(Part 2) Best gastronomy essays books according to redditors
We found 278 Reddit comments discussing the best gastronomy essays books. We ranked the 95 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
This might be nitpicky, but neither of the Wiki maps in the articles you linked cover Ethiopia / Eritrea, which have a distinctive and comparatively well-known in the West culinary tradition. I feel like this problem has more to do with the lack of Western interest in the nuances of sub-Saharan African culture and cuisine rather then a lack of the existence thereof. For example, I can think of interesting and unique dishes originating from Uganda (Luwombo), Nigeria (Suya), and South Africa, both indigenous (the braai tradition) and Afrikaner (Cape Dutch cuisine; the bobotie). This is entirely setting aside the French ex-colonies, which have interesting culinary traditions of their own with a different cultural genealogy.
I'd second the recommendation someone else made to take a look at Black American Southern food, as that has a lot of sub-Saharan influence; I'd also point you specifically to Michael Twitty's book The Cooking Gene, which isn't a cookbook but spends the bulk of its pages reckoning with the specter of African diaspora in Southern cooking. I'd also suspect there are at least a handful of Francophone cookbooks concerning the cuisines of the ex-colonies that might be worth looking at, if you know French or you know someone who does. I'd just be careful not to expect a huge comprehensive book of all non-Arab African cuisine, for a lot of reasons that I can go into if you'd like but might be a little too in-the-weeds for here.
Derek Dellinger ate exclusively a fermented diet for a year, wrote a book about it, The Fermented Man
has done work shops, is involved with a brewery, and has appeared on Heritage Radio Network's ['Fuhmendaboudit' - episode available to listen to for free here](
http://heritageradionetwork.org/podcast/derek-dellinger-the-fermented-man/)
I don't know about current, its 25 years old. It was being recorded while Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for Sega Genesis was being developed. If you want to see current Coolio...
You might enjoy this read.
https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Forks-History-American-Reviews/dp/0062228897
I seem to recall at least one review was an applebees and it was a big deal in that town. Small chance i have the resturant wrong. Been a while since i read it.
Now you can do it too, in your own home !
Cooking With Lovecraft
I've never tried it myself- but I really wanted to after reading Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead by Habeeb Salloum... But then I got sick, so :( No cooking cookbooks for me.
There is not "overwhelming evidence". In fact, there is zero evidence. Everything that these organizations say is based on epidemiological studies that are flawed and are inconsistent with each other. I don't care how many organizations are saying it, they are all basing their information on the same handful of flawed studies. I have read them and read about them. I doubt you have done the same.
Americans have largely switched to a carb heavy diet with low fat options for everything imaginable yet heart disease is higher than ever. It wasn't this way in the past when People ate a lot more red meat and dairy products than they do today.
There are also societies that eat almost entirely fat as their diet who have pretty much no heart disease at all. Of course no cause and effect can be established, but it does show that high fat is not causing people to die from heart disease.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M6A2WTF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy-ebook/dp/B00A25FDUA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1537127594&sr=1-1&keywords=big+fat+surprise
Here are a couple to get you started. Also read the actual studies that the diet-heart hypothesis are based on and you will see how flawed they are.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109703016310
The Fat of the Land https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M6A2WTF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_XDgJBbE37AVP8
Actually is a really interesting read by a brewmaster from a brewery called Kent Falls in CT that brews a large amount of sour beers. Not quite the same but he ate just fermented foods with high acidity. https://www.amazon.com/Fermented-Man-Front-Lines-Revolution/dp/1468309013
Some of my personal favorites (amazon links):
A Fortune Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East, mainly Southeast Asia.
The Geography of Bliss, RTW.
Food-related:
Ant Egg Soup: The Adventures of a Food Tourist in Laos
Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China
Peter Hessler in China:
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
Country Driving
And Peter Mayle's series on Provence.
Look at Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen. It has a history of the family and their escape from Vietnam to Australia as well as being a good cookbook.
https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Red-Lantern-Stories-Vietnamese/dp/0740777432
Good time as any to plug The Cooking Gene, by Michael W. Twitty. This is basically his life's work.
>A good Jew knows whether he can eat something or not
If you cook all your food yourself or if a knowledgable family member makes all your meals maybe so. The minute you start getting into processed foods things change (see below).
>and if he is lied to or makes a mistake God doesn't hold him accountable.
Basically true but...
> Of course, as with anything religious, this may be the position of his personal branch of Judaism and not all Jews.
Correct. I used to be not so strict about keeping kosher but after talking to some of the inspectors that go around the world dealing with the factories that make food or food ingredients and processing agents and learning from them I changed my attitude and became more strict.
The inspectors I know aren't rich by any means, their work is practically blue collar but requires a detailed understanding of many volumes of Jewish law on the subject of kashrus as well as knowing the ins and outs of many different parts of the food processing business, one of them has a PHD in chemistry. They travel for months out of the year and are often away from their families. Not easy work. They could certainly earn more money in other jobs but these guys do it because they look at it like public service work.
Of course there have been cases where supervisors were dishonest or worse, but on the whole this really isn't the case. If you want to read a book on the subject in general without going into too much detail, try Kosher Nation by Sue Fishkoff.
David Tanis. I came here to suggest another of his, Heart of the Artichoke. In addition to having awesome recipes, his books are just soooo beautiful to flip through.
http://amazon.com/dp/1521077800
Enjoy the 'ghetto gourmet' https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002UL33BA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Hey, the kashrus industry is fascinating. The book to read is Kosher Nation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805242651/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This book is pretty fantastic. Haven't tried the recipes (traditional Sichuan), but the writing is great.
Another technique to easily get the skin off is by freezing bags of tomatoes then thawing them out on your counter.
Supposedly the skin will easily peel off using this tactic, according to David Tanis in his book Heart of the Artichoke.
