mostly the flavor of
the smoke was in the casing. So I peeled that off and smoked the "nude"
sausage in my smoker. The result was "double smoked" kielbasa. The
smoked-kielbasa-casing po'boy was sort of a side benefit, if you follow
me. I had photos of all this, but most of them seem to have slid into
oblivion.
  

    
What is the best thing I've ever eaten? That will take some thought.
Four immediate memories that haunt me: raw sea scallops (like having
the ocean melt in your mouth, almost like eating a dream); my first
childhood encounter with ham bone marrow (written about in MOUTH WIDE
OPEN); the first time I tasted a barley sugar lollipop; and, again as a
child, although an older one, the night I discovered the little
delicious pockets of edible stuff in the crevices inside a deep-fried
chicken back. My mother bought a deep-fat fryer when I was in seventh
grade and we started having fried chicken every Sunday. There were six
of us and one chicken so there was a lot of competition for favorite
pieces. Nobody wanted the back, however, including me until I
discovered its secrets and the not insignificant pleasures of the tail.
And, blessing of blessings, I ALWAYS got the back. And I never told
anyone why I had taken leave of my senses.
  

    
Ah, what my father used to call the Pope's nose! We've still got that
question about food magazines/media hanging up there, but it's late and
I"m going to bed. 

I also had a good meal tonight: penne with tuna sauce. Kinda naked,
because I had written "Kalamatas" on my shopping list and could *not*
decipher it...until I started cooking this evening. Dang. 

And there are beans soaking for the Minestrone alla Genovese from the
book, which I've made once, and with which I am currently engaging in
dialogue. 
  

    
Sorry. I didn't mean to ignore the magazine query. I greatly admired
Saveur when Colman Andrews edited it. Recently, it seems to me to ask a
little less of its readers, but I still leaf through it, and even cook
from it on occasion (or at least think I might, so copies sit around,
opened to a particular recipe, waiting. And waiting.) That's it. I've
taken a particular dislike to Gourmet recently, not because of its
editorial direction but its publisher's perverse fetish for impeding
the reading experience with every imaginable obstacle and, to be blunt,
cheap perfume-y stench. If they can find a way to imprison a pelican
among its pages so it can jump out and sell you a Lexus, it will
happen. I'm doing my best not to be there when it does. 
  

    
Have you seen Ed Behr's quarterly, "The Art of Eating," John? I like
quite a bit of it (especially Mitchell Davis's writing). Some of it
reminds me of your writing, actually.
  

    
John, it's fantastic to hear you've just come out with another book. 

I like what you're saying above about Saveur "asking a little less of
its readers." I think that seems to be the case with a good bit of the
writing in the big food magazines. When I was first getting into food
studies(I'm a Master's student in Gastronomy) I was pretty generally
interested in most of them, eagerly and uncritically reading any sort
of article on some far-out dish I could find ( the "I eat
weird/disgusting foods" articles used to be a favorite.) Now I have a
lot more trouble with food magazines, and mostly avoid them. 

I would be interested to know how you got "into" food writing--did you
have any special contacts or connections in that world? If you've done
any magazine food columns (were you once a columnist for Gourmet, or
am I thinking of someone else?) what are your thoughts on that
experience? 
  

    
Oops, miswrote about the kielbasa casing.

And I am inspired by the falafel chapter.  I was in Israel in the summer of
1981 and I loved being able to get falafel on the street like I got Sabrett
hot dogs on the streets of New York.  Unfortunately, in my part of Florida
we don't see a lot of falagel places, so I needed your reminder of how much
I really love it. And now I have a guide on how to prepare them for myself.
  

    
I’m currently reading your Serious Pig, and am massively in love.
Though I live in Montreal, I have a strong attachment to Prince Edward
Island, off the shores of Eastern Canada. I have had trouble getting a
sense of food vernacular there, but as it is a place that grows
potatoes (and also has those unmanned make-your-own-change roadside
sales shacks for them), values lobster, doesn’t value its excellent
snow crab, I’m feeling reached and helped by your words on Maine,
helping me to make sense of some of what I’ve observed but not wholly
understood. You should come, by the way-- I'd get us some lobsters off
the boat, and boil some sea water, and off we’d go. 

I was just talking about the book to some friends, and got to tell
them how I was struck by your uniquely loving and meditative position
in regards the ingredients before you. It is an instinct that I realise
I share, though pan-fried potatoes turned eight times over an hour and
ten minutes is for me a new frontier. Thank you for it.
  

    
ED BEHR. Eric, Ed Behr and I are old friends, and I have Art of Eating
from the very first issue. Our sensibilities (and ambitions) are quite
different. Ed has an admirable obsession with the products and
struggles of artisanal food producers, especially European and American
ones, which I share at least enough to read him on them. But the
reality is that that world, if it isn't in one's own neighborhood, is
pretty much restricted to the rich and to the motivated culinary
adventurer, neither of which am I. When I wrote above about culinary
publications, I was thinking of the mass market ones; anyone with a
serious interest in food and wine (and beer!), and the survival of the
artisanal processes that make what we eat and drink all they can be
should go straight to www.artofeating.com and subscribe.
  

