For those of you with a cooking/food writing/food science collection, what’s indispensable? What do you currently find yourself returning to again and again?
For me, Nikki Segnit’s “Flavor Thesaurus: A Compendium’ and Flavor Thesaurus: More Flavors are both in there, along with The Noma Guide to Fermentation, Koji Alchemy, and *Burma: Rivers of Flavor.” Oh, and Sercarz’s *Spice Companion."
For food writing, I’m always happy to dip into some M.F.K. Fisher.
On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee is such a special and unique book. I wish there was a book like it for every one of my hobbies! It’s an explanation of what happens during cooking at a molecular level, which gives so much insight into how and why cooking techniques and ingredients work well together. In addition to that it blends in hlthr history of cooking (ancient recipes) and literature. It’s such a wonderful book! I can’t recommend it enough.
I also like Jeffrey Steingarten’s writing. His two books The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must Have Been Something I Ate are a joy to read. He is a good columnist for Vogue, which gives him time and money to do all kinds of elaborate cooking projects and travel. The essays are such a pleasure, full of passion and enthusiasm. and humor. Just as an example, the conceit of the eponymous essay of his first book is that a food columnist should eat all foods – after all, a film critic wouldn’t be allowed to hate whole genres of film. So in the essay he tries to get himself to enjoy all the foods he doesn’t like.
The McGee sounds like just the kind of thing I love. I’ve seen it here and there but never picked it up, weirdly. Gonna look for it, as well as some Steingarten.
These lean more toward food science & food politics, but here are some of my favorites:
Catching Fire - Richard Wrangham
The Dorito Effect - Mark Schatzker
The Omnivore’s Dilemma - Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan
Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
Food Politics - Marion Nestle
I too enjoy Pollan’s work. All below are by Gary Taubes.
- Good Calories, Bad Calories
- Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It
- The Case for Keto
All the above dive into studies about metabolism, how your body processes food, and analysis of ‘diet’ books’ claims. I like this thoroughness and appreciation of the biological aspect of metabolizing food. Instead of trying to be popular or show a fad, he looks at science.
All great stuff. I’m a fan of Pollan’s work, as well.
Can you tell me more about Koji Alchemy? I do a lot of Japanese cooking, and I enjoy fermentation, pickling, sourdough, etc. This book sounds like it’s be up my alley.
I also heard that store bought koji is generally subpar in quality. What does this book have to say about that?
@KRAW@KRAW@linux.community, It’s a deep dive, pretty rewarding. The basic food science, history, and a lot of things to try. Really nice alongside the NOMA Guide, actually.
I’ve grown many batches of koji (it gets easier as you learn more about how it behaves), but my one foray into store-bought stuff wasn’t too bad — it seemed a bit dry, but that’s easily enough remedied.
We go back to Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi a lot. Also latley The Flavor Equation by Nik Sharma.
Yeah, love Ottolenghi — he had a nice piece in NYT recently, referencing Segnit, actually. I need to find a copy of the Sharma, sounds like.
I think you will love Sharma’s books if you like Ottolenghi.
Cool! Gonna check those out, then. Thanks.