All in The Star Tribune

secret ingredients

SJRH
The Star Tribune

A good cook has secret ingredients. Yes, there is a virtue in simplicity, and much to be said for what might be called the Chez Panisse school of contemporary American cooking that implores us to get our hands on in-season ingredients, grown well, and in a state as nearly alive as possible, and then more or less to get out of their way. A perfect peach needs no translating, says Alice Waters. It is its own language. In such a cuisine, salt, pepper, olive oil, and maybe a little lemon and garlic, can see you, with few regrets, through weeks of elegant, soft-spoken meals. And yet.

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french cuisine's six u.s. ambassadors

SJRH
The Star Tribune

They are six. They are American. They are at the height of their powers in the middle years of the 20th century. They are all entranced in some way with Paris, and they all write about it. Their cumulative work will change the way Americans think about food, and the way you and I eat, whether we’re aware of it or not. Justin Spring is a biographer and former National Book Award finalist with roots in southern Minnesota, with family in St. Cloud, and who has spent many of his Christmases here in the snow among us. His latest book, “The Gourmands’ Way: The Story of Six Americans in Paris Who Changed Our Relationship With Food” (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 383 pages, $30), has just been published.

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cranberries: a manifesto

SJRH
The Star Tribune

We have done wrong by cranberries. North America has few enough true native fruits; the Great Lakes north country even fewer. Yet here we have not just a native fruit, but one of the original native fruits. The fruit that fueled and healed Native Americans for centuries. The fruit that was served at the first Thanksgiving. The fruit that Thomas Jefferson requested of James Madison, as one of three items from home he especially missed while in France: apples, pecans and cranberries. The fruit that effectively made the fur trade possible, because its acidity, when pounded into venison pemmican, prevented spoilage and made for one of the first transportable meals on the continent.

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a minneapolis chef takes on venison in new cookbook

SJRH
The Star Tribune

The problem with most game and fish cookbooks, somewhat paradoxically, is that they are written by guys who hunt and fish. That is to say, they are written by guys whose primary interest in hunting and fishing is the hunting and fishing part. Their cookbooks, as a result, tend to be filled with a disheartening collection of half-considered recipes that take more or less successful stabs in one direction — at a kind of down-home, open-fire manliness — and more or less unsuccessful stabs in the other direction, at complicated fine-dining sophistication.

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lemongrass, ginger, garlic and fire: an introduction to hmong food

SJRH
The Star Tribune

Yia Vang has a set of classic stories he loves to tell. He’s just told me the one about the guy who comes up after a Hmong cooking demonstration, cups Vang’s big right hand in both of his, looks up earnestly into Vang’s eyes, and says, “I just love Thai food." “I mean, dude, I just spent an hour telling you how Hmong food isn’t Thai food,” Vang giggles. “You know, I get it that you toured Bangkok last year, but can we listen a little bit?”

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of links and legacy

SJRH
The Star Tribune

For this Romanian family from St. Paul, the weekend before Christmas is a holiday unto itself: "Pull on your gloves, boys. It's time to mix some sausage." According to family legend, Eva Lapadat arrived in New York by ship from Beba Veche, Romania, in 1937, with three dollars in the pocket of her housecoat.

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