    
ENTRY INTO FOOD WRITING. Rachel, the only food column I wrote was for
a magazine called Wigwag, meant as an alternative to The New Yorker and
which lasted for, what? a year, I think. At the same time, I wrote a
column for Metropolitan Home, not about food but about parts of the
house, which lasted just about as long. (I later published those essays
and others of the same sort, in my little book HOME BODY). How I got
into food writing is too long a story to get into here (I think I spell
it out in the intro to OUTLAW COOK), but it was initially (and
spiritually remains) self-published. My first book, SIMPLE COOKING, was
a collection from the food letter, as have been all my books since.
Consequently, I'm an anomaly in the food world (bet that surprises
you!) and offer nothing but an object lesson to anyone wanting to be a
food writer. The world of freelance writing, outside of a very few
writer-respectful publications, is shaped by editors, and those who
write for them have to learn to acquire the necessary plasticity to
shape themselves occasionally. I can't. When Gourmet wanted me to
insert the names of some restaurants in New York that served bone
marrow in my essay on that subject — restaurants I had only never
visited but had never even heard of, I practically had a heart attack.
And that is the least of it. A famous food writer said to me of a
famous food publication (not Gourmet) that the editor had given her a
list of adjectives that had to be inserted into her piece to liven it
up. 
  

    
SERIOUS PIG. Victoria, thanks ever so much for your words of
appreciation, all the more so because they're about SERIOUS PIG. That
is the one book in which I actually get out of the kitchen and roam
about, mostly in Maine, but also in New Orleans, and it may be my
favorite book. It suffered, I think, because the print was so small,
unconscionably small in the paperback edition. I get a headache just
looking at it. If I could do it all over again [writer heaves long
sigh]. But that it got into your hands, well, what more could I ask
for? 
  

    
You know, one thing in the newsletter that's never been published is
the No Name Diner saga. That must be accruing enough word-count for
publication, at least as a pamphlet or something. (I'll leave it to you
to explain to the gathering multitudes what it is). I like the idea of
a narrative interrupted (or interspersed, more like it) with recipes,
not least because that's something I did for several years with my
Petaluma Pete column. No Name reminds me that you were an English
teacher, were you not, back in the Mesozoic, and makes me wonder if you
had a novel hiding in your desk once before using it for kindling for
a barbeque.
  

    
Oh, and for you multitudes currently gathering, we invite your
questions. E-mail them to <inkwell@well.com> and put "John Thorne" in
the subject line. 
  

    
Breaking news (well, breaking to me): the NYT just named Mouth Wide
Open a notable book (only 12 other books share this distinction).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it will be covered in this
Sunday's Review.
  

    
and I forgot to say: CONGRATS! Get ready for a big sales spike.
  

    
Yay!  I was just coming over to post that info.

Thanks for the food list.  Back when I ate meat, chicken "oysters"
were secret favorites, just as fish cheeks (what the Chinese call the
"walnut") were.  And barley sugar!  I had forgotten that flavor.

Back to food magazines: I'm wondering whether the dip in quality for
most food magazines is directly related to the increase in the number
of people who watch the Food Channel.  It seems that they've become
more focused on the passive pleasure of watching others eat, rather
than on a hands-on approach to making good food for ourselves.  Or am I
missing something here?
  

    
Let me add to the chorus of congratulation. Next stop Oprah! (Gaaaah!)

Or at least getting those other books of yours back in print. Which
isn't nearly as far-fetched, and a lot more useful. 
  

    <scribbled by gower Fri 30 Nov 07 10:27>
  

    
I'm both impressed and amazed that the Times went ahead and listed a
book that contains the most wonderful skewering of Amanda Hesser
anywhere in print; it's also one of one of the most thoughtful
cookbook
reviews ever. I haven't yet read the Cook and the Gardener but Cooking
for Mr. Latte or whatever it was called left a sour taste in my mouth
that's STILL there somewhere, years later. For anyone reading this who
hasn't yet picked up Mouth Wide Open, this essay alone is worth the
price of admission.
  

    
Eric, or anyone, do you have a URL for that list of books? I'd like to
see what kind of company our guest's keeping!
  

    
Thank you, everyone! [Author blushes modestly.] Having written a
review for Dwight, I know his standards are quite high. That review
made me dizzy. And, yes, it would be great to have at least OUTLAW COOK
back in print. We'll see. About food magazines in general, my feeling
is that people have less and less time for leisurely reading, and
whereas, when I was young and foolish, men said they bought Playboy for
the fascinating articles but really spent their time drooling over the
photos, I wouldn't be in the least surprised to learn that people
actually subscribe to Gourmet to drool over the advertisements. There
was a lengthy piece about me in The Boston Globe this Wednesday
http://tinyurl.com/35hgok and the one email I got was to compliment me
on the bowl in which the soup was served. 
  

    
Dang, I'd have e-mailed you on being brave enough to open a can of
pickle soup, myself.