Omnivoracious

IACP Cookbook Awards: 2008 Winners Announced

Last night, at an awards ceremony in New Orleans, the International Association of Culinary Professionals announced their 2008 cookbook award winners. Paul Johnson's Fish Forever: The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy, Delicious, and Environmentally Sustainable Seafood took home the top honor, Cookbook of the Year. John Wiley & Sons led the pack with four awards total, with Fish Forever taking Cookbook of the Year and the Single Subject Category.

On Friday morning I printed out the list of the nominees and, Oscar pool-style, checked off the titles I thought would win in each category (with a Cookbook of the Year write-in), put it in a sealed envelope and filed it away to compare and contrast once the IACP picks were revealed. Let's just say, thank goodness I didn't hit the casinos this weekend as my projections were an abysmal one for fourteen. Bring on the Beards!

--BTP

2008 Winners and Finalists

Cookbook of the Year:
Fish Forever: The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy, Delicious, and Environmentally Sustainable Seafood by Paul Johnson

American:
Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans by Susan Spicer and Paula Disbrowe
A Love Affair with Southern Cooking by Jean Anderson
The Pastry Queen Christmas: Big-hearted Holiday Entertaining, Texas Style by Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman--Winner!

Bread, Other Baking, and   Sweets:
Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers by Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman--Winner!
Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor by Peter Reinhart
Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich

Chefs and Restaurants:
Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking by Masaharu Morimoto--Winner!
Pier by Greg Doyle, Grant King, and Katrina Kanetani

Compilations:
Baking Boot Camp: Five Days of Basic Training at the Culinary Institute of America by The Culinary Institute of America and Darra Goldstein
Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Techniques for the Artisan Confectioner by The Culinary Institute of America and Peter P. Greweling--Winner!
Mark Bittman's Quick & Easy Recipes from the New York Times by Mark Bittman

First Book (The Julia Child Award):
Elizabeth Falkner's Demolition Desserts: Recipes from Citizen Cake by Elizabeth Falkner
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking by Masaharu Morimoto--Winner!
Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey by Efisio Farris and Jim Eber

Food Photography and Styling:
Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Good Spirits: Recipes, Revelations, Refreshments, and Romance, Shaken and Served with a Twist by A.J. Rathbun--Winner!
Rosa's New Mexican Table by Roberto Santibanez

Food Reference/Technical:
Discover Chocolate: The Ultimate Guide to Buying, Tasting, and Enjoying Fine Chocolates by Clay Gordon
Food: The History of Taste by Paul Freedman--Winner!
Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur's Guide to Oyster Eating in North America by Rowan Jacobsen    

General:
Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook by Jacques Pepin
Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You A Better Cook by Jamie Oliver--Winner!
Cooking by James Peterson

Health and Special Diets:
Allergy-Free Cookbook by Alice Sherwood
Cleveland Clinic Healthy Heart Lifestyle Guide & Cookbook by Bonnie Sanders Polin and Frances Towner Giedt
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman--Winner!

International:
Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey by Efisio Farris and Jim Eber
The Country Cooking of France by Anne Willan
Turquoise by Greg and Lucy Malouf--Winner!

Literary Food Writing:
Beans: A History by Ken Albala
Julia Child by Laura Shapiro--Winner!
The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg

Single Subject:
Fish Forever: The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy, Delicious, and Environmentally Sustainable Seafood by Paul Johnson--Winner!
The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss
Vegetables: Recipes and Techniques from the World's Premier Culinary College by The Culinary Institute of America

Wine, Beer, or Spirits:
Good Spirits: Recipes, Revelations, Refreshments, and Romance, Shaken and Served with a Twist by A.J. Rathbun
IMBIBE! From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, A Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar by David Wondrich
The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson--Winner!

Jane Grigson Award (Tie):
Beans: A History by Ken Albala
To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science and the Battle for the Wine Bottle by George M. Taber

Design Award:
Egg

James Beard Foundation Awards: 2008 Finalists Announced

Following last Monday's reveal of the 2008 IACP finalists, today the James Beard Foundation announced their nominees for 2008 (along with a snazzy update to their website).  Hailed as "the Oscars of the food world," the Beards honor cookbooks, chefs, journalists, food writers, and food and beverage professionals. Winners will be announced in a black-tie ceremony at Lincoln Center on Sunday, June 8.

Ten Speed Press led the pack with the most IACP nominations and continues their run with the most James Beard nods (6 total, including their Celestial Arts imprint).

Titles Nominated in More Than One Category: The Country Cooking of France (International, Photography)

Total Nominations Per Publisher:

Ten Speed Press: 6
John Wiley & Sons: 5
HarperCollins: 4
Artisan: 3
Penguin Books: 3
Stewart, Tabori & Chang: 3
Chronicle Books: 2
University of California Press: 2
W.W. Norton & Company: 2
Bloomsbury: 1
DK Publishing: 1
Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 1
Flammarion: 1
Kyle Books: 1
Little, Brown & Co.: 1
Scribner: 1

Congratulations to Amazon in-house favorite Junot Díaz (who seems to make almost every book-awards shortlist), who was nominated for the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award in the Broadcast Media Awards category for his piece "He'll Take El Alto," which ran in last September's Gourmet. He's up against Alan Richman and Francine Prose.

