New Books in 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 maki...

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 Leon...

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 med...

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 boo...