Best Food Writing 2010 Part 1

Best Food Writing 2010.

by Holly Hughes.

INTRODUCTION.

by Holly Hughes

"But I'm already already a a Bon Appet.i.t Bon Appet.i.t subscriber!" I protest to the faceless woman at the other end of the phone line. "I have subscriber!" I protest to the faceless woman at the other end of the phone line. "I have years years left on that subscription." left on that subscription."

"Then we'd be happy to extend your Bon Appet.i.t Bon Appet.i.t subscription to . . . [she checks her records] . . . the year 2025." A drecky 1970s pop single flashes into my mind: subscription to . . . [she checks her records] . . . the year 2025." A drecky 1970s pop single flashes into my mind: In the year twenty-five twenty-five, if man is still alive.... In the year twenty-five twenty-five, if man is still alive.... At that moment, I feel a desperate impulse to reach my arm through the telephone and inflict grievous bodily harm on that poor innocent customer service operator. At that moment, I feel a desperate impulse to reach my arm through the telephone and inflict grievous bodily harm on that poor innocent customer service operator.

"Look, I've got nothing against Bon Appet.i.t," Bon Appet.i.t," I plead. "It's a perfectly lovely magazine; that's why I already subscribe to it. That's not the point. I plead. "It's a perfectly lovely magazine; that's why I already subscribe to it. That's not the point. I want my Gourmet back." I want my Gourmet back."

A moment of silence at the other end, then a weary sigh. "Yes, ma'am. I understand. We're hearing that from a lot of our customers."

I have the feeling that if Conde Nast had listened to its readers instead of high-priced business consultants, that landmark culinary magazine-founded in 1949-would still be with us. (It still is is alive, in fact-at least online.) I reckon that once management has paid top dollar for consultants, they're pretty much obligated to follow that expensive advice, no matter how drastic. But still-terminate alive, in fact-at least online.) I reckon that once management has paid top dollar for consultants, they're pretty much obligated to follow that expensive advice, no matter how drastic. But still-terminate Gourmet Gourmet? It just doesn't make sense.

THE DEATH KNELL of Gourmet Gourmet hung gloomily over my head as I began reading for this 2010 collection. Was food writing a dying art, I wondered? hung gloomily over my head as I began reading for this 2010 collection. Was food writing a dying art, I wondered?

Yet the more I read, the more baffled I became. Maybe I'm not one-hundred-percent subjective-after all, I spend a goodly amount of time every year trying to read all the food writing that is produced, in books, magazines, newspapers, and Web sites. (Best job ever.) ever.) Still, I've been doing this for eleven years now, and from where I sit, food writing seems more robust than ever. Still, I've been doing this for eleven years now, and from where I sit, food writing seems more robust than ever.

Reading the flurry of articles that came out right after the announcement, I saw that the Conde Nast executives who shuttered Gourmet Gourmet were quick to blame the new media. The market for a culinary magazine has been steadily dwindling, they claimed, because readers nowadays generally pick up all their recipes on the internet. The very thought of this depressed me. And yet lo and behold, a few days later, I found my own teenage daughter sauntering into our kitchen, cradling her laptop, declaring that she'd found a recipe for blondies to bake for her basketball team. Could the Conde Nast suits be onto something, I wondered? were quick to blame the new media. The market for a culinary magazine has been steadily dwindling, they claimed, because readers nowadays generally pick up all their recipes on the internet. The very thought of this depressed me. And yet lo and behold, a few days later, I found my own teenage daughter sauntering into our kitchen, cradling her laptop, declaring that she'd found a recipe for blondies to bake for her basketball team. Could the Conde Nast suits be onto something, I wondered?

Over the new few months, as her baking hobby flowered (or should I say floured?), the long row of cookbooks on our counter went untouched while she downloaded recipe after recipe-cupcakes, s'more bars, snickerdoodles. But then her birthday came around, and lo and behold, she came home from a surprise birthday dinner loaded down with cute pastel-colored cookbooks, courtesy of her girlfriends (smart girls, to keep the stream of baked goods flowing). She's been happily discovering new recipes out of them ever since.

The reality? Those quick-and-easy recipe sites could never be a satisfying replacement for Gourmet, Gourmet, not by a long shot. Sometimes we need the gorgeous photographs, the colorful writing-and yes, the glossy ads to flip through. And the more I read, the more I sensed that serious foodies demand more than ever that a recipe be meticulously tested, as the not by a long shot. Sometimes we need the gorgeous photographs, the colorful writing-and yes, the glossy ads to flip through. And the more I read, the more I sensed that serious foodies demand more than ever that a recipe be meticulously tested, as the Gourmet Gourmet test kitchen did so superbly; they want at least a little write-up, to give the recipe context, to explain the food's history. I realized that it was time to add a new section to the book, test kitchen did so superbly; they want at least a little write-up, to give the recipe context, to explain the food's history. I realized that it was time to add a new section to the book, The Recipe File The Recipe File, to compare and contrast different takes on this question, from Adam Gopnik's essay on browsing through cookbooks (page 264), to Monica Bhide's reflections on the value of simplicity in a recipe (page 294).

It's so easy to blame the internet for everything-the death of good writing, the death of measured thought, the death of the printed word, blah blah blah. The truth is, a great deal of today's best food writing is being published online, on a proliferating number of serious food Web sites. With production costs eliminated (no paper, no printing press, no trucks hauling physical copies across the country), these sites can devote themselves to smart writing. With readers posting comments online, articles launch conversations; on timely topics, stories can be published immediately. My must-read list now includes chow.com, egullet.com, culinate.com, leitesculinaria.com, seriouseats.com, zesterdaily.com, among others. Nearly a dozen of the pieces selected for this year's edition were published first on Web sites-and that doesn't even begin to dip into the crazy number of independent blogs out there, or the many online components posted by traditional print media.

