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This post written by Clint Peppers: A Story of Hot Pursuits
by Amal Naj
[cover name=peppers]
Amal Naj grew up in India, so you’d think he’d be okay with hot peppers. However, he really didn’t like spicy food until he was in college in Ireland and started to miss food from home. From there, he went on to be a hot pepper junkie. If you really love hot food, this is probably a book for you. Peppers: A Story of Hot Pursuits is a collection of pepper facts and stories.
This book covers a lot of pepper-related topics. It includes some of the history of peppers around the world and how they have been used as medicine. It also includes some science – Naj hangs out with a number of biologists who study peppers. Two chapters cover the rather bizarre story of McIlhenny Company, the people who make Tabasco sauce. Naj also describes some of his pepper-related travels, such as his visit to Hatch, New Mexico, which is probably the hot pepper capital of the United States, or the Andes mountains in Bolivia, where he joins in the search for the the original wild pepper.
This book came out in 1993, so some of the facts, especially where people talk about the science of peppers and how they are used in medicine, are probably outdated. There is no mention of the Naga Jolokia (the ghost pepper), either. Habaneros are as hot as this book gets. I also noticed that this is not the easiest book to read, although it’s not that bad. The author sometimes uses larger words when shorter ones would work just fine, and sometimes the science sections get bogged down by long lists of names. As long as you know to expect it, you should be fine.
Also, if you want to read more about Tabasco sauce, you might want to check out this series of articles from 2004.
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Where to Find It
[linkplus name=”Peppers” url=”http://csul.iii.com/record=b12113516~S0″]
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This post written by Clint Are You Really Going to Eat That?: Confessions of a Culinary Thrill Seeker
by Robb Walsh
[cover name=areyoureallygoingtoeatthat]
Robb Walsh was in the advertising business when he started writing about food and restaurants on the side. Pretty soon, newspapers were paying him to travel to different parts of the world and review unusual foods. Not long after that, he lost his advertising job and his wife divorced him. He’s still writing about food, though, and according to his blog, he’s married again.
Are You Really Going to Eat That? is a collection of some of the articles he has written for various newspapers and magazines from 1993 to 2003. Don’t let the title fool you. While Walsh really has eaten bugs and other stuff that most people in the United States would find extremely unusual, that’s not what this book is about.
These articles are about more than just restaurants and food. Walsh gets a little bit of culture and history. He also introduces us to some interesting people like Jay, the owner of a Houston bagel shop who threatens him for taking notes in the restaurant. I doubt you’ll visit many of the places Walsh writes about, but the stories he tells are interesting enough to keep you reading.
Most of the foods Walsh tries aren’t that far out, especially if you live in California. You might learn about some new foods, but a lot of it is about fairly ordinary things like hot sauce, coffee, cheese, oysters, crabs, and bagels. However, Walsh always finds some interesting angle on his foods, and he often travels to various parts of Europe or the Americas to learn more.
For example, he goes to Switzerland and France to find out who really invented Gruyère cheese, since the two countries have been fighting over it for years and years. He heads down to Argentina to check out the pizza places in Buenos Aires.* He visits Trinidad to find out about curry and hot sauce, and he goes to a prison to find a famous soul food chef.
Of course, he does spend some time looking at foods that some of you may not be familiar with. My favorite is the durian, a huge, spiky fruit that tastes delicious and smells like a herd of rotting cows. (It’s the fruit on the cover, right beneath the machete.)
As a bonus, Walsh includes twenty recipes that you might (or might not) want to try out.
You can read some of it online at Google Books. If you need more, you can check out the author’s blog.
* Sorry, Robb. The best pizza out there is Zuppardi’s Apizza in West Haven, CT.
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Where to Find It
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This post written by Clint World Food
published by Lonely Planet
[cover name=worldfood]
I love Japanese and Indian food, but I known next to nothing about any of it. What is “paneer” in my saag paneer? Where did Japanese curry come from, and why is it served on top of a pork cutlet? If you’ve ever wondered what some kind of food is or where it came from, you might want to check out the World Food series from Lonely Planet.
Each book covers one or two countries, or sometimes a specific region of the United States – there’s one for India, one for Japan, one for California, and one for New Orleans, for example. Each book is a little different, since it has different authors, but all of the books introduce you to the many different cuisines in a country, and you get to learn about different ingredients and traditions that go along with food. You’ll learn about the kind of food people eat in their houses, the kind they get in restaurants, and the kind they buy from street vendors. You’ll also get some of the history of different foods. I did, for example, learn how Japan got hooked on curry.
