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?

Jollibee - Not - So - Lovely

 

I've never been a fast food person, nor a chain restaurant person. When there's nothing else they'll do, but I'm much more likely to try something singular and slightly suspicious, even in a far off place.

But the other day, someone asked me how to make a homemade version of the Jollibee spaghetti. My response was, of course, "...What." 

Now, I knew about it. Jollibee is a quick-service Filipino restaurant chain that's trying to be slightly upmarket while still bottom feeding. The spaghetti is what gets people looking because who the hell expects a fast food chain to have spaghetti- especially one from Southeast Asia. Now apparently there are locations that have palabok pancit, which is Actual Filipino Food, but they don't have that at the one closest to me so my hopes of something tasty mostly went out the window. They did have pies though, and so all hope was not lost.

I discovered there's a Jollibee location out on Alameda island, which is close enough for me to make the trip as an experiment. Unfortunately I had forgotten how absolutely foul it is to get out there. I want to grind that place to gravel so I can rebuild it properly. Ugh. But it's not about the journey to and from, as dreadful as it was.

This may not be the norm since the storefront is in a plaza where everything is very uniformly sculpted, but the appearance is fairly mundane, though the logo is distinct. Were it not for that (and the definitively different intended demographics), you'd have a hard time telling the difference between Jollibee and Popeyes or Chick Fil-a. The amount of sheer product I could see from the far side of the counter was absolutely wild to me. Alto-shaams FULL of cooked chicken ready to rock, dozens of possible orders of food awaiting boxing and bagging, with probably ten employees back there all busy at one thing or another. And one single solitary cashier. That I get, because half the counter was labeled Online Order Pickup and the entire time I was on premises there was a steady stream of people heading to and from. Probably 2/3 of the orders never saw a table, including mine since after the struggle to get there I wanted to go home rather badly.

"Have a Jolli day!" said the cashier as I took my blinking buzzer-to-be off to a corner to wait. Cute and inoffensive, at least. A good twenty minutes later (continuing the trend of 'Quick-service' being very much Not That) I had a bag full of food, and a half hour after that I was home to eat. Because of course getting back was even worse.

I didn't get the whole menu because I'm poor and prepared food is expensive no matter how lousy it is. However, I did get a solid sampler of what they're known for and what they're trying to push.

Chicken: Solid. Somewhere between Wendy's and Popeyes in crunch, with both the regular and spicy being suitably flavorful. Gave my poor beau some terrible heartburn though.

Spaghetti: What. Exceedingly sweet, sauced with what might as well be ketchup (probably banana ketchup and a handful of other things) with fragments of what might be ground meat, little coins of hotdog, and some sprinkled yellow cheese. It's the Filipino version of Chef Boyardee or Spaghetti-Os as we know them today. It's a nostalgic flavor for someone somewhere, probably a vast number of people. But definitely not me. Yech.

Adobo Rice: Sucked. Almost nothing to it but a whisper of soy sauce and vinegar to color and flavor it, with tiny flecks of chicken here and there. I'd made actual chicken adobo earlier this week, so I just put some of my leftovers on top to make it taste like Jollibee pretends it does.

Macaroni and Cheese: Quite nice! Pasta is thick and soft, sauce is rich. It's essentially Stouffer's, if you've ever had the occasion to try it.

Pies: Two! Peach/Mango and Ube. Both extremely delicious. Easily the standout items and I'd happily eat either of them any time. Remember when McDonalds pies were fried and delicious? These make the Golden Arches' golden era look tame.

Overall Verdict:  D I A B E E T U S

It's supposed to bring Filipino flavors of home, but if that's home I totally see why people would leave... if they can manage to walk after all that!

Plagiarism? In cookbooks? Gosh.

"Food influencer" accused of plagiarism. Gosh. You think?

First of all, welcome to the world of food. Everybody steals, copies, and tweaks. It's normal, because food is ephemeral and imprecise. My own stance on intellectual property (Doesn't exist. Make your name with valid, tangible, and more permanent assets.) aside, this just starts a squabble where nobody involved looks good. 

Unless it's really, really obvious. 

The person in question is Brooke Bellamy- an Australian TikTok-er who has some robust internet notoriety and a place called 'Brooki's Bakehouse'. She's also got a book "Bake With Brooki", which is where the trouble shows up. The allegations of pilfered recipes are very much justifiable. I looked for myself to be sure. As a chef and a recipe developer myself, I'd back them up. I would never have allowed something so blatant to hit the shelves. It's not James Beard levels of pilferage, but it's a different sort of bad when it's not even your own previous publications you're pilfering from. Worse still, the recipes came from other easily found places with operators who pay attention to this sort of thing.