Food writing has moved out of its "ghetto," no longer confined to food magazines or the dining sections of newspapers (once referred to as "the women's pages"). Such general interest magazines as The New Yorker The New Yorker, The Oxford American The Oxford American, The New York Times The New York Times magazine, and magazine, and salon.com have all gone so far as to set up annual food issues. Even the esteemed Atlantic Monthly magazine has added an entire section for food issues (dubbed the Atlantic Food Channel) on have all gone so far as to set up annual food issues. Even the esteemed Atlantic Monthly magazine has added an entire section for food issues (dubbed the Atlantic Food Channel) on atlantic.com. A well-established core of professional food writers is thriving nowadays, getting more mainstream respect than ever. Jonathan Gold, page 68, broke the barrier first by winning a Pulitzer Prize-and I'll bet he will soon be followed by others.

Indeed, provocative food journalism has never been more widely read, with food matters increasingly on the public's mind-thanks not only to Michael Pollan's bestsellers, but to solid reporting by journalists such as Jane Black (page 175), Kim Severson (page 329), and former Gourmet Gourmet contributor Barry Estabrook (page 34). That may be a chicken-and-egg situation-reporting whips up concern, which in turn creates more of an audience for more reporting, and on and on in an upwards spiral. Whatever the cause, the section that leads off this book, contributor Barry Estabrook (page 34). That may be a chicken-and-egg situation-reporting whips up concern, which in turn creates more of an audience for more reporting, and on and on in an upwards spiral. Whatever the cause, the section that leads off this book, Food Fights Food Fights, seems to overflow every year. This year, I found the carnivores and vegetarians still duking it out (as if that issue could ever be settled), but several other stories reveal an interesting backlash against the locavore trend (check out Jonathan Kauffman's comparison of locavores to indie rockers, page 16, or Brett Martin's lunatic plan to become a "global-vore," page 2) and a pushback against restaurant ratings-whether compiled by critics, chef judges, or "ordinary" diners.

These days, fluff is out and substance is in. Just look at The Food Network, which had long been trending toward puffy entertainment programs. This year, however, its executives launched a second channel, the Cooking Channel, that puts the focus back on hands-on cooking and kitchen technique (which is where food television began, after all-remember Julia Child?).

When you get right down to it, food writing can't be a dying art when there are so many talented pract.i.tioners of the art working at the top of their game. While no one writer has made it into all eleven editions of Best Food Writing Best Food Writing, this year's edition features 11 writers whose work merited inclusion five or more times in that 11-year span. That's a broad range of writers, from New Englander John Thorne (page 251, nine times) and quintessential Southerner John T. Edge (page 163, also nine times) to the humor of David Leite (page 290, eight times) and the gonzo restaurant reviews of Jason Sheehan (page 149, eight times). But to really judge the state of food writing today, just look at how many new voices are in this year's book. A handful of these, of course, are topnotch writers known for fiction or other nonfiction subjects, who only occasionally turn their attention to food-writers like Adam Gopnik (page 264), Charlotte Freeman (page 276), Wright Thompson (page 286), and Jonathan Safran Foer (page 38). Yet with 22 of the writers in this year's Best Food Writing Best Food Writing-nearly half of the contributors-being first-time entrants, that's a lot of dynamic new food writers. They include J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (page 241), Oliver Strand (page 227), Mike Sula (page 192), Rowan Jacobsen (page 170), Kevin Pang (page 81), and Rachel Wharton (page 157), not to mention guys with a wholly different day job, such as William Alexander (page 232) and Robert d.i.c.kinson (page 203).

My conclusion? We may still have to mourn Gourmet Gourmet's demise, but the rumors of food writing's death have been greatly exaggerated. I'd go even farther-I think food writing is enjoying a spectacular moment in the spotlight. May it last forever!

Food Fights

THE FEDEX MEAL PLAN.

By Brett Martin From GQ GQ

Throwing locavore virtue and carbon footprint caution to the winds, Brett Martin embarked on a quixotic-and very funny-project: To feed himself exclusively with delicacies overnighted from around the globe.

One should never underestimate the value of having friends whose first reaction, when you tell them you need two In-N-Out burgers FedExed from Los Angeles to New York by the next morning, is to ask, "Regular or Double-Double?" These are the kind of people with whom you'd be happy to share either a foxhole or a beer, the kind you know would be willing to follow you into any drunkenly conceived, willfully contrary, possibly wrongheaded, and certainly obnoxious scheme you'd manage to dream up. I happen to have such friends (their names are Oliver and Sarah), and I happened to have had such a scheme. It was this: To get as many foods as possible, from all over the world, sent overnight via FedEx to my home in Brooklyn.

The idea came to me in the midst of one of those morose funks that occur after coming home from a long trip. In this case, I had just returned from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was moping about the house, dreaming of days spent stuffing myself with a mix of Chinese, Indian, and Malay delicacies unavailable anywhere else in the world.

