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"

Sweet tarts

"Once inside, there was nothing especially quaint or ye olde about Patisserie Tante Marie: just a few plain tables, a freezer full of homemade ice cream, and a long display case of cakes and tarts. But what cakes and tarts!

"Lumpy golden fruit tarts oozing golden nectar were lined up beside fudge-brown disks floating above clouds of mousse. Sheets of almond sponge barely contained a lava flow of coffee cream. Lemon tarts, the color of butter, almost shivered with fragility."

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

In Claire's corner

Claire Criscuolo, who owns and runs Claire's Corner Copia in New Haven, Conn., with her husband, Frank, looks back at decades of vegetarian cooking in "Welcome to Claire's: 35 Years of Recipes and Reflections from the Landmark Vegetarian Restaurant."

She talks of inspiration and their "commitment to using organic and local foods," and the joy with which they have served generations of students and professors.

Their restaurant, at Chapel and College streets, is on "undeniably the most beautiful corner in the city," she writes. "It's the place where you can see the first daffodils of spring as they pop up from the land surrounding the Yale campus... the place where you can feel like you're in the center of the city."

Criscuolo ("Claire's Classic American Vegetarian Cooking") divides the book into seven convenient sections, including breakfast; soups, stews and sandwiches; and desserts.

The first contains recipes for apple-maple muffins, chocolate chip-and-walnut scones, and healthy fresh fruit smoothies.

By far the largest chapter, though, is the one on appetizers, salads, dressings, dips and salsas. It showcases everything from black bean-and-sweet corn quesadillas to pan-grilled vegetable fattoush, a Lebanese bread salad. Criscuolo also notes dishes that are gluten-free or vegan, or can easily be made so.

In this substantial volume, she rewards longtime customers with satisfying favorites and introduces the rest of us to a slew of delicious possibilities.

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

Mindful eating

"He opens the door, and enters
a dark room. Silent men and a few
little boys are eating supper. Someone
hands over a rice bowl and chopsticks,
and gestures eat eat. The food
is leftovers of leftovers. Even
the child monks practice eating meditation,
mindfully selecting some unrecognizable
brown vegetable, chewing it many times,
tasting it, identifying it, thinking about
and appreciating who grew it and cooked it, grateful
to them, and to the sun and the rain and the soil,
and all that generates and continues all."

Maxine Hong Kingston, in "I Love a Broad Margin to My Life"

Talking about pie

"The expression as easy as pie, meaning very easy indeed, is a curious one. Why should a pie be easy, after all? It seems that the ease of the pie is in the eating rather than the making of it, as in the similar expression nice as pie. Both originate in nineteenth-century America, where likening something to a particular pie is also archetypally American - as American as apple pie, in fact.

"Something described as pie in the sky is essentially a good idea but unlikely to amount to anything in reality. The phrase comes from a trade union parody of the hymn 'The Sweet By and By' that was often sung during the years of the Great Depression early in the twentieth century...

"Moving back across the Atlantic, to have a finger in every pie is an expression commonly used to describe a person who has an interest in many things, especially business-related. It would be easier to understand if the phrase read 'a finger in making every pie,' which would rid us of the image of somebody going around poking their finger into other people's peach crumble, thereby suggesting an interfering meddler. The expression has been in use for over four hundred years and is applied to anybody with wide and varied business interests. It is also used by some people to describe themselves in an attempt to appear mysterious and interesting when in fact they've probably never had their finger in anybody's pie."

Albert Jack, in "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"

The Lunar New Year

Because it is the Year of the Dragon 4710. And it promises to be fierce.

Why ask why?

Peach pie.

Everything everywhere

"Sabine had never seen a kitchen like the one at La Villa Fernand. It was a nightmare. There was too much of everything everywhere. Forty wooden spoons stuffed into one drawer. Cake and butter molds in the shapes of rabbits, elephants, swans, crosses, trees, stars, moons, countless different variations of Saint Nicholas, several fleur-de-lis, and an assortment of lions and lambs.

"And there were molds for petit-fours, tarts, madeleine, brioche, tartlett-croustade, dariole-baba, parfait, charlotte, bombe, ice cream loaves, poundcake and terrine a pate.

"There were larding needles, salamanders, a cocotte and a conical, pyramid-shaped, of course. And there were so many multiples of potato ricers, mashers and whisks of every size and shape that they tumbled onto the countertop with the slightest provocation.

"Porcelain dishes and pottery bowls were stacked and stuffed into every available space along with boxes upon boxes of silver serving spoons, plates and bowls that Escoffier had bought at estate auctions for use at his restaurants. And - perfect or chipped, some matched and some not - there seemed to be enough dinnerware to feed several armies, and then some.

"Each pot and pan, each tin, every spoon and plate - was part of the history of Escoffier's life and it was all gathering dust."

N.M. Kelby, in the novel "White Truffles in Winter"

Lucky peas

Because it is New Year's Day.

Once a year

"Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we'll be seeing six or seven."

W.C. Fields, quoted in Albert Jack's "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"