Recipe Tin Eats is a site I'm less familiar with, but I also don't do a lot of recipe hunting. The owner Nagi's recent post showed an easy to follow comparison between the recipes in question. By my standards, it's fairly cut-and-dried. It was pointed out in the first place by her fanbase, who discovered it after some digging and brought it to light. If it's that obvious even to non-professionals... yeah.

Sally's Baking Addiction is another name listed, and an absolutely extraordinary resource for the modern home baker. Sally knows her stuff, takes great pictures, doesn't overdo it on the ads or the storytelling, and the recipes on her site do what they say they'll to- I've used plenty of them myself. When I'm doing my own recipe dev work, her site is on a list of many I check for baseline recipes to compare with. 

Here's an easy to follow example for you. I went back to look- Sally's oatmeal cookie has a great deal in common with my own oatmeal cookie. Did I steal it? No. Why is it similar? Home baking has limits. Equipment, ingredients, and yield don't vary much at all, mostly because of storage and intent. Almost nobody's batching dough for a gross of cookies at once- they're making a batch they can fit in a bowl and bake in a home oven to feed a small number of people. Those fairly narrow parameters can make for a lot of very similar recipes. But don't underestimate the power of research. It's way too easy to be found out if you just lifted something wholesale, and the general public is veeeery happy to pour a little poison on someone's reputation, deservingly or not.

If you're going to just up and take something, do it more like Dylan does. His cookbook recipes all come from other places, but everyone is quite well aware because it's part of his schtick. Taking the horrors of home kitchens past and making modern and palatable incarnations is nice. Highlighting recorded-but-forgotten delights is even nicer!

Me, I don't use TikTok, and had no idea who this Brooke lady was. But I sure do now. I'm not linking her website, her socials, and especially not her cookbook. Screw that.

A treasure of my youth appears to be gone.

 I spent a chunk of almost every summer of my teens up at Sabattis.

Seems like the modern BSA isn't enticing enough to keep attendance at numbers that'll let it stay open.

It'll be missed very much.

I hope everyone's ready to get a lot sicker a lot more often.

 

It's interesting how little I see from the mainstream food media these days since I stopped using Twitter some months back.

Not that I'm missing anything of substance. The vast majority is fluff pieces, any bits of harder-hitting reporting are elsewhere. Stuff like how desperately doomed most of the food production in the country is as regulatory standards for quality and safety get cut away.

Safe bet that a whoooole lot of people are going to realize how easy it is for foodborne illnesses to find their way into their supper. More than likely while they're dying after contracting them. I know how to prevent them, where to look for them, and how long I have before I start avoiding buying certain things. There's a tier list based on ease of contamination, severity of danger, and a host of other factors that I consider when looking at the months and years ahead. Here's a freebie: Don't buy salad greens.

Alongside this we have the backyard gardeners who have no idea what it's like to actually grow enough food to live off of. People that have never seen how much wheat it takes to mill into flour, and haven't a clue how to do the milling.

I'm lucky to live in a climate where I can grow damn near anything I please, but there's no possible way I could grow enough food to feed myself- I know this because I because I actually know how to do it- something near nobody willing to opine on such things can say.

In Memoriam

You were always game for anything, grinning like a goofus the whole time.

You deserved better last years than the ones I know you had.

That sorrow will stay with me forever.

Goodbye, Tiger. Uncle Wolfy loves you, now and always.

In Theory

...this is supposed to be a mostly profession-oriented blog. I am a master culinarian, recipe developer, teacher, nutritionist, and food safety analyst.

I am also a great deal more than that.

Given the state of things, however, oversharing is dangerous.

Paranoia and pragmatism now means peace of mind later. 

I've got my disaster bag prepped and ready.

Can't save everyone. Don't want to. Shouldn't have to- and most aren't capable of deserving it anyway.

I'll do what I can.

What a mess.

 

All those cuts to Meals on Wheels apparently went out over the last 24 hours or so.

So let me tell you, gentle reader, of the last 48.

Yesterday, I began to track down the family of a senior who died five years ago when mail showed up for her estate. Yes. They died in the first covid wave, amidst so many others. And disappeared. 

Today, I delivered a route, as I always do when a delivery crew fails to show. Someone who I'd spoken to on Monday didn't answer when I knocked. Thinking they might not yet be home, I called their contact number and got family. Poor man was on total life support, surrounded by loved ones. 