Or were they? I suddenly thought, snapping awake. Unavailable? What did that even mean in these modern times? After all, there is a network of couriers crisscrossing the globe twenty-four hours a day and promising that anything can be anywhere within a matter of hours. So if I craved a bowl of pork noodles of the sort sold on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, why would I need to do something as old-fas.h.i.+oned as actually I suddenly thought, snapping awake. Unavailable? What did that even mean in these modern times? After all, there is a network of couriers crisscrossing the globe twenty-four hours a day and promising that anything can be anywhere within a matter of hours. So if I craved a bowl of pork noodles of the sort sold on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, why would I need to do something as old-fas.h.i.+oned as actually visiting visiting Kuala Lumpur? International s.h.i.+pping may be pricey, but as a way to stay connected to the tastes of the planet during lean times, it seems downright affordable. Kuala Lumpur? International s.h.i.+pping may be pricey, but as a way to stay connected to the tastes of the planet during lean times, it seems downright affordable.

But hold on, I hear you say, doesn't this fly in the face of every single thing going on in the food world? Aren't all right-minded eaters supposed to be eating locally, seasonally, and sustainably, with exquisite sensitivity to each ingredient's provenance, genetic heritage, and carbon footprint?

Well, yes. And the truth is that this made the prospect all the sweeter. It's not that I don't believe in local and seasonal eating. Clearly, the food revolution of the past two decades has made eating in America a better experience for mouth, belly, and conscience alike. The thing is, the revolutionaries have won. Ask any young chef for his or her culinary philosophy and you'll hear localandseasonal localandseasonal rattled off so fast the actual words lose all meaning. Even behemoths like McDonald's and Walmart have made concessions to the values of Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. rattled off so fast the actual words lose all meaning. Even behemoths like McDonald's and Walmart have made concessions to the values of Alice Waters and Michael Pollan.

Obviously, the local eating orthodoxy can produce some astonis.h.i.+ng food. At Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Dan Barber's restaurant-c.u.m-farm in Westchester County, New York, I had a midwinter dinner that, as far as I could tell, eschewed even such alien ingredients as lemon and black pepper. The meal was very beige and utterly transcendent. But like any other true belief that morphs into a tired buzzword, it's worth taking a step back to note how, in the hands of lesser talents, this one may be abused: by the restaurateurs who believe that having a chalkboard menu crammed with farm names is more important than such incidentals as serving well-prepared, delicious food. By the chefs who equate the word local local with a chance to up a dish's price by $10. By those who would deny us the joy of acknowledging that we live in a gastronomic Age of Miracles. (Tomatoes in January? In biblical times, you could get five or six apostles for less.) And by the just plain silly; it was about the time that my local bar started listing Blue Diamond Almonds on its snack menu with the added parenthetical "(Sacramento)" that it became clear that local, seasonal, and their attendant food pieties had jumped the line-caught, fair-trade, National Marine Fisheries Service-approved mako shark. with a chance to up a dish's price by $10. By those who would deny us the joy of acknowledging that we live in a gastronomic Age of Miracles. (Tomatoes in January? In biblical times, you could get five or six apostles for less.) And by the just plain silly; it was about the time that my local bar started listing Blue Diamond Almonds on its snack menu with the added parenthetical "(Sacramento)" that it became clear that local, seasonal, and their attendant food pieties had jumped the line-caught, fair-trade, National Marine Fisheries Service-approved mako shark.

And the fact remains that, at Blue Hill, I had paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege of enacting a ma.s.sive historical reversal. For the rest of human existence, as Felipe Fernandez-Armesto points out in Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food, one mark of a great empire has been the diversity of its ingredients and the distances they traveled to get to the elite. The Greeks and Romans filled their tables with spices, fruits, and fish from the farthest reaches of their dominions. Peter the Great had oysters brought to then landlocked Russia from thousands of miles away, packed in sawdust and hay. The British once cooled their gin-and-tonics in Calcutta with ice cut from Ma.s.sachusetts ponds.

Moreover, the movement of food across vast distances is literally the story of civilization: Science, mathematics, religion, language-all were carried around the world in s.h.i.+ps' holds filled with bread-fruit, amid camel caravans carrying spices, even (or especially) in s.h.i.+pping containers crammed with frozen McDonald's beef. Locavore Locavore may have been the 2007 may have been the 2007 New Oxford American Dictionary New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year, but there's already been a word for those whose diets are restricted to seasonal items grown in their immediate area: That word is Word of the Year, but there's already been a word for those whose diets are restricted to seasonal items grown in their immediate area: That word is peasant peasant.

Which, anyway, is what I told myself at 8:30 A.M. when the doorbell rang and I signed for a miraculous purple-white-and-orange package containing two slightly wilted but-or was it my imagination?-still warm In-N-Out Double-Doubles.

HERE WERE MY CRITERIA: I would only order foods that were distinctly of their place. They would have to be meals meals-prepared dishes that, in the past, I would have been obliged to travel to distant lands to taste, or taste again. My dream list included bollito mis...o...b..llito misto from Ristorante Diana in Bologna, Italy-dripping cuts of meat boiled together in a rich stock and served with spicy fruit mustards; m.u.f.fuletta sandwiches from New Orleans's Central Grocery Co.; Allen & Son Barbeque's North Carolina pulled pork; parsley-and-marrow salad from St. John Restaurant in London; from Ristorante Diana in Bologna, Italy-dripping cuts of meat boiled together in a rich stock and served with spicy fruit mustards; m.u.f.fuletta sandwiches from New Orleans's Central Grocery Co.; Allen & Son Barbeque's North Carolina pulled pork; parsley-and-marrow salad from St. John Restaurant in London; tonkatsu tonkatsu from Tokyo; the Malaysian noodles. from Tokyo; the Malaysian noodles.