And on the Seattle front, we raise a glass of Veuve to these local nominees:

Tom Douglas (Outstanding Restaurateur)
Canlis (Outstanding Service)
Maria Hines, Tilth (Best Chef: Northwest)
Holly Smith, Cafe Juanita (Best Chef: Northwest)
Ethan Stowell, Union (Best Chef: Northwest)
Jason Wilson, Crush (Best Chef: Northwest)
Maneki (American Classics Award)
Sara Dickerman (Multimedia Writings on Food)

IACP Cookbook Awards: 2008 Finalists Announced

The cookbook award season is officially on the front burner. Earlier this evening the International Association of Culinary Professionals announced the 2008 finalists for their annual cookbook awards. If the James Beard Awards are the "Oscars of the food world," then that would probably make the IACP awards the gourmet Golden Globes.

As in past years, the  "International" aspect of the IACP awards comes into play with the occasional title that isn't that familiar (or easy to locate) in the States (Pier and Turquoise anyone?). While Ten Speed Press had five featured finalists, I was disappointed that one of my favorite books they published in 2007, David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop didn't make the cut. The same goes for two of my other favorite titles from last last year, David Pasternack's The Young Man and the Sea and Gina DePalma's Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen.

It's always difficult to predict the winners, but when thinking about Cookbook of the Year, I'd start by seriously considering any title nominated in more than one category. Using this less-than-sure-fire method, here are this year's double-nominees: Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges (Chefs and Restaurants, Food Styling and Photography), Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking (Chefs and Restaurants, First Book), Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey by Efisio Farris and Jim Eber (First Book, International), and Good Spirits: Recipes, Revelations, Refreshments, and Romance, Shaken and Served with a Twist (Food Photography and Styling; Wine, Beer, or Spirits). The prolific Mark Bittman is also nominated twice, but for two different books: Mark Bittman's Quick & Easy Recipes from the New York Times and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food.

Full disclosure: We are over-the-moon thrilled for Amazon's very own A.J. Rathbun, all-around raconteur and author of the IACP double-nominee, Good Spirits. Congratulations, A.J.! This year's winners will be announced on Friday, April 18 at an awards ceremony in New Orleans, LA.

--BTP

2008 Finalists

American:
Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans by Susan Spicer and Paula Disbrowe
A Love Affair with Southern Cooking by Jean Anderson
The Pastry Queen Christmas: Big-hearted Holiday Entertaining, Texas Style by Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman

Bread, Other Baking, and   Sweets:
Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers by Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman
Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor by Peter Reinhart
Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich

Chefs and Restaurants:
Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking by Masaharu Morimoto
Pier by Greg Doyle, Grant King, and Katrina Kanetani

Compilations:
Baking Boot Camp: Five Days of Basic Training at the Culinary Institute of America by The Culinary Institute of America and Darra Goldstein
Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Techniques for the Artisan Confectioner by The Culinary Institute of America and Peter P. Greweling
Mark Bittman's Quick & Easy Recipes from the New York Times by Mark Bittman

First Book (The Julia Child Award):
Elizabeth Falkner's Demolition Desserts: Recipes from Citizen Cake by Elizabeth Falkner
Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking by Masaharu Morimoto
Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey by Efisio Farris and Jim Eber

Food Photography and Styling:
Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Good Spirits: Recipes, Revelations, Refreshments, and Romance, Shaken and Served with a Twist by A.J. Rathbun
Rosa's New Mexican Table by Roberto Santibanez

Food Reference/Technical:
Discover Chocolate: The Ultimate Guide to Buying, Tasting, and Enjoying Fine Chocolates by Clay Gordon

Food: The History of Taste by Paul Freedman
Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur's Guide to Oyster Eating in North America by Rowan Jacobsen    

General:
Chez Jacques: Traditions and Rituals of a Cook by Jacques Pepin
Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You A Better Cook by Jamie Oliver
Cooking by James Peterson

Health and Special Diets:
Allergy-Free Cookbook by Alice Sherwood
Cleveland Clinic Healthy Heart Lifestyle Guide & Cookbook by Bonnie Sanders Polin and Frances Towner Giedt
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman

International:
Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey by Efisio Farris and Jim Eber
The Country Cooking of France by Anne Willan
Turquoise by Greg and Lucy Malouf

Literary Food Writing:
Beans: A History by Ken Albala
Julia Child by Laura Shapiro
The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg

Single Subject:
Fish Forever: The Definitive Guide to Understanding, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy, Delicious, and Environmentally Sustainable Seafood by Paul Johnson
The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss
Vegetables: Recipes and Techniques from the World's Premier Culinary College by The Culinary Institute of America

Wine, Beer, or Spirits:
Good Spirits: Recipes, Revelations, Refreshments, and Romance, Shaken and Served with a Twist by A.J. Rathbun
IMBIBE! From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, A Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar by David Wondrich
The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson  

Vote with Your Forks! (Guest Blogger: Michael Pollan)

As this guest blog comes to an end this week, so does my book tour in support of In Defense of Food, so I thought I'd leave you with a few observations from the road. After speaking in places as different as New York and Indianapolis, Toronto and Louisville, Philadelphia and Iowa City, as well as LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, I'm convinced that we're witnessing the rise of a new movement around food in this country--one of the most exciting and hopeful political developments in my lifetime.