He died while I was on the line. I spent the next twenty minutes consoling half a dozen people I've never met as they broke down together.

This is the stuff they're taking away the funding for. Not hard to guess why- beyond the simple cruelty and ignorance, at least. Hungry people get angry, they get aggressive, they get things happening. People like this don't. They're already on the last of their resources. They'll simply fade and die, unknown and forgotten. Often, I joke that the motto of our center should be "Forgotten But Not Gone". I don't forget easily.

"To ignore the plight of those one could conceivably save is not wisdom, it is indolence"

In a world steeped in malice, I think those words ring true for those who seek a better world.

Why? Simple.

"For those we have lost. For those we can yet save."

And so I battle onward. As best I might.

Girl Scout Cookies: What's New?

 

It's been a looooong time since I had the chance to get ahold of any Girl Scout cookies. I'm not going to do any major digging into the changes that have happened even since I was in high school with Girl Scouts, but... I remember when these cookies were 3 bucks a box, and the boxes were definitely a fair bit bigger.

No sense in beating around the bush about price and proper valuation though. Other things I remember offhand... there are a couple bakeries that produce all the cookies, and they're thousands of miles apart, which is why some cookies have different names in different parts of the US. Out here in California, the Shortbread I knew growing up is called a Trefoil. Makes perfect sense looking at it, but still. Different suppliers, different name to protect all the companies from copyright blather. (Not that copywrites actually matter in the food world, but on the corporate side they pretend.)

I picked up a few boxes. Though apparently they're not all even boxes any more!

The order sheet was my only information, and so I went with what made some appeal to my preferences. I got a box of the iconic Thin Mints, and two other types that are wholly new to me. A gluten-free Caramel Chocolate Chip, and crispy chocolate, caramel-cored curiosities called Adventurefuls. 

Now one thing that threw me was the vastly different weights of the three varieties. 5oz, 6 1/2oz, and 9oz. That's no small discrepancy, and it's... interesting that the GF cookies are the lightest. The ingredients couldn't possibly be that much more expensive. The different packaging could account for some of the difference, but what was wrong with the classic two-channel sleeved box? That's the big thing I was wondering about when I went ahead and opened them all to have a proper look.

And then came the taste test.

The Caramel Chocolate Chip are interesting. They're very crunchy, but also extremely light. The use of oat flour as a primary gives them a texture and flavor vaguely reminiscent of a peanut butter cookie, which is a sandiness I find rather unpleasant. The caramel flavor is heavy and cloying, as one-note and artificial as it gets. You can't even taste the chocolate chips- though admittedly there aren't many. These are to Famous Amos as Oreo are to Hydrox. They tried, but it's just not quite right. Yes, even without the cachet of being the actual original in the genre, the Hydrox was a far superior cookie to Oreo. Given some of the horrorshow flavors Oreo has tried bringing to bear, it seems an apt comparison.

The Adventurefuls were a very different sort of unfortunate. "Brownie-inspired cookies with caramel-flavored creme and a hint of sea salt". Jibberish. (If a Brownie inspired this, she'll never make a proper Girl Scout, let alone the Gold Award.) It's supposed to be a chocolate 'thumbprint' style cookie, a shallow well that's filled with faux caramel, then decorated with pretty chocolate stripes. Or they would have been, had anything about the designs worked right. 

The cookies arrived half-melted, some stuck together, and the box wasn't even full! The picture is missing two but I'd only eaten one. That pretend caramel flavor overpowered almost everything here too, except for the cookie hidden underneath it all. Hard and crispy, it has the feel and texture of the Thin Mint base cookie- which is probably why the camouflage. Can't make it too obvious they're double dipping on a winner, even when it turns into a loser- which this definitely is.

Well, that was a bust- and at seven bucks a box, it was an expensive one! Mathing it out by the weights listed on the boxes, the cookies were about 16 bucks a pound. I've paid more for cookies, but they were waaaaaay better cookies. Like the local place Butter Pecan, where the cookies are actually worth that kind of price.

Sorry, girls. I'm not buying again.

Book Review: "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles", by Jennifer 8 Lee

 

Back when I first penned this review, I decided I'd keep it simple- The Fortune Cookie Chronicles turned out to be an excellent book. It strives to answer some of the most common questions that come up when "Chinese Food" is a topic of conversation. As it happens, that's rather a lot, being that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than any two fast food chains combined.

