Food Writer Research Articles

Surviving the Global Market

This article examines the ways in which governmental and private culinary institutes, individual chefs, food writers and gourmets prepareTurkish cuisine for the global market. Along with plate design and presentation, traditional tastes are being challenged and subjected to modernization and synthesis. In these attempts to modernize cuisine, the European Union can be seen as a symbolic marker for the future of Turkish society. While not wishing to represent itself as the very “other” of the West, Turkey still seeks to be different—to be unique within the West. While nationalism is still influential in the struggles of global image-making, cosmopolitanism constitutes a national image for Turkey. In this respect, the notion of cosmopolitanism is becoming a significant feature of Turkish cuisine in the global market.

Karen and Me

Food writer John Martin Taylor reflects on his relationship with the recently (2007) deceased culinary historian Karen Hess, who was his mentor and friend. He compares their circuitous paths to the food world, and the similarities of their approaches to, and ideas about, the field. Taylor describes their meeting and her continued inspiration to him through the twenty-three years of their friendship.

Hearth and Hotmail

Hearth and Hotmail

Cooking for vegetarian children

Nowadays more and more children are being brought up as vegetarians. Food writer Liz Franklin explains how to ensure children are getting the correct nutrients for a healthy diet.

A science in the making?

Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavourby Herve This (translated by MB De Bevoise)Columbia University Press, NY, USA 392 pp, $30/£20 ISBN 023113312X Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavour consists of 101 short essays, which first appeared in Pour la Science —the French edition of Scientific American —when author Herve This was one of its editors. The book is a translation of Casseroles et Eprouvettes and, after an introduction to the English‐language edition, the essays are grouped into four loose sections: Secrets of the Kitchen; The Physiology of Flavour; Investigations and Models; and A Cuisine for Tomorrow. The book begins with a brief history of molecular gastronomy: “a word or two about the origin of the name” and a mention of its two founding fathers, This and the late professor of physics, Nicolas Kurti, who died in 1998. Alas, This neglects to mention two more founders: Harold McGee, a famous American food writer, and Elizabeth Cawdry Thomas, an American cooking teacher. It is generally agreed that the founding event was the ‘International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy’, held in August 1992 in Erice, Italy, and attended by chefs and scientists both from within and outside Europe. …

Helen King (ed.), Health in Antiquity, London and New York, Routledge, 2005, pp. xxii, 292, US$87.50 (hardback 0-415-22065-3).

The publication of conference papers can be fraught with problems, as this volume shows. The original organizer of the conference gave up, some contributors drifted away, one died, others were added, and a valiant editor stepped in to link together essays that differ considerably in scope and quality. The original theme seems to have been that of health, and the ancient Greek and Roman views on health, as opposed to disease, but, apart from Emma Stafford's paper on the cult of the goddess Hygieia, and Gillian Clark on Christian and pagan ascetics, this proved impossible—or a missed opportunity. Plutarch and Galen's discussion of health are briefly noted, those of Athenaeus of Attaleia and hellenistic doctors disregarded entirely. Philosophical (and later theological) discussions of the classification of “good things” are likewise omitted. Instead, we are given four useful papers on the results of archaeological and palaeopathological surveys of ancient sites from Greek prehistory to Pompeii, showing more promise of things to come than overturning standard views. Another archaeological paper, by Ralph Jackson, is the highlight of the volume. He compares the written advice on bone surgery with the evidence of instruments and skeletal evidence to show the relative effectiveness of ancient bone surgery—and its complexity and ingenuity. This is a model of solid scholarship that integrates detailed evidence into a wider picture. In a more literary fashion John Wilkins tests the advice of medical writers on diet against that of cookbooks and food writers to assess the feasibility of medical dietetics for ordinary Greeks and Romans. He argues for a general similarity between the two, and draws attention to the way ancient preferences differed from those of modern dieticians. Two papers look generally at notions of health as applied to women (Helen King) and the disabled (Nicholas Vlahogiannis), interesting topics for which the ancient evidence is relatively sparse. The late Dominic Montserrat studies the Christian healing cult of SS. Cyrus and John at Menouthis, a nice introduction to a cult less familiar than that of Cosmas and Damian. Two further papers offer musings on the use of drama in modern healing and its potential application in ancient healing cults, and on the importance of a pleasant environment in modern hospital architecture and at certain ancient shrines. The latter is more successful in avoiding special pleading. This is a difficult volume to review, for, despite the editor's valiant attempt in her introduction, neither the theme nor the individual contributions cohere easily. There is some high quality scholarship on display that was well worth publishing in some form, but there are gaps, not all the fault of the authors. But Classicists still fail to use the Arabic Galen, to their disadvantage. There is no reference to Galen's comments on the role of rhetorical performances in the Asclepius cult (On examining the physician 1,1-2) or his important exposition of the role of Hygieia in the fragments of his commentary on the Hippocratic Oath (edited by Franz Rosenthal). These include quotations from the famous paean of Ariphron, and from at least one other poem, and give a Pergamene perspective on the significance of Asclepius and his family.