Two years ago, when I was on the road for The Omnivore's Dilemma, the ferment around food issues was concentrated mostly in big cities and mostly on the West Coast. That was where people "got it" and seemed most excited about building local food economies, supporting small farmers doing good work, and reforming agricultural policies at the federal and local levels. But much has changed in the last two years. I found the same level of enthusiasm and sophistication in places like Indianapolis--cities in the farm belt where you would not expect criticism of the corn industrial complex, or the virtues of local food, to find much support. While I was on the road, we had the recall of 143 million pounds of beef from the slaughterhouse in Chino as well as the ethanol-induced spike in food prices, two issues I got many questions about. People are coming to recognize that food is a political and ecological issue--indeed, is becoming a national security issue. The mystery, to me, is why so few of our political leaders yet recognize the visceral power of this issue. They soon will.

Today's food movement has many faces, some of them more prominent in certain places than others. There is the movement to reform school lunch. There is the effort to regulate or ban the marketing of food to children. To teach children in schools how to grow food and then prepare it. There is the drive to rebuild local food economies, through farmer's markets, CSAs (community supported agriculture), and the development of municipal food policies encouraging institutions to buy produce locally. There is the meteoric rise of organic food in the marketplace and, not far behind, grass-fed animal protein. Every city now has a handful of chefs who are driving change and raising consciousness by connecting with farmers and shining the light of their glamour on the men and women doing the crucial work of raising our food with conviction. There is the movement to improve the lot of the animals in the food chain, holding producers to high standards of animal welfare. There is the drive to reform the farm bill, which shocked Capitol Hill this past year. There is the growing recognition on the part of the public health community that the farm bill is a public health issue. There is the movement to improve access to healthy whole foods in the inner-city food deserts where fast food is easier to find, and cheaper, than fresh produce. There is the effort to defend small producers from the burden of regulation that holds down local food production and drive up its cost. There is the movement to improve food labeling--calorie counts on fast food, for example--—and to ban transfats. There is the rise of the "Edible" magazines, which are popping up in cities from coast to coast to celebrate local foodways. There is the rise of Slow Food, the Italian-born organization devoted to rebuilding a food culture based on real food eaten communally. I met with Slow Food members in almost every city I visited, and all reported burgeoning memberships and activism.

So there is a lot going on. The movement as yet feels somewhat scattered and inchoate, which might explain why it hasn't been widely recognized by the media as a full-fledged movement. But make no mistake: That is what is rising in America today, a drive to repair our broken, dangerously unsustainable, brutal, and unhealthy food system, and replace it with a shorter, more legible food chain based on the principles of equity, sustainability, and health--but health in the broadest sense of the word, a conception of health that recognizes that our personal health is in fact indivisible from the health of the land, the plants, the animals, and the workers who together comprise the food chain that sustains us.

We're at the beginning of something big. Vote with your forks! --Michael Pollan

Your Comments and Food Haikus (Guest Blogger: Michael Pollan)

Thanks for the many provocative posts this week, especially the thoughtful comments on the challenges of eating well when we’re feeling so stretched, both for time and money. Yes, there are people who can’t possibly invest any more time or money in their food, but before deciding that describes you, it’s well worth considering whether the issue is really resources or priorities. For many of us it turns out to be a matter of priorities.

A few readers offered some good rules of thumb. Thanks to Richard Demers for this one:

“The more packaging, the worse it is.” He explains: “Like the individually wrapped Biscotti, in a plastic tray, in a cardboard box with a plastic window, in a plastic grocery store bag.”

Richard also included the aphorism “Eating is an agricultural act,” which he acknowledges he “stole from somebody.” He guessed it was Carlo Petrini or Alice Waters, but in fact the line belongs to Wendell Berry, the Kentucky writer and farmer, who wrote a wonderful essay on the theme of this blog that I recommend to everyone interested in these issues. It’s called “The Pleasures of Eating,” and it appears in an anthology of his work called “What Are People For.” You can also find it on the web.

I wanted to share something I picked up in Portland last week, while on book tour. Before speaking at an event at the Bagdad Theater, sponsored by Powell’s bookstore, the audience was handed index cards and asked to compose a food haiku in the style of the one printed on the cover of In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants.” For some reason, that particular form and rhythm seems to be especially sticky, and it has spawned many imitations. (One of my favorites was submitted to the New York Times website: "Ate the plants. A whole heap. Still hungry.") Anyway, the audience at the Bagdad came up with some particularly sweet ones. Here are a few of my favorites (more are on the website of the magazine Edible Portland:

Grow corn
Just for food
Not cars

Go home
Rip up lawn
Plant kale

Sweet beet
Dye my mouth
Winter red

Earl Butz
Liked his corn
In cups

Feedlots
Make our beef
Torture raised

Picking fruit
Low hanging plum
You're mine

To eat
What I grow
Is heaven

As you can see, they’re not true haiku. (Two words/three words/two words) But try one: there’s something about the form that really works.

Look forward to reading yours.

Table Talk, Take Two (Guest Blogger: Michael Pollan)

Readers:

Thanks for all your posts, which were full of interesting comments and provocations—but not a whole lot of new eating algorithms, I must say. I await more of those.