Little factoids like that (Or that the 8 in her name is deliberate, but not for shock value- 8’s a lucky number in China.) are sprinkled all through the book- tidbits of passing interest backed up by research, and deftly tucked into the narrative. The storytelling laid beside the bald facts is poignant, stirring, and leaves definitive impressions at various levels of depth. Equal parts reporting, blog post, vignette, and amateur food critic, each section gives answers and information that not only serves to bolster your current understanding, but compound it as you read on. You'll think back as you near the end of the book and absentmindedly apply bits of info from the beginning to form a more complete picture. That's not as easy a trick to pull off as it sounds, considering your average college textbook. Likewise, it isn't something I say lightly.

Full disclosure though, a drafted manuscript that used similar research to address several of the book's major topics was sitting on my harddrive when this book came out. Jennifer beat me handily to getting things published (benefits of being a journalist and reporter rather than a chef I suppose), but in hindsight I don't mind a bit. She did an excellent job from start to finish.  Not speaking Mandarin or Cantonese myself, her net was a wider cast than mine, and I was very pleased at the surpassing thoroughness of her efforts- though some of my contacts in Japan might have been useful to her. Her list of notes and bibliographical references is also quite comprehensive- for those with a scholarly bent, that section alone is worth digging into. She's done a LOT of legwork, dredging up old manuscripts, translations, even court documents detailing the struggle of Asian-Americans to find citizenship and some measure of stability here in the United States. These days, I have to wonder how many more new versions of the very same struggles are going to be written and referenced in the months and years to come as the nation backslides into horrors thought banished for good.

There's one major problem with reviewing a manuscript as well constructed as this- most every enticing soundbite and succinctly distilled phrase has already found its way onto either the cover or the dust jacket.

So- if you've ever wondered who General Tso was, or why his chicken seems to be everywhere. If you're Jewish, and have memories of Chinese food every December around Christmas. If you've ever wondered where that Chinese Takeout Box came from, how the fortune cookie came about, or who wrote all those fortunes, or ever played the lucky numbers on the back. Any of that, plus all sorts of other satisfied curiosities work together to let me recommend this book with some real enthusiasm.

St. Patrick's Day- a Primer, Perhaps?

I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about Irish food. It's not a part of the world that's on my culinary radar. Fair bit of what I do know isn't about restaurants, hotels, or other such things. It's details about farms, ranches, orchards, distilleries- the places the food and drink come from.

Looking at it from the outside, it seems to me like most of the detail-oriented expertise in Irish food gets spent before it hits the kitchen. Whether properly true or not, it certainly isn't a bad thing- lets the resulting prepared food showcase itself, in a manner akin to what you might see in Japan. The cultural emphasis on starting from the best place possible seems to fit well enough- there's not a lot done to most of of the ingredients because there's no need to do anything. Season properly, cook till appropriately tender and flavorful, and that's it. Even humble vegetables like cabbage can be absolutely delicious. I actually used to serve cabbage quarters as a side dish, cooked in rendered lamb fat till browned all over, then steamed just long enough to bring out the sweetness of the deeper-set leaves. A real delight.

Now, tomorrow is different. Nobody celebrating over here across the pond will be a historian wearing blue. They're all going to be garbed in green, gilded, glittery, and Guinnessed to the gills. Going out to eat will be easy, because any holiday-specific menus you're likely to see are likely to focus on a handful of relatively simple, familiar things. 

Corned Beef and Cabbage (Many don't corn their own.)

Bangers and Mashed (Colcannon if they're feeling ambitious.)

Cottage Pie (Shepherd's Pie if you're lucky and find a place serving lamb.)

Guinness Stew (Beef, maybe lamb. Mirepoix, turnips, parsnips, potato, peas.) 

Beer and whisky will be all over the place. Guinness will show up at both ends of the meal. Expect to see a lot of Guinness chocolate cake with Baileys Irish Creme frosting), or served as an admittedly excellent float with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of chocolate or coffee syrup. Whisk(e)y will also likely show up in whipped cream, caramel sauces, and anywhere else it can be shoehorned in. Not a bad thing. It's delicious. 

I suppose that's some of the idea why people get so enthused about it, but personally... I don't think the risk of going out is worth the bother. St. Patrick's Day is much like New Year's Eve, where everyone who doesn't normally party decides to give it a go. All too easily they party too hard, get careless, and then wake up somewhere they really shouldn't be. 

If you do go out, be careful, cautious, and be sure to shower before bed.

Sláinte!

Book Review: 'The Last Chinese Chef', by Nicole Mones

 

How do you distill the culinary essence of 5000 years of history into a single short book?

