50 Foods: The Essentials of Good Taste

Author: Behr, Edward

Edition: First Edition

Features:

• A guide to deliciousness foods

Number Of Pages: 432

Details:

With 50 Foods, noted authority Edward Behr has created the definitive guide to the foods every food lover must know. A culinary Baedeker, 50 Foods will delight and inform the connoisseur as well as the novice.   Like Behr’s celebrated magazine, The Art of Eating, 50 Foods presents simple, practical information about buying, using, preparing, and enjoying. Behr focuses on aroma, appearance, flavor, and texture to determine what “the best” means for each food. He tells you how to select top quality—signs of freshness and ripeness, best season, top varieties, proper aging. If the way to prepare, serve, or eat something is little known, then he explains it (how to open an oyster, why the best way to cook green beans is boiling, how to clean a whole salted anchovy, when to eat and when to discard the rind of a cheese). Behr also names the most complementary foods and flavors for each of these fifty marvelous foods and the wines that go with them.   The fifty selections provide a broad sensory range for the modern gourmet. Most of the foods are raw materials, but some have been fermented or otherwise transformed—into bread, ham, cheese. Six of the fifty are cheeses. As Behr explains, cheese is probably the best food, as wine is the best drink. Behr argues that food tastes more delicious when it is closer to nature. Skilled low technology is almost always superior to high technology. But with scientific insight, the old methods can be refined to achieve more consistent high quality.   We can’t always have the best, but with the information in this book we can eat better every day. Knowing good food is part of a complete understanding of the world—part of a full enjoyment of nature, a full experience of the senses, a full life.   For the connoisseur at any level, 50 Foods is a beautifully written guide to deliciousness, with color illustrations by Mikel Jaso throughout. From Booklist Compacting the world’s myriad foods to an inventory of just 50 may prove a formidable task. But Behr is up to the challenge and makes compelling and intelligent arguments for each of his selections. Beef, lamb, and veal appear, as do seafood and vegetables, such as green beans, and even condiments, such as vinegar. Rarely is any of the enumerated foods eaten on its own, so Behr appends items whose flavors don’t simply complement but also generate synergies enhancing each. Behr’s tastes are particular but not fussy, although some of his prescriptions, such as avoiding combining oysters with lemon juice, fly in the face of convention. Behr chooses the best wines, where appropriate, to accompany each item on his list. Some favored wines will be familiar to connoisseurs only, but plenty abound on the shelves of any decently stocked wine merchant. This is equally a reference text and a book for foodies to savor. --Mark Knoblauch

Reviews:

The Wall Street Journal:

“In putting together  50 Foods, Mr. Behr has made use of his decades of interviewing farmers and wine producers and his travels in Europe and America. He has strong tastes and strong opinions, and his smart and evocative descriptions make for good reading. Stop at any entry, and he'll draw you in...it will be useful to both the novice and the conoisseur."  Los Angeles Times:

“Great reading."  The Minneapolis Star Tribune:

"For the reader who loves to burrow into a food book with as much enthusiasm as with a novel...It's a delightful book with beautiful design and clever illustrations from Mikel Jaso that will make you smile (at least I did)." The Daily Beast:

"One ingredient at a time, Edward Behr will change the way you eat for the better....Behr is after something more fundamental and elusive. He is after good taste. He is after questions that have animated humans since we could eat—why things taste good; what tastes best together; why we eat certain things at certain times, and so on. That is why, unlike the dozen or so brilliant, useful, and enticing cookbooks pub...

EAN: 9781594204517

Release Date: 31-10-2013

Languages: English

Item Note: Good shape with typical wear. Has a remainder mark. Hardcover Used - Very Good Ships fast! 2013First Edition

Item Condition: UsedVeryGood

Binding: Hardcover