Paper Palate

Steven Jenkins has lived the ultimate Food Life.

The Food Life: Inside the World of Food with the Grocer Extraordinaire at Fairway by Steven Jenkins, with recipes by Mitchel London, has to be one of the most passionate and wittiest memoirs I’ve read in a very long time.

Not that I’m surprised. I’ve been smitten with Steven Jenkins since I purchased his first book, the Cheese Primer, twelve years ago.

 Ah, to live in New York and have no less than four Fairway Markets to choose from! To walk in and smell the freshly baked bread, taste a bit from the tubs of olives and platters of cheese, see what is on offer at the deli, the fish counter, and the butcher, and choose from the giant pyramids of fresh fruit and vegetables from around the world.  These markets look like a food lover’s paradise.

In addition to recounting the Fairway Market’s story and Steven Jenkins’ own tales from life at the market, the book gives practical advice on choosing staples such as olive oil, vinegar, anchovies and cheese.

“The enemies of fine olive oil are time, air, light, and heat.  As for time, olive oil, unlike some wines and cheeses, does not improve in the bottle or can.  If you are a family of four and you’re using less than a liter of grand olive oil a week, you need to use more olive oil - but that’s another issue.  (By “grand” I mean not  merely that the oil is extra-virgin, but also that it is remarkable, full of nuance, fragrant - it has a rich mouthfeel without being cloying or greasy.)

“In olive oil, the flavor and fragrance molecules run down like flashlight batteries.  But I’ll bet you that unless you’re a regular at Fairway, any bottle or tin or purportedly grand olive oil you pick up either won’t tell when the oil was produced or will reveal in very fine print that it’s been in that bottle for two years or longer.  Absolutely unacceptable.

“Air, oxidation, causes oil to become stale, flat, lifeless.  Light robs oil of its color, nutrients, flavor, and fragrance.  It does this right through the glass, even if the bottle was never opened.  How does it do that?  I don’t know.  It just does.

“Heat robs olive oil, indeed any culinary oil, of its organoleptic properties.  This is why you should never cook with grand olive oil unless you are a hopeless wastrel.  Don’t store your olive oil where common sense tells you not to - in a hot pantry, next to the oven or stove, or on a hot windowsill or radiator.”

And you may never look at anchovies the same way after reading what Mr. Jenkins has to say about them:

“Likewise, forget about supermarket tinned anchovies. Forget about the anchovies used in pizza parlors. They’re a vile misrepresentation of one of our greatest culinary gifts. They taste like salty fish guts, whereas serious anchovies taste like adult candy.  They are indispensable for stews, for daubes, for soups, and for innumerable pasta dishes. To prove this, sit before a couple of fillets packed in olive oil, from companies such as Roque (Collioure, France), Ortiz (Pays Vasco, Spain), and Recca (Sciacca, Italy).”

The book also includes a compact collection of 42 well rounded recipes by chef Mitchel London, including such delights as Runny Cheese Potatoes, Spicy Broiled Cornish Hens with Lemon and Fresh Oregano, Tuscan White Bean Soup with Escarole and Fennel Sausage, and Vanilla-Coconut Macaroons with Chocolate Variation.

The Food Life is a celebration of all things edible. If you love food you’ll love this book. It’s as simple as that.