<= Kinda like this. Note the cover blurb by Ruch Reichl- which at the time was shorthand for people in food media to take the book somewhat seriously, and to help goad dabblers into a purchase. (The other cover, seen below, is better.)

The Last Chinese Chef is one of those books where even if you don't know a thing about the subject matter to start, you will by the end. Moreso, you'll likely be grateful for it. The more you know to start with though, the better you'll probably like it. I'm definitely a fan of this approach, which the book handles well- I would recommend it to anyone who has a care for the relationship between food and culture, food and family, or food and more food! In that way it's a lot like a Fuschia Dunlop book, which makes perfect sense given both the subject matter and the intended perspectives.

Written by Nicole Mones, who also penned Lost In Translation (you may have seen the movie adaptation, and if not you should- it's not the easiest watch but Bill Murray gives a truly inspired performance), it weaves the story of a food writer and a great chef into an already bright tapestry of Chinese literature, art, culture, and food.

Much of the main story is outlined by parables and Chinese idioms which serve to flesh out the story, making it seem a liiiittle less thin than it would otherwise read. While I noticed, knowing full well who this book was marketed at, not everyone will notice or even care. There are a fair number of interesting coincidences in the book too, but that's just... sort of how literature works in settings like Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China anyway. It's really hard to break out of that whole 'Asian Mystique' trope, I've found.

This manuscript also bears a lot of underlying resemblance to Jennifer Lee's "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles", which I'll post a review for sometime this week. Not in execution of course, but rather in intent. Serving not only to educate, but to illuminate and fascinate the reader. It reveals answers to questions you might not know you had, and subtly brings out the desire to explore further even as it does.

There's one fairly robust caveat to the book though. It was published in 2007, and the story's then too- in the period leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Using that context, the story fits superbly- the journey of a chef alongside the journey of his homeland, both seeking greatness, belonging, and approval as what they were and what they strive to be. The deliberate time and place setting serves to highlight the past, analyze the present, and inspire hope for things yet to come. It was a superbly chosen parallel at the time, but looking at it now? The messages ring hollow indeed.

In spite of that one bit of bother, this book is well worth a read. It might be indirect in its messages, but they could never be called vague. Chinese style, by a non-Chinese.

And that's the point, really. Read it- you'll see what I mean.

Ugh. My head.

 

I have never minded the dentist. But I've been too poor for anything resembling viable dental care for... nigh on twenty years.

Root canals aren't so bad, I guess.

But I really wish that teeth weren't mistreated as Luxury Bones by the US imitation of a healthcare system. I'm a foodservice professional. I need my mouth in perfect condition. It should never be a worry for me. Instead, I'm probably going to go into an appalling amount of debt just to return to normalcy.

At this point in my life, my share of contribution is long since done. I am obliged provisioning in accordance with that. Debts are not things I owe- they are things I am owed.

I am likely to die before I ever manage to claim even the smallest fraction of them.

A quandary.

 

How does one explain to a well-known well-poisoner that the cause of their social isolation is staring at them in the mirror? 

Say, for example, you built an environment that gathered people together and evolved over a couple of decades into a happy, thriving community, all at essentially no cost.

Would you be happy you did something that enriched all those lives, that turned them into more than the sum of their parts? 

Or would you expect to be reliably fawned over, get upset and offended when it didn't always happen, eventually wipe out the whole thing in a fit of pique, then continue to complain after generously being invited into its replacement by those who gathered and made the place anew?

Damn good thing the member list survived, is all I'll say.

The psychological breakdown of this sort of aberrant behaviour is both interesting and topical. Insecurity induced selfishness accounts for a lot, and adding in a constant need for positive reinforcement, approval, validation, etc. is no real reach.

But to also be petty, vindictive, and passive aggressive, nettling people while pretending at victimhood just makes you seem a thorn in everyone's side.

Small wonder they're a pariah- could take their win from the tech money lottery and be content. But no.

Most of the people they're bitching about remain a community at least in part because they weren't so lucky, and benefit from mutual support in times of trouble. Don't think for a moment I'm not one of them, either. A couple years ago during the plague, the UV coating on my eyeglass lenses fragmented. Was like looking through a window spiderwebbed with cracks. Wearing them gave me splitting headaches every single day, and I can't see a damn thing without them. But I hadn't had a job since 2020 when the plague shut everything down- I was flat broke. So a friend from that group sent me a couple hundred bucks. Didn't ask, it just showed up one day.

