Synopsis
Urbane, informative, and highly entertaining essays by Vogue food columnist Steingarten, about bread, choucroute, barbecue, fat farms, the wonders of red wine, and French fries cooked in horse fat--among other things. A winner of a 1998 award from the Association of Culinary Professionals. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-11-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 514 pages | | Height: | 9.0 in | | Width: | 6.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 26.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
After endless gourmet bingeing around the globe, "Vogue"'s food writer Jeffrey Steingarten ends up nibbling dreary dribblets at a fat farm. But fine wine--reputed to melt fat--comes to the rescue, along with a miraculous new fat substitute called Olestra. Ole! Bon appetit, Jeffrey! 5 drawings.
Funny, outrageous, passionate, and unrelenting, Vogue's food writer, Jeffrey Steingarten, will stop at nothing, as he makes clear in these forty delectable pieces.Whether he is in search of a foolproof formula for sourdough bread (made from wild yeast, of course) or the most sublime French fries (the secret: cooking them in horse fat) or the perfect piecrust (Fannie Farmer--that is, Marion Cunningham--comes to the rescue), he will go to any length to find the answer.At the drop of an apron he hops a plane to Japan to taste Wagyu, the hand-massaged beef, or to Palermo to scale Mount Etna to uncover the origins of ice cream. The love of choucroute takes him to Alsace, the scent of truffles to the Piedmont, the sizzle of ribs on the grill to Memphis to judge a barbecue contest, and both the unassuming and the haute cuisines of Paris demand his frequent assessment.Inevitably these pleasurable pursuits take their toll. So we endure with him a week at a fat farm and commiserate over low-fat products and dreary diet cookbooks to bring down the scales. But salvation is at hand when the French Paradox (how can they eat so richly and live so long?) is unearthed, and a "miraculous" new fat substitute, Olestra, is unveiled, allowing a plump gourmand to have his fill of fat without getting fatter.Here is the man who ate everything and lived to tell about it. And we, his readers, are hereby invited to the feast in this delightful book.
Industry Reviews
"[S]erves up 40 obsessional, witty and authoritative essays....His brisk and self-mockingly pedantic disquisitions on the edible are unrivaled in the completeness of their basic research."
Wall Street Journal - Raymond Sokolov (11/12/1997)
"[A] wonderful book, comprising a selection of his brilliant essays....[A]n improbable mayonnaise that in less expert hands would have curdled immediately but in Steingarten's has turned out a triumph. it is part cookbook, part travelogue, part medical and scientific treatise, part propaganda pamphlet and part self-deprecating self-portrait. Steingarten writes with marvelous ease and clarity and humor. His facts are fascinating and so are his recipes.."
New York Times Book Review - Alexander Chancellor (12/07/1997)
"He has a voice like no one else's: corrosively funny and skeptical (of food fads, dieters, and "healthy" foods), and passionate (about researching ingredients and recipes). When I read him I forget how much I'm learning--even on subjects I've spent a great deal of time thinking and reading about--because I'm having such a good time."
Kummer
"A book worth celebrating...so expertly seasoned, so full of flavorsome surprises that if it were a meal even Mr. Steingarten would have difficulty finding fault with it."
Moore
"Jeffrey Steingarten is...a witty, down-to-earth, culinary train-spotter and the kind of person you'd like to invite home to supper....He is that rare form of enthusiast you come across once in a decade, who can make odd facts utterly fascinating....This is a wonderful book--at turns funny, mouth-watering, and revelatory...."
Bamforth
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