Book Review: "Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Roadtrip", by B. Dylan Hollis

 

I’ve read A Lot of cookbooks. Whether because I’m researching, reviewing, or even just bored, there’s always something that separates the better and the best. It’s not usually the recipes, the pictures, or even the quality of the volume itself- it’s the theming. A solid modern or contemporary cookbook shows itself best where every page leads organically into the next. Where each recipe has its place both in the section, the book, and even the genre. While I know a good number, it’s still not a common thing, and so I always make a note.

That damn TikTok twink did it twice in a row!

In an impressive first publication, B. Dylan Hollis debuted with Baking Yesteryear, in which he offers a rich historical account of 20^th century American food decade by decade alongside no small amount of recipes from each- including a hilariously awful Worst Of The Worst chapter at the end, because where there are recipes, there are inevitably bad recipes, and whoooo boy did he ever find some clunkers.

Here in his second book Baking Across America, however, we have something very different yet also very familiar. "Baking Across America" does exactly what it says it does. It’s a journey through the U.S., region by region and state by state in search of what might be called the Defining Specialties of each and every one. Now how Dylan went about this is both very clever and very appropriate. Hundreds upon hundreds of cookbooks from every nook and cranny of every last place, and as local as can be- you name the obscure or local organization, he probably found something. Then to scour each and every one looking for recipes and concepts in common, narrowing things down with some quite thorough historical research until there was little if any real doubt about the notions.

There are some (even many) recipes that might raise an eyebrow at first look. My home state of New Jersey is, for example, poleaxed via the alchemical marvel that is the Tomato Soup Cake. Yes, really. And yes, it’s actually rather tasty. No, don’t ask me to explain the why of it here, the chemistry is complex and exhausting. 

BUT! 

The research bears out most each and every recipe ultimately featured here- they’re eminently defensible. Of the ones I couldn’t vouch for offhand, I even did some digging of my own to be sure. Each is introduced with an air of playful, generous fondness. All throughout this book, the recipes are portrayed as so much more than lists of ingredients and instructions. They’re comrades; they’re guides into myriad communities of all shapes and sizes as much as they’re tributes to those who came before and brought those recipes to the modern day one generation at a time. It’s a comprehensive collection that speaks to any number of cultural backgrounds, niche ingredients, and historical minutiae.

If I had a complaint about anything at all in this book, there’s really only one thing that jumps out... or, rather, shies away. For a book so massive, so bombastic in its method, pictures and prose, the text itself is what I found troublesome- the font’s just too damn small! Nearly every recipe fits neatly to a single page, and every last iota of additional space is chock-full of fantastic, brilliantly colorful, largely timeless photographs. While they absolutely do their job highlighting most every facet of every region of the US, I can’t help but wish for a few fewer photos and a larger, more legible font. Now I suppose that if you, like myself and many others, can hear Dylan reading the text aloud in your head as you peruse the thing, it’s going to be more than loud enough to make up the difference. The book’s story is told in no small part by the pictures- America is a bright, colorful, diverse, and VERY BUSY place. The endless array of excellent and nearly overwhelming photography works to emphasize precisely that, and does so while riding the edge of being gratuitous… but not going over.

So, to recap: gorgeous book, rock-solid concept, and superbly executed; but the font is small enough to make rapid read-throughs and referencing more difficult than a cookbook of this caliber ought to be. If you like the concept, the food, or the man himself, you’ll have a great time with Baking Across America. If you want fantastic photos, a plethora of well-researched history lessons, or even just a really pretty coffee table book, you’ll love it too.

I’ll recommend it without reservation.

For the first time in a while...

I went into SF the other day to go meet up with a twink I'd made an appointment with. 

No, not quite like that. 

Though that would have made me modestly legendary, since I'm talking about the frenetic B. Dylan Hollis of food TikTok stardom. He was in San Francisco as a stop on his book tour for his second cookbook, Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip. I'll probably be reviewing that later this week now that I've got my hands on a copy. But back to the day with the man himself.

One of the more pleasant things about meeting a media figure in the flesh and up close is the chance to see what's underneath. While the vigorous enthusiasm and bombast is very much still on display, the frantic edge disappears to reveal a much more nuanced and contemplative young man. The event itself being held in a church may have done a bit to temper some of the more robust ribaldry, but Dylan's also a musician- so adjusting to venue is familiar, and he surfed that wave like a proper Bermudan.

