Product Description

What makes good food good? When Edward Behr sets out to answer that question, his quest leads from the seemingly prosaic properties of salt and pepper to the differences among vanilla of different origins: Bourbon, Mexican, Tahitian. Plenty is written about food all the time, but only a little of that contributes to a fuller appreciation for and understanding of basic ingredients. Behr does that along with providing mouthwatering descriptions of flavors, textures, and aromas. In The Artful Eater, with intellectual curiosity and physical pleasure, Behr unveils the complexities of bean, roasting, and brewing that make a perfect cup of coffee. He investigates why some cream has much more dairy flavor than others, why gray salt tastes more intense than white, why some Southern country ham is on the same level as great Italian prosciutto. Behr investigates eggs, walnuts, wild and tame sorrel, Atlantic salmon, roast beef, and apples, among other foods. He enriches our enjoyment of eating by tracing the natural origins and cultural history of these foods. By consulting mustard seed brokers in Saskatchewan, mussels growers in Maine, ham curers in Kentucky, a spice merchant in Baltimore, and a walnut researcher in Bordeaux, Behr discovers truths about quality that are all but unknown. The Artful Eater contains a good measure of practical information--there are recipes and advice on the correct use and preparation of food. But at its heart the book is an appreciation of individual ingredients, the excellent raw materials on which all great food depends.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #547761 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Columns from Behr's quarterly newsletter The Art of Eating offer a lavish array of food lore--from a mussel primer to praise of Southern country ham--meticulously prepared and delightful to ingest. Illustrations.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
The title of this book, and of Behr's quarterly newsletter The Art of Eating, notwithstanding, the real subject of the essays collected here is not eating or cooking but food itself--or, more accurately, specific foods--and, in Behr's view, ``very good food, the best'': how it develops, how to choose it, and sometimes how it has vanished. In the first piece, he defends salt against health bureaucrats' ``alarmist guidelines''; in the last, he reports on Seattle's serious coffee culture; along the way, he laments the passing of good cream and discourses on such topics as the varieties of apples, the difference between black and white mustard seeds, the relative merits of vanilla beans and extract, the superiority of farmed mussels over wild, and how to get good ham (``Smithfield'' on the label no longer means much). It all seems to flow along with no particular direction, but Behr's research, both field and library, is purposive enough. Neither scientific like Harold McGee's investigations nor lively like Jim Thorne's Simple Cooking (also from a newsletter on food), these pieces are still undemanding enough for casual browsing and substantive enough for serious food mavens. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Edward Behr abandoned carpentry in 1986 to write about food. He is the editor of the highly respected and influential quarterly The Art of Eating.