The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten
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Book Reviews of The Man Who Ate Everything
Book Review: Best food book I've read so far
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the best foor book I've read so far. I learned a lot and was entertained.Book Review: A New Yorker's Views on What's Good to Eat
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is a collection of short essays by Jeffrey Steingarten, food columnist for Vogue magazine. The essays touch on topics such as who makes the best ketchup (and how to make your own), how to make perfect mashed potatoes, judging a barbecue contest, cooking with Olestra (the fake fat), and fruitcakes. There are research essays on health related topics such as the French Paradox, and the possibly over-rated dangers of eating salt. Steingarten also likes to do experimental research in his own kitchen, resulting in essays on topics like bread, french fries, or ice cream. Sometimes he works with exotic ingredients, and other times he experiments with creative uses for packaged processed foods. Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes for specific projects from the essays, but this is not a recipe book by any means. Sources are not cited at all, neither in the text, nor through endnotes or a bibliography. There is, however, an index.
Virtually all of the essays held my interest. Some of them led to some ah-ha moments, as he explains the science or culture behind favorite dishes that just don't always turn out well in my kitchen. Steingarten is a New Yorker through and through. He revels in being able to start an odd cooking project late at night, popping out if need be to 24-hour groceries to get that exotic ingredient that happens to be missing from his kitchen at the time when he needs it. He goes to great lengths to ensure proper cooking procedures for ultimate results, such as continuously monitoring and correcting the cooking temperature when boiling potatoes for mashing, or ordering freshly ground flour to be flown in special for his bread. This seems to be a rather city-oriented way of thinking about cooking. Out here in the country, I don't have time to monitor the temperature of my potato water, but I grow my own potatoes and know that the variety and age of the potatoes probably is much more significant for excellent mashed potatoes than the cooking temperature. To get fresh flour, I grind my own, and if I don't have an ingredient in the house when I begin a recipe, I substitute or change recipes rather than go right out and buy something. In sum, Steingarten's way of thinking about many topics is very much that of a consumer from the big city. While readers may not share that approach, the book is nonetheless interesting and informative.
The one chapter I was less than pleased with was the one on Olestra. Steingarten came across as being so thoroughly enamored with Olestra, it sounded as if he felt he had to say only positive things about the product because the manufacturer had been so generous in letting him play with it.
Book Review: A fascinating look at food around the world
Summary: 4 Stars
I came across Steingarten's book quite by accident. Pulled in by the title, I found myself absorbed from the first chapter in the witty and informative style of the book. It's a series of essays or articles on all the important food topics, such as bread, seafood, wine, and more. The thing I loved about it was his relentless commitment to researching. In the first chapter, he resolved to identify and conquer all his food prejudices.
In subsequent chapters, he goes to great lengths to learn all he can about a particular food-related topic, and he tests the ideas in his kitchen. My favorite chapter was the one on bread, or more specifically, his quest for the perfect levain, a type of bread made without yeast. He takes us through attempt after attempt in his kitchen until he gets it right, then reports that he and his wife ate nothing but the levain when it did come out right. What dedication to his craft!
Also highly enjoyable was his chapter on attempting to lose weight - I could really relate! As he discovered, however, some diets will make you lose your joy for food, which would be disastrous for him professionally.
You should read this book even if you don't usually read books like this, and get copies for all your relatives and friends who like to cook.
Book Review: Funny, informative and inspiring (to make you cook, that is)
Summary: 4 Stars
Despite the Oliver Sacks-like title, this is a culinary florilegium by the food critic of Vogue and Slate. I quote the New York Time Book Review, bowing to its laconic accuracy: "Part cookbook, part travelogue, part medical and scientific treatise." Steingarten is tireless in poring over the scientific research on nutrition and cooking, and clearly loves his subject as much as he loves to try the same recipe a dozen times, hunting for perfection. He praises the greatest cooking and the finest simple pleasures (McDonald's, barbecue), investigates everything from ketchup to salt to Kobe beef, and argues for common-sense nutrition. He kicks against the Food Police: salt doesn't raise blood pressure, sugar isn't that bad for you, alcohol is good for you once a day, etc. (His essay "Salad, the Silent Killer," even if it doesn't burst the bubbles of the Food Police, serves as wicked parody of obsessive toxin-phobia and fault-finding.) To top it all off, Steingarten writes very well and is at times wickedly funny. A great food read.Book Review: Highly informative and entertaining
Summary: 4 Stars
I had never heard of this author and had no expectations about what I was going to get when I read this book, and I loved it. It's full of interesting articles about why foods should be cooked certain ways (for example, how to cook potatoes for mashing so that they come out right and not gluey.) It tells stories about how to eat foods in certain cultures, and about new and interesting types of foods that you may never get to taste. There are also chapters where the author (and often his wife) review common foods such as ketchup - giving you descriptions of each brand and it's flavors and ingredients. The author has a quippy sense of humor that I found cute and relatively fresh - again, I had no expectations of what his style of humor was going to be. Apparently from reading some other reviews here there are people who like the author who feel that this book isn't his best work... but I recommend it to people who are unfamiliar with the author. A friend of mine started perusing my copy when she was over and later got her own.