I haven't tried it myself, but I've got no reason to believe this method wouldn't work.
Oh man, you are in for a treat! The Cooking Gene is by Michael Twitty, originally published just last year.
I don't think I've read all of Omnivore's Dilemma but I'm pretty sure I've read excerpts. Thanks for reminding me, I'll bump it up closer to the top of my "to-read" pile.
I have a book called Will Write For Food which has some interesting advice for a career in food writing.
Eat It Anyway: Fight the Food Fads, Beat Anxiety and Eat in Peace
https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Anyway-Fight-Anxiety-Peace-ebook/dp/B07GNF4DHF/
If you like the idea of this business model, you need to read the book "Cooked" by Michael Pollan., or watch the Netflix series by the same name.
Food is one of the most important aspects of human culture, yet the economy is forcing us to specialise more and more. So much so that people feel like they'd rather work an extra hour and let someone else cook for them.
We are all becoming so compartmentalised, it's removing all the joy out of enormous portions of our lives, all for the sake of a cheap, nutritionally deficient burger.
Wait, I must vehemently protest on that one.
While perhaps my phrasing could be better, I was actually telling of a proper research about comparison of efficacy of ancient techniques versus modern ones. It is directly related to the main question.
It was an addition on Qwenidens answer and if he was not the first one to respond, I would have probably said what he said.
PS. I think I can find the corresponding research. In the meantime here is a few sec Google search: http://lifespa.com/a-holy-case-for-raw-cheese/
http://www.amazon.com/Cooked-A-Natural-History-Transformation/dp/1594204217
P.P.S sorry I'm new to reddits system, you wrote that the comment removed- but I can still see it. Is this like a grace period?
Thanks for doing all the fancy formatting there.
This book is next on my reading list, so I can't tell you how it is yet, but I am excited to begin it when I finish my current book!
Have you ever read this book? It's weirdly charming. Antony Bourdain, gods rest him, discovered her and got her a book deal.
Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062228897/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_3uCGDbM7BE03X
Basically gonna echo most of the answers already posted, but just to pile on:
Cookbooks
Nothing inspires cooking like a good cookbook collection. The great news about cookbooks is that they're often bought as gifts or souvenirs and they make their way onto the used market cheap and in great condition. Here are my suggestions for a great starter shelf:
both of these books are written by popular chef, so they may be a little more upscale than what you are looking for. in my opinion Deep Run Roots has simpler recipes for a home cook to follow.
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Run-Roots-Stories-Recipes-ebook/dp/B01E3V5P8S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483213393&sr=1-1&keywords=deep+run+roots
https://www.amazon.com/Heritage-Sean-Brock-ebook/dp/B00MEY9SZS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483213500&sr=1-1&keywords=sean+brock
Cool question...we know that many of the fresh cheeses were eaten by lower classes in the middle ages (a "cottage cheese", literally!)...one interesting source is http://www.amazon.com/All-Manners-Food-England-Present/dp/0252064909/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412089572&sr=1-1&keywords=9780252064906 which even mentions that "Dairy produce very much remained identified with the lower orders..."
BTW, Benu has a cookbook and the chef will sign it if you bring it/buy it. Really good cookbook, not good if you actually like cooking though, its mainly just a good conceptual read due to the complexity of the dishes. Here is a link to Amazon where you can read the reviews.
I do mean Staffcanteen! Good catch. Here are some Instagram accounts I enjoy in addition to the superstars - not all of them are brilliant all the time, but I'm okay following an account if there's one really great thing every now and then.
I recommend the Benu cookbook as well.
Starting with ingredients
http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Ingredients-Aliza-Green/dp/0762427477
My boyfriend's grandma got this cookbook as a gift. I spent all day until 2am reading it because the stories in it were great--I could really relate because my parents are first generation Vietnamese. The recipes look pretty good too.
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Red-Lantern-Stories-Vietnamese/dp/0740777432
When I shopped around my ecookbook The Gluten Free Low Carber to publishing companies and agents I got a LOT of rejections, and it still hasn't been picked up to publish in hard copy, even though it is doing really well on Amazon.com in kindle format. What they all told me they are looking for before they will take you on is a platform (established fans that will buy your book - apparently IBIH didn't have enough at the time), and an original concept that is on trend (sadly once it becomes popular it's already "old" to them so you have to be ahead of the trends). It also takes an average of 18 months from start to finish to get a hardcopy cookbook published the traditional way, and there are no guarantees that it will do well. Self-publishing on kindle is definitely easier, but it still takes a lot of work to meet the formatting guidelines, and get all of the text and photos complete - also there are no guarantees that amazon will accept it once it's finished. It took me over 300 manhours to get mine to the point of sale as an e-book. It was worth it to me because I loved doing it, and the sales have been good, but it could have tanked and in that case it would have been a lot of hard work for nothing. So if you're passionate about it, go for it - but don't do it if you just think it's going to be a huge moneymaker, because 9 times out of 10 it really isn't. If you're serious about doing more research and moving forward, you can get lots of great info in this book which was one of the most helpful to me.
Here it is on Amazon. Not "published next month" but available now.
Sadly, it's $34, only a hardcover (no Kindle), and no "Look Inside" preview.
I found it interesting that a popular (and expensive) recent book says something similar. Actually pretty negative in terms of using insects as a protein source.
As the industry grows there's going to be a LOT of pushback from entrenched industries looking to discredit entomphagy in any way they can. The Time article from a year or so ago went there.
Under the right conditions (primarily temperature), and fed the right food source, crickets (and other edible insects / arthropods) are an efficient and cost-effective protein source.
On Eating Insects https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Insects-Essays-Stories-Recipes/dp/0714873349/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510820964&sr=8-1&keywords=eating+insects