"Paris to Provence"

"Although my family only lived a little more than two years in Provence with the goats and making cheese before returning to California where my parents became high school teachers, we returned every summer to our old stone farmhouse, leaving as soon as school got out, traveling there by various routes, and once settled in, exploring our world with day trips to the sea, to lakes, and to neighboring villages and castles. 

"It was there, during those long, lazy summers with my family, that I learned the smells of the forest as we gathered wild herbs, the taste of truly fresh fish and vegetables, and the pleasures of lingering over the table.

"Thus began my journey from Paris to Provence, starting and ending in Paris."

Ethel Brennan (with Sara Remington) in "Paris to Provence: Childhood Memories of Food & France"

Down South

Defining Southern food – explaining all that it entails – can often be a tricky proposition. It is not simply one thing. It is many things. It is not confined to one place. It encompasses many places. It is both contemporary and traditional, incorporating a number of elements. It is ever evolving and rooted in history. It is inventive, inviting and honest. That Southern food cannot be easily defined is ironically among its defining characteristics.

In "Smoke and Pickles: Recipes and Stories from a New Southern Kitchen," Edward Lee shows us what Southern cooking can include. Chef and owner of 610 Magnolia in Louisville, Kentucky, for the past decade, he melds personal influences and professional experiences with local resources.

Lee grew up in a Korean-American household in Brooklyn during the 1970s and '80s. He watched his grandmother prepare old-school Korean dishes, he says. At his friend Marcus's apartment, he had Puerto Rican plantains over rice. He hung out with Jewish neighbors, too, when his parents were at work, learning from them as well.

After college Lee opened a Korean barbecue joint on Mott Street in New York City, attracting hipsters, "entertaining celebrities and fashionistas and selling lychee martinis by the dozens." It eventually closed: "Three years of the restaurant had gone by in a blink."

Somehow he found himself in Kentucky in 2003 on the weekend of the Derby. He has lived there since, getting the chance to reinvent himself "through the lens of tobacco and bourbon and sorghum and horse racing and country ham."

Lee took instantly to the South and it in turn took to him. The foods around him, he realized, were similar in many regards to those he ate as a child with his grandmother. "Soft grits remind me of congee; jerky of cuttlefish; chowchow of kimchi. My Korean forefathers' love of pickling is rivaled only by Southerners' love of pickling. BBQ, with its intricate techniques of marinades and rubs, is the backbone of both cuisines."

In the cookbook, Lee combines familiar ingredients in previously unfamiliar ways. For a beef rice bowl, for example, he marries Asian-style barbecue – think bulgogi – with sautéed collard greens. He tops them with fried eggs and spoonfuls of corn chili remoulade, giving the dish further spice. He re-conceptualizes bibimbap.

For pulled pork, he eschews sweet Southern barbecue sauce for a saltier version made with items such as soy sauce, black bean paste and sesame oil. He serves the meat with cornbread and pickles, or tucked into hot dog buns with spicy Napa cabbage kimchi. Savory and sour notes contrast well.

Chapters on bourbon and bar snacks, and desserts also prove innovative. In the former, Lee focuses on the distilled spirit most associated with Kentucky. "I have sipped and I have slugged," he writes. "I have rollicked in the simple joys of a Rebel Yell and pontificated on the complexities of a Col. E. H. Taylor..."

In the latter, he gets creative with buttermilk affogato, for instance, chess pie with blackened pineapple salsa, and a whiskey-ginger cake garnished elegantly with pear cut the size of matchsticks. These presentations further exemplify his novel approach to Southern flavors.

The chef arrived in the South and discovered its pleasures later in his life. On the other hand, award-winning cookbook authors Matt Lee and Ted Lee were raised in the South and have long been schooled in the area's rich culinary heritage.

In "The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen," they celebrate all their hometown has to offer. They extol its virtues, showing us "not only what it's like to grow up here and learn to cook here," they say, "but also how we are continually inspired by this place." They describe the cuisine as well as the people – farmers, fishermen, chefs and bartenders – who help to make their community whole.

As they did in "The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook" and "The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern: Knockout Dishes with Down-Home Flavor," they concentrate on popular traditional items, including shrimp, okra, pecans, and boiled peanuts, around which they have built a mail-order specialty food business, too.

More notably, however, the brothers choose to feature several ingredients with which the region might not be immediately associated. They call attention to kumquats, for example, which grow throughout downtown Charleston. They use them to infuse gin for cocktails, highlighting their sweet-tart flavor – a mix of orange, grapefruit and lemon – in a kumquat sparkler with sparkling white wine, a kumquatini, kumquat margarita and kumquat-chile Bloody Mary.

They talk about loquats, a tad smaller than golf balls and native to China. The fruits "emerge on trees throughout the Lowcountry in April (March, if it's been a warm winter), with furry skin enveloping a shallow layer of yellow-orange flesh." They use them for a vodka infusion to concoct loquat Manhattans.