Out of the Kitchen: Adventures of a Food Writer

Book Review| February 01 2006 Out of the Kitchen: Adventures of a Food Writer Out of the Kitchen: Adventures of a Food WriterJeannette FerraryMckinleyville, CA: John Daniel & Co., 2004247 pp. $15.00 (paper) Gastronomica (2006) 6 (1): 109–110. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2006.6.1.109 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Out of the Kitchen: Adventures of a Food Writer. Gastronomica 1 February 2006; 6 (1): 109–110. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2006.6.1.109 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. ©© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, NY.2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

A Swarm of Bee Books

Robbing the Bees . A Biography of Honey: The Sweet Liquid Gold That Seduced the World. By Holley Bishop . Free Press, New York, 2005. 334 pp. $24, C$35. ISBN 0-7432-5021-4. Letters from the Hive . An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind. By Stephen Buchmann with Banning Repplier . Bantam, New York, 2005. 288 pp. $24. ISBN 0-553- 80375-1. The Hive . The Story of the Honeybee and Us. By Bee Wilson . John Murray, London, 2004. 320 pp. £14.99. ISBN 0-7195-6409-3. An enthusiastic writer who has recently come to beekeeping; a researcher who has long worked on bees, flowers, and their ecosystems; and a historian of ideas (and food writer) offer their diverse perspectives on bees, honey, and humans.