I suppose I expected the food purveyors of the world to hear my plan, join hands, sing a round of "It's a Small World," and make haste for the nearest FedEx drop box. This may have been a touch naive. For one thing, I do not know the words for "obnoxious scheme" in Italian or j.a.panese. Even in English, the mission proved a hard sell. "That is not something we could possibly do," the general manager of St. John politely told me. A Bolognese friend living in Brazil burned up his Skype account trying to find a willing partner for me in Italy. "How to FedEx a bollito mis...o...b..llito misto . . . this is a very difficult thing to explain," he reported sorrowfully. My contact in Toulouse, France, from whom I'd hoped to procure some ca.s.soulet, had only this to say: "Clearly you are not familiar with the French." . . . this is a very difficult thing to explain," he reported sorrowfully. My contact in Toulouse, France, from whom I'd hoped to procure some ca.s.soulet, had only this to say: "Clearly you are not familiar with the French."

Old Europe, though, was nothing compared with the legal issues here at home. The great traders of old dealt with sandstorms and tsunamis; they crossed mountain ranges and dodged pirates. My challenge was to navigate something called the Animal Product Manual Animal Product Manual, a publication of the United States Department of Agriculture. I would have rather had pirates.

At 931 pages, filled with more acronyms than a Tom Clancy novel and more appendixes than a hospital Dumpster, the APM APM suggests a national strategy of protectionism through sheer confusion. The regulations on receiving gifts of food from foreign countries are buried somewhere among categories like "Powdered Bird Guano That Lacks Certification" and "Commercial Importations of Cooked Meat or Meat Products of Poultry and Fowl from a Country or Region of Origin Known to Be Free from HPAI (H5N1) but Affected with END." What little I could decipher was not promising: Malaysia, it seemed, was, by USDA standards, a veritable pit of disease, home to "Cla.s.sical Swine Fever, Exotic New-castle Disease, Foot and Mouth Disease, Highly Contagious Avian Influenza and Swine Vesicular Disease." It was amazing I'd even gotten out alive. Sweden was hardly better. That meant that, even for those dishes allowed into the United States, each ingredient would need to be accompanied by reams of paperwork. When I got USDA senior staff veterinarian Christopher Robinson on the phone to a.s.sess my plan, he cut handily through the bureaucrat-speak : "I'd say it was pretty much impossible," he said. suggests a national strategy of protectionism through sheer confusion. The regulations on receiving gifts of food from foreign countries are buried somewhere among categories like "Powdered Bird Guano That Lacks Certification" and "Commercial Importations of Cooked Meat or Meat Products of Poultry and Fowl from a Country or Region of Origin Known to Be Free from HPAI (H5N1) but Affected with END." What little I could decipher was not promising: Malaysia, it seemed, was, by USDA standards, a veritable pit of disease, home to "Cla.s.sical Swine Fever, Exotic New-castle Disease, Foot and Mouth Disease, Highly Contagious Avian Influenza and Swine Vesicular Disease." It was amazing I'd even gotten out alive. Sweden was hardly better. That meant that, even for those dishes allowed into the United States, each ingredient would need to be accompanied by reams of paperwork. When I got USDA senior staff veterinarian Christopher Robinson on the phone to a.s.sess my plan, he cut handily through the bureaucrat-speak : "I'd say it was pretty much impossible," he said.

Indeed, while I can't vouch for dirty bombs, bales of heroin, or hordes of illegal aliens, I can report that our nation is perfectly safe from rogue s.h.i.+pments of suckling pig. That's what I had coming in from the restaurant Ibu Oka in Ubud, Bali, where the pigs are stuffed to bursting with shallots, garlic, lemongra.s.s, and chilies, bathed in coconut oil, and then hand-turned before a blazing pyre of coffee branches. The beauty of that description left customs agents at JFK unmoved: The s.h.i.+pment was destroyed. Likewise the noodles from KL. And a s.h.i.+pment of cotechino cotechino and tortellini from Italy. I began picturing my house as one of those little bases in Missile Command: Packages of delicious food came arcing toward my door from around the world, only to get zapped at the last moment by authorities at various ports of entry. and tortellini from Italy. I began picturing my house as one of those little bases in Missile Command: Packages of delicious food came arcing toward my door from around the world, only to get zapped at the last moment by authorities at various ports of entry.

CLEARLY, ANOTHER APPROACH was needed. But while I plotted, I contented myself with domestic goodies.

I am convinced that we are evolutionarily equipped with a gene that makes us forget the taste of North Carolina barbecue, just so we continue to eat lesser foods in between pulled-pork sandwiches. The tub of Allen & Son pulled pork that showed up at my door was every bit as good in Brooklyn as it had been the last time I'd gorged on it at the restaurant's vinyl-covered tables in Chapel Hill. In college my friends and I had stonedly fantasized about being able to be faxed a pizza. This wasn't quite that level of instant gratification, but it was d.a.m.ned close. Even the hush puppies worked well when reheated, though owner and eponymous "Son" Keith Allen had categorically refused to send coleslaw, saying it wouldn't survive the trip in a condition up to Allen & Son standards. "Sometimes I worry about you northern boys," he told me.

From New Orleans came the m.u.f.fuletta, a stacked sheaf of sliced Italian meats and sharp provolone stuck between enormous rounds of bread and topped with olive relish. Central Grocery would only send frozen batches of three, but they arrived in surprisingly perfect shape. From New Mexico came a Tupperware container of green-chili enchiladas from a legendary shack of a diner called El Farolito; from Kansas City, Missouri, an order of Arthur Bryant's "burnt ends," the most grizzled, succulent parts of a smoked brisket.

