Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
cjp, I was wondering that very thing the other day with regard to the
Food Network and food mags, especially in light of the enormous
popularity of Rachael Ray's magazine. I believe Paula Deen has a
magazine as well. 

As a New Orleanian, John, I've especially enjoyed your writing on that
part of the country. Serious pig, indeed....although with the holidays
coming up it's your essay on Roald Dahl's beloved Arnheim's "meisjes"
that keeps needling at me (the recipe, that is...I've recently gotten a
tough-as-hell stand mixer!) 
  

    
Rachel, that's exactly the sort of mixer you'll need. But the results
are worth it.
  

    
Holidays are such fun for those of us who really don't coook much from
scratch except then.  Or who love to make dessert but usually defer.
Are you working up new dishes for the holidays this year?
  

    

John, For what it's worth, my wife already had one of the books you
recommended. She asked me to relay that another of her favorites is "The
Dance of Spices" By Laxmi Hiremath.

That also led to another thought: the internet "cookbook". It's trivial to
find recipes on the internet, but quite something different to find good
ones.  That's why we're still buying cookbooks. Maybe this is a classic
generational thing - the hippies from the 60's buying cookbooks but the
wired generation living on the internet.
  

    
Gail, to be quite honest, as I get older, I feel less and less
inclined to get involved in holiday cooking or baking. This may sound
like moral hauteur, but in truth I have no sweet tooth. In fact, I have
a contract with my publisher to write a book on savory alternatives to
dessert, i.e., savories. Last year I made Christmas spiced beef from a
recipe in one of Elizabeth David's more obscure books, which had me
tracking down a source of saltpeter (turns out it's used as rocket fuel
and I was able to get it [by the pound only!] on eBay). It was...
interesting, but I don't know if it really counts as holiday cooking. 
  

    
jmcarlin, thanks for the tip about Dance of Spices. I've requested it
through interlibrary loan. About recipes on the Internet, yeah,
although you could say exactly the same thing about cookbooks. The
difference is that when you find a really good cookbook, you don't have
to worry about each recipe, because you tune in to the author's
sensibility. Maybe it's my age, but I find Websites harder to gauge
that way, but it's also because they don't have the depth of content. I
use the Internet a lot in my food research, but not so much when I'm
looking for a recipe. So often, on the Web, it's the SAME recipe,
repeated ad infinitum. 
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
NO NAME DINER SAGA. Ed, I actually have a book contract for the
No-Name Diner stories. It was supposed to be finished ten years ago,
but eventually my editor understood that I do not write to schedule.
For those unfamiliar with Simple Cooking, the food letter, the fount of
all that appears in my books, I've been writing a fictional narrative
of the goings-on in a small-town New England diner that appears,
episode by episode in most issues. While I do write a lot about our
vernacular food, recipes included, the point of the serial was to give
me a chance to write about the context in which food takes on meaning,
outside of autobiography and family narrative. At least that was the
idea when I started. Since then the characters have kind of taken on a
life of their own; my job seems to be to provide them with fresh
material (and come up with the recipes). And, yes, I was an English
teacher, at a private school where I was handed so much fascinating
material that I wrote a 500-page manuscript before I realized that I
would be sued by everyone involved if I ever let it out into the world.
That, of course, was back in the seventies. Today, it would just be
another scandalous autobiographical novel, prefaced with an abject
don't-take-me-to-court apology. All water over the dam with no
connection at all to my current writing. 
  

    
Eric, regarding Amanda Hesser, the first sentence in my email to
Dwight Garner, editor at The New York Times Book Review, when my book
was included in The Notable Cookbooks listing, was to jokingly thank
him for not giving MOUTH WIDE OPEN to her to review. I appreciate the
fact that you found the piece worth mentioning as "worth the price of
admission." Readers who know only my books might be surprised to learn
that most of my book reviews are positive, even enthusiastic, but the
critical ones seem to be the ones with staying power, probably because
they're less of the moment. In any case, not a single review of my own
book has mentioned my reviews of that one or the one of Raymond
Sokolov's THE COOK'S CANON. I suppose that's just as well; in his
otherwise positive review of OUTLAW COOK, Jeffrey Steingarten scolded
me for my bad attitude re my review of Paula Wolfert's writings. The
food world is very different from the literary world, maybe because
it's so much more of a club. 
  