There's a reason my Christmas/holiday card list is so long. I pay that generosity both back and forward as best I can. Even if it's only a couple times a year, it never hurts to remind people that you're thankful to have them in your life.

This sort of social ostracizing happens when you don't do that.

Or when you don't even know how.

Book Review: "Being Dead Is No Excuse: The official Southern Ladies guide to hosting the perfect funeral", by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hayes

I’ll start by stating the obvious: This book is about a very different world from mine.  

But a world that is, in its own way, still familiar.

"Being Dead Is No Excuse: The official Southern Ladies guide to hosting the perfect funeral"

The title alone evokes a lot of things, centered around a tradition so insular and severe it borders on self-parody, and after reading... I'm not sure which side of the line it's on.

Now as someone who has been a chef, caterer, and many other things, event planning is not new to me. I’ve done weddings, birthdays, baby showers, book releases, orgies, and plenty of other interesting happenings- but funerals are one I haven't been tapped for. Now I’m not inexperienced with them by any means- I've been to… well, a lot. 

But there's a world of difference between going to one and handling one. You can in theory attend, grieve, and be gone, and think no more of it. However, not everyone does, or even can. To those who live in the Delta (shorthand for a sizeable chunk of the American Deep South), funerals are an experience like no other, one that's not unlike like surfing a wave, or carving down a slope of fresh powder. There's what's historically or traditionally expected, the variables and variations on the theme, and hidden under a thin veneer of Maybe lies the vast potential for comedic catastrophe.

Spoiling the book would be difficult, because so much of it has eased into the cultural subconscious. But if I attempt to add much in the way of detail, the mood will be off and the impact will suffer, so I'll keep it short.

One key component of funerals like this is something the book's authors are very dedicated to: community. It may not be pretty, and it may not even be nice. But it's theirs, and so it's worth fighting for. Not everyone can, will, or even should find their own community in which to thrive. But once you've got one? People do tend to dig in- and this book makes much and more of that tendency to great effect.

Another key made clear this book is Food. Funereal tradition is absolutely awash in food, so there are a lot of recipes in this book- enough that there's an index in the back. While many of these use the term 'recipe' as loosely as has ever been allowed, and quite deliberately so, Being Dead Is No Excuse goes into painstaking detail about the minutiae of the food and drink of the Southern funeral tradition. In no small part this is a cookbook full of funereal foods that could easily lead to a follow-up death- and they won't deny it for a second. Bring on the mayo and the cream of mushroom soup.

What is perhaps the most interesting part of it all is the underlying Christian denominational turf war- but I'll leave it at that because the joy is truly in the telling.

If you want a good laugh in the manner of Noises Off or perhaps My Fair Lady, this will do you right. I had my eyes closed and my face in my hands at many a point. Sometimes from the stories, sometimes from the snacks, but always with a smile.

Book Review: "Baking Yesteryear", by B. Dylan Hollis

Food media has done some Weird Shit in its time- this is known. But the notion of short form cooking with unusual or unexpectedly interesting recipes is about as common and timeless as it gets (or as much so as the internet gets, at least). That said, carving out a niche of one's own while doing something comparatively common is not easy, requiring a vast amount of luck, charisma, and apparently hair gel. 

Friends would reliably send me little clips of this fellow B. Dylan Hollis. I believe my first experience was "Ice Cream Bread", which I thought about for a second and went "Oh, it's going to end up like pound cake!" before hitting play  (I was right, for the record, and it's a pretty good one.) I looked with care, considered the source, and made a point to take notes on any of them I happened to see. Because it might be a gimmick, but it's a solid gimmick.

Random and/or retro recipes are inevitably a roll of the dice- something I know all too well, having no small amount of the same sorts of cookbooks he pulls from for many of his clips, and for much the same reasons. No small part of the fun of those recipes (and in this case watching him) is wondering of what's actually going to happen, and his endearing boyish charm more than covers the rest. He's the strawberry mimosa sort of twink whose hair I want to muss, then grin at the petulantly frazzled result before I pull him onto the couch to cuddle and watch a movie. If he happens to read this... blush away, kid.

But this is less about his online presence and more about his first book. Not too long before his second one will come out (it's due in May of this year) I decided to pull Baking Yesteryear from the library's shelf and give it a proper look. Yes, I'm a little late to the party, but that's the usual for a poverty-stricken professional like me. Besides, it's not like the recipes are new! Everything in the book is 20th century, and cuts out in the 80s somewhere. There's no real rush- they'll keep a little longer!