There were a lot of interesting posts on the challenge of eating well on a budget, as well as some proposed strategies and solutions. The fact is, we have a food systems (ie, a set of agricultural policies) that encourages farmers to grow lots of corn and soy, the building blocks of fast food (in the form of high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated soy oil and all the other industrial ingredients teased out of those two remarkable plants) and effectively discourages farmers from growing real food people can eat. The result is that the unhealthiest calories in the supermarket are the cheapest, and the healthiest calories the dearest.

But processed food is not necessarily so cheap—it’s only cheap on a per-calorie basis. It costs money to design, produce, market and package those Honeynut Cheerio Cereal bars with the layer of synthetic milk-like material in the middle. If you compare the price of those bars to the price of the oats they’re made from (79 cents a pound for rolled organic in my market), you’ll quickly see that the processed version is no bargain. They’ve figured out a way to get you to spend several dollars a pound for oats by adding sugar, “convenience,” and fortified vitamins --about which all you need to know was supplied by one reader: “An old preacher of my acquaintance used to say that, "enriched" foods was like a guy robbing you of all your money, then tossing you a sawbuck saying, "now you're enriched."

To eat well doesn’t necessarily take a lot more money, but it probably does take more time. What people are buying when they buy processed foods is convenience, by and large. Many people don’t think they have enough time to cook any more, and the food marketers are very good at flattering our sense of busyness. Look at how they portray the American family: either stressed out in the morning trying to get out of the house (does no one have an alarm clock that works?!?!?) or relaxing with snack foods in front of the TV. Hmmm. It’s  worth thinking about what you actually do with the time you save by eating convenience food. Is it really better spend than cooking a meal for people you love and then enjoying it with them?

As Leslie Batchelor wrote in her post, “Always prepare your food with love, gratitude, and joy in your heart not anger, frustration, bitterness, sadness, etc.... Enjoy the process of making the meal! I swear the food tastes better and is better for us.”

Till next week….

Let’s see more of those rules of thumb. My favorite thus far: “Always leave room for an apple.”

Table Talk (Guest Blogger: Michael Pollan)

I'm delighted to have this opportunity to engage with you about my new book, In Defense of Food. Anyone who's had a chance to read it--or even just glance at the cover--knows that the book is my attempt to help readers navigate what has become a treacherous food landscape, made especially confusing by the rise of something I call "nutritionism." "Nutritionism" is a highly reductive way of looking at food that presumes the nutrient is more important than the food and, because nutrients are invisible, we need experts to tell us how to eat. This supposedly more scientific way of eating is what I set out to debunk in the book, on the grounds that it not only destroys the pleasure of eating, but has actually done very little for our health, except quite possibly to make it worse. Why? Because the science of nutrition is still very sketchy, and because the food industry uses this sketchy science to make health claims for distinctly unhealthy foods. Heart-healthy whole-grain Cocoa Puffs?!?! You get the idea.

My premise is that science doesn't yet know enough to tell us how to eat. So who, or what, does? Not me or any other journalist, god knows. No, the best guide to how to eat is the guide we relied on for thousands of years before people know what an antioxidant or carbohydrate was, and that is Culture. Culture, when it comes to food, is of course a fancy word for your mom--through mothers, dietary wisdom, based on generations of trial and error and the gradual discover of what keeps people healthy and happy, has been passed down for thousands of years. So the last third of my book is an attempt to recapture some of this cultural wisdom before it completely disappears under the onslaught of food marketing and nutritionism.

I try to distill this cultural wisdom into a series of eating algorithms--mental tools for navigating the food landscape and eating well. Instead of talking about how to get your antioxidants or probiotics, my rules of thumb go more like this:

1. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2. Avoid food products with more than five ingredients; with ingredients you can't pronounce.
3. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot.
4. Shop the perimeter of the supermarket, where the food is least processed.
5. Avoid food products that make health claims.
6. Eat meals and eat them only at tables. (And no, a desk is not a table.)
7. Eat only until you're 4/5 full. (An ancient Japanese injunction.)
8. Pay more, eat less.
9. Diversify your diet and eat wild foods when you can.
10. Eat slowly, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

There are more, but this should give you some idea of how I approach the question of what and how to eat.

Since publishing the book last month, I've collected several more useful rules of thumb from readers and people I've met on my book tour. For example, someone told me her grandmother used to say, "The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead." Another reader wrote that her grandfather used to say, at every meal, "I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry." This cultural rule against eating until stuffed seems to be widespread. Muslims have told me that the prophet Muhammad addressed the issue of appetite by advising we should supply the stomach one-third with food, one-third with drink, and leave one-third for "easy breathing."

A couple of others I've collected:

"If it arrives through the car window, it isn't food."
"Eat all the junk food you want--as long as you cook it yourself."

I'd like to invite you to share more such rules for eating with me and the others reading this blog. By collecting old rules and developing new ones in the same spirit, we can help wrest the culture of food back from the marketers and the scientists.