When a friend said, "You're pretty much obliged to get something from Chez Panisse," a s.h.i.+ver went up my spine. Alice Waters's Berkeley restaurant is considered the very cradle of the localandseasonal localandseasonal movement. When I asked them to FedEx me a dinner, I was told, with just a hint of Northern California frost, "We don't do takeout." Undeterred, I dragooned a friend who happened to be visiting the Bay Area into visiting for dinner, ordering an extra entree, and then s.h.i.+pping me the doggie bag. The short ribs with polenta were delicious but unmistakably tinged with guilt. I felt like I had just peed on Jacques Pepin. movement. When I asked them to FedEx me a dinner, I was told, with just a hint of Northern California frost, "We don't do takeout." Undeterred, I dragooned a friend who happened to be visiting the Bay Area into visiting for dinner, ordering an extra entree, and then s.h.i.+pping me the doggie bag. The short ribs with polenta were delicious but unmistakably tinged with guilt. I felt like I had just peed on Jacques Pepin.

Meanwhile I thought I'd solved my international-s.h.i.+pping issues. It occurred to me that the USDA doesn't police fish, so I switched to an all-seafood menu, carefully avoiding any knowledge of ingredients like chicken stock and b.u.t.ter to preserve deniability when it came to customs forms. From Stockholm's great fish emporium, Melanders Fisk, I ordered fatty Baltic herr ing-stromming-pickled, and then breaded and fried. Then I breathlessly watched the FedEx tracking page. Sure enough, after a short delay at JFK, the package was released. Emboldened, my Malaysian contact and I switched to a noodle dish that seemed to pa.s.s the USDA test-prawn mee, a deeply spicy, complex seafood soup. I watched as it was picked up in KL, cleared Malaysian customs, and took wing across the Pacific. The next morning, it reached Anchorage and then . . . stopped, held for inspection.

The herring, on the other hand, had arrived accompanied by tiny plastic containers of dill-laced mashed potatoes, lingonberry preserves, and drawn b.u.t.ter. (Oops.) It was delicious, but standing and eating in my kitchen, once the FedEx man had departed, I felt my vague misgivings begin to solidify. Was the stromming really as good as when I'd had it as a picnic on an island just north of Stockholm, drenched in suns.h.i.+ne and surrounded by happy, pink vacationing families? By the same token, the m.u.f.fuletta had been a fantastic sandwich, but did it really measure up to the one I'd had in New Orleans years before-the time I'd snuck out of the hotel while my girlfriend napped to greedily down a sandwich between the second of two lunches and a dinner at Galatoire's? Cervantes may have said that hunger was the best sauce, but context runs a close second.

I was even more conflicted about the dishes from places I hadn't been hadn't been. For years I'd planned on making the trip to Kansas City to visit Arthur Bryant's. Now, why would I ever go to Kansas City? Or to the lonely high-desert crossroads where El Farolito sits? Even the ma.s.sive carbon footprint of the sourdough loaf I'd had sent from San Francisco wasn't quite enough to a.s.suage my melancholy at having never been to San Francisco. I wondered if Peter the Great dreamt of standing knee-deep in the Atlantic, gathering his own oysters.

This, I realized, is the dark side of the miracle of everything, everywhere, all the time-something we experience in realms well beyond food. Once upon a time, I would wait for the chance to hear Bessie Banks's original version of "Go Now." Banks's version would come on the radio about once every two years. Each time I happened to catch it, I would all but have to pull the car over to let her stirring, wounded vocal wash over me. Now, of course, I own a digital copy of the song, but I have to keep it off my iTunes playlist for fear of it popping up on shuffle too often and losing all meaning. For that matter, there's the rush of emotion that occurs every time a long-lost friend suddenly pops up on Facebook, which is so frequently that I've been forced to either stop caring or lose whole days in a paralysis of nostalgic reverie. For all its legitimate political, environmental, and gastronomic rationales, it may be that the localandseasonal localandseasonal movement is more about this, ultimately conservative, impulse than anything else-a self-protective retrenchment in the face of too much available data. movement is more about this, ultimately conservative, impulse than anything else-a self-protective retrenchment in the face of too much available data.

I HAD ONE MORE free-floating bit of data out there, one more missile aimed at my front door. Day after day, I tracked the status of my prawn mee, prawn mee, greeted each time by the dread message: clearance delay. By the time it arrived, it had been a week since it was packed, some 10,000 miles away. greeted each time by the dread message: clearance delay. By the time it arrived, it had been a week since it was packed, some 10,000 miles away.

Unwilling to give up the dream, I called the Customs and Border Protection office in Anchorage. Had the package been refrigerated? I asked the woman who picked up the phone. No, she said, it had probably just sat in a fenced-in portion of the warehouse.

Hmm. What temperature would she say it was?

"Um, this is Alaska. It's pretty cold," she said. "I sometimes wear a sweater in there."

Dear reader, is it weird that I still thought long and hard about eating the soup? Even though the package was starting to smell downright funky? Well, consider this: The last time I'd smelled prawn mee prawn mee had been at a sidewalk market filled with had been at a sidewalk market filled with all kinds all kinds of smells-cooking meat, fermented fish paste, ripe-to-bursting melons, tropical flowers. Maybe the funky aroma had been just one perfectly healthy note in the symphony? More to the point, isn't that where it belonged? of smells-cooking meat, fermented fish paste, ripe-to-bursting melons, tropical flowers. Maybe the funky aroma had been just one perfectly healthy note in the symphony? More to the point, isn't that where it belonged?

