The Best American Food Writing 2023 Quotes

“In episode 45 of Shokugeki No Soma, the food clubs are under fire. They must throw out their innovations and practices in order to adhere to the new director's food manual. Everyone must only make a certain type of dish and made in a specific way. Students disassociating from this manual will be expelled.
Innovation was frowned upon while classism had taken its hold. In order to save his dorm, protagonist Soma Yukihira challenged Chef Eizan "The Alchemist" seat number seven in the Council of Ten to a food war. With a board of judges willing to forgo tasting a dish because it uses ingredients not considered "top quality" or doesn't put the quality of an ingredient above its preparation, it goes completely against Soma Yukihira's style. Soma utilizes every day's cheap delights and elevating it into deliciousness. Chef Eizan presented Khao Man Gai, taking careful attention to not alter the chicken's natural flavors too much. One bite and every tongue squealed with bliss. Eizan presented a formidable classic that didn't stray too far from the books.


Season of the Underdog
Soma Yukihira was the underdog. The judges were prepared to discard his dish and name Soma defeated without taking a bite. Soma prepared a chicken wing gyoza with a rich ankake sauce. He removed the bones of the chicken and stuffed the cavity with ground pork, shiitake mushrooms, scallions and cabbage, then prepared a bone broth and used it to make the ankake sauce. From the jump, I was like oh shit, that's fire. Captivated by the scent, a judge took a bite. He was taken aback by the flavor! The delight. Soma Yukihira won the food war and saved his dorm.”
― Mark Bittman, The Best American Food Writing 2023: Eye-Opening Essays on Culture, Inequality, and Justice

“All across Italy, as Parasecoli tells me, food is used to identify who is Italian and who is not. But dig a little deeper into the history of Italian cuisine and you will discover that many of today's iconic delicacies have their origins elsewhere. The corn used for polenta, unfortunately for Pezzutti, is not Italian. Neither is the jujube. In fact, none of the foods mentioned above are. All of them are immigrants, in their own way--- lifted from distant shores and brought to this tiny peninsula to be transformed into a cornerstone of an ever-changing Italian cuisine.
Today, jujubes are better known as Chinese dates. It was likely in Asia that the plant was first cultivated, and where most are still grown. By the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, at the turn of the first millennium, the tree had spread to parts of the eastern Mediterranean where, according to local tradition, it furnished the branches for the thorny crown of Jesus Christ. Around the same time, Pliny the Elder tells us, a Roman counselor imported it to Italy.
The Romans were really the first Italian culinary borrowers. In addition to the jujube, they brought home cherries, apricots, and peaches from the corners of their vast empire, Parasecoli tells me. But in the broad sweep of Italian history, it was Arabs, not Romans, who have left the more lasting mark on Italian cuisine.
During some 200 years of rule in Sicily and southern Italy, and the centuries of horticultural experimentation and trade that followed, Arabs greatly expanded the range of ingredients and flavors in the Italian diet. A dizzying array of modern staples can be credited to their influence, including almonds, spinach, artichokes, chickpeas, pistachios, rice, and eggplants.
Arabs also brought with them durum wheat--- since 1967, the only legal grain for the production of pasta in Italy. They introduced sugar cane and citrus fruit, laying the groundwork for dozens of local delicacies in the Italian south and inspiring the region's iconic sweet-and-sour agrodolce flavors. Food writers Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari argue that Arabs' effect on the Italian palate was as profound as it was in science or medicine--- reintroducing lost recipes from antiquity, elevated by novel ingredients and techniques refined in the intervening centuries. In science, this kind of exchange sparked the Renaissance; in food, they argue, one of the world's greatest cuisines.
Today, in Italy's north, where African influences give way to more continental fare, Italian cuisine leans heavier on crops taken from Indigenous peoples in the Americas: tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, zucchini, peppers, and corn, which is used to make polenta. Cultural exchange moved in the other direction as well. As millions of Italians left for the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries, Italy's culinary traditions were remixed and revolutionized again. Italian Americans pioneered a cuisine that would become almost unrecognizable to the old country: spaghetti and meatballs, chicken Marsala, fettuccine Alfredo, deep-dish pizza.”
― Mark Bittman, The Best American Food Writing 2023: Eye-Opening Essays on Culture, Inequality, and Justice

“The giuggiole, or jujube fruit, resembles an olive and tastes, at first, like a woody apple. After withering off the vine, it takes on a sweeter flavor, closer to a honeyed fig. Among the medieval elite, the fruit was so popular that it gave birth to an idiom: "andare in brodo di giuggiole"--- "To go in jujube broth"--- defined in one of the earliest Italian phrase books as living in a state of bliss. Every fall, the handful of families that still cultivate the fruit in the village gather in medieval garb to celebrate the jujube and feast on the fine liquors, jams, and blissful sweet broth they create from it.
Italy is full of places like Arquà Petrarca. Microclimates and artisanal techniques become the basis for obscure local specialties celebrated in elaborate festivals from Trapani to Trieste. In Mezzago, outside Milan, its rare pink asparagus, turned red by soil rich in iron and limited sunlight. Sicily has its Avola almonds and peculiar blood-red oranges, which gain their deep color on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna. Calabria has 'nduja sausage and the Diamante citron, central to the Jewish feast of Sukkot.”
― Mark Bittman, The Best American Food Writing 2023: Eye-Opening Essays on Culture, Inequality, and Justice

“Modern science has since discovered the positive effect of an infusion of salt on the nervous system, and for lactating mammals, but a tiny male moth with a huge appetite for salt also seems to back the notions of the ancient Greeks--- that salt is a key ingredient for successful sex.
The male Gluphisia moth spends most of his short life accumulating enough salt to give his mate a nuptial gift of sodium.
This act is achieved by "puddling," or sucking from pools of standing water or moist ground for several hours at a time and squirting out the liquid in strong jets. The process is nothing if not a test of endurance, with the most virile moths squirting out 4,325 jets, or 600 times their bodyweight.
The moth only takes in sodium, expelling other nutrients like potassium. The act raises the moth's sodium levels to eight times that of the nonpuddling Gluphisia. Ultimately, the former will give half of this sodium to a mate in a reproductive act by incorporating the sodium into spermatophore, a present of nutrients, protein, and sperm that supplies the female with enough sodium to pass on to her larvae.”
― Mark Bittman, The Best American Food Writing 2023: Eye-Opening Essays on Culture, Inequality, and Justice