A is for apple pie

"A is for apple pie. The nursery rhyme lives with us from our earliest years and culinary memories. As does the scent of autumn apples steaming in a pie; pouring hot, silky, vanilla-flecked custard over thick gluey-appled pastry triangles; pushing a clot of thick yellow cream on to the sugared pastry top with your fingers; or dropping a cold scoop of the best homemade vanilla ice cream over the summit, the hot beating the cold into melting submission.

"Apple pie is the alpha and omega of pies - well, at least of sweet pies - and there are, I'm sure, as many versions as there are cooks, but that is the joy of it.

"From cheese crusts and spices to crumble tops and gooky molasses-sugared tops punctuated with scrunched walnuts; from the plainest pie to the traditional winter welter-weight warmer, apple hat; from rhubarb and apple to apple and quince, apple and raisin, blackberry and apple."

Tamasin Day-Lewis, in "Tarts with Tops On or How to Make the Perfect Pie"

Thai one on

Restaurant art

Hashing it out

We like corned beef hash as much as the next fellow. And we always like a good poached egg. These inevitably get us going.

Talking "Taco"

"Mexican food is at our state dinners, in elegant presentations. Mexican food is in our school cafeterias, packaged as chimichangas or in bags of Fritos, in convenience stores heating on rolling racks, waiting for the hands of hurried customers.

"Mexican food sponsors college bowl games such as the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and buys naming rights for sporting venues such as the Taco Bell Arena at Boise State in Idaho. Mexican food commercials blanket television airwaves hawking salsa and hard-shelled taco packets and high-priced tequilas and imported beers promising a day at the beach.

"Mexican food fills our grocery aisles, feeds underclassmen, sits in our freezers and pantries, is the focus of festivals, becomes tween trends or front-page news - and if you don't know what I'm talking about, ask your kid about spaghetti tacos.

"That wonderful culinary metaphor the melting pot has absorbed Mexican in this country just like so many immigrant cuisines of the past - but in a demanding way, unique from other traditions that have penetrated the American palate.

"While there are more Chinese restaurants than Mexican in this country, Mexican food is the easier sell... While pizza is the best-selling and farthest-reaching item of Italian-American cuisine, its rise and that of pasta and subs is only relatively recent; the United States, on the other hand, has loved Mexican food for more than 125 years - bought it, sold it, made it, spread it, supplied it, cooked it, savored it, loved it."

Gustavo Arellano, in "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America"

Hunger

In his empathetic account "The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change," former Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Thurow ("Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty") focuses on a group of smallholder farmers in western Kenya, "a paradoxical region of breathtaking beauty and overwhelming misery."

Without modern equipment and valuable fertilizers, these farmers struggle to feed their families throughout the year and produce enough crops to make money to send their children to school. They believed "education was the surest route out of poverty."

They try hard to stretch their food supplies from one harvest to the next. The time in between - when prices soar with shortages "and parents scramble for whatever income they can find and scrounge whatever assets they can sell to afford daily nourishment" - is known as "wanjala," the hunger season.

In chronicling their plight, the author also discusses the efforts of the One Acre Fund, founded not long ago by Andrew Youn, a social entrepreneur with an MBA from Northwestern University. The organization works to provide farmers with "access to the seeds and soil nutrients and planting advice" that would normally be unavailable to them.

By documenting their collaboration, Thurow paints a sobering but ultimately hopeful picture of a continuing food crisis in Africa and some of the things people are doing to mitigate it.

(A version of this review appears in Publishers Weekly.)

Crumble, her sweet

"Five minutes later, a generous slice of rhubarb-apple crumble arrived, warmed in the small kitchen and served with a side of fresh cream, whipped staunchly into a thick, puffy cloud.

"I sat for a minute, contemplating the crumble's imperfect bumps and dull brown color. The pale pink and sometimes green slices of rhubarb poked out of the sides and lumps of rogue topping decorated my plate.

"Where the crumble had baked against the dish, a sticky crust of caramelized fruit juice and sugar had formed. It looked like a tarte that had done a somersault in its pastry box and arrived bruised and battered. There was nothing perfect about it.

"Except its bright flavors. Except its comforting warmth. Except that it was exactly what I wanted and needed. I savored each juicy-crunchy bite. It was wonderful."

Amy Thomas, describing dessert in "Paris, My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate)"

Fava bean Friday

The fava beans go from this

 to this

to this

in the span of a Friday afternoon. It is time well spent.

What the French do

Part cultural study, part memoir, part children's food guide, Karen Le Billon's "French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters" is a breezy, useful volume for hurried parents looking to keep their kids well-fed.
 
A mother of two young girls, Sophie and Claire, the author recalls the year her family moved from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Pléneuf Val-André, France, her husband Philippe's hometown on the Brittany coast.

She compares North American eating habits to which they had been accustomed (e.g. fast-food consumption, constant snacking) to French norms they needed to learn along the way.

"French parents gently compel their children to eat healthy food. They expect their kids to eat everything they are served, uncomplainingly. They ask them to spend long hours at the table (where they are expected to be extremely well behaved)..."