I'd like to think that it was this, rather than fear of salmonella, that brought my experiment to an end. I took a deep breath and dumped the soup down the sink. I took care to bale up the FedEx box for recycling. Then I went out for a slice of pizza.

FORGOTTEN FRUITS.

By Gary Paul Nabhan From Saveur Saveur

In his 2001 book Coming Home To Eat, Coming Home To Eat, chronicling a year of eating only out of his own Arizona foodshed, Gary Nabhan established himself as a leader of the local-eating movement. Here he trumpets the virtues of heirloom fruits and vegetables. chronicling a year of eating only out of his own Arizona foodshed, Gary Nabhan established himself as a leader of the local-eating movement. Here he trumpets the virtues of heirloom fruits and vegetables.

The morning sun is just peeking over the ridges of the Great Smoky Mountains when my friend Jim Veteto and I spot a tall, old-looking apple tree arching over the side of the road. We swerve our rented PT Cruiser to the shoulder and get out. I'm hoping that these apples are Nickajacks, a rare variety that's native to the highlands of western North Carolina, so I climb onto the hood of the car and reach as high as I can, to no avail. Jim, who is quite a bit taller than I am, climbs up next to me and, with a little bounce, s.n.a.t.c.hes a low-hanging fruit. He holds it up for inspection. I can tell from its color and irregular shape that it's not the apple we were searching for.

"It kind of looks like a Mudhole," I say, referring to a type once known in these parts for making excellent apple b.u.t.ter. I take a bite. Nope, this one is creamier, with whiter flesh. It's probably just one of the countless unnamed apple varieties you find in the wild around here.

"That's the dilemma," Jim says, as we get back in the car. "There are so many heirloom varieties that have adapted to the micro climates up here, it's hard to identify them." Jim, a lanky, bearded 35-year-old, knows a lot about heirloom fruits and vegetables. He works with the Southern Seed Legacy in Athens, Georgia, an organization devoted to preserving the seeds of heirloom plants in order to restore some of the genetic diversity that industrial agriculture has eroded over the years.

On this trip, though, we're looking for forgotten fruits, not seeds. We're on a late-summer apple search-and-rescue mission in the mountains of North Carolina for a program I started five years ago called Renewing America's Food Traditions (RAFT). With the help of Slow Food USA and six other national organizations, RAFT aims to restore foods and culinary customs that are at risk of disappearing. Apples are at the top of our list because hundreds of varieties have become extinct in recent decades, their unique physical attributes and tastes basically erased. For a food that is as iconic and as essential to the American culinary canon as the apple, it's tragic that only 11 varieties-out of the estimated 14,000 that evolved from the seeds English settlers brought to North America from Europe-const.i.tute 90 percent of all apple consumption in the United States.

The remaining 10 percent includes heirloom apples of all shapes and sizes-some gnarly and spotted and downright ugly, others with graceful silhouettes and glossy skin. Some are honey sweet; others have a lip-puckering, tannic tartness; still others fall somewhere in between, offering subtle hints of flavors most people may never have tasted in an apple. They have names like Gloria Mundi, Seek-No-Further, Ohio Nonpareil, Brushy Mountains Limbertwig, and s.h.i.+awa.s.see Beauty, to name just a few. The problem is that fewer and fewer of these fruits are commercially available, as one small orchard after another is let go to seed and the names of the old varieties are forgotten. The trees themselves may survive, in the wild or on private property, but the histories of their fruit are often a mystery.

That's one reason why I'm driving the country roads of North Carolina with Jim: I'm meeting up with locals who can help me identify and revive some of these old varieties. This part of Appalachia-particularly the region known as the Southern Highlands, which encompa.s.ses the Blue Ridge, Great Smoky, and parts of the c.u.mberland and Allegheny mountain ranges-is one of the richest apple habitats in the country. Today, somewhere between 800 and 1,000 distinct heirloom varieties still grow in the area's hills, coves, and hollers-more kinds, by some counts, than are found in all the other regions of North America combined.

Not surprisingly, the cooks of Appalachia have strong preferences for specific varieties-one kind for eating fresh, another kind for applesauce, another for pie, and so on-that are different from the tastes of their Northern neighbors. "In the North, they eat a tart and cook a sweet. Here in the South, it runs the other way," one North Carolina orchard owner tells us. "I love a tart Jonathan in a pie, but those Yankees might use an apple as sweet as a Golden Delicious." What's more, Appalachian cooks use apples in some altogether remarkable ways. Outside Appalachia, you just aren't going to find so many people inclined to make fried apple pies, cook sliced apples with chopped cabbage, spread applesauce between layers of mola.s.ses cake, stew sun-dried apples, or dip ringlike slices of apples in batter and fry them to make fritters.

TO PEOPLE LIKE ME, the disappearance of old apple varieties-like the die-off of an animal species-represents a profound loss, in terms not just of botanical diversity or rural cultural history but also of the way we eat. The striking, unusual flavors and cooking properties possessed by these heirloom apples simply don't exist in supermarket varieties. And yet, Jim reminds me, most people in the region don't refer to the apples growing in their midst as heritage breeds. "Most people around here have never heard the term heirloom heirloom applied to plants," Jim says. "They just call them old-timey apples." applied to plants," Jim says. "They just call them old-timey apples."

