Recommended Reading | The Rambling Epicure

2014 Top Ten Books on Food and Cooking

Published by Alessandro + Thursday, November 27, 2014 Permalink 0

By Elatia Harris

Every Thanksgiving I make a list of the 10 books about food and cooking that made the greatest impact on me that year. My criteria? I have to have bought them, read them through, loved them and cooked from them if they include recipes. Not all do. Food writing is changing — one glance at the list below will show you how much. What about your own Top Ten?

1.) The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, by Dan Barber
A visionary book. Can we make this future? Will we?

2.) The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity, by Sandra M. Gilbert
The subject as considered by one of the great minds of our time. Endlessly rewarding.

3.) The Food History Reader: Primary Sources, by Ken Albala
Magnificent choices. Now everyone can be a student of the dazzling Ken Albala.

4.) Cumin, Camels and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey, by Gary Paul Nabhan
Nobody knows the desert and its potential like professor and farmer Gary Paul Nabhan. An exceptionally moving book.

5.) Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts, by Aglaia Kremezi
To simplify, to exalt real flavor, to live lightly on the earth — this is the book.

6.) Yucatan: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition, by David Sterling
Deep insight into a marvelous, highly local cuisine with unique features.

7.) Heritage, by Sean Brock
A chef of passionate dedication works to preserve the heritage foodways of the American South. Certain people who shall be nameless have given Southern cooking a bad name lately. THIS helps!

8.) The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, by Dan Jurafsky
Hilarious and erudite. If you don’t really know if you like language better than food, or vice versa, read this. Zero conflict.

9.) Porta Palazzo: The Anthropology of an Italian Market, by Rachel Black (paperback edition 2014)
The largest open market in Europe holds up the mirror to Italian society.

10) Simple French Food, by Richard Olney (40th Anniversary Edition)
Were you trying, as a teenager, to master the art of French cooking? Then of course you went to Julia, but you might have gone to Richard, too. Matchless instruction, such beautiful prose that you can read it aloud for pleasure, and recipes that cannot disappoint.

Coconut Pound Cake and Ratio Cooking

Published by Diana Zahuranec + Monday, October 15, 2012 Permalink 0

by Diana Zahuranec

It was soft and yellow-white with a thin, dark crust. The crust was not hard or chewy, but broke away perfectly from the rest of this pillow-y treat. It wasn’t a piece of bread, though it looked like one. Was it cake? It was on the end of a long table under a blue tent shading us from the summer sun. A gold cardboard plate presented perfect slices of this marvelous discovery.

I held the slice in my little sweaty hands, taking small bites that burst with butter, vanilla, and sugar. Its texture was half of the pleasure: smooth, moist, fine-grained, and soluble, I already wanted more. But the table was on the other side of the lawn now, and there were so many long tables laden with food with big people figures milling about, from one end to another. I never found it again.

David Downie: Chartres: Sacred and Profane

Published by David Downie + Wednesday, July 20, 2011 Permalink 0

by David Downie

Last weekend my travel feature on the cathedral and lively town of Chartres ran in the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle Travel section — the cover story. This was the first time I’d written anything for the Chron since 2007. I was a regular contributor from the late 1980s until then, but somehow, after John Flinn left as editor, things went quiet. I had 6 books to write — three Terroir Guides, a thriller, a history of the American Academy in Rome, a book about Rome’s quiet corners… and Hit the Road, Jacques, about our 750-mile trek across France… a book my agent is currently showing to editors in New York… So, there wasn’t much time for magazine and newspaper work.

I’m happy to say that the affable “new” travel editor, Spud Hilton, in the saddle for the last few years, was glad to have me contribute again to the section. I hope this is the first of many pieces.

Back to Chartres and a teaser, the first few lines of the story, and a link. Photos are included and, believe or not, I took them. The par-blind photographer.

The voices of vacationers partying at cafés faded as I left Chartres’ picture-postcard main square and entered the dusky nave of the cathedral. Blinking until my eyes adjusted, I stared up at dozens of jewel-like stained glass windows glowing an otherworldly blue. READ FULL ARTICLE

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, April 28, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, April 28, 2011 Permalink 0

by Sim ón de Swaan

Somehow we have fallen for a myth, the notion that food that isn’t fast prepared and fast cooked is inherently more difficult, more time consuming, more of a sweat, almost not worth the effort, or, at least, only worth the effort of the time.–Tamasin Day-Lewis, Good Tempered Food

Tamasin Day-Lewis is an English television chef, daughter of the poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon, and sister of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis. For those who live in the UK , her cooking show can be watched on TV.

A Thought for Food: One Woman’s Journey into the World of Slow Food

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, April 5, 2011 Permalink 0

by Meeta Khurana Wolff

A Thought for Food – Slow Food

Eating poorly or inadequately in our fast food culture is easy. Overworked and stressed, we rush out to find a quick bite and often find solace in a burger or a hot dog. The temptation of sugar, salt and fat feel good while we are eating it, but it really does little to satisfy us. It is convenient at the time and stills our hunger. Dinner might be a quick microwave meal, frozen pizza ready in minutes in the oven, or even take out. Looking at the long-term effects, it will make our family and us fat, lazy and sick!

Food Poetry: Wine

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, January 20, 2011 Permalink 0

by Christina Daub

Wine

Photo courtesy of Paul, Free Digital.

Sometimes wine is a river you flower in,
the tight buds of your lips opening
to sip, to swallow a dark sun in.

You smile as the world unmoors itself
and words float out in unfamiliar
tongues. The grape’s too perfect

Continue Reading…

David Downie: Vintage Beaune

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Permalink 0

by David Downie

Many wine lovers know that in the Middle Ages monks at the abbey of Cluny in southern Burgundy perfected the art of winemaking. But few outside the region have heard of Rector Eumenus’ speech in 312 AD to Emperor Constantine at Augustodunum, today’s Autun. Even locals don’t realize that fine wines were being grown in Constantine’s day on the limestone hills of the Côte d’Or.

Eumenus extolled in particular the vineyards of a pleasant village called Belenos, on the Roman road from Lyon to Paris, in the sunwashed Sâone River Valley. Still the capital of winegrowing in Burgundy, modern Belenos, better known as Beaune, hosts more wineries within or near its medieval ramparts than any mere mortal—except, perhaps, Robert Parker—could reasonably discover in anything less than a three-day visit.