Cooking With Ideas

Japanese Farm Food

This is a topic I know less than nothing about: Japanese Farm Food. So, why am I writing about it? Well, Andrews McMeel sends me cookbooks (not a surprise to regular readers). Sometimes they are smallish, targeted ones. And sometimes they are wonderfully lush books. This is one of the latter. So: I have read lots of it. And, I initially thought I would pass it along to someone who knows -- and likely cares -- more about Japanese food. But now I am not sure.

But I can say this: from the cover -- with a beautifully spare bittersweet picture to the foreword by Patricia Wells to the author's commitment (Nancy Singleton Hachisu), this is a wonderful book. The photographs, as is often though not always  the case with Andrews McMeel books, are especially worth exclaiming over in this case. (They were taken by Kenji Miura.) And the web presence is dandy: here is the related site called Japanese Farm Food. Nancy Singleton Hachisu is also connected, as the foreword by Wells hints, to the food movement internationally. She is a force in Japan's Slow Food Convivium (in this regard, see this piece) , but also as a person with significant links in San Francisco is linked to Alice Waters, has been off to Italy where the Slow Food movement has its "origin" and. . . . reflects in wonderful ways on being a westerner who lives and loves and has children and farms and cooks and . . . . in Japan, and in rural Japan at that. 

Perhaps it is the rural focus that makes me think I might keep this book. I initially brought stereotypes to the table (as it were!) and assumed this would be way over my head. But, in some ways, it is just about vegetables and fish, cooked in a range of ways, with a range of particular seasonings that mean Japan (and/or Japanese rural food). I can do that, I said to myself, while reading -- if I can do X I can do Y. Who knew? 

And, the delightful pictures teach you a bit about farming in Japan -- including not only rice farming but other aspects as well. 

Among the things hidden in this book are fish patties, beef and onions with ginger, and a full page of explanation of artisanal charcoal. There are discussions of fish mongers and recipes for curry rice or fried rice of various sorts. It is do-able even if I never truly get what the various ingredients are in terms of seasoning. (For example, tehre is a brown sugar, and the directions say quite distinctly: DO NOT SUBSTITUTE AMERICAN BROWN SUGAR, it is not the same thing. Thank goodness, because of course I would have substituted.) 

So: if you want a more informed take on this book, click here (where a recipe I am tempted by is reproduced) or here. 

 

 

The Politics of Cookbooks?

Some time ago, I read a book entitled Pink Ribbon, Inc. authored by Samantha King. Here's the site form teh publisher of the book. It was a very good book, pointing out the many ways that the breast cancer industry is embedded in a political neo-liberal world. Why else would mammogram machines lead to long walks that raise money for detection (and thus for mammogram machines) and not for . . . . prevention? And, the pervasiveness of pink products, revealed in the book to very little money actually going to breast cancer research at all but gaining the purveyors of the products much good will, well, gets on my nerves sometimes. And, yet, I feel a twinge and buy things. And yet, I walked -- raising money because of people I love. Critical reflection is important, even in the face of this epidemic (or these epidemics). And it needs to be directed at all those rubber bracelets and additional walks, and all those things. 

Having said that, this is not a review fo that book (which students found a bit difficult, as they kept having to be reminded that King is NOT saying that we ought not address the problem of breast cancer. Of course that is not her point. Her point is that we may feel like we are addressing it when we are not. And there may be a reason -- or set of reasons -- for that!) 

Anyway, this cookbook review is about a book entitled The Back in the Swing Cookbook, subtitled Recipes for Eating and Living Well Every Day After Breast Cancer. Authored by Barbara C. Unell and Judith Fertig (yes, you have seen the latter's name here on Cooking with Ideas recently as she has authored other cookbooks), this book comes form an organization called Back in the Swing USA. Its target audience is those who are survivors (and those who want to buy presents for survivors). And, thank goodness, it is not PINK. The cover shows blueberries, and is reassuringly cookbook looking. The recipes range from a sweet couscous involving dark chocolate and dried fruit to a pomegranate sparkler to oaxacan chicken in mole. Everything sounds delicious and though I am not a breast cancer survivor, unless I succumb to the temptation to pass it on to someone who is, I shall make some of these recipes. 

Sprinkled throughout are some reflections -- just on the cusp of mushy, but also not over the top -- which are likely of use to us all -- about grace and gratefulness, for example. Again, thank goodness, nowhere does there verge on the implication that one should be grateful for disease (os dis-ease). 

I found this book to be one of the good efforts -- to respond to pain, but move beyond it. And not, at least to my mind, to exploit it. 

So, move past those pink bits of candy or pink plastic bracelets, and make some bodacious broccoli salad or island fish tacos -- or that couscous with dark chocolate, which still puzzles me. Read the quotes, think about gingersnap crusted pumpkin pie. And survive -- whatever are your challenges -- with glee. 

Virtual Cooking II

Yep, I am still not cooking much, and thus spending undue quantities of time on line when I am not working or. . . . And, so I am sharing some of my perusals through this web site. I like it when food meets other things -- as, for example, a main theme of this site -- the meeting of food and murder mysteries. This time, though, it is literature meeting food in another way. In this case, the issue is photographs of food which are made as a result of -- or linked to -- literary examples. NPR has a piece, by Laura Krantz, entitled "Photographing Literature's Famous Food Scenes." And here it is. Krantz is actually reporting on the work of Dinah Fried who is actually doing the photographing and thus making Krantz (and me) happy. 

Among the texts she works with are Catcher in the Rye and Alice in Wonderland, The Bell Jar and, of course, Proust -- as well as much more recent texts. Of course, this discovery led me to google away on a sunny day (which I must stop), finding, for example, this site which lists lots of fun food scenes in literature -- and asks for more in the comment section -- how about your ideas -- here, or there? 

 

Cupcakes in the Mail -- Not Really, But Still

Yes, I am still working my way through the pils of cookbooks that arrived when I fell off the edge of the world and stopped being a regular blogger. And this one focuses on cupcakes. Its title? Bake It In a Cupcake: 50 Treats with a Surprise Inside. Its publisher? Andrews McMeel. And its author? Megan Seling. Here is one of her sites. 

As you all know, I am definitely not a baker. But, I do like sweets. And I know some people who like to bake. Does that qualify me to comment on this cookbook? Probably not. But, I was drawn in by the cover photo, which is a white cupcake, cit in half to reveal its interior --  with a (very) pink heart inside. This forced me to look inside, where I found (to my utter surprise) cupcakes with tiny little pies baked inside them. How odd, I have been thinking ever since. How odd. 

And, so, I shall mail this cookbook off to a friend who likes to bake cupcakes. I will, I will. Somehow the prospect of pies inside cupcakes seems very disturbing to me. I do not know why. Does it disturb you?