Remembering Harry Golden: Food, Race, and Laughter

The 2004 meeting of Southern Foodways Alliance at University of Mississippi's Center for Study of Southern Culture brought together more than 300 scholars, food writers, restaurateurs, and just plain food lovers to eat and talk about issues of race and food history. Tom Hanchett, historian at Levine Museum of New South in Charlotte, North Carolina, shared this profile of 1950s southern writer Harry Golden, who used food and humor to advance nascent Civil Rights movement. Imagine a Jewish guy, short, fat, maybe in his fifties, bald, smoking a big cigar, Hungarian immigrants' kid, Yiddish accent, very Lower East Side. Make him a reporter for a labor union newspaper. That's Harry Golden. Now move him from New York, his natural habitat, to Charlotte, North Carolina. Cotton-mill town, banking town, place where religious diversity means Baptists and Presbyterians, adamantly antiunion dating back to General Textile Strike of 1934, when labor was rounded up and put in barbed-wire concentration camps. That's incongruous, right? Well, Harry Golden loved incongruous. He delighted in this new region he found himself in, and he delighted in role of gadfly and kibitzer. Harry Golden came to Charlotte at tail end of Great Depression and found himself a job at a little labor union newspaper. It's a surprise, perhaps, but there were enough unionists in Charlotte to support a newspaper--at least for a little while. Golden was energetic, a good ad salesman, a good talker, good company. Folks gravitated to him, enjoyed his presence and his stories. When newspaper went belly-up, Harry Golden decided to start his own monthly sheet, a one-man show called Carolina Israelite. told you he celebrated incongruous. Actually, if you know South it may not surprise you that Charlotte had enough Jews to support Leo's Delicatessen, and Harry opened Carolina Israelite in a big old Victorian house just a few steps from that nourishment. Harry aimed his new newspaper not specifically at Jews, but at anyone who might listen. He wrote about whatever was on his mind; Kathleen Purvis of Charlotte Observer recently called him the world's first blogger. It might be his Lower East Side youth, his thoughts on news of day, his love of opera, his love of food. It always, somehow, was about community. I have a positive cure for this mental aberration called anti-Semitism. believe we've been doing it all wrong. believe that if we gave each anti-Semite an onion roll with lox and cream cheese, some chopped chicken liver with a nice radish, and a good piece of brisket of beef with a few potato pancakes, he'd soon give up all this nonsense. It is worth a try. Or time he gave a box of genuine halva candy from New York to a Gentile friend here who had been courting a widow lady for years without success ... and next time saw guy he was dancing in streets. Often Harry Golden wrote about race, about incongruities he saw in city and region he had so enthusiastically adopted. Segregation bothered him deeply. So did system of unequal social relations that required that a black man, whose family had been in America 2 or 3 hundred years, step off sidewalk and tip his hat to me, a stranger to Charlotte, an immigrant in America. Golden made friends in black community as he did among whites. His house became a safe place where people of all backgrounds could drop in and talk--perhaps only such place in Charlotte, one of few in South. Out of those meetings, a marvelous strain of satirical humor began to bubble into Carolina Israelite. I prevailed upon manager of a department store to shut off water in his 'white' fountain and put up an 'out of order' sign. …

Please Play with Your Food: An Incomplete Survey of Culinary Wonders in Italian Renaissance Cookery

Wonders in Italian Renaissance Cookery As early as the 1st century C.E., food writers and cooks were devising illusions and theatrical presentations using food and culinary formulas. Roman gourmet Apicius' famous dish "Anchovies without Anchovies" and his utterance that "no one will know what he is eating" are (literally) classic examples of such "culinary wonders." In recent memory, illustrious chefs like Escoffier at the Savoy in London (who recreated a naval tragedy using poached chicken escalopes) and Abe Lebewohl of the Second Avenue Deli in New York City (who built a replica of the World Trade Center Twin Towers using chopped chicken livers) have made truly extraordinary--if not tasteful--contributions in this field of culinary arts. Such artifice and conceits found what was perhaps their greatest expression during the Italian Renaissance when the author of the "first modern cookery book," Maestro Martino of Como, documented a series of mirabilia gulae or "wonders of culinary indulgence," including a roast peacock that appears to be alive and spews fire and fishes that appear to swim in a suspended gelatin aquarium. A survey of his and his contemporaries' recipes reveals that the wholly new genre of culinary writing emerged together with the many other "secret books" of the Italian Renaissance, including miscellanea by famous Renaissance figures like Luca Pacioli.

What makes a great chef?

The development of the UK restaurant industry is briefly outlined, and then the study seeks to examine the skills and characteristics needed to progress as a chef. Rather than describe the factors that drive workers from the trade, they are explored as problems which must be accepted and overcome, and virtues which must be acquired if anyone aspires to become a great chef. Sources include the comments of top chefs, food writers and others within the industry, as well as lengthy discussions with, and observations of, those working within the sector.

