Boldtype | May 2007


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May 2007:: issue 43

Books This Month
1.	Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen
2.	The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg
3.	How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations from the World's Greatest Chefs by Kimberly Witherspoon and Peter Meehan
4.	Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger
5.	Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee
6.	Dirty Dishes by Ralf Schmerberg
	Feature Book News Credits/About Us

Food
It's all a matter of taste this month. A biography of Alice Waters gives a rosy-spectacled view of the life and times of a titan of American cuisine. Those who are gourmet-inclined but easily intimidated should pick up How I Learned to Cook, which asks top chefs how they honed their craft; the responses prove that even the professionally trained didn't always get it right the first time. Equally illuminating are two behind-the-scenes looks at iconic meals: Sasha Issenberg dissects the history and economy of sushi, while, on the other side of the palatability spectrum, Steve Ettlinger takes on the humble Twinkie. We're also offering Sweet and Low, a memoir of family history and artificial sweeteners. Proving there's life after the feast, photographer Ralf Schmerberg serves up strangely compelling images of leftovers, but you'll find plenty of meat in our interview with the editors of Diner Journal, a fresh and quirky periodical of essays and recipes. We're running out of food puns, so we're sticking a fork in this intro.
- Toby Warner, Managing Editor

A dynamic collaboration between Budweiser Select and Flavorpill, Select Flavor harnesses the talents of up-and-coming artists and designers to interpret Select — a premier hand-crafted beer — and its iconic crown through original artwork. Expect a new kind of creativity. Expect everything.

NONFICTION

Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen


Published:	2006
Pages:	272
Publisher:	Picador
Links: Author bio NPR interview NY Times review

“Some say Ben came up with the idea for the sugar packets; others say it was his wife Betty's idea. Some say Cohen's mother was written out of the will out of spite; others say it was out of love (although no one quite understands or accepts this theory).”

Review
Entrepreneur Ben Eisenstadt's life was the kind of humble-beginning and pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps story that epitomizes the "American spirit." He was orphaned as a teenager; worked through law school to graduate top in his class; ran a diner throughout the Depression by virtue of sheer determination; and, after naively giving away his first invention (the sugar packet), went back to work and invented Sweet'N Low, the ubiquitous sugar substitute that made his family incredibly wealthy.

Eisenstadt's grandson, author Rich Cohen, has unrestricted access to the surviving family members, but, as the son of the daughter who was essentially disinherited in Eisenstadt's will, Cohen casts himself as an exile — even, hyperbolically, likening himself to Napoleon in Corsica. While the story may not be his, Cohen is intricately and irrevocably connected to this lavish collection of people: "I sometimes think a family is no more than a collection of such stories, a chronicle that locks you down like the safety bar that crosses your lap before the roller-coaster leaves the platform, without which you would fly away in the turns."

Cohen asks uncomfortable questions of his extended family that elicit secrets and opinions on events that occurred decades ago; but he discovers that no two family members remember anything the same way. Some say Ben came up with the idea for the sugar packets; others say it was his wife Betty's idea. Some say Cohen's mother was written out of the will out of spite; others say it was out of love (although no one quite understands or accepts this theory). These contradictions aren't unique to this family, and this universality makes the story endearing.

An image Cohen frequently evokes is that of his aunt Gladys in her Flatbush home. She hasn't left the house in 30 years, and he admits to vacillating between two opinions of her: either she is the weird woman in the neighborhood whom everyone talks about, or she's like lots of other relatives everywhere and just ignored. The same could be said of the Sweet'N Low saga as well: it's either a unique story of gumption, big business, and greed, or it's a family story of favoritism, grudges, and division. Or it's both.
- Tom Roberge

NONFICTION

The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg


Published:	May 2007
Pages:	352
Publisher:	Gotham Books
Links: Philadelphia Inquirer review

“Sasha Issenberg is going after a fix. The demand for this fix drives billion-dollar markets, where speculators get rich and international piracy slips across borders. But its final destination is on a small bed of rice in a town near you.”

Review
Tuna has become the crown jewel of a sushi-crazed public. Only decades ago, tuna was used in cat food and carted off to town dumps after trophy-fishing competitions. But as demand rose from discerning palates in Japan, a few schemers blew the market for the fish wide open. Thanks to improvements in freezers and a network of fish-carting planes, tuna caught in the Atlantic shows up in Japan as a $40 piece of toro in a matter of days. As Sasha Issenberg writes it, it's a textbook case study of globalization.