Championing vegetables they realized not long ago had been harvested in South Carolina since the 18th century, the brothers also introduce things like salsify, a scraggly carrot-like root. They peel, cook and mash it as we might potatoes to create fried salsify "oysters" reminiscent of hushpuppies or falafel. They get us excited to return to the kitchen.

The Lees break every so often with profiles of women and men in the local food industry. They spotlight folks like Celeste Albers, a poultry and dairy farmer on Wadmalaw Island 18 miles south of Charleston, and Sidi Limehouse, "a prominent character, as much for his salty opinions and spicy backstory... as his fine produce."

They give them their fair due. The brothers know Southern cooking is only as good as the ingredients to which people have access. They understand Charleston's appeal, taking great civic pride in both its thriving food scene and the hard work required to sustain it.

Like Edward Lee, and brothers Matt Lee and Ted Lee, Susan Puckett pays tribute to the South. A Jackson, Mississippi, native and former food editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she, too, has long been schooled in the make-up of the region. She knows its colorful and complicated history. ("It birthed King Cotton, the blues, and the civil rights movement.") She studies its fascinating foodways.

Her volume "Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler's Journey Through the Soul of the South," equal parts visitors guide, handy cookbook and photo essay, takes a broad look across a couple of states. Puckett begins in Memphis, Tennessee, and works her way down Mississippi toward Vicksburg. She covers cities both big and small, spotlighting a few fancy eateries but focusing mostly on mom-and-pops. These businesses keep it real.

"Travelers expecting to indulge in home-style fried chicken and fresh, pond-raised catfish are rarely disappointed," she says. "Fine examples of those Delta stalwarts – with their requisite accompaniments of slow-cooked greens and cornbread – turn up in every small town, and even in country cafes in the middle of nowhere."

Unusual items appear often as well. "From one end of the Delta to the other, old-time tamale makers wrap cornmeal cylinders filled with spicy beef or pork... to sell from roadside stands or café lunch counters. Pit masters mix barbecue into spaghetti. Convenience stores sell giant dill pickles marinated in Kool-Aid as snacks to go."

In search of popular everyday foods, Puckett explores what folks at the Southern Foodways Alliance dubbed the Mississippi Delta Hot Tamale Trail. She tries tamales at Blues City Café in Memphis, for example, and at Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, Mississippi, and Pea-Soup's Lott-A-Freeze in Indianola, Mississippi. She has her share.

Unlike tamales we get "in Mexican and southwestern-style restaurants, which can be dry and fairly tasteless," she contends, the ones found in the Delta are "savory cigar-shaped packages... dripping in oily, spicy juices." They are made in corn husks or parchment paper. And though they are sold all over the state, they are rarely seen outside of it.

Puckett also encounters Kool-Aid pickles – whole dill pickles soaked in powdered drink mix, sugar and pickle juice – in large plastic jugs. For decades, she tells us, children in poor black neighborhoods had been pouring Kool-Aid packets directly into pickle jars; they liked the tanginess. Grocers "refined the technique a bit, and started selling them along with other pickled soul-food standbys like eggs and pigs' feet."

When she can, she shares recipes from residents and restaurants as well, giving us opportunities to mimic flavors or try new dishes in the comfort of our own kitchens. In conjunction with snapshots taken around the region by photographer Langdon Clay, they help to reveal a strong sense of community.

For those of us born and raised on the West Coast, areas south of the Mason-Dixon Line can sometimes unfortunately be but a blur. (Areas east of the Rockies aren't always clear to us either.) The geography we learned in fifth grade fails us. We are simply not as familiar as we should be with that stretch of the country.

The authors, each in his or her own way, enlighten us further about the South – its food, land and people – giving visual representation to all we have imagined. They teach us about Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi.

Whether bringing multicultural influences to Southern food, offering ideas on handling unique ingredients, or collecting observations traveling from one town to another, they imbue their discussions with nostalgia. They entice us with their cooking. Through stories and recipes, they document their love for the place they call home, celebrating its generosity and hospitality.

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

Hello, sunshine

Because it has been that kind of a week. From Sweet Bar Bakery.

Being French

"I really had no idea what was happening on the Paris scene, what was hot and what was not: all I wanted to do was to create a place that was the sum of all my best experiences. 

"I wanted to serve simple yet inventive food, using high-quality ingredients, in a laid-back bistro setting, with affordable prices, a menu that changed daily, and a short but exciting wine list. 

"I guess I was in the right place at the right time: the Paris 'bistronomy' trend was just starting, and the type of food and ambiance I had in mind seemed to be exactly what people were craving.

"Frenchie quickly received great praise from the public as well as the critics. The phone started to ring nonstop, and the reservation book was filled a month ahead. To this day, I still don't understand how it all happened so quickly."