Brilliant Mischief: The French on Anti-Americanism

One of the leading traitors of the American Revolution, Count Rumford (born plain Benjamin Thompson in Massachusetts), was indirectly responsible for the Baked Alaska. After a spying career on behalf of the British and some other military adventures, he moved to Paris and devoted his life to scientific observation, which included disquisitions on the properties of heat, among which was the recipe for omelette surprise, which used egg whites to insulate ice cream. Inspired by Rumford s work, others labored to create desserts that similarly combined an inner core of ice cream with an outer casing of some hot, sweet matter pastry or meringue. Maybe as a riposte to the Frenchified counterrevolutionary Rumford, Thomas Jefferson, the canonical American intellectual, is reported to have served ice cream encased in hot pastry at a White House dinner during his presidency. Others built on Rumford s breakthrough. The French food writer Baron Leon Brise, who published a highly successful book of recipes despite apparently not knowing how to cook, wrote of the presentation, in 1866, of a dessert similar to the omelette surprise by the chef accompanying a visiting Chinese delegation to a Parisian confrere named Balzac. However, the man most closely identified with this delicious dish was Charles Ranhofer, the legendary (French-born) chef at Delmonico s, the leading restaurant of New York in the nineteenth century. As a celebration of the purchase of Alaska by the United States from Russia in 1867, he served the meringue and ice cream concoction to a grateful world, initially calling it Alaska, Florida. However, Baked Alaska as Ranhofer s confection came to be known in English was not to be the universal term for the

"The Only Place to Eat in Berkeley": Hank Rubin and the Pot Luck

The Pot Luck restaurant in Berkeley served what was arguably the most sophisticated and inventive food in the East Bay in the 1960s and early'70s. Though unfamiliar to many present-day food writers and scholars,in its day the restaurant was well known. In the 1960s and early '70s,laudatory pieces appeared in magazines such as GQ and in Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle. The owner of the Pot Luck, Hank Rubin, a man for whom food and cooking have been principal concerns since an early age, is perhaps best known as the former wine columnist for of Bon Apptit. This article reviews Rubin's considerable achievements at the Pot Luck, both culinary (e.g., the development of more than 600 soup recipes) and socio-cultural (e.g., Pot Luck is said to be the first restaurant in the Bay Area to hire African-Americans as waiters).

Booklist and Notes

Booklist and Notes George Brosi Browning, Frank and Sharon Silva. An AppleHarvest: Recipes and Orchard Lore. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1999. 151 pages with an index and many color photographs. Oversized hardback in dustjacket. $17.95 Frank Browning was born in Florida in 1946, but grew up on his parents' apple orchard in Fleming County, Kentucky. He currently lives in Brooklyn and at the family orchard now runby his brother. Although his roots in an Eastern Kentucky orchard show in this book, his wings as a person who has lived on both coasts and written about a variety of subjects are even more clear. The middle section of the book is called "A Culinary Pomarium" and features pictures and descriptions of twentysix different varieties of apples. It is preceded by commentary on apples and followed by fabulous recipes, ranging from Kentucky Apple Stack Cake to Apple and Country Ham Risotto. The recipes are divided into sections on First Courses, Main Dishes, Side Dishes and Desserts and Beverages. Only a very few seem to be rooted in Fleming County traditions. Indeed, many require esoteric ingredients only available in major metropolitan areas. Adding spice to the volume are little quotes and facts scattered throughout the text. The overall impact is quite impressive. Browning lived in San Francisco in the 1970s and wrote books on Vietnam, prison reform and other issues. More recently, he has written two important books on the gay experience in America. His immediately previous book, Apples: The Story of the Fruit of Temptation, received the 1999 Julia Child Award for thebest food writing. Co-author Sharon Silva grew up on an orchard in Sonoma County, California and currently lives in San Francisco, where she is a food writer and editor. Huddle, David. The Story ofa Million Years. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1999. 190 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $23.00. "The Story of a Million Years is actually ten stories told by eight narrators. The stories are gem-like on their own, but they also work together as a cohesive whole . .. Huddle's portrayal of [his] characters reveals the secrets great and small that linger between couples, the way confidences are given as gifts and betrayal is seldom simple" (Boston Phoenix). The novel begins with the kind of secret that a person would never tell in a million years, an "adventure" involving a fifteen-year-old girl and the husband of her mother's best friend, a man in his forties. 82 Indeed, the novel often centers on the sex lives of the characters but is nevertheleastbitgraphic orexplicit.Althoughitbegins inCleveland, the setting is primarily Virginia—including rural Virginia reminiscent of Huddle's ownup-bringing in Ivanhoe, and the University ofVirginia, the author's alma mater. David Huddle (b. 1942) has taught at the University of Vermont since 1971, when he got his M.F.A. from Columbia. He also is on the faculty of the prestigious Bread Loaf School of English. Huddle ,David. Summer Lake: New and Selected Poems. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. 172 pages. Trade paperback. $19.95. This volume collects Huddle's poetry fromPaper Boy (1979), Stopping by Home (1988), The Nature ofYearning (1992) and A David Huddle Reader (1994) but also includes a section of subsequent poetry. Publishers Weekly notes that "many poems are portraits, anecdotes or recollections of his family and his childhood in tiny Ivanhoe, Virginia. Always moving, never difficult, Huddle's ... free verse and deliberately muted vocabulary seek the clearest possible understandings of his feelings and motives, and of his eccentric, pathetic or brave regional characters." Kennedy, Rory. American Hollow. Boston: Bulfinch Press of Little, Brown and Company, 1999. 117 pages with Photographs by Steve Lehman, Foreword by Robert Coles and interviews by Mark Bailey. Hardback in dust jacket. $35.00. Rory Kennedy was born in 1969 after her father, Senator Robert Kennedy, was slain by an assassin. Partially inspired by her late father's concern for Appalachia, she spent thirty days in 1997 living with the Bowling family in rural Perry County, Kentucky, and produced an HBO documentary on the experience as well as thisbook. Both are the result of collaboration withher husband, Mark Bailey, whose interviews allow the book...