In due time, Le Billon (Eau Canada) drafts a set of rules for her daughters, strategies she believes readers can easily follow as well. Parents should "schedule meals and menus," for example. "Kids should eat what adults eat: no substitutes and no short-order cooking."

Her tone is straightforward, generous and gentle. That Le Billon concludes with a small collection of kid-friendly recipes - including a Five-Minute Fish en Papillote and Clafoutis (sweet cherry soufflé) - helps make this foodie manifesto all the more accessible.

(A version of this review appeared originally in Publishers Weekly.)

Producers and purveyors

In an effort to highlight local producers and purveyors, Seattle resident Leora Y. Bloom talks to a cross-section of people in the eye-catching volume "Washington Food Artisans: Farm Stories and Chef Recipes."

Meet Stina Booth, for example, and her husband, John Richardson, who run Booth Canyon Orchard near Twisp. They "take turns driving their truck across the Cascades to bring their apples and pears to Seattle so that someone is always at home taking care of the trees." 

Or Pete Knutson of Loki Fish Co. in Seattle, who resembles "a Norwegian fisherman... movie-star handsome, aging with craggy wrinkles in all the right places." He is similarly attached to his trade - when he's not fishing, he's teaching at Seattle Central Community College. Knutson is "an activist in the fishing industry" as well.

The author also collects recipes ranging from spiced albacore tuna with stone fruit chutney to goat cheesecake with pears and honey. They will have denizens of the Northwest and beyond drooling - most ingredients can be sourced nationwide.

Clare Barboza's sumptuous landscape and food photos complement the narrative nicely. They give sight and sound to an admirable group of people committed to the health and well-being of their customers and their communities.

(A version of this review appeared originally in Publishers Weekly.)

Without question

Because in life there should always be cake.

You and me

A visit to Umami Burger yields a port and stilton burger, topped with port-caramelized onions and blue cheese. It proves an excellent yield.

"Mycophilia"

Mushroom hunting, Eugenia Bone reminds us, isn't simply traipsing through the woods after weeks of wet weather, eyes to the ground. It requires a decent amount of patience, fearlessness, skill and "knowledge both of the organism and of its habits and habitats."

In "Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms," the journalist and noted food writer sheds light on groups of fungi aficionados from around the country and chronicles her own growing interest in the field over the past decade. She introduces us to a distinct subculture.

Some people, Bone says, gather mushrooms for the thrill as well as the taste. They join mycological societies that offer "lectures on fungal biology, slideshows of mushroom photography... (and) small guided walks." They take part in regional forays and festivals.

Like her, they look forward to spring, when morels – "probably the most fetishized of all wild edible mushrooms" – can be found in abundance. Getting good ones will reward them with delicious meals afterward.

But eating bad ones can send them to the hospital. One cap of an Amanita phalloides, for instance, "will make you very sick, even do you in, especially if you exhibit symptoms within six hours of eating." Telltale signs of mushroom poisoning include gastrointestinal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.

Other mushroom people forage for the money. Commercial pickers who hunt for chanterelles, truffles and matsutakes in the Pacific Northwest, for example, are part of a thriving industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They sell the mushrooms they find in the wild to restaurants or distributors, following a trail from British Columbia in the summer south to Washington and Oregon in the fall and Northern California in the winter.

Made up primarily of Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong or Mien immigrants, Latino migrant workers and "white off-the-grid types," the workforce can get competitive. Stories abound of groups "staking out and defending territory in national forests with automatic weapons," the author tells us, "robbing each other of their mushrooms and robbing the mushroom buyers of their cash." There is an inherent danger to their search.

Bone, whose food books include "At Mesa's Edge: Cooking and Ranching in Colorado's North Fork Valley" and "Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods," nominated in 2009 for a James Beard Award, also touches on other aspects of mycology in the United States today.

Talk of fungi biology and molecular make-ups, of spore dispersal (the way in which spores ensure their survival), ecosystems and parasites get fairly heady. They prove a bit much for non-academics to fully comprehend.

Likewise, chapters on psychedelic mushrooms – "the black sheep of the mycological world" – and mycotechnologies can be challenging.

The former looks at physical and psychological effects hallucinogenic mushrooms can have. Bone recalls a trip to the Telluride Mushroom Festival where she tried some; it is among the few events that celebrate psychoactive mushrooms as well.

Meanwhile, the latter tackles advances in burgeoning scientific fields where fungi are used, for instance, to remediate oil-polluted soil or agricultural waste.

For the food-inclined, however, sections about white button mushrooms are fascinating. As are discussions on cultivated criminis, portobellos, oysters, shiitakes and enokis. They are varieties with which many of us are familiar.

Grown largely in Chester County, Pennsylvania – "the heart and soul of the American button mushroom industry" – about 30 miles west of Philadelphia, the white button is by far the most ubiquitous. Total mushroom sales in the U.S. in 2008-2009 topped 817 million pounds, Bone says. White button mushrooms accounted for 802 million pounds.

