"john t. edge" news and stories

'Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking'
Craig Claiborne with foreword by John T. Edge and Georgeanna Milam
University of Georgia Press -- 2007 (originally published in 1987 by Clamshell Productions, Ltd.)
Buy it on Amazon

"It is not a question of chauvinism, but I have always averred that Southern cooking is by far the vastest and most varied of all traditional regional cooking in this country," wrote Craig Claiborne in the foreword to this pan-Southern paean to the cuisine of his childhood.

While Claiborne fled the physical South -- and his legendarily smothering mother, Miss Kathleen -- in favor of a stint in the Navy, hotel school in Switzerland and a multi-decade tenure as food editor of the New York Times, his palate remained staunchly attuned to the servant-cooked colloquial fare he'd enjoyed at his mother's boardinghouse.

What we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

California vintners defy tradition to make lighter, more delicate pinot noirs.

Food historian John T. Edge debuts his new series, United Tastes, which will explore changing American cuisine. This week he writes about the fabled Chinese cashew chicken of Missouri.

Michelle Obama champions healthy eating.

Those steak frites just got a little cheaper: Europe lowers their dining out tax.

A writer searches New York for an old-fashioned Irish pub, which he says is a rare commodity even in Ireland these days.

The Temporary Vegetarian makes mushroom and daikon soup.

The Minimalist makes emerald-flecked mashed potatoes, with dandelion greens.

A review of chef Marco Pierre White's new NBC cooking reality show, The Chopping Block. Just how will he crush the souls of his contestants?

Source

On any given day, I've said ten nice things about the Southern Foodways Alliance before it's even lunchtime. Today, there are pom-pon shakes, fist pumps and spirit fingers of glee at the news of their latest endeavor.

"Announcing SFA's Skillet Brigade

Roll up your sleeves and join SFA's Skillet Brigade. It's a new initiative, one designed to put our vision statement into action: To set a table where black and white, rich and poor, all who gather, may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

Show SFA spirit in your community. Don't think large scale; you don't need to rebuild a storm-damaged fried chicken restaurant. Think smaller scale, and work with an existing effort. Serve lunch at a soup kitchen. Staff the hospitality tent at your local farmers' market. Lend time and talents to the community food pantry." (Read more here.)

For folks unfamiliar with the SFA, they're a member-supported organization of 800+ academics, chefs, writers, and plain ol' food fans who've banded together to celebrate and preserve the food cultures of the American South via conferences, publications, documentary films, and general full-throated evangelism. Won't you please lend a spatula? It's for an awfully delicious cause.

[via: The Southern Foodways Alliance's Skillet Brigade]

Yesterday's All Things Considered featured a discussion with John T. Edge, food writer and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Today, Edge is having a "steak-off," a quest for, as he calls it a "transcendent, platonic hunk of beef." The talk turns to dry versus wet aging and Edge ultimately refers to Adam Perry Lang, formerly of Le Cirque and Daniel in New York City. Lang gives a good overview of dry aging, likening the process to a grape becoming a raisin. There's also the obligatory justification of the prices of dry aged meat. One detail I hadn't heard before was the benefit of dry aging multiple cuts in the same room. Lang says the aromas that develop in the room carry over from one cut to the next, almost like developing a sourdough starter.

[Thanks to John C.]