These are mostly books about food, but sometimes they contain a few recipes, as well. Some of the information will only be useful if you plan to visit that country, but some of it will help out eating in different local restaurants, and some of it is just plain interesting.
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Where to Find Them
[librarylist author=true]
[linkplus name=”World Food” url=”http://csul.iii.com/search~S0/?searchtype=X&searcharg=t%3A%28world+food%29+and+d%3A%28guidebooks%29+and+not+t%3A%28walt+disney%29&sortdropdown=-&SORT=D” cchasone=some]
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This post written by Clint Oishinbo
by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki
Oishinbo is a series about food. The main character, Yamaoka Shiro, is a journalist whose father is a famous gourmet. The newspaper Shiro works for is about to celebrate its 100th birthday, and as part of the festivities, the publishers would like to create the “ultimate menu” that features the absolute finest examples of Japanese food. Somebody figures that since Shiro’s dad is a food expert, Shiro must be the perfect person for the job. Well, maybe.
There are a few potential flaws in the plan. First, Shiro and his dad hate each other. Second, Shiro is kind of lazy. Plus, he’s often a jerk. Of course, when you meet his father, you see that being a jerk runs in the family.
Fortunately, Shiro does know a lot about food, so (with the help and encouragement of some of his colleagues), he sets off to find all the pieces for the ultimate meal.
A lot of Japanese food manga are based around cooking duels, and Oishinbo has plenty. These aren’t always formal cooking competitions, but each episode usually requires Shiro to outwit, or help someone else outwit, his father. Along the way, we learn a lot about Japanese cuisine, and we get to see several of the important themes for Japanese food. Taste isn’t the only sense in Japanese cooking. The appearance, scent, and even the feel of the food in your mouth are all important. Fresh ingredients are vital. Also, local ingredients are taken very seriously – in Japan, pretty much every town has its own special ingredient that either can’t be found anywhere else or is way, way better than what you find anywhere else. There are also a couple of recipes at the start of the book, and there are a lot of notes in the back, just in case you want to know more about Japanese culture and food.
Oishinbo is a very long series in Japan, but when it was published in the United States, Viz decided not to release the whole thing. What we get instead are volumes that each focus on one specific topic. The first one looks at the fundamental ingredients of Japanese cuisine. Others focus on sake (rice wine), rice dishes, and ramen and gyoza (potstickers), among other things. This means that some of the story is missing, but the individual episodes all share a common theme.
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Where to Find It
[linkplus name=”Oishinbo” url=”http://csul.iii.com/search/X?SEARCH=t:(oishinbo)&SORT=DX&l=eng”]
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This post written by Clint Yakitate!! Japan
by Takashi Hashiguchi
[cover name=yakitatejapan]
How can I describe Yakitate!! Japan? Take some kind of action manga like Dragonball Z or Naruto and replace all the fighting and martial arts and ninja stuff with baking. Or maybe it’s like an all-bread comedy version of Iron Chef, except where the main character is dumb. There’s action and difficult training and secret techniques and excessive drama, all focused around making bread products. There are actually a lot of manga like this in Japan, but they never seem to get translated into English. The basic plot of a lot of these manga, including Yakitate!! Japan, is that some extremely talented cook travels around and defeats many rivals in cooking contests.
Yakitate!! Japan isn’t just about cooking, though. It’s also about comedy. Everything is just over the top – people often have out-of-body experiences after eating a particularly good pastry, for example, and the characters are all a little bit crazy. There are a lot of puns. Other times there will be a parody of some other manga. There is also crude humor from time to time, just so you know.
The hero is Azuma, a sixteen-year-old who wants to invent the best bread in Japan. He calls this Ja-pan, which is a pun, since “pan” means “bread” in Japanese. He’s dumb as a post, but he’s a genius when it comes to bread.
Kawachi is Azuma’s rival/sidekick. They meet when they both apply for the same job at the start of the series. Kawachi knows more than Azuma does about almost everything (he knows what a croissant is, for example), but he is nowhere near as good at actually doing the baking. Even though they work together, he would really like to beat Azuma one of these days.
Tsukino is the manager of the store where they work. She is about Azuma’s age, but she has a talent for finding and hiring skilled people. She is actually fairly normal.
Matsuhiro works at the same store. He’s big, loud, and fond of horses. Oh, and he has an afro. He might be the craziest of the bunch, but he is also very skilled.
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Where to Find It
[linkplus name=”Yakitate!! Japan” url=”http://csul.iii.com/search/X?SEARCH=t:(yakitate)+and+a:(Hashiguchi)&SORT=DX&l=eng” series=true]
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