Throughout the meet-and-greet were all manner of interesting questions that yielded intriguing insights, many of which matched my own past analyses. One that has always pleased me very much was the comparison of a recipe to a piece of music. They share a great many attributes, of course. They're guidelines and specifications, constructed in a way that evokes a given time, place, and circumstance. They're also precise in enough ways to create a Usual Way To Do It, but vague in others so as to allow for interpretation, arrangement, variation, and occasional amusing disaster. Good on him for figuring that one out. 

Much was also made of the making of the book itself, which often involved photoshoots in awkward places and all sorts of unexpected bystanders. I won't spoil anything in case any of you are catching a spot somewhere on the tour, but I have to say this: I wish they'd had a film crew too, because that blooper reel would be absolutely brilliant.

WHY DIDN'T THEY CALL ME?!

 

Boss Fight Books: Dance Dance Revolution

WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE?

I need to find out exactly who they tapped for this because I am A Little Upset that I wasn't on the list.

There are innumerable DDR players. But there are very, very few like me. I was a tournament competitor and occasional champion for *decades*, very much one of the best players on the planet. No exaggeration there, I have gameplay world records that stand even today, several hundred tournaments under my belt, and enough prize money won to basically zero out what I spent playing. My time spent learning the game happened at one of the best-known independent arcades in the country, that hosted the east coast version of EVO for a dozen years and more, and later on the most competitive music game tournaments anywhere in the US and probably the world at large.

But skills aren't everything in a book like that. You need history, you need perspective. Again, stalwart of 8 On The Break. I knew basically every major player in the US off the top of my head via the DDRFreak and AaronInJapan forums. I watched communities all over the country and over in Japan form, grow, squabble, compete... everything. 

When the first regularly updateable scoretrackers like TeamGwailo and OverTheMonkey showed up, I held my own on the leaderboards and watched the shifts in player development in close to real time, with those who knew one another sending challenges and pictures to spur one another on. 

When the first two In The Groove cabinets appeared, one went to the Break. The mighty regulars, all manner of visiting competitors, and I all worked together to do a whole bunch of the beta testing as the game evolved, through Roxor, Andamiro, and the battles with Konami. Hell, my picture is still in the credits if you can find an ITG2 cabinet that hasn't been tweaked harder than Florida Man.

I should expect to see a great many names I recognize in the acknowledgements of this book when I finally get my hands on it, but... if I don't? Rest assured there will be Yelling.

Goodness gracious, can this get any more amateurish?

I'll start with a quote from a recent article:

San Francisco Chronicle food critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan dropped a bombshell of a story about visiting the three-Michelin-starred restaurant the French Laundry, wherein chef Thomas Keller asked her to leave. This is, of course, one of the cardinal sins of a business built on hospitality, especially if the diner hasn’t done anything worthy of getting 86’d other than existing as a restaurant critic.

Let's take it from the top. Fegan is a B-tier, underqualified critic that elbowed her way in via Bon Appetit and serves as a perfect example of what happens when a publication doesn't actually care about putting someone who has expertise in a position that mandates a vast amount of it. Now as I mentioned back when she first took the position, I expected a subdued but steady degradation and eventual failure, much like her predecessor. Not being terribly aggressively online, as well as preoccupied by the overbearing and perpetual sense of impending disaster that seems to refresh as readily as someone's Facebook page, I haven't bothered to keep terribly tight track of that over the past two years. But to discover tonight that the article referenced in that quote probably helped seal the win on a James Beard Award? I am, to put it mildly, appalled. 

Hospitality is rather more nuanced than most would be comfortable understanding. It is the foremost duty of a host and their environ to curate the experience for all those permitted entry. If someone is where they shouldn't be, that's a problem. Calling the use of a privilege, duty, and burden as essential as that a 'cardinal sin' should be grounds for a flogging. "...especially if the diner hasn't done anything worthy of getting 86'd other than existing as a restaurant critic." Well, if they shouldn't exist as a restaurant critic, maybe that might have been a clue. 

Maintaining the balance of what goes through a restaurant's doors is a delicate dance, and the steps are more subtle the higher the stakes, something I know quite well. While I don't have a 3-starred restaurant in my background, I've worked in 1-starred places before and had the head chef of a 2-starred place offer me its head pastry chef job half an hour into preparing for a demonstration class together. Nowadays it's very easy for someone noisy and shameless to get a thoroughly wrong message in the eyes and ears of hundreds of millions of people, so giving someone the boot is not actually a problem- nor should it be. 

