1001 FOODS YOU MUST TASTE BEFORE YOU DIE
BY FRANCES CASE
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
1001 Foods You Must Taste Before You Die
(Universe Publishing) ISBN 978-0789315922 0789315920
This bucket list of international gourmet foods describes the taste, appearance, origin, producer, ingredients and preparation of the best foods in the world. It is the perfect food reference book for travelers who open up a menu or visit a market and want to identify international foods. The don't-miss list of foods includes, for example, tiger nuts (nut-flavored tubers used to flavor horchata de chusa drinks in Spain).
If you want to pack gourmet gift baskets, 1001 Foods is a great culinary resource book. You could, for example, pack specialty foods listed in the book, such as Nduja (salami from Calabria, Italy), artisanal cheeses like Chabichou from Poiou, France, and purple rice from Thailand.
International foods
This comprehensive guide to gourmet foods of the world is divided into nine categories and alphabetically organized, two foods to a page. A detailed description of the taste follows each of the listed gourmet products.
Color photos illustrate each of the raw foods and prepared food items (e.g., injera, pane carasau and barbari bread). Full-page color images depict cooks, bakers, wood-fired ovens, orchards, flowers, markets, food stalls, drying fish, spices and food processing activities.
The Food index organizes gourmet foods alphabetically in sections on fruit, vegetables, dairy, fish, meats, aromatics, grain, bakery and confections.
A Glossary defines food terminology such as aemono (Japanese chilled vegetables, cooked and mixed with a dressing), affinage (ripening cheese to maturity) and umami (the Japanese term for the 'fifth' basic taste after sweet, sour, salty and bitter).
Gourmet cheeses
1001 Foods You Must Taste Before You Die has an exceptional list of gourmet cheeses: Crowdie (Scottish cottage cheese), Brillat-Savarin (a triple-crème cheese from France), Sakura (a soft cow's-milk cheese from Hokkaido, Japan), Langres (cylindrical unpasteurized soft cheese from France) and Harzer Roller (a German low-fat, curd cheese flavored with caraway seeds). Some cheeses are well-known, such as Munster (a buttery, yellow cheese from Alsace, France), while others are hard to find cheeses, such as Fleur du Maquis (ewe's milk cheese from Corsica covered with flowers and herbs like rosemary and savory).
In the Confections section, readers find gourmet candy like Ameixas d'Elvas (sugar-coated dried plums), Kaju Katli (ground cashew candies from Southern India) and single-estate chocolate.
This culinary book features 960 pages of gourmet foods, ranging from the healthy rainforest fruit, açaí, consumed by indigenous tribes in the Amazon, to Turkish salepi dondurma (salep ice cream) made from milk, sugar and salep (the ground dried tuber of wild orchids), which claims aphrodisiac properties.
Unusual foods
Readers learn the differences between a key lime and a finger lime, between a Jaffa orange and a blood orange and between a pink grapefruit and a pomelo. The culinary reference book describes edible dandelions, nettle and fiddlehead ferns, as well as Vaucluse green asparagus and Bassano white asparagus.
The book includes cheap foods, like yams and taro, expensive foods, such as black and white truffles, and unusual foods, like huitlacoche (a delicious corn fungus cherished in Mexico).
Types of mushrooms
Iwatake (a Japanese rock lichen) is a fungi listed with enokitake, matsutake, maitake, shiitake, morel, oyster and oronge mushrooms. Foodies will learn about the tastes of Kalamata, Nyons, Bella de Cerignola and Moroccan olives.
In the Dairy section, readers find taste descriptions of Cornish clotted cream from England, French crème fraîche d'Isigny , Russian smetana, American cottage cheese, Iranian labneh, Bulgarian sheep's milk yogurt, Icelandic skyr, Spanish cuajada, Italian ricotta Romana, Corsican brocciu, German obatzda and other dairy foods.
Contents
- Introduction
- Food Index
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Dairy
- Fish
- Meats
- Aromatics
- Grain
- Bakery
- Confections
- Glossary
General Editor
Frances Case, with 53 contributing authors