Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink

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Since its earliest days, "The New Yorker "has been a tastemaker literally. As the home of A. J. Liebling, Joseph Wechsberg, and M.F.K. Fisher, who practically invented American food writing, the magazine established a tradition that is carried forward today by irrepressible literary gastronomes, including Calvin Trillin, Bill Buford, Adam Gopnik, Jane Kramer, and Anthony Bourdain. Now, in this indispensable collection, "The New Yorker "dishes up a feast of delicious writing on food and drink, seasoned with a generous dash of cartoons.
Whether you re in the mood for snacking on humor pieces and cartoons or for savoring classic profiles of great chefs and great eaters, these offerings, from every age of The New Yorker s fabled eighty-year history, are sure to satisfy every taste. There are memoirs, short stories, tell-alls, and poems ranging in tone from sweet to sour and in subject from soup to nuts.

M.F.K. Fisher pays homage to cookery witches, those mysterious cooks who possess an uncanny power over food, while John McPhee valiantly trails an inveterate forager and is rewarded with stewed persimmons and white-pine-needle tea. There is Roald Dahl s famous story Taste, in which a wine snob s palate comes in for some unwelcome scrutiny, and Julian Barnes s ingenious tale of a lifelong gourmand who goes on a very peculiar diet for still more peculiar reasons. Adam Gopnik asks if French cuisine is done for, and Calvin Trillin investigates whether people can actually taste the difference between red wine and white. We journey with Susan Orlean as she distills the essence of Cuba in the story of a single restaurant, and with Judith Thurman as she investigates the arcane practices of Japan s tofu masters. Closer to home, Joseph Mitchell celebrates the old New York tradition of the beefsteak dinner, and Mark Singer shadows the city s foremost fisherman-chef.

Dining out: All you can hold for five bucks / Joseph Mitchell --
The finest butter and lots of time / Joseph Wechsberg --
A good appetite / A.J. Liebling --
The afterglow / A.J. Liebling --
Is there a crisis in French cooking? / Adam Gopnik --
Don't eat before reading this / Anthony Bourdain --
A really big lunch / Jim Harrison --
Eating in: The secret ingredient / M.F.K. Fisher --
The trouble with tripe / M.F.K. Fisher --
Nor censure nor disdain / M.F.K. Fisher --
Good cooking: / Calvin Tomkins --
Look back in hunger / Anthony Lane --
The reporter's kitchen / Jane Kramer --
Fishing and foraging: A mess of clams / Joseph Mitchell --
A forager / John McPhee --
The fruit detective / John Seabrook --
Gone fishing / Mark Singer --
On the bay / Bill Buford --
Local delicacies: An attempt to compile a short history of The buffalo chicken wing / Calvin Trillin --
The homesick restaurant / Susan Orlean --
The magic bagel / Calvin Trillin --
A rat in my soup / Peter Hessler --
Raw faith / Burkhard Bilger --
Night kitchens / Judith Thurman --
The pour: Dry martini / Roger Angell --
The red and the white / Calvin Trillin --
The russian god / Victor Erofeyev --
The ketchup conundrum / Malcolm Gladwell --
Tastes funny: But the one on the right / Dorothy Parker --
Curl up and diet / Ogden Nash --
Quick, hammacher, my stomacher! / Ogden Nash --
Nesselrode to jeopardy / S.J. Perelman --
Eat, drink, and be merry / Peter De Vries --
Notes from the overfed / Woody Allen --
Two menus / Steve Martin --
The zagat history of my last relationship 409 / Noah Baumbach --
Your table is ready / John Kenney --
Small plates: Bock / William Shawn --
Diat / Geoffrey T. Hellman --
4 a.m. / James Stevenson --
Slave / Alex Prud'Homme --
Under the hood / Mark Singer --
Protein source / Mark Singer --
A sandwich / Nora Ephron --
Sea urchin / Chang-Rae Lee --
As the french do / Janet MalColm --
Blocking and chowing / Ben McGrath --
When edibles attack / Rebecca Mead --
Killing dinner / Gabrielle Hamilton --
Fiction: Taste / Roald Dahl --
Two roast beefs / V.S. Pritchett --
The sorrows of gin / John Cheever --
The jaguar sun / Italo Calvino --
There should be a name for it / Matthew Klam --
Sputnik / Don DeLillo --
Enough / Alice McDermott --
The butcher's wife / Louise Erdrich --
Bark / Julian Barnes