Today, you can spot sushi joints in any landlocked Midwestern town, and with the global demand for the fresh red stuff so high, the industry has gotten creative. Tuna ranching, in which young fish are corralled in large nets and fattened up before being harvested, has exploded. These fish farms (both legal and illegal) are so large, they can be spotted by Google Maps.

Disappointingly, Issenberg's book treats tuna like any other highly traded good, glossing over the fact that, with natural resources, after boom comes bust. He predicts that the Chinese appetite for sushi will only increase, but barely mentions that bluefin tuna populations are already hurting and facing pressures from fishermen everywhere.

Still, Issenberg's examination serves up enough tasty morsels to stand on its own (did you know that the spicy tuna was invented in the US as a way to get rid of less-than-fresh tuna scraps?). If anything, it's a stern reminder to take a second look at what comes next to your wasabi and ginger.
- Lauren Sommer

NONFICTION

How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations from the World's Greatest Chefs edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Peter Meehan


Published:	2006
Pages:	306
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Links: Witherspoon's Don't Try This at Home

“Many, if not all, of these chefs have one sensei in particular in whose kitchen they learned the ropes, and under whose stern and sometimes explosive watch they grew into hardened culinary warriors.”

Review
Like a puff pastry, the recipe of How I Learned to Cook is a deceptively simple one: ask 40 legendary chefs how they learned to cook. Immediately, the answers break down into a couple of archetypes. While some, such as the stories of Hester Blumenthal or Chris Bianco, fit the "and that's when I realized what real cooking was" mold, by far the more interesting ones are those that capture the sheer insanity of a kitchen. It is from this infernal chaos that most chefs emerge.

Tellingly, when asked for their most formative moments, a large percentage of the chefs relate some variation on "grills gone wild": Jonathan Eismann found his cook holed up in the bathroom with "a lit crack pipe in one hand and his dick in the other" during a slammed dinner service; Michelle Bernstein fucked up her boss' dinner at the illustrious James Beard house; and Tony Bourdain tore a filet of salmon on national television.

Cooking — at least professional cooking — is a lot like martial arts; often, these epic errors take place at the foot of a master. Many, if not all, of these chefs have one particular sensei in whose kitchen they learned the ropes, and under whose stern and sometimes explosive watch they grew into hardened culinary warriors. David Chang sat in a darkened room in Tokyo for days, making noodles no one would ever eat while his master demanded absolute devotion. Fourteen-year-old Daniel Boulud trembled like a willow under the withering rage of legendary chef Paul Bocuse before opening his own four-star New York City restaurant, Daniel, years later.

For most of us, cooking is, and should be, a relaxing experience.� For the chefs in this book, to step into the kitchen is to step into a war zone, complete with the threat of disaster, the adrenaline of battle, and, most importantly, the joy of cooking.
- Joshua David Stein

NONFICTION

Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats by Steve Ettlinger


Published:	March 2007
Pages:	282
Publisher:	Hudson Street Press
Links: Book site

“The ingredients in this unassuming little snack can also be found in cigarette filters, the glue on postage stamps, concrete, shoe leather, paint, and artillery shells.”

Review
If you are what you eat, and you eat Twinkies, it turns out you're a complex culinary and chemical compilation of close to 40 ingredients sourced from all over the United States and abroad. And while it might not be surprising that America's fabled "Golden Sponge Cake" is less golden than it is Yellow No. 5 and Red No. 40, what is surprising is that the ingredients in this unassuming little snack can also be found in cigarette filters, the glue on postage stamps, concrete, shoe leather, paint, and artillery shells.

In Twinkie, Deconstructed, author Steve Ettlinger goes on a quest to uncover the origins of each of the Twinkie's ingredients in the hope that he'll be able to answer one seemingly simple question posed by his six-year-old daughter: "Where does polysorbate 60 come from, Daddy?" Devoting each chapter to an ingredient, Ettlinger succeeds in answering that question by chapter 19. Along the way, the reader is invited to watch the somewhat uncanny alchemy of Twinkie creation as the author explores an interminably long and ostensibly disconnected assembly line of food scientists, farmers, miners, flavor analysts, and petrochemical engineers — bakers, curiously, are scarce.

