New Culinary Books I'm Excited About
On foraged cocktails, native California foodways & a Noma magazine.
The following books have all been recently released or will be published soon. Most are available for sale on Amazon (or better yet Bookshop).
Slow Drinks: A Field Guide to Foraging and Fermenting Seasonal Sodas, Botanical Cocktails, Homemade Wines, and More by Danny Childs
Danny Childs, who I’m going to have on the podcast soon, did anthropological field work with the Shipibo and Mapuche in South America and is currently the beverage director at the Farm and Fisherman Tavern in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I was sent a PDF of this book earlier in the year and I think I have used it more than any other cocktail or drinks book I have ever used. Slow Drinks is an incredible manual for utilizing seasonal produce and botanicals, many of them wild and foraged, to make ingredients for cocktails and alcohol-free alternatives without over-complicating them, like making orgeat from chestnuts or a shrub from paw paws. Order here.
Release date: October 3.
70 Años de Crónicas Gastronómicas by La Academia Venezolana de Gastronomía
Seventy years of some of the best food writing in Venezuela has been compiled into an anthology by the La Academia Venzolana de Gastronomía. In the editorial note, Sergio Dahbar states so elegantly: "From regional cuisines to paradigmatic elaborations of signature dishes of Venezuelan cuisine; from well-deserved tributes to wise men who left (Scanonne, Lovera) to the flavors that immigrants brought to Venezuela; from the relationship of sex with gastronomy to the art of a Cartesian paella; from the chronicle of a restaurant that was a corner of socialites in a skyscraper in Parque Central to the virtuosities of Venezuelan cocoa and rum. A careful reading of these pages sheds light on an immortal truth: all gastronomy is the sum of identities that intersect in the landscape." The stories are told by various writers, journalists, chroniclers, chefs and historians, such as Rafael Cartay, Miro Popic, Ivanova Decán Gambús, Ocarina Castillo, Sasha Correa, Otto Gómez Pernía, Nidal Barake and Vladimir Viloria. Six of the texts are from the renowned writer Rosanna Di Turi, who passed away earlier this year.
Download for free here.
Release date: Available now.
Chími Nu'am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen by Sara Calvosa Olson
There is a shortage of books about indigenous cuisines in the Americas, especially outside academia, so this book about California’s native foodways is a great addition. I’m especially curious about the special section on acorn processing and mindful sourcing. Order here.
Release date: Already out.