In the broadest sense, an heirloom apple is any distinct, named variety of the fruit that has been pa.s.sed down in a family, community, or culture for generations. To preserve an heirloom variety, it's not enough simply to save the seeds, though. Growing a genetically identical apple requires a concerted, calculated effort: you have to graft cuttings from one tree onto the rootstock of another. The reason for this is that seedling apple trees-those that grow in the wild from seed-produce fruit that's essentially a hybrid of their parents and therefore a new kind of apple. This explains why countless varieties of the fruit, believed to have originated in Kazakhstan thousands of years ago, have propagated around the world.

My trip in North Carolina with Jim is just the latest in a series of travels I've made with RAFT collaborators over the past few years to seek out, recruit, and learn from other Southern heirloom apple preservationists. These journeys have led me to forge friends.h.i.+ps with some remarkable people-orchard keepers, historians, cider makers, horticulturists, and others. Perhaps the most respected scholar among them is the North Carolina apple historian Creighton Lee Calhoun Jr., who spends the majority of his waking hours matching forgotten fruits to their names. Since he took up this pursuit, in 1982, he has discovered and identified a slew of apples formerly thought to be extinct, relying mostly on horticulture books, old nursery catalogues, and archival ill.u.s.trations. Calhoun, a soft-spoken 75-year-old, has also brought 300 heirloom varieties into cultivation at nurseries he consults with across the South.

In 1995 Calhoun published Old Southern Apples Old Southern Apples (McDonald & Woodward Publis.h.i.+ng Company), a lavishly ill.u.s.trated tome that has become a bible for apple preservationists. Not only does the volume present detailed descriptions of some 1,600 varieties, but it also brings to life the people and histories wrapped up with this food. He describes the significance of the apple in the rural South, where, before the days of refrigeration, it was the only fruit that could be kept through the cold months "to provide a taste of freshness." Of the elderly Southerners who helped him reclaim knowledge about heirloom apples, Calhoun writes, "They remember storing boxes of apples through the winter in unheated rooms . . . how those apples perfumed the whole house. They recall drying apple slices on a tin roof, and they can tell you how to make cider and vinegar. But most of all, they remember the incomparable taste of a freshly picked southern apple . . . baked right on the tree by those long, hot southern summers." (McDonald & Woodward Publis.h.i.+ng Company), a lavishly ill.u.s.trated tome that has become a bible for apple preservationists. Not only does the volume present detailed descriptions of some 1,600 varieties, but it also brings to life the people and histories wrapped up with this food. He describes the significance of the apple in the rural South, where, before the days of refrigeration, it was the only fruit that could be kept through the cold months "to provide a taste of freshness." Of the elderly Southerners who helped him reclaim knowledge about heirloom apples, Calhoun writes, "They remember storing boxes of apples through the winter in unheated rooms . . . how those apples perfumed the whole house. They recall drying apple slices on a tin roof, and they can tell you how to make cider and vinegar. But most of all, they remember the incomparable taste of a freshly picked southern apple . . . baked right on the tree by those long, hot southern summers."

Other apple preservationists I've met are more recent converts to the cause. One of them, Tom Brown, is a retired chemical engineer in his late 60s who lives in Clemmons, North Carolina. In 1998 he became obsessed with a juicy variety believed to be extinct called Harper's Seedling and has since tracked down at least seven locales near his home where those apples once grew; he took cuttings from a surviving tree in the area just before it died and grafted them onto trees on his property in hopes that, in a few years, he will have a steady supply of the delicious fruits. His hunt for Harper's Seedling has fueled a pa.s.sion for finding other forgotten varieties. These days, Brown estimates, he racks up at least 20,000 miles a year on Southern back roads, traveling as far as Kentucky,Virginia, and Tennessee to chase down leads given to him by old-timers at regional festivals, people who grew up with these apples and can remember their names and characteristics.

"Time is running out," Brown told me when I ran into him at the Forgotten Fruits Summit, the first annual powwow for apple preservationists, held in Madison,Wisconsin, last March. "I recently picked up a picture I had taken of the six folks who had helped me the most in my search for apples, and I realized that five of them had died."

At that same summit, I met up with another dedicated preservationist: an orchard owner from Boone, North Carolina, named Bill Moretz. His orchard was started by his grandfather in the 1930s and is now home to one of the country's first community supported agriculture projects devoted to promoting apple diversity. Once a week, his customers receive a bag of several different kinds of heirloom apples.

One of their favorites is the Sweet Dixon, a dessert apple that has red-striped skin and crisp, sugary-sweet flesh. The story behind the Sweet Dixon, which was widely thought to have disappeared, goes like this: Seventeen years ago Calhoun got wind that an elderly North Carolina woman had a huge old Sweet Dixon tree on her property that still produced fruit. By the time he arrived at her home to take cuttings, however, the tree had been cut down. Sensing Calhoun's disappointment, the woman managed to find another tree growing nearby, one she remembered from her childhood; he took cuttings and has been growing Sweet Dixons ever since. What Calhoun didn't know until years later-when he was asked by Moretz to identify an old tree growing near his barn-was that the same kind of apple had been growing on Moretz's property all along.

Toward the end of our North Carolina trip, Jim Veteto and I decide to visit Moretz at his orchard. When we arrive, he hands us a couple of Sweet Dixons straight from the tree to sample. Then he picks one for himself and takes a bite. "It's still green yet," Moretz says, "but you can taste all the sugars and the flavors developing." It is clearly one of his favorites, but Moretz, like many other orchard keepers dedicated to bringing back as many old varieties as they can, is reluctant to proclaim the flavor of any single apple to be better than that of others.