I look forward to your rules. I'm also happy to answer any other questions you have about eating, the food chain, and my books about the subject, both In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma. I look forward to hearing from you. --Michael Pollan

Our First Guest Blogger: The Omnivore Himself

We have been talking for a while about bringing authors (and other book people) on Omnivoracious for guest appearances, and we had the perfect person in mind to begin with. Not only is Michael Pollan the author of some of our favorite and our customers' favorite books. (His last two books, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, each made our top 5 editors' favorites of the year, in 2006 and 2001, and Omnivore was our #6 customer favorite too in '06.) And not only is he one of the most personable and articulate authors we've had the pleasure of meeting. (One of my favorite interviewing moments was when I recorded a conversation with him after he had just given a talk to a large and enthusiastic group of fans here. He had done a brilliant riff on corn in the talk, and before the interview I said my one request was that he somehow weave that riff into the interview. A clumsy request, but like a true pro, when he saw an opening in the conversation he stepped right into it and, Obama-like, hit every note once again.) And not only does he have one of our favorite books of the new year, In Defense of Food, the "omnivore's solution" follow-up that was our Best of the Month spotlight pick in January.

The real clincher in having him as our first guest blogger was that he is, of course, the original omnivore, and one of the inspirations for the naming of this blog. We hope that we can approach the kind of wide-ranging curious appetite here that he shows in all his books, and for that reason and all the others, we're thrilled to have Michael Pollan sitting in on Omnivoracious this month. He'll be posting once a week for the next few weeks, and would love to hear your questions about his books and your own ideas about eating and our food culture. Omnivores, please join in. --Tom

P.S. Here's a photo from his visit to our offices in 2006. We ran out of books for him to sign, so the unlucky (or lucky) last person in line instead received his prop for the talk, an ear of the demon corn, signed with the message, "Stephanie--Vote with your [stomach?] + don't eat this. Michael Pollan."

It's Tom's Seattle... We Just Eat Here

James Beard Award-winning Seattle chef Tom Douglas is a man whose name is synonymous with Pacific Northwest cuisine. Through five of Seattle's most creative and exciting restaurants, Tom and his wife and business partner, Jackie Cross, have helped define the Seattle food scene. Tom is also the author of three cookbooks, including the award-winning Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen, and oversees a line of specialty food products sold nationwide. I've been lucky enough to get to know Tom since I moved to Seattle in '99 and his Palace Kitchen practically serves as a second home for me. Tom has been kind enough to have me as a regular guest on his weekly radio show to talk about cookbooks, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to interview him about about celebrity chefs, getting your kids involved in the kitchen, bloggers, his undying love of Seattle, and much more. Highlights from our talk are below. You can read the entire interview or listen to a podcast of the interview on Amazon Wire (gentle readers, please note: I was at the peak of a severe cold when we recorded this so I sound a bit like Lauren Bacall).

--BTP

Amazon.com: First of all, how would you define Pacific Northwest cuisine?

Douglas:   That's a cheap question.

Amazon.com: Too easy?

Douglas: [Laughs] Well, I've only been asked it for 25 years now and it's still a hard one to come by. I think it's in the context of a restaurant and for me restaurants are so much more than just their cuisine. I think the Seattle restaurant scene is a really fun--really up and down the Pacific Northwest coast. Portland's the same way... Vancouver. There's a certain sense of approachability. A certain sense of product. A celebration of the amazing bounty that we have here. Pacific Northwest cuisine is really about--kind of the same regionality that every other region has--things that come from here. I think the best way to explain to somebody from "the outside" is to use the salmon explanation.

When you are a chef in New York City or in Florida or in Dallas and you want salmon on your menu tonight you call your fish broker and you order salmon. You have some fresh salmon? Yeah? I'll take some salmon tonight. In Seattle, when you want salmon on your menu you call your fish guy and you say, What kind of salmon do you have tonight? Coho? King? Silvers? Keta? Where was it caught? What river? Campbell River? Yukon River? Copper River? Columbia River? Who caught it? Was it brought up right on the boat? Was it troll-caught? Gill-netted? Pursing caught? How was it bled? Did they bleed it right there on the boat or did they wait till they got to the dock and take it to the dockhouse and then take care of all the fish at one time? Or, as that fish was brought up, did somebody stop, bleed it, and pack its belly with ice and put it in the hold and go back three hours later to the shore and that afternoon put it on an Alaska Airlines jet down to Seattle? Oh, I'll take that one! I'll take that salmon that was King, troll-caught, boat-bled, caught this morning, on a plane this afternoon. That's the fish that I want!

New Year's with Ina and Patricia

In a Christmas Eve post we shared a holiday message from food writer Patricia Wells along with an exclusive snapshot she shared of her shopping at a Paris outdoor market with fellow cookbook writer and part-time Parisian Dorie Greenspan. Patricia promised a New Year's photo to share with Amazon and this lovely note just landed in our inbox. What exactly is on the menu when two of the food world's favorite women and their husbands get together for a holiday meal? Read on to find out.

--BTP

New Year's is a time for family, so we gathered together a family of friends to celebrate the arrival of 2008, which we all agree will be a special, positive year for all of us. We spent it at our farmhouse in Provence, with Ina and Jeffrey Garten, who arrived on the TGV from Paris with plenty of champagne and chocolates. For the feasts, my husband, Walter, made his spectacular scrambled eggs with fresh black truffles, a remarkable oyster casserole prepared with gigantic fresh oysters from Brittany, and a wedding-cake sort of cheese course: the fat creamy Chaource cheese from Champagne which he cut into three layers and spread with truffle butter and truffles. I dried grapes from our vineyard and prepared a "Vintage 2007 Old Vines" raisin bread, and offered a golden sponge cake made with lemons from our trees, fresh local olive oil, and almonds, and prepared a mixed berry sauce from summer fruit we froze for the occasion. We both have new books coming out  this year--Ina's is Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, out with Clarkson Potter in October, and Walter and I have written our memoirs, We've Always Had Paris... which will be out with Harper Collins in May. We all look forward to seeing many of our readers this year, and wish all health and happiness in 2008.   

