Lucky Peach Issue 13

by David Chang (Editor), Peter Meehan (Editor), Chris Ying (Editor)

Lucky Peach is a quarterly journal of food and writing. Each issue focuses on a single theme, and explores that theme through essays, art, photography, and recipes.

Lucky Peach #13, our "Feel the Joy" issue, arrives just in time for the holiday season. Like Dorie Greenspan, the high priestess of holiday (and year-round) baking, we're indiscriminate lovers of all holidays. This issue's there's fiction from Anthony Bourdain, with real advice on how not to ruin a turkey dinner ( two turkeys), and recipes for recreating Peter Meehan's traditional Christmas Eve Feast of the One Fishes (that's lobster rolls). Our celebrations take us all around the world, from a halal butcher shop in New York's East Village to Haiti, where Adam Gollner celebrates with Vodounistes. We learn from a mithai master at a sweets shop in London, celebrate Christmas in India, home of some of the world's oldest Christian communities, and marvel at mountains of food in Indonesia, where celebrations are marked by gunangans (food mountains). We learn the science behind what happens when we overeat; plus plans for how to build your own gingerbread mansion and cocktail cures for what ails you.

Genres: Food, Foodie, Nonfiction, Cooking

168 pages, Paperback

First published November 18, 2014

Reviews

[Hans]

The Sea Issue took me months to read because I kept distracting myself with other reading projects. The Holiday issue took only a few days. Tons of good stuff smacking the Holiday theme every which way until it simply gives under the pressure and climbs into the nook carved out for LP Issue 13, where it dreams away the days until LP Issue 14 walks up to your mailbox and says, "Hello. Was it me you're looking for?"

My favorite part appeared on page 171. Michael Tunk's bio made me rush back to check out his work again. The bio made me wish that I could do that kind of project all the time rather than the odd occasions when, after working for a living, I carved time to do secret-paper-cabal-related projects. "MICHAEL TUNK takes photographs and magazines from the 1800s to the 1980s and re-contextualizes them into something beautiful. He takes refused detritus and spins a yarn of gold. He takes the weight from a hoarders home and fixes it into aesthetic candy. His pieces are never Photoshopped; he uses only X-acto blades and what's left of the bones in his wrists."

Great stuff again. See you in 2015.

[Kristina Harper]

It always takes me a while to get through an issue of Lucky Peach, but I read them cover to cover. There are always decent articles I like, a few I love and a couple I think I'll have no interest in but end up finding fascinating. That's just what happened here. This issue's theme was The Holidays, and it explored holidays all over the world, including Christmas in countries I didn't think would celebrate it wholeheartedly but do. Great issue with some fantastic cookie recipes and a short story by Anthony Bourdain that contained some excellent tips for turkey gravy. I make killer turkey gravy during the holidays, but this year's might just be exceptional.

[waits4thebus]

Thoroughly exploring the theme of "holidays" geographically, religiously and personally, there was something for everyone, from the halal meat provider in Brooklyn, a hardened cook's shortcuts methods for the best holiday dinner (involving a stunt turkey), to the healing power of donuts when one mourns, once again a home run. Subscription RENEWED.

[Kaarina]

Fantastic, as always!!

[James]

A foodie magazine with a few good stories and not many good recipes, good for a quick read, get it from a library lest you suffer buyer's remorse.