That, however, is weighed against perceived public image. The French Laundry- a fantastic restaurant but one reliably overhyped. Years of steady media attention crafted a legacy it's never felt quite worthy of- rather like Chez Panisse, another inexplicably iconic California spot. I'm not talking out my ass here-  a friend went for dinner there over the weekend, so my most recent intel on the place is as fresh as it gets. When something awkward and controversial happens such places often suffer in the courts of public opinion, and those at the center of the discord often reap the benefits. 

That seems to be what happened here.

Perhaps the winds are shifting, and Thomas Keller's star has dimmed. The hungry and envious backing those in conflict with the French Laundry restaurant consortium have managed to sneak in an eye gouge here, and put an award where it really should never have gone. This undermines the James Beard Awards somewhat severely in my eyes. After all the hullabaloo a few years back and their supposed newfound attention to detail, I don't like this mess one bit.

Paranoia now is peace of mind later

 

That's the mantra for this week. Got three huge events over the next few days, and the windows in between them are dangerously small.

Set up for a practice graduation. Let that run, then set up for a Pride event that starts the next morning. Then Friday there's that, and fifteen minutes after it ends I have to have the same room set for the actual graduation. After that, it's time to set it anew for a completely different event that runs the entire next day!

Of course, this is on top of my usual daily stuff, which uses the same meeting hall as every single one of these events. I'm going to be in the walls!

As if I didn't have enough unqualified and overappreciated nonsense to deal with.

 

I was recently reminded of one of the most infuriating and degrading experiences of my life. Beginning, of course, with someone asking for my help. What they wanted was for me to acclimatize a friend of theirs to what might be experienced as everyday food in Japan. Apparently the subject was considering a trip. 

Then I found out who it was.

I'd introduced this same person to a variety of new foods in the previous months when they would drop by to visit my current housemates and dinner happened to be near. I was never told about incoming guests, of course, but an extra plate is nothing- there are always leftovers when cooking for a full house.

Now, when I say 'new foods', I'm not talking nonwestern exotics like Jollof Rice or Lamb Vindaloo.

I'm not talking Euro classics like a simple risotto or a baked Brie en croute.

We're talking things like... Oven-baked fish, topped with parsley and breadcrumbs.

Broccoli, gently roasted, with a pat of butter.

Corn. 

Corn.

The difference between dino nuggets and karaage was apparently already too much.

I gave it due consideration, and then flat out refused.

You couldn't possibly pay me enough to make it easier to inflict such a culinarily-crippled menace on Japan. For starters, Japan is in general... less than kind to individualists. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered back down" was a common turn of phrase in my East Asian Studies undergrad classes.  There is nothing about this person that could possibly thrive there. Something personal- it's a place I've been trying to go for literal decades, and have had the opportunity ruined for me many times over. I will absolutely not help someone enjoy a luxury they're not even capable of qualifying for when someone like me keeps getting snubbed and sloughed off.

The hazardous someone in question is an adult. Somewhere in their mid to late twenties, and that grew up here in the US- in the midwest, no less. Though "grew up" is one hell of a reach in a case like this. 

The approach and experience is infantile, and the timing decades out of date. How does one near thirty without awareness and comfort of basic fundamentals of a western diet? Stuff you see in the canned goods aisle and the freezer case all year round? Or that you see in most TV dinners?

That, and more, was what comes to mind when I saw this.

A new cookbook: "COLOR TASTE TEXTURE: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food".

In some ways, to some people, it might be seen as a step in the right direction. Not to me. 

You're not supposed to make things easier for difficult people. You're supposed to make better people.

Somewhat surreal moment

The story begins mundanely enough.

We had somebody come in to do court-ordered community service hours

The center does get these on occasion, it’s whatever. We're on the list and it's a good place to get comparatively easy work hours, even if they're not always easy to schedule. We are, after all, open in the middle of the workday.

Yesterday I had to go do a delivery route, as often I do when drivers go missing. As I'm walking out the door, I notice there’s a Benz double parked almost right in front of the center.

That happens sometimes. This street is sometimes quite busy because we regularly have events and there are schools nearby. People do pick-ups and drop-offs all the time, and usually they're gone in a matter of minutes. I thought no more of it and off I went.

Some ninety minutes later I returned, and noticed it was still there. Now blocking a few cars' worth of traffic. I head inside and start asking. The front desk knows, the director knows, we’re all talking about it, and we start asking around. 

We get to the kitchen where the volunteer’s busy washing dishes. Goes “Oh, that’s my car.". Doesn't even blink. Casually meanders out to move it and find real parking. Been here for upwards of two hours, and blocking half the street the whole time. 

We’re all mildly aghast.

Then.

We find out the service hours are for reducing fines

…on a giant pile of traffic tickets.

Because what else would it be, right?