Seventy farms in the area make up roughly 70 percent of the mushroom farms in the country, all of which are family-owned and operated.

Fungi farming is both labor-intensive and time-consuming. Mushrooms "must be selected for size, cut, and trimmed, each one by hand." Italian laborers from a century ago were replaced in the 1970s by Puerto Rican workers. They in turn were gradually replaced by Mexican workers. Approximately 98 percent of the labor force on mushroom farms these days are Mexican workers.

By taking mushrooms out of the kitchen and into the forest and field, Bone gives us a greater understanding of these unique ingredients. Whether foraged in the wild or grown on a network of farms, they are part of an intricate and flourishing food system.

In this sometimes too technical but overall interesting examination, she introduces us to a few of the people behind the things we eat, and the remarkable work they do every day. She helps us appreciate their efforts.

(A version of this review appears at www.culinate.com.)

Chocolate eggs

Because it is Easter Sunday.

An April fool

Because I am still a fool for rhubarb and yogurt.

Sweet on sweets

"Traditionally, all Indian desserts are made on top of a stove, whether steamed, simmered, boiled in syrup, toasted, panfried, or deep-fried, or sometimes a combination of all these techniques.

"The popular gulab jamun, for example, is a syrup-soaked fritter about the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Like so many Indian sweets, its ingredients are simple, essentially sugar and milk, but the recipe requires a great deal of precision, technique, and labor - again, like so many of the subcontinent's confections.

"The process begins by making mawa (also known as khoa or khaya), produced by cooking milk over a slow fire for hours to evaporate almost all of its moisture.

"Ideally the result should be fairly dry with a delicate golden color and a taste hinting of caramel. Mawa is used in numerous Indian desserts. (Some cookbook authors suggest substituting milk powder for the mawa, but then all the complexity is lost.)

"Once the mawa is ready, the cook mixes it with flour and more milk or cream, forms the batter into balls, then deep-fries them. Finally, they get a soak in syrup.

"The resulting gulab jamun is part doughnut, part baba rum with a pleasantly bitter edge from the twice-caramelized milk sugars. Most Americans find it too sweet. Indians adore it."

Michael Krondl, in "Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert"

Green with envy

For the inner leprechaun, a cupcake with green frosting.

For an early morning kick, coffee with Baileys Irish Cream.

Good taste

"Start to view your quotidian breakfast as a sensory event. Observe a full sixty-second moment of alimentary appreciation before lifting a single utensil or eating a single bite.

"Put the newspaper aside for a day and simply pay attention to your breakfast and see how it changes the way you start your day.

"Visually inspect it as if you were seeing it for the first time. Smell it deeply before putting a bite in your mouth. Wait until you get to the office before checking your e-mail.

"If you must eat during the commute, find a carpool or use public transportation. Friends don't let friends eat and drive."

Barb Stuckey in "Taste What You're Missing: The Passionate Eater's Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good"

Nice and slow

Jim Weaver, a restaurateur in Princeton, New Jersey, describes the work he has done in recent years with the Slow Food movement in "Locavore Adventures: One Chef's Slow Food Journey."

He helped to found a local chapter in 1999 to be part of something larger, he says, and "to support authentic food that's been grown and enjoyed as close to its source as possible."

He pays tribute to a network of organic farmers and artisanal producers in the Tri-State area. He presents Eran Wajswol, for example, a real estate developer turned cheesemaker who "(gave) up his wingtips and pinstripes for a hair net, black rubber boots, and overalls with suspenders, his daily garb for churning out memorable cheese." Wajswol runs the Valley Shepherd Creamery in Long Valley.

Weaver writes of Pegi Ballister-Howells, an early supporter of Slow Food who maintains the website for the New Jersey Vegetable Growers Association and manages the Tri-County Cooperative Auction Market in East Windsor. "People need to understand that family dinners are critical, and kids need to know that fresh food is good," she says.

And he visits Salumeria Biellese, a deli, catering and salumi shop in New York City that offers terrifically cured meats. "The company makes its products properly: everything is handmade using all-natural ingredients and the meat from specific breeds... and then naturally aged."

The author provides a compelling look at food people and places in his corner of the country. In doing so, he reminds us to pay attention to the remarkable folks in our own corners as well.

(A version of this review appears in Publishers Weekly.)

Sweet or savory

"Is there anyone who doesn't inwardly melt at the sight of a golden glazed pie crust, with its little cottage chimney of steam wafting the scent of buried juices, the auguries of delight of what lies beneath?

"There is something so recondite about making a pie, and yet its image is dainty-dish, nursery-rhyme redolent of comfort and simplicity, 'as American as apple pie', 'as easy as pie'.

"The image of the pie is somehow quaint, romantic, one we feel nostalgic for; it is old-fashioned, welcoming, the cosiness we imagine when we are homesick, lovesick.

"The prinking and crimping and rolling and baking, the making and shaping by hand, the crafting of the crust are all about feeling, smelling, touching and tapping."

Tamasin Day-Lewis, in "Tarts with Tops On or How to Make the Perfect Pie"