--Patricia Wells

Sunday at the Market with Patricia and Dorie

We're very fortunate that Seattle is a frequent stop on the cookbook book-tour circuit and this past spring celebrated food critic and cookbook author Patricia Wells visited Amazon for a late-morning talk over coffee. Wells has lived in France for more than 25 years and during our talk we asked her if she ever runs into  Dorie Greenspan and Ina Garten, two women who have also stopped by Amazon over the years and who also spend much of the year in the City of Lights. We pictured a high-end foodie sitcom of sorts, with these culinary all stars running into each other at the markets, shopping together, or tapping on each others' doors to borrow sugar cubes or exchange a recipe or two. Patricia was sweet enough to remember this and sent us an e-mail this past Sunday with photographic proof that such Parisian culinary adventures do exist. (A little French bird told us that we just might receive another photo for New Year's featuring a certain Barefoot Contessa.)

Happy holidays!

--BTP

There's a little corner of Paris that probably has more American foodies than many major American cities. The city's 6th and 7th arrondissement is inhabited by a happy party of part-timers and full timers, and since food is our mission, we tend to gather often for multi-course feasts. Cookbook writers Dorie Greenspan and Ina Garten are a stone's throw from our apartment on Rue du Bac. Eli Zabar and his wife Devon Fredericks are not far away, and restaurateurs Johanne Killeen and George Germon are just about to move in, too. So there’s never a problem if you need to borrow a tin of caviar or a few fresh black truffles!

Dorie and I get together often, and we manage to talk nonstop wherever we go. When she is in town, we meet on Sunday mornings at the Boulevard Raspail organic market, and talk so much that our shopping list has to take a serious back seat. We meet at the potato galette stand for breakfast and go on from there.

We all love to cook for one another, and surely one of our New Year's feasts will be made up of some of the fresh black truffles just coming into season: There might be scrambled eggs with truffles, fresh pasta and truffles, for sure the Chaource cow's milk cheese layered with the fragrant mushroom, and a lamb's lettuce salad dotted with minced truffle trimmings. Dorie will prepare dessert, of course, hopefully it will be her famous Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart.

Champagne and wine will flow freely, with our favorite house champagne, Rose de Jeanne, a 100% pinot noir from winemaker Cedric Bouchard, a white Châteauneuf-du-Pape old vines wine from Château du Beaucastel, and our own red Cotes du Rhône, Clos Chanteduc.

Dorie, her husband, Michael, myself and my husband, Walter will be sure to toast all of our readers, thanking them for their support, and wishing them a very delicious 2008!

Patricia Wells
Paris, France
23 December 2007

How to Eat Like Jonathan Lethem

As someone who is equally at home on both sides of the literary and culinary fence, today's Grub Street post of Jonathan Lethem's New York Diet (where a featured New Yorker chronicles a week's worth of eating) had me at chili-cheese fries. The author of Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and most recently, You Don't Love Me Yet, ticks off every bagel, bowl of cereal, and Vietnamese sandwich that crossed his lips this week (though the days/dates seem to be off according to the James Bond wall calendar at my desk). He reports that his "tendency is to go from purity to decadence, like I'm reliving the fall of a great empire," adding "I sound extremely healthful, like I'm some kind of Zen purist. By dinner I'm in the Caligula phase."

Here's hoping that someday soon you'll be able to walk into a Boerum Hill deli and order "The Jonathan Lethem" from the sandwich board.

--BTP

"Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet": Padma's Passport to Flavors

In addition to her role as host of Bravo's Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi's résumé also includes work modeling, acting, and as the award-winning cookbook author of Easy Exotic: Low-Fat Recipes from Around the World. Her new book, Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet, is a personal scrapbook of recipes that serves as a culinary passport to a world of international flavors. Padma recently visited the Amazon offices during the Seattle stop of her book tour for a late afternoon coffee break with a few Amazonians at the Starbucks in our building. Graced with undeniable poise, and resplendent in a ready-for-the-runway white dress with matching go-go boots, Lakshmi turned heads as soon as she stepped off the elevator. Afterward she joined me in our podcast studio to talk about her book, Top Chef, the secret to her fried chicken recipe, and much more.

Some highlights from our talk are below. Read or listen to the  entire interview on this week's episode of Amazon Wire.

--BTP

Amazon.com: How do you envision a home cook approaching your book? What's the best way for them to dive in to it?

Lakshmi: That's a great question, Brad. I think the best way to do it, especially with the more complicated recipes--there are some really easy recipes. The easiest one being Chili Honey Butter--and it's exactly that. Probably the most--I would say, not difficult--but a bit intimidating recipe in the book is the Chicken Bisteeya--the curried Moroccan pie. And that dish is traditionally made with pigeon, but I thought I better do it with ground chicken--you can do it with ground lamb or ground turkey or whatever.