Greg Marchand in "Frenchie: New Bistro Cooking"

Maple sweet

"March is the time of the year for maple festivals, where you can watch what the big boys do and sample all sorts of maple products. We've never been. We have our own maple festival nonstop for several weeks, and we seem to invent a new product every day. 

"Of course there are the usual suspects: pancakes, waffles, French toast, regular toast with a small beaded drizzle in the butter; but we also pour the syrup over ice cream, into ice cream, and can make sorbets and gelatos; use it in place of sugar in breads, cakes, and cookies; in homemade barbecue sauce, salad dressing, and mayonnaise; as a background to sauteed Thai chiles, pad Thai, and other stir fries; with fruit, yogurt, Kefir; alone, out of the jar, like a shot of whiskey on a rough day; shot with whiskey, like a sweet boilermaker, on a rougher day; as a glaze for chicken, salmon, pork, and shrimp; over oatmeal, with cinnamon and nutmeg in a pan sauce, like Madeira; in place of honey with strong cheeses. 

"The limits are your own apprehensions and the amount you're willing to risk wasting should the flavors fall into dissonance. The only way I haven't had it is as the Canadians do, dumped into a pile of clean snow on a cutting board outdoors and stirred up with a stick, then eaten, communally, with a spoon."

Paul Graham in "Sweet Spot" in "Best Food Writing 2012"

St. Patrick

"At home, Saint Patrick's Day is a religious holiday that celebrates Patrick bringing Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century. It is observed with the same kind of reverence that Americans have for Thanksgiving, but more solemn...

"On Saint Patrick's Day, we don't drink green beer, we don't dye the rivers green, and we don't get really drunk. It is actually a stay-at-home day on which many pubs are closed..."

Cathal Armstrong and David Hagedorn in "My Irish Table: Recipes from the Homeland and Restaurant Eve"

Sweet harvest

"You could tell that Kevin was boiling when you arrived at the parking lot and saw the broad column of steam shooting through the sugarhouse roof. That steam was scented with maple, and as soon as I got out of the car and stood in the open air I encountered the sweet smell. I liked this idea of standing in a maple-scented mist at the top of a mountain."

Douglas Whynott in "The Sugar Season: A Year in the Life of Maple Syrup - One Family's Quest for the Sweetest Harvest"

Who knew?

"It was hard to say goodbye to Irina, my kind, precise Russian teacher, and to my journalist friends. I was sorry to leave the dazzling commentators I had interviewed, and also the Uzbek and Chechen women who sold me vegetables and homemade yogurt and honey at my local farmers' market. 

"Theirs were the best tomatoes I'd ever tasted. 'Tashkentsky!' the Uzbek women stated proudly, for everyone wanted produce from the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent. Who knew you had to come to Russia for the perfect tomato?"

Irris Makler in "Hope Street, Jerusalem"

Feb. 14

What we would facetiously call a hearty breakfast.

Bugging out

Daniella Martin champions bug-eating in "Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet," an engaging though sometimes over-the-top volume. 

Having spent the past 10 years studying insects, the entomophagist concludes that "we should all be eating bugs - as our ancestors did, as our global neighbors do, as our primate cousins do, and as we ourselves do constantly, by accident, without realizing it." 

She considers them viable alternatives to beef and pork, for example. Their environmental impact is comparatively small, requiring "little to no deboning, gutting, plucking, or butchering." Crickets, grasshoppers, ants and certain caterpillars also contain large amounts of calcium. 

With that said, however, Martin might still have difficulty convincing readers to actually eat these tiny critters. 

For those willing to entertain the idea of a bug banquet, she concludes with a handful of earnest recipes for items such as Salty-Sweet Wax Worms, Crickety Kale Salad and Sweet-n-Spicy Summer June Bugs. But many may still squirm at the idea of slugs. She never fully sells them on the taste or visual factor.  

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

Good tidings

For the Lunar New Year.

Sweet

Because it is apparently National Chocolate Cake Day.

Anthologizing

Editor Holly Hughes' annual anthology "Best Food Writing 2013" captures with some success the mood in today's food world. "The season of foam and gels has passed," she reflects in the introduction, "and the Year of the Pork Belly has given way to the Year of Kale." 

What follows is a collection of essays and articles by bloggers, journalists, big-name chefs and foodies alike all published within the last year.

People have also returned to slow foods, Hughes says, assuming they had previously left. 

In the meditative essay "Slow Cooking, Slow Eating," for example, Edward Behr encourages readers to take it easy both in and out of the kitchen: "Slowness really means living at the right speed for whatever you are doing, living more in the present moment, rather than looking always ahead to the next thing... It means you pay attention."

