THE LADY OF SHALLOTS

  Cross-posted at Reb's Reading Rants and Raves Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine by Sarah Lohman My rating: 5 of 5 stars The best food histories are just histories. Sarah Lohman captures a whole lot of history in narratives about eight flavors that she feels best define American cuisine: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, monosodium glutamate (MSG), and sriracha. I could feel my resistance when I read MSG, but it is worth quoting the book here: Today there’s a double standard when it comes to the perception of MSG. If it’s in Chinese takeout, it’s called MSG, and it’s like poison. But when MSG is utilized by high-end American chefs and brands, it referred to as “Umami" and it’s celebrated as revolutionary. Although [Kikunae] Ikeda named this taste umami in 1907, the designation wasn’t accepted officially by the scientific community until 2000, when taste receptors on the tongue were specifically identified for glutamate....

 CW: enslavement/trauma Cross-posted at Reb's Reading Rants and Raves The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty My rating: 5 of 5 stars A "journey" is an apropos description for this book. I won't even attempt to quantify the percentages of history, memoir, documentary, and food writing. Twitty manages to intertwine his personal story with a history of foodways and people that inextricably connects ancestry, personhood, and food in ways that left me contemplating my own complicated feelings about food and culture. As an adoptee, with two parents who have died, I've not cared to search too much into my own genealogy--I suspect in fear that somehow the cultures and stories into which I was adopted will become "less than." If fear is in the mix, I am even more humbled because this book is at times gritty reckoning with both Twitty's own ancestral history, and this country's foundat...