    
Ed, no URL, alas. I got the info from Jessica's Biscuit, who sent out
an email with the info. I can list them though: 

Henderson, Beyond Nose to Tail
Hopkinson, Roast Chicken and Other Stories
Thorne, Mouth Wide Open
Waters, The Art of Simple Food
Chang, The Seventh Daughter
Locatelli, Made in Italy
Spicer (not a bad name for a cookbook writer), Crescent City Cooking
Moskowitz, Veganomicon
Zaouali, Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World
Malouf, Artichoke to Za'atar
Peterson, Cooking 
Johnson, Fish Forever (owner of Monterey Fish, my favorite fish
source)
 
  

    
Here it is. Thoughtful and interesting. And I speak as a food book
reviewer, not as one of the reviewed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Cooking-t.html?8bu&emc=bu
  

    
Hmm....feeling a trip to the bookstore coming on.   This conversation
is just right for a gray and damp fall weekend.

I almost never try to browse for recipes on the internet, because the
hit to miss ratio is way too low.  I'd much rather use it as a research
tool, to compare different versions of a recipe or learn about how an
ingredient might be used.  

I am very selective about the cookbooks I keep.  I buy some and get
others from the library, but if the author's sensibility does not match
mine closely enough, or can't be easily tweaked to fit (like several
who consistently underseason the food, usually by a factor of two,
which is easily corrected), I won't keep the book.  

There is so much out there on the net that is not referenced or
credited in any way that allows me to establish that sort of confidence
in someone standing behind the recipes.
  

    
What a treat to come home and read the 62 previous posts!

Earlier this month I went through my books and pulled all yours out
for a re-read John. My favorite recipe is the one for stifado, sorry I
can't remember which book it is from.  Why hadn't I ever though before
to slice the chuck roast rather than cube it?  Such a simple thing and
yet that recipe informs every stew dish I make.  

Look forward to a trip to the bookstore tomorrow and reading your new
book.  
  

    
Liz! Not every writer likes to be told that your favorite bit comes
from the first book he wrote!! But, in truth, I'm very happy to
remember that recipe, because it was one my first epiphanies as a cook.
I disagreed with Elizabeth David! I was true to my palate's memory.
The recipe is in SIMPLE COOKING, on page 126. A very slowly dish of
smothered onions and beef, in a simple tomato sauce made with tomato
paste and red wine. 
  

    
Debunx: I so much agree with you that at first I thought I had somehow
written that post. You wouldn't like to ghostwrite for me, would you?
  

    
Dang, he's already hiring ghostwriters!

Your site, <http://www.outlawcook.com/>, was really quiet for a while,
and now I see you're adding entries every couple of days. Why, one
might even call it...a blog! (Maybe I should just whisper that; nothing
seems to make publishers run away faster than if someone calls you a
b-----r.)

Do you consider what you're doing blogging? Do you read any food blogs
(lord knows there's a million of them)?
  

    
Ummmm. Yeah, it's a blog, given that a blog is, roughly, a journal or
diary that you've decided to share with the world. I go through spells
when its hard to write, and I'm trying this out as a way of getting the
juices flowing. It's also a way of disciplining myself to write down
what I do in the kitchen right after I've done it, instead of blithely
promising myself that I'll remember it. Even with a few hours lag time,
I find that I forget things that come back only because I had the
sense to photograph them. As to publishers and blogs, my publicity
person at FSG sent review copies of MWO to about fifty of them, and has
garnered some really interesting reviews. This is important, because
there are very few sources for food book reviews and those review very
few food books. I'm going to try to get some reviews of my own up at my
site, too, and some other things. The problem is that to do it
half-properly takes an enormous amount of time. And, unless you get
feedback, how do you know that it isn't all a total bore? 
  