What I recommend for all these recipes is to do them when you have time on a Saturday. And think of it like a hobby, like you would with doing a crossword puzzle, or anything else. I would do your mise en place before you start. Mise en place is a French term meaning to chop all your vegetables and put them into place before you begin. That way you're not scrambling--you're doing yourself a favor. I do a mise en place for the week in my own home. I know I'm going to use onion, I know I'm going to use garlic, I know I'm going to need some chilies, I'm probably going to use some bell peppers... so I chop those things up, I put them in a plastic container, and I stick them in my fridge. Most of cooking is the labor of chopping. Give yourself a break. Pretend you're on a cooking show and have all your ingredients lined up for you. I learned this, actually, going on The Martha Stewart Show. Arrange the ingredients on your counter in the order that they appear in the recipe. So even when you're cooking and you're stirring and you don't want to burn yourself, the next thing that you're reaching for is the next full plate or bowl of ingredients. And don't use a different dish for every single ingredient. If you've got three ingredients that go in at the same time, put them all in the same plate. That way you have just one plate to dump in.

Amazon.com: Makes perfect sense. It sounds like a lot of work but in the long run it more than makes up for it.

Lakshmi: Yeah, once you do a recipe a couple of times like that, then you're not under the pressure of Oh my god, it's not going to come out well and then if it doesn't come out well what am I going to serve for dinner? Most of these recipes, except for maybe the fried recipes--but even the fried recipes--they are great as leftovers. There's not anything in my book that isn't great as leftovers. Probably the flautas, because they're fried and they're better eaten hot. Even the fried chicken is great cold.

Amazon.com: Cold fried chicken... that's the best.

Lakshmi:   Yeah.

Amazon.com: Speaking of fried chicken, you were raised a vegetarian, but was there a turning point when you became a full-time carnivore or did it sort of happen naturally?

Lakshmi: It happened very gradually. It started with the most heinous of things--pepperoni on pizza, bologna on sandwiches, hot dogs. Probably the first thing I ate was a hot dog on a New York street corner. Not exactly the Cordon Bleu method. Once I was a teenager and growing up in this country, I sort of got phased in that way. Kids can be cruel. I remember when I first came here and I was eating from Tupperware with curry and rice and vegetables. You know, it's very pungent. In the 80s India wasn't as groovy as it is now. India's had two groovy moments. Once when the Beatles went to India and now when Madonna has embraced yoga. Kids were mean and they'd be like, ewww, what is that? I wanted to fit in. And that's how it started really.

Amazon.com: And I guess your mouthwatering three-page tribute to bacon in the book officially seals the deal?

Lakshmi:   Yes! Yeah, it does.

Amazon.com: And as mentioned, you also throw your hat into the ring with a fried chicken recipe. As you say in your headnote, what's a girl from south India know about Southern fried chicken? Where did that recipe come from?

Lakshmi:   Years of tasting! I'm a sucker for fried chicken--I really love it. I'm a fan of all of Edna Lewis' recipes. I recently met the Lee Bros. who happen to be huge Top Chef fans--and gosh they are cute in person! I really love fried chicken. In a way that somebody else converts to Judaism or becomes a Hare Krishna, I belong to the church of fried chicken.

Amazon.com: You're a would-be Southerner...

Lakshmi:   I know, I really am.

Amazon.com: Your secret ingredient is Rice Krispies and a double brine...

Lakshmi: Yeah... there are two schools of fried chicken. One is brining in salted water and the other is soaking in either buttermilk or milk. I just combine the two. I basically use like a Maldon or coarse-grain sea salt and I do it in whole milk and I just cut the chicken up. I stir the salt until it actually dissolves into the milk. That's very important. I like sea salt rather than iodized salt because I think the mineral content adds a real briny, ocean flavor to it. I encourage people to layer flavors. I remember when we were editing this book on another recipe--I think a crumble recipe--one of the editors who was helping me with the measurements said, You have three kinds of sugars and Frosted Flakes and no serious chef will take you seriously. And I said You obviously don't have children in your house because if you have children in your house you have Frosted Flakes. And I'm using three types of sugars because that's what makes it taste the best. If you don't have three types of sugar then please, use just one.

Amazon.com: And like you said, even better the next day.

Lakshmi:   Oh, yeah! Absolutely better the next day.

Amazon.com: How has working on Top Chef altered your point of view on food?

Lakshmi:   It's made me much more omnivorous. I went to Top Chef very much a carnivore, but I had certainly never eaten frog legs and elk and bison and kangaroo and rattlesnake--often in the same meal together. It has broken every food inhibition that I could hope to even think of. I will eat anything, at least once. For better or worse.

Amazon.com: And how does the featured city on the show affect the vibe of each season?

Lakshmi: It affects it considerably. It's kind of a pain in the neck for us to pick up and move to a different city every time--a lot of us on the set grumble about it. But I do think for the show it's very useful. Each city has its own culinary landscape. For instance, Miami, which has already aired, has this wonderful blend of Caribbean culture and Latin American culture and Southern American culture (talking about fried chicken). All those combine to make for a very very interesting array of ingredients, restaurants, and the chefs that come there. It also has great seafood, not to mention the glorious citrus that's there. And all those things inform what you do--and they should. If any chef ever tells you they're not inspired equally by the truck-stop barbecue as they are by the four-star Michelin restaurant they are lying.

Amazon.com: I know you're sworn to secrecy, but any hint of a preview of what to expect in Chicago?