The intensity and enthusiasm Hollis has for desserts comes through in near every sentence of the book as readily as it does in his innumerable cooking and baking video clips. In his own words: "it dawned on me that each recipe writer was, in their own way, simply trying to share something that made them feel good... the sharing of a dessert and how to make it was an exercise in sharing happiness." It has the ring of truth to it, and contrived or not, brand or not, it's delightfully charming and as endearing as can be. 

His mien is more or less 'Favorite Grandson goes through Grandma's cookbooks as saucily as if he were a guest on The Golden Girls'. So... me, with more glitter and pizazz but far less precision and expertise. He himself also notes “I’ve often said I’m perhaps one of the only well-known food creators on the internet who hasn’t a clue what he’s doing”.

...I had to pause for a moment there and just laugh. 

And laugh and laugh and laugh. 

Such a dear sweet innocent boy. Small wonder his earnest words ring true!

Before the culinary trip through time begins though, there's a note or two. The recipes break from modern convention and call for salted butter unless otherwise specified. Recall that refrigeration is a 20th century thing, and remained somewhat rare till midcentury. Given butter's consistent expense, it was commonly sold salted to ensure longer shelf life. 

Hollis also hedges his bets here by offering terminology, common ingredients, measurement conversions, and his default cookie scoop (It's a #60, if you were wondering. Mine's a #50- I like them a little bigger.) as well as a superlative pie crust recipe and a basic vanilla buttercream frosting. Those last two likely in case some of the potential components of the recipes as written seem a touch too intimidating or equipment-prohibitive (Not everyone owns a candy thermometer or stand mixer, after all!). He mentions by name the Boiled Frosting, which sounds equal parts complicated and outlandish until you read it- it's basically just Swiss Meringue. Tricky, yes, but not outlandish at all. 

Baking Yesteryear's recipes go through most of the 20th century, decade by decade beginning with the 1900s. Every decade begins with no small amount of stage-setting, sprinkled with personal anecdotes, historical miscellany, and other cleverness to keep you reading and put you in the proper frame of mind for the time and place. Each is as unique as the recipes and circumstances from which they came, and read hungrily.

There are three sections that aren't decades though.

Dates: Something he adores but never seems to get enough of.

No-Bake: Because there were enough of them to justify a separate category.

Worst of the Worst: Explains itself, really. Whooooooo boy.

Bereft of ego, I'm probably one of the best possible people to review this sort of book. I know exactly what Dylan's talking about, where it's coming from, where his approach is coming from, and how to approach it. On every relevant level I understand the subtext- including how to jumble subtext right.

For someone who didn't do food for a living until now, he did a damn fine job with this book. The recipes are clear, succinct, and none too complicated. The concept is sound, the execution stellar, and the voice underneath as clear as can be. It's a good solid read that takes a lot of old things and brings them out of mothballs into the light again. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, and it's not the most useful as a practical cookbook, but as a compiled reference text, coffee table book, and way to get in touch with Grandma, it's a fine work indeed.

With minimal fanfare, Draeger's San Mateo is closing for good.

 

Now I don't live in San Mateo any longer, but I'm not at all surprised to see this happening: SFGate: Gourmet Bay Area grocery store closing after nearly three decades
 There were rumors during the plague that the plot of land had been sold -the buyer varied depending on who you talked to-, but the flux of the pandemic let a lot of useful intel slip by unnoticed.

Let me add that I no longer have skin in the game as far as Draeger's goes. I was one of their cooking school's lead instructors for most of the 2010s, and enjoyed myself thoroughly there. An almost-independent department, we were a solid moneymaker, and what we brought in from private events and classes subsidized the in-house restaurant 'Viognier' quite well. The pandemic closed the cooking school for what we all thought was for good, (Worth mentioning that the restaurant permanently closed at the same time. The story in SFGate talks about a decline in fine dining... but that dining room was empty more often than not.) and so the Scions of the Draeger's Cooking School scattered. 

I'll miss that place. We had a lot of good times there, as a department. Abby ran a delightfully tight ship, and had the most incredible Customer Service mien I've ever seen in action. Oliver and the wine crew were extraordinary, and the housewares department was something out of legend. Jorge was a wizard with that stuff- truly incredible sense of style and a knack for placement that managed to make egregious expense avoid looking tacky. No small feat.