From pickle liquor to pockle, the process is as peculiar as it is educational — examining every one of Twinkie's solvents, moistening agents, emulsifying systems, and humectants. With each chapter, Ettlinger adds insight and context to the items listed on the packaging of a Twinkie, as well as other common comestibles found throughout the average supermarket. Yet it's the author's ability to add a dash of history and a pinch of anecdote that adds texture, flavor, and shelf life to this book. Blending a well-known cast of characters — Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon, and Miss Muffet — together with cameos from a relatively obscure troupe — Hennig Brand, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, William Henry Perkin — Ettlinger shares his enriched and tasty Twinkie tale one morsel at a time. The effect is satiating.
- Justin Kazmark

NONFICTION

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution by Thomas McNamee


Published:	April 2007
Pages:	380
Publisher:	Penguin
Links: Author site Waters' Edible Schoolyard Project

“Waters' story is seminal to that of American haute cuisine, and McNamee is the first to attempt to tell it in its entirety.”

Review
Alice Waters is counted among the best chefs in the world, and yet she is not a chef at all. When she started Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, she wanted only to recreate the experience of food that she'd so loved as a student in France in the 1960s: fresh, local, seasonal ingredients, simply prepared and presented in a convivial atmosphere where the sharing of food created community. And though Waters intended to ensure that every aspect of the restaurant's functioning, including the single prix-fixe menu, was in accordance with her vision and palate, when dinner service began each night she wanted to be in the front of the house, not the kitchen.

Thus did Chez Panisse, despite persistent financial mismanagement (Waters wasn't a businesswoman, either), become something of a Renaissance workshop, with Waters as creative director and a procession of (mostly male) chefs — many of whom would later take this "New American Cuisine" to their own restaurants — behind the stove. Diners' enthusiasm for the Chez Panisse way helped change the landscape of American food, sustaining commercially viable organic farming, spawning a national gourmet culture, and introducing Americans to ingredients — olive oil, mesclun, homemade stock — that are now staples of any foodie kitchen worth its sea salt.

Ironically, while Waters' legacy will endure, McNamee's biography may not. The book's defining aspect is his access to Waters, but at times the biography feels compromised as a result. At least one figure central to the Chez Panisse story — Jeremiah Tower, Waters' first chef, whose flamboyant take on classic French cuisine first brought attention to the restaurant — apparently refused to be interviewed for it, and those who were interviewed tend to be Waters devotees. Her faults — particularly her tendency to take more credit than in some cases she probably should have — are inevitably forgiven as "Alice being Alice."

Still, Waters' story is seminal to that of American haute cuisine, and McNamee is the first to attempt to tell it in its entirety. In a way, it's hard to blame his affection for his subject — imagine the great meals he got out of it.
- Chris Parris-Lamb

PHOTOGRAPHY

Dirty Dishes by Ralf Schmerberg


Published:	2005
Pages:	240
Publisher:	Hatje Cantz
Links: TreeHugger interview

“The book's portraits of gnawed flesh, bone, and waste protest the ubiquitous "food porn" prevalent in mouthwatering cookbooks, TV shows, and the magazine Saveur.”

Review
A fashion photographer, filmmaker, and director of high-profile commercials, Ralf Schmerberg takes an artistic turn with Dirty Dishes. From the nostalgic to the nasty, the photographer spares no details and, although capable of finesse, breaks food down with butcher-like abandon. In chapters paced like a multicourse meal, Schmerberg describes the making, presenting, and clearing of meals served in fancy hotels, street spots, and bourgeois homes.

Traveling from the meat market to the kitchen slop bucket, Schmerberg's food both elevates and degrades its consumers. The cornstarch slop, prickly bones, and wide-eyed fish heads in "Restaurant Maxwell, Berlin" and "Vietnamese Delivery Service, San Francisco" would not be fit for a dog. In addition to these vomit-inducing tableaus, other photos turn crustaceans into jewels: the lobster-like critter in "Chuen Kee Seafood Restaurant, Sai Kung, Hong Kong" sparkles with Wedgwood-blue spattering.

Schmerberg's photographs bring us to, and above, spreads in China, New York, and even his own home. Viewers get a bird's-eye view of silly flowers made of coiled salmon in "Kjoto Sushi Restaurant, Tokyo," and the untouched, cherry-studded splendor of a birthday cake in "Birthday Party for François Garnier, Mitte, Berlin." His family's Christmas dinner, devoured except for a few orange peels, shells, and winter greenery, stars in "Christmas Dinner, Ralf Schmerberg Studio, Lisa Lounge, Berlin." Ranging from the intimate to the elite, the same chapter includes "Jiun Yvet Restaurant at the Great Wall, Mia Yaet," whose piled plates of untouched stir-fries make silent judgment.

