New Books in Food

Roel Sterckx‘s book Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge University Press, 2011) had me at drunken seances. (Drunken seances! Do you really need another excuse to read it?) It is a compelling and engaging read, and a wonderful resource for anyone interested in early China, the history of food, ritual studies, or the history of sensation. Sterckx’s work explores the culture, philosophies, and practices of sacrificial religion in early China, focusing on the ways that food and consumption at the dinner table and ritual altar helped shape ways of thinking about human sagehood and the relationships between the human and spirit worlds. The book ranges from the practices and language of cooking to the spiritual sensorium, from sacrificial procedure as a search and a multimedia event to the portrayal of Confucius in early texts about dining and sacrifice, from lively butchers to bland stews. In a particularly fascinating chapter on the economy of religious sacrifice, Sterckx considers how the demands of the spirit economy may have undermined that of humans in early China. Also, there are drunken seances. *Listeners will notice that the connection was a bit spotty at the very end of the interview. Stick with it! It’s worth it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Merry (Corky) White‘s new book Coffee Life in Japan (University of California Press, 2012) opens with a memory of stripping naked and being painted blue in an underground coffeehouse, and closes with a guide to some of the author’s favorite cafes in Japan. This framing alone is worth the price of admission. In addition to being an extraordinarily spirited, witty, and enjoyable book, however, Coffee Life in Japan is also a thoughtfully argued and exhaustively researched account of the history and ethnography of coffee and cafes in modern Japan. This wide-ranging and trans-disciplinary work explores the spaces of the modern cafe, be they social, solitary, or occasionally silent and sprinkled with stuffed animals. White introduces readers to chapters-ful of fascinating characters, including passionate coffee experts who train like dancers to learn to create the perfect cup. This is a surprising book, a pleasure to read, and a treasure for anyone interested in the history of drink, of global commodities, and of Japan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

When was the last time you ate some chocolate? If you live in the developed world there’s a strong chance that you’ve been munching on some fairly recently. At the basic level chocolate is an everyday treat and at the top end it is a seriously indulgent luxury product. But how much thought have you ever put into where that chocolate comes from and how it touches the lives of those involved in making it – and the countries in which they live? If you live in the parts of Africa at the centre of the world’s cocoa crop it is unlikely that you’ve ever tasted chocolate in its final, consumer form. In places like Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana cocoa is a crop, a commodity and a mainstay of the economy. Orla Ryan‘s Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa (Zed Books, 2011) is an attempt to tease out the complex interplay between cocoa, the farmers who grow it and the fortunes of the wider societies. She examines issues like child slavery (a favourite campaign subject for international rock stars) and whether programmes like ‘Fairtrade’ can produce a genuinely better deal for poor farmers (she argues that what has really improved the lot of Ghanaian farmers is democracy). Whether you’re interested in the economics of cocoa, want to view the situation in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire through the lens of this crucial commodity, or are simply curious about where the chocolate bar that you have in your bag really comes from, I recommend reading this book. Orla is a journalist, and that means that she is very able to present complex information and arguments clearly, and pick out what the most important parts of an issue are. The result is a fascinating book. I hope you enjoy the interview. NB: Although the book is already out in Britain, the paperback version is being published in the US on May 8th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Hobson-Jobson was not just about administration and geopolitics- the language of Empire extended to its culinary endeavours as well. Thus chota hazri, tiffin,and curry puffs at Peliti’s were the things that sustained an army of civil servants as they went about registering land records in the United Provinces, negotiating with Malay sultans or checking out logging operations in Sabah. Cecilia Leong-Salobir’s book, Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire (Routledge, 2011), looks at the gastronomic side of things in Britain’s tropical, Asiatic Empire -India, Malaya and Singapore. It looks at the things administrators, soldiers and commercial workers ate on various occasions- in the dak bungalow, on camping tours, at grand dinner parties – and how they went about preparing their victuals- mostly with the help of domestic staff, Muslim, Goan, Malay and Chinese, cooks of whom they had criticisms aplenty to make, yet in the end trusted with the task of cooking for their families. And they made sure to write down all they gleaned about rustling up pastries and souffles in lands where rice and chappatis were the staple dishes. Cecilia researched the cookbooks, colonial archives, correspondence, and prepared questionnaires for old Empire hands to come up with a comprehensive report on what the Empire builders ate- and the result is a deliciously detailed work, which explores how the socio-cultural structure of Empire dictated and determined what would be cooked and eaten at specific times and places. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Cuisine in early modern Japan was experienced and negotiated through literature and ritual, and the uneaten or inedible was often as important as what was actually consumed. Eric Rath‘s recent book Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan (University of California Press, 2010) is a rich study of the culture, practices, performance, and literature of food in early modern Japan. Rath takes us from medieval culinary manuscripts penned by men of the knife, all the way to sukiyaki recipes clipped from newspapers in 1950s America. Focusing on late medieval culinary manuscripts and early modern printed cookbooks, Rath shows that cuisine in pre-modern Japan blended the edible with the uneaten, puns with pickles, and rituals with rice cakes. This is a wonderfully written account of the history of food in its many spaces: on the page, on the cutting board, on the tray, in the kitchen, and in transit. In the course of our interview we talked about the practical challenges of researching the history of cuisine in early modern Japan, the theater of slicing up carp, the Iberian roots of tempura, and the proper way to eat a flying quail food display. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Danyelle Freeman, better known as “Restaurant Girl” and a judge on Top Chef Masters, is single. But if you are considering asking out the petite and spunky brunette, you are going to have to compete with some stiff competition. “I prefer a great steak over a great man,” Danyelle said during an interview I did with her at a Borders bookstore in New York on the occasion of the release of her new book Try This: Traveling the Globe without Leaving the Table (Ecco, 2011) The book is a memoir of Danyelle’s appetite, blending a trip through her experiences with different ethnic foods with some very detailed information about each cuisine. For instance: pick up a piece of nigiri sushi with your fingers – not chopsticks – by the rice and dip only the fish into soy sauce, and only a little, and don’t add wasabi to the sauce but only onto the fish directly in a small amount. Not because this is the proper way, but because this proper way enhances the experience. The interview contains personal stories, behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Top Chef and lots of talk about delicious things. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food