Heading back to downtown San Mateo is going to be a very different thing as the next few years go on. I wonder how this supposed mixed-use space is going to look... "Developer Lane Partners is planning to erect around 100,000 square feet of office space and 10 below-market-rate units, with around 17,000 square feet dedicated to an unnamed grocery store, according to the San Mateo Daily Journal"

That's corporate construction speak for "We want to pretend we're making this a more livable space while gouging the city and the locals". It's also interesting that the grocery store is unnamed, because one of the rumored buyers of this location was Target. Their grocery would do some most unpleasantly tacky things to the look of downtown, and I do hope that's not what ends up in the location. Blech.

I have contacts down there still, so hopefully there will be more information as things develop. Assuming they do, of course. We'll see.

Book Review: "The Man Who Ate Too Much" by John Birdsall

 

A James Beard Biography is a very tricky thing to look at. The man showed a refreshingly simple face to the world, full of bonhomie and circumstantially cogent expertise- enough to get interest, but not enough to get in trouble…mostly. A fine showman, exemplifying ‘larger than life’. But as with so many others, underneath the surface was the relentless tide of insecurity that comes from being so much more than he ever thought was safe to reveal. And so we have “The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard”, by one John Birdsall. A fellow culinarian and author (ironically, a two-time James Beard Award winner) who, as I read between the lines, seems to harbor many sentiments not unlike my own about the man. But this is Beard’s bio rather than Birdsall’s, so let us be about it.

First and foremost, the man known as James Beard came from luxury, and with connections. The reassembled minutiae of his early years is awash in expansive excess. Months spent in far-off locales, not even working for ages at a time- something utterly unthinkable for almost anyone who might pick this book up today. It boggles the mind to see how carefree people once had the privilege to be. Given such ease, how much more could have been done is a hard thing to consider. Nonetheless, his ability to flimflam fickle fortune began early and never ceased, blind luck leading him over and over to the absolute perfect persons to kickstart every facet of what would become his career, and with a mix of relentless clever schmoozing and discreet deference, such ways were kept open as long as might have been managed.

Made abundantly clear over and over again is Beard's knack for keeping things quiet till the time was right. His first cookbook? Largely pilfered recipes from early business partners and sometime socialites, mingled with mostly made-up attributions, all hidden behind an ironclad façade of rambunctious reputability- in what would seem to eventually become a tradition. A giant who stands on the shoulders of others, their faces carefully, even artfully obscured. People, ideas, opinions, all devoid of definition- for the protection of the man behind their use.

This biography also makes no small point of viewing the man through the lens of his queerness, but it's an approach far more robust than Beard’s own. Known in abstract, if not in common, James Beard lived the life of a man who wished to hear the music of love but knew not from whence the tune might come, nor how to carry it. Deeply repressed by the culture around him and the needs of the moment, sharp and acerbic beneath the bombast of his public face, Beard’s well-concealed intimates come across as ephemeral as his expertise often was. Small wonder so much of his life seemed so lonely.

More bothersome still, work ethic and disciplined consistency were the man’s lifelong bugbears. He never once managed a repute for reliability, something truly miraculous for one who managed to find his sort of success in the world of food- where showing up five minutes early, ready to go full speed for the next however long has ever been the standard.

What that and so much else of this manuscript also none-too-quietly shouts is how exhaustingly easy it can be for someone of means to succeed whether they deserve the privilege or not. To dawdle about universities, flirting with professors and professionals. To have friends get you jobs teaching things you know little and less about, reading two weeks ahead of your students to maintain the charade. To breathe a false life and meaning into illusion via artifice and imagination. Miracles of days gone by, impossible now.

The years passed, the man aged, the world changed, and then he was gone from it. I suspect the notion of a true successor had vanished from Beard’s mind decades in the past, but that of a legacy was one he held tightly to, and so he maintained his disciplined discretion all the way to the end. A long, rich, full-seeming life, yet somehow as thoroughly hidden away as could possibly be.

In some ways, it's best he died when he did. Fragile as his mental health was, the AIDS crisis would surely have broken him, as it did so many it didn’t kill. Perhaps worse still is what later became of the world in which we now pretend to live. Life’s whimsy and joy has been ruthlessly stripped away by those born to wealth then raised to selfishness and greed. Men like James Beard are ground up and molded into nameless drudges in flavorless locales with no hopes, dreams, or futures. I know many of them. I worry I may well be one, no matter my mastery.

If you wish to read a fine story, The Man Who Ate Too Much will serve you well. The best way to remember a showman like Beard is, perhaps, through the telling of his tale in a manner he’d understand. One can hear his voice in the pages- both the one you’d hear in public… and the much quieter one at the back of his mind he tried so hard to forget.