Lakshmi:   Yes, I am sworn to secrecy, but I can tell you there are a lot of strong women this season.

Amazon.com: And finally, Padma, of the four taste sensations in the title of your book, is there one you're drawn to over the others?

Lakshmi:   The "hot" (laughs).

A Sweet Finish for the Thanksgiving Table

Looking for some sweet inspiration for your dessert course this Thanksgiving? In our Fall into Cooking Store you'll find an all-star lineup of seasonal, hand-picked recipes that are perfect for the holiday table.

While pumpkin pie is MIA (do you really need another recipe?), you'll find some inspired takes on autumn flavors, including a Creamy Pumpkin Custard from Babbo's Gina DePalma and Seattle chef Tom Douglas' Butternut Squash Gingerbread promises to be a family favorite. And you won't need a holiday as an excuse to revisit award-winning cookbook author Dorie Greenspan's amazing Applesauce Spice Bars.

• Parsnip Spice Cake from Kurt Beecher Dammeier, author of Pure Flavor
• Creamy Pumpkin Custard from Gina DePalma, author of Dolce Italiano
• Butternut Squash Gingerbread from Tom Douglas, author of Tom's Big Dinners
• Applesauce Spice Bars from Dorie Greenspan, author of Baking
• Bea's Apple Crisp from Alice Medrich, author of Pure Dessert
• Apple Butterscotch Grunt from Sherry Yard, author of Desserts by the Yard

--BTP

Back to Basics with Michael Ruhlman

   

Inspired by the Strunk and White classic, Michael Ruhlman's The Elements of Cooking will quickly prove to be an essential culinary reference for both seasoned cooks and novices who might not know gravlax from gremolata. After a thorough "Notes on Cooking," Ruhlman, a prolific author and popular blogger, settles in for an opinionated and informative A-Z roundup (from Acid to Zester) of cooking terms, lessons, and techniques reduced to their essential essence. Even with only one recipe (for veal stock), it's a must-have for every kitchen library--a book that will help you re-think your approach to food.

Ruhlman was gracious enough to write an exclusive essay for our Fall into Cooking Store and I got to break bread with the author at lunch at the Dahlia Lounge while he was in Seattle on Monday for his book tour. Over tomato soup and crab cakes (Ruhlman declared that the Lemon-Scallion Dungeness Crab Cake was the best crab cake he's ever eaten) we talked about books, blogging, and the proper way to send back a dish at a restaurant. The next day we traded e-mail to talk about his new book.

--BTP

Amazon.com:  Did you have a eureka! moment when you decided to use Strunk and White's The Elements of Style as the inspiration and model for The Elements of Cooking?

Ruhlman: I did! My wife had planted an idea in my head: "You've worked with all these amazing chefs, you should write the ten most important things you know about cooking." A few days later, preparing to teach a writing seminar, I was flipping through my copy of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, smiling at the opinionated commands about prose style and thought, "I want to do this for the kitchen!"

Amazon.com: Who do you like to imagine as your book's ideal reader? Do you envision home cooks using it the same way a culinary student might--or even a seasoned chef?

Ruhlman: First ideal reader is the home cook who wants to get better. At any level, say you're a beginner and don't know what zest is or what exactly is meant by the word blanch, or an advanced home cook who wants a more nuanced definition of braise versus stew. I think every culinary student in America should read it straight through--because in a way the book describes a way of thinking about food and cooking. And I hope chefs buy it for their line cooks, and read it themselves and argue the finer points of cooking.

Amazon.com: Is the book meant to be digested cover to cover or dipped into from page to page?

Ruhlman: No, dipped into. But read cover to cover it would convey an overarching philosophy of cooking that stresses the fundamentals and encourages acute observation and attention in the kitchen.

Amazon.com: Aside from a heavy hand with butter, what are the top three things that set restaurant cooking apart from home cooking?

Ruhlman: Proper use of salt throughout the cooking process and fresh stock are THE main differences. Neither are difficult to do or to learn. I'd say the next one is getting your pan to the right temperature.

Amazon.com: What do you think about the increasingly popularity in food lit, the renaissance of which was kicked off by your good friend Anthony Bourdain.

Ruhlman: It's good and bad. It encourages publishers to find more like books, though the quality is not always there. But it has opened up the way for more good books too.

Amazon.com: Do you have any favorite books in that category?

Ruhlman: Bourdain's always excellent, and Buford's whole portrayal of the Babbo kitchen in Heat was outstanding.  I'm a Pollan fan, and admired Kamp's United States of Arugula.

Amazon.com:  Do you think there are too many cookbooks published each year?

Ruhlman: Yes, I think there are 3,000 cookbooks too many published each year.

Amazon.com: Your blog is a must-bookmark site for serious foodies. Does blogging take you away from your regular writing gigs or does it inspire you even more?

Ruhlman: Blogging, oy, I really love it, but yes, it does take away from the other work and I've got to be very careful about it. So why then am I about to start a second one? I can't help myself! So I guess I'd have to say it's inspiring.

Amazon.com: Every year new buzz words are officially added to the lexicon. What are a handful of cooking terms we might see added to a future edition of The Elements of Cooking?

Ruhlman: I don't know, I tried to get them all. I hope the ones in it can get increasingly refined, and I look forward to putting more in. I'm sure readers will suggest new terms, part of the reason for the blog.