Arresting Fast Food

Arresting Fast Food

"You Have a Basket for the Bread, Just Put the Bloody Chicken in It"

"You Have a Basket for the Bread, Just Put the Bloody Chicken in It"

Genetically modified foods incite U.K. debate

Frankenstein is what British newspapers are calling them—genetically modified foods, that is. And last week, the U.K.'s official scientific community became embroiled in the impassioned debate that has flared up over the long-term safety of genetically modified crops and foods to human health and the environment. Late last month, a consortium of environmental activist groups, celebrity chefs, and food writers urged a consumer boycott of any such products and foods containing them. Just last week, another consortium of activist groups—one that combines such partners as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the U.K.'s Townswomen's Guild—called for a five-year moratorium on such crops and foods. The groups essentially want more exhaustive tests run on modified foods, through measures such as rodent-feeding studies, for example, much as drugs are tested for long-term safety. The British government has hastened to support the science of biotechnology underpinning genetically modified foods, and its sci...

Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescoes beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to celebrate the pleasures of Italian life.

Replacing sugar and fat in cookies: Impact on product quality and preference

Sugar and fat are two key ingredients of cookies and other baked desserts. Food writers frequently advise reducing the amount of sugar in cookie recipes as a method for arriving at a lower-calorie product. An alternative strategy, reducing the fat content of cookies, may reduce calories even further, while maintaining high overall product acceptability levels. This study showed that sweetness was the key sensory attribute that determined preferences for cookies. Acceptability ratings for cookies dropped sharply following a 25% reduction in recipe sugar levels, but were relatively unaffected following a 25% reduction in recipe fat content.

Honey revisited: a reappraisal of honey in pre-industrial diets

In pre-industrial times, honey was the main source of concentrated sweetness in the diets of many peoples. There are no precise figures for per capita consumption during most periods in history because honey was part of either a hunter-gatherer or subsistence economy. Until now, historians and food writers have proposed that it was a scarce commodity available only to a wealthy few. We do know, however, that in a cash economy honey was sold in large units (gallons and even barrels) and it was present in such abundance that mead, made from honey, was a common alcoholic drink. A reappraisal of the evidence from the Stone Age, Antiquity, the Middle Ages and early Modern times suggests that ordinary people ate much larger quantities of honey than has previously been acknowledged. Intakes at various times during history may well have rivalled our current consumption of refined sugar. There are implications therefore for the role of sugar in modern diets. Refined sugar may not have displaced more nutrient-rich items from our present-day diets but only the nutritionally comparable food, honey.