Further highlights include Michael Pollan's "Step Two: Saute Onions and Other Aromatic Vegetables," Jonathan Gold's profile of Kogi co-founder Roy Choi ("The King of the Food Trucks Hits Hawaii"), and Brett Martin's GQ article "Good Food Everywhere." They are topical, accessible and nicely done. 

The eclectic anthology would not be complete, however, without occasional paeans to questionable food items as well. 

Katharine Shilcutt, for example, writes about McDonald's in "I Ate My First McRib, and I Regret It." Dan Barry bemoans the Hostess bankruptcy in "Back When a Chocolate Puck Tasted, Guiltily, like America."

Pieces like these add lightness and levity to the volume as a whole. They provide necessary balance, making it informative as well as entertaining. 

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

Reason to feast

"My brother and I dressed up, though after all the hellos we did not figure much into the main social swirl. The women were dressed in rich hues of silk, and sandals slapped the back of their heels. Their black hair was swept up. Jewelry flashed. The men wore dark pants and white shirts, and their greetings included hearty laughs and shoulder slaps.

"Our table was covered from side to side with steaming dishes of rice, chicken curry, aloo copi, and shrimp cutlet. Mom had been in a cooking mood, so chops lined a long glass dish as well. Women standing near the platters dazzled me in their colorful dress, as did the array of foods: red tomato chutney, snappy green beans, golden dal..."

Nina Mukerjee Furstenau in "Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America's Heartland"

Sweet start

It is a sweet and savory Sweet Bar start to the new year. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Food fantasy

"I have a food fantasy.

"When Iris is six, I'm going to take her to Tokyo. Just the two of us, dad and daughter, in the big city, kickin' it Japanese-style.

"Laurie will stay home, because - this is her only fault - she doesn't like Japanese food. Sometimes she comes along for sushi, but she says it makes her feel like a philistine, because she only eats the easy bits, like tempura.

"So, while Laurie eats whatever it is she eats when we're not around, Iris and I will eat at a skeezy yakitori joint and enjoy char-grilled chicken parts on a stick. We'll go to an eel restaurant and eat several courses of eel, my favorite fish. Iris's favorite is mackerel, so we'll also eat plenty of salt-broiled mackerel, saba shioyaki, tearing off fatty bits with our chopsticks. We will eat our weight in rice..."

Matthew Amster-Burton in "Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater"

Old-school

Bring us some figgy pudding and bring it right here...

Figgy Pudding

from Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell's "The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook"

softened butter for the pan
1 1/2 cups water
3/4 pound plump, dried figs, stems removed, cut into small bits
3 Tbsp. orange liqueur
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned into cup and leveled off)
1 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
3 large eggs
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups fresh bread crumbs (white or whole wheat)
ice cream or whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously butter an 8- to 10-cup tube pan or metal steamed pudding mold with a top.

In a small saucepan, combine the water and figs. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce to a bare simmer, cover, and cook for 20 minutes, or until the figs are very tender. Remove from the heat, but don't drain. Stir in the orange liqueur.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt.

In a bowl, with an electric mixer, beat together the eggs and granulated and brown sugars until well combined. Beat in the butter and bread crumbs. Stir in the figs and soaking liquid. Fold in the flour mixture. Scrape the batter into the pan. If using a tube pan, cover the top with a double thickness of foil and place a pot lid that will fit snugly on top. If using a steamed pudding mold, close the top.

Place the pan in a roasting pan and pour hot water to come halfway up the sides of the pan. Bake for 2 hours, or until the pudding is firm and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Remove the pan from the water bath and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Run a spatula around the sides and center tube and invert the pudding onto a serving platter. Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream, if desired. Makes 12 servings.

Priorities

"And I had but one penny in the world. Thou should'st have it to buy gingerbread."

William Shakespeare in "Love's Labours Lost"

Winter white chocolate

White Chocolate-Cherry-Carrot Cookies

from Michelle Obama's "American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America"

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups (packed) light brown sugar
1 Tbsp. mild honey
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup dried cherries
1/4 cup toasted chopped macadamia nuts (optional)
2 ounces white chocolate, chopped into small pieces, or white chocolate chips
1 cup finely grated carrots

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the rack in the center of the oven.

Sift together the flour with the baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter, brown sugar, honey and vanilla until smooth. Add the eggs and mix until well combined. Scrape down the bowl.

On low speed, add the cherries, nuts and chocolate. Scrape down the bowl.

Stop the mixer and add one-third of the flour mixture. Turn to low speed and combine. Stop the mixer again, add the rest of the flour mixture, and combine on low speed.

Add the carrots, and mix on low speed until incorporated. The batter will be stiff.

Using a standard ice cream scoop or a heaped tablespoon, drop batter in mounds, 2 inches apart, onto a parchment-covered cookie sheet.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool completely before removing them from the cookie sheet. Makes approximately 24 cookies.

Sweet ginger

Because it is apparently National Cupcake Day.