    
Well, as someone with one and a quarter blogs myself, you should
install a stat-counter, so you know how many hits you're getting and
where they're coming from (I appear to have a regular reader in
Mongolia, for instance), and what they're searching for when they land,
where they land, etc. etc. etc. I started mine because I love to
write, yet don't have nearly the opportunity I once had. Doesn't seem
to have brought in any work, but at least I get that out of my system. 

Are there food blogs you read, though? 
  

    
ED: "Are there food blogs you read, though?" If you happened to visit
me in my apartment before I married Matt, and if you looked around, you
would see that every available surface was heaped with papers,
magazines, and books, and every bookcase was stuffed with books,
papers, and magazines. Matt has this thing about neatness, so this
isn't the case anymore. I no longer subscribe to any magazines, I read
no newspapers, and I'm doing my best not to buy any books — because the
moment I purchase one, the urge to read it flickers and vanishes. Even
so, there are two bookcases on either side of my desk stuffed with
books I haven't read; a large wooden trunk, ditto; two taborets on
either side of my chair stuffed with books and file folders; and my
desktop is a litter pile. And where am I? Sunk into my reading chair, a
bowl of popcorn in my lap, totally absorbed in a thriller. Remember
Sherlock Holmes' comparison of the brain and an attic and how the
detective must keep it free of any clutter, including the information
that the earth goes around the sun? My brain is crammed to the rafters,
with long lines of things waiting to get in. So, to answer your
question: no. I am exhausted by information, opinion, endless talk,
printed words. Obviously, I'm hopeless addicted, but I no longer go out
of my way to add more dust to the storm. Blogs came too late. Way too
late. 
  

    
from off - Well reader Martin Rook:

Hi John,
 I am currently reading, (and enjoying very much)  Mouth Wide Open. It is my
first experiece with your writing, and I intend to try to track down your
out of print titles. A question: I wondered if you have read, and if so,
have an opinion on a favorite book on cooking of mine . The title is Supper
of the Lamb, and the author is Robert Farrar Capon.
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
ROBERT FARRAR CAPON. Hi Martin, that is a reach into the past. When
was SUPPER OF THE LAMB first published... 1969? Anyway, I understand
your treasuring it, since the tone is humane and the recipes
thoughtfully presented, with a larger frame of reference than most
cookbooks aspire to. I don't know if you've sought out his other
books,
but in my own opinion, the best was the this one, his first, and the
others detract from rather than add to it. Is that your experience,
too?
  

    
Had to hit three bookstores in the past 24 hours to get a copy of
mouth wide open.  It ended up being one of the more expensive books
I've gotten, although I also blame the christmas gift book for the pile
of other books that followed me home.  I need better local bookstores.
  

    
Only a few essays into this and I'm enjoying it immensely.  This is
the first of your books that I've read, but clearly will not be the
last.  

I had to start with the chapter on falafel, one of my very favorite
foods.  I recently visited my old neighborhood in San Francisco and had
some falafel at Sunrise Deli, and it was a revelation to be reminded
of how wonderful their falafel were--the  falafel themselves are
wonderfully fresh and crisp, and studded with sesame seeds.  Is this
variation traditional in some areas now, or perhaps a quirk of the
original cook at this deli?  

I had never considered them in quite the way you discuss--as lacking
the succulence of meat--but it does bring home that my failures to
create an acceptable alternative have been, at least in part, due to
failure of follow through with the other elements of the sandwich that
provide what succulence there is.  I now have a batch of chickpeas
soaking to see if this new understanding will improve my outcomes, and
fortunately there is already some sumac in the cabinet just waiting for
this opportunity.
  

    
I was brought up a bit short by that essay by the realization that
falafel was such a new item on America's culinary horizon. When I
worked in L.A. in 1976, we'd go down to Fairfax, where there was what
was apparently an Israeli chain falafel joint, called 'Me n Me, or
something weirdly laid out like that. It was exactly as you describe
the Israeli places, toppings and all, and it never occurred to any of
us that we might have been some of the few Americans at that time who
were enjoying this stuff.