Moretz's orchard, which is home to 100 different varieties of apple, is a supremely serene place, a grid of tidily pruned trees in evenly s.p.a.ced rows that extend over rolling hills. The air is fragrant with fruit, and the gra.s.s underfoot is lush. Resisting the temptation to lie down right where I stand and soak up the scene, I follow Moretz as he makes his rounds, stopping before every other tree to examine its apples and the health of its bark, branches, and leaves.

Watching Moretz tend to his orchard of rare fruits, I come to the realization that it's more than nostalgia that drives people like him to keep such historic apple varieties alive. It's the sheer love of the food itself, in all its incarnations, and the joy of sharing them with friends and pa.s.sing them on to a new generation. "I grow them to embrace the future," he says to Jim and me before we leave. "But it's not enough just to grow them. You have to eat them, too."

AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF GERMAN b.u.t.tERb.a.l.l.s.

By Jonathan Kauffman From Seattle Weekly Seattle Weekly

Is the food world beginning to see a backlash against the buzzword "locavore"? Kauffman, former food editor for Seattle Weekly Seattle Weekly (he's now at (he's now at SF Weekly SF Weekly in San Francisco), dares to question how a food trend proliferates. in San Francisco), dares to question how a food trend proliferates.

Back in April 2004, Sage Van Wing, then a gra.s.s-fed-beef rancher and chicken farmer in northern California, read Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat Coming Home to Eat, a chronicle of his experiment to eat only food produced within a 200-mile radius of his Arizona home. "I thought, this guy did this for a year in the middle of the Southwest,"Van Wing says. "Surely it ought to be possible to do the same here. So I asked my friend Jessica [Prentice, a chef and cooking instructor] if she'd join in. We picked the easiest month of the year, August, and decided to stick to 100 miles." They got a few more friends to join in, and came up with a catchy word to describe their group: locavores locavores.

"Then we wrote a press release for the h.e.l.l of it," continues Van Wing, now off the ranch and living in Seattle. "We thought, why not invite other people to join us? Within the first couple of weeks, over 800 people had signed up for the challenge. We'd really tapped a vein." In 2007, locavore locavore was added to the Oxford American Dictionary. Van Wing and company's 100-mile-diet challenge sp.a.w.ned best sellers like Barbara Kingsolver's was added to the Oxford American Dictionary. Van Wing and company's 100-mile-diet challenge sp.a.w.ned best sellers like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, influenced thousands of menus, and p.i.s.sed off more than a few people, most of whom didn't realize that the 100-mile diet was meant to be a short-term thought exercise, not a barbed-wire perimeter. The local-foods movement continues to be the largest, most influential food trend in the country.

Those of us who now favor the local over the certified organic certainly do it out of deeply felt beliefs about how to spend our dollars, support producers we trust, protect our bodies from pesticides and E. coli E. coli, and preserve the planet. But the local-foods movement has also been wildly successful because it taps into the way the indie-rock generation forms its ever-s.h.i.+fting musical allegiances.

When I walk down East Thomas Street to the Broadway Farmers Market every Sunday, fold-up tote in hand, I'm not there to revamp the food system-I'm out to see what's new in the crates this week. Take the Olsen Farms Potatoes stand, with its ever-rotating supply of purple, red, yellow, and white lumps. I remember when Yukon Golds became the darling of early-1990s bistros, but at Olsen's stand I pa.s.s them over in favor of varieties like German b.u.t.terball, Maris Piper, or Mountain Rose. Never heard of something before? It's going into the little red bag.

When I went seed shopping for the first time this year at City People's in Madison Valley, there were shelves and shelves of Sweet 1000s and Early Girls, which are proven to work in the Northwest climate. But of course City People's doesn't stock only the tried-and-true-there's also a set of rarities for foodie hipsters and the early adopters like me. I spotted a tag on a tomato start that two of my my friends had just been raving about. There! That was going to be my tomato. Should the slugs not intervene, I foresee a day when I bring my friends fist-size, bright-red tomatoes. Oh, that? I'll say offhandedly. It's a Moskvits. Heard of it? I grew it myself. friends had just been raving about. There! That was going to be my tomato. Should the slugs not intervene, I foresee a day when I bring my friends fist-size, bright-red tomatoes. Oh, that? I'll say offhandedly. It's a Moskvits. Heard of it? I grew it myself.

Trumpeting a band you're devoted to-or a specific farm's lacinato kale-isn't just about love for the product. It's about making the product part of you. In his book Buying In Buying In, the New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine columnist Rob Walker writes about the rise of micro-brands like Barking Irons, whose T-s.h.i.+rts have made it into columnist Rob Walker writes about the rise of micro-brands like Barking Irons, whose T-s.h.i.+rts have made it into Barney's Barney's , , GQ GQ, and People People. If you're a Barking Irons consumer, Walker says, the important thing isn't to advertise your possession of the brand to the general public. It's to be recognized by other people who are clued in to the exclusive nature of Barking Irons. Even more important is that when you wear the T-s.h.i.+rt, you you know you're a member of that elite. The effect reminds me of the tiny pins I affixed to my coats in high school, laying out the contours of my (social) ident.i.ty as if I were drafting my own astrological chart. know you're a member of that elite. The effect reminds me of the tiny pins I affixed to my coats in high school, laying out the contours of my (social) ident.i.ty as if I were drafting my own astrological chart.

In an age when we're trained from birth to acknowledge brands-and everything becomes a brand-my Moskvits tomato is yet another one. When I dice it up with a bunch of onions and herbs to make salsa fresca, who's going to know that it's a Moskvits? Only me and a few other people in the know. That's a huge part of its appeal.