The book's portraits of gnawed flesh, bone, and waste protest the ubiquitous "food porn" prevalent in mouthwatering cookbooks, TV shows, and the magazine Saveur. In this book, food is fact, not fantasy, and the photographs read as both Schmerberg's journal and an exposé of food's literal and figurative underbelly.
- Lauren McKee

FEATURE Interview: Diner Journal		In 1998, soon-to-be Brooklyn restauranteurs Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth refurbished a 1920s Kullman diner car under the Williamsburg Bridge. They scraped away years of fryer grease and chipping paint, streamlining the diner into a low-key hangout for their friends and South Side neighbors. As Diner evolved from a cheeseburger joint into a treasure trove of local, seasonal specials, a deliberate foodie ethos emerged among the owners and head chef Caroline Fidanza. Diner worked hard to source organic and sustainable products, first at the McCarren Park Greenmarket and then by sending scouts to farms around NY state and beyond. Part cookbook, part musings of impassioned foodies, Diner Journal tells the story — through recipes, interviews, and profiles — of the farmers, butchers, and cheesemongers they met along the way. Boldtype's McKay McFadden sat in on an editorial meeting to talk about the journal and the state of food writing today with Tarlow, Fidanza, and contributing editors Anna Dunn and Tom Mylan. *Boldtype: Why did you start Diner Journal? Andrew Tarlow: Caroline and I had been working on the notion of a cookbook, and we knew that we really wanted to do this thing in-house. So the idea came up to do it in installments, and then, after several issues, you'd have a cookbook. BT: It's more than a cookbook, though. What niche are you trying to fill in food writing? AT: We want this to be our opinions about food and the things and the people we care about. There's a huge gap between Saveur* and the Art of Eating, and we're trying to fit in there, but not make this thing so self-referential. If you looked at both Diner Journal and the Art of Eating, you would see a connection, but in our design and our aesthetic we are trying to move in a different direction, and not be so dense. *Caroline Fidanza: We want it to have a sense of humor and a sense of pleasure. Keep reading »*

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BOOK NEWS A few notable bits of recent book news.
Beloved Papa and his femme fatale (Guardian)
Newly published love letters and telegrams between Ernest Hemingway and actress Marlene Dietrich reveal an unconsummated love.
Poetry month: loud and clear (FSG)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux celebrate poetry as a spoken art form on their blog, including podcasts and mp3s of poets reading their work.
Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84 (Guardian)
The legendary writer leaves an unmatched legacy of satire in American fiction.
Carlos Castaneda: psychedelic scholar and cult leader? (Salon)
Salon explores the legacy of Carlos Castaneda as a bestselling writer and asks where all his witches went after he died.
Defending David Sedaris (Slate)
After an accusatory piece in the New Republic, several writers and reporters support Sedaris' claims that his nonfiction is both exaggerated and true.
The book report (NY Times)
Michiko Kakutani surveys the presidential field... of hefty memoirs.


CREDITS Editors Toby Warner Mark Mangan McKay McFadden Paul Laster Chris Parris-Lamb Doug Levy Zolton Zavos Chris Gage Nick Merritt Editors-at-Large Larry Weissman Sean McDonald Contributors Justin Kazmark Lauren McKee Tom Roberge Lauren Sommer Joshua David Stein Production & Design Anjuli Ayer Jessica Bauer-Greene Morgan Croney Sascha Lewis Cover Art Ralf Schmerberg "Film Catering, Lausitz Racetrack", 2001 Ditone print 13 1/2 x 9 3/4 in./ 34 x 25 cm From Dirty Dishes, published by Hatje Cantz Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. © Ralf Schmerberg All Rights Reserved		ABOUT US Boldtype is a monthly, email-based review of books published by Flavorpill Productions. Our mission is to cover five to seven books each month that are worth reading. No money is accepted from any publishers, writers, reviewers, or marketing or PR companies. In addition to this monthly review of books, Flavorpill also publishes ten other email magazines, covering ART, FASHION, NEWS, MUSIC, and cultural events in six cities — NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, SAN FRANCISCO, CHICAGO, MIAMI, and LONDON. MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS Every month, Boldtype presents one exclusive media partner. Click for more information about advertising opportunities on Boldtype and across all Flavorpill publications. FEEDBACK We welcome any and all feedback — comments, criticism, and even effusive praise. To reach the staff at Boldtype, please email us at editor. SUBMISSIONS If you have a book that you would like us to consider for review, please send an email to books or mail a copy here: Boldtype c/o Flavorpill Productions 594 Broadway, Suite 1212 New York, NY 10012

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