1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die - Frances Case (ed.)
Or must you?
Robyn Lewis
1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die [©Random House]
Things don't always go to plan. Take our Christmas holidays for example - one minute we're dreaming of a relaxing week off at the beach, the next we've become familiar with hospital emergency departments, cardiologists and the intensive care ward, when a valve in my husband's heart decided to pop a string just days prior to Santa's arrival.
Faced with the imminent - albeit low-odds - prospect of death, were we thinking of foods we hadn't eaten, or wines we have yet to drink? No. The night before the big operation, we sat in a suburban Heidelberg pizza house - the only restaurant near the hospital open on a Sunday night between Christmas and New Year - and surrounded by jovial, life-loving Italians, ate what tasted like the best pizza of our lives, washed down with a fabulous (at the time) chianti, and talked of life: our time together, our five-year-old daughter, the future of our farm and vineyard should the 1% chance happen in the morrow....
We certainly weren't regretting that we hadn't tasted melokhia or volaille de Bresse.
The point? We don't often think of death until the possibility is staring us in the face. Nor do we usually plan "things to do before you die" unless we're pushing 80 or have recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Not to mention the competition from 1001 Other Things to Do, Books to Read, Films to View, Places to Visit, Rivers to Fish, Paintings to See, Music to Download .... the lists proliferate. At this rate I may need several lifetimes, and significant unearned income, to do even half, let alone write that novel or finish sorting my photos.
But let's put such mundane considerations aside, and say you've been granted three years to live (allowing a few extra days for airline meals), an unlimited food and travel budget to cover both you and your gastronomic companion - for you can't dine on 1001 foods alone - digestive systems of steel and a blatant disregard for food miles and the current trend to eat and drink locally, as you embark on a global culinary adventure. What should you eat?
1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die is a well-illustrated manual for the curious foodie, describing each food in detail, where it comes from and with tasting notes and even recommended brands. Healthily, 1001 Foods starts with fruit (120 of them, including flowers) and vegetables (167). Considering myself a bit of a foodie, and having lived in four continents, I thought a good start would be to count how many I'd eaten already.
This where it started to get tricky. I've eaten thousands of figs and bananas in my life, but not from Smyrna or Lacatan, so I can't count those - ditto Rainier cherries, Mara des Bois strawberries (have the contributors not tased Tokinawas?) and Hachiya persimmons. In total I managed only 73 - there were some unexpected pluses like marula and mazhange from my days in Africa (which elephants regard as a top food), and a Malaysian favourite, durian - but having never visited South America I scored badly there. And the near-inedible medlars (which I grow, but not to eat) - surely someone included them as a joke? I found two fruits in there twice, in slightly different variants; 999 Before You Die doesn't quite have the same ring about it....
On the vegetables I fared slightly better, perhaps because many are cultivated far from their place of origin. Again, I was reminded of my travel deficiencies - no Bassano white asparagus, mavi onions or huitlacoche for me so far. At this rate I'm obviously going to have to live more than three years, or move to London or New York, where presumably these foodstuffs are freshly displayed in enormous global village markets? I was quite pleased to reach 107, but appalled at the inclusion of Coco de Mer in the nuts section - with only 7000 highly endangered and protected trees remaining worldwide, what are they thinking? This 2009, not 1809, and the seeds should be used to propagate the species, not be eaten. (Contributors to the meats section have marginally more ecological sense, although the moose might disagree, along with several species of small birds perhaps better left to the tables of pre-revolutionary France.)
The omission of kang kong, one of the most profilic and flavoursome vegetables of Asia, with enough growing wild in the waterways of the Northern Territory to feed the whole Australian continent, also left me perplexed, as much because it is delicious but because it has the potential to feed millions. But this isn't a book for the starving, more a Harrods food hall meets pan-Asian supermarket guide, complete with excellent photographs of every food.
My count slid further downhill in the cheese and dairy section (which curiously includes eggs), not because I don't like cheese but due to the extreme localisation of products from Europe and America, most of which never make it to Antipodean shores (we have our own equally good alternatives, of course). Cholesterol considerations aside, it's going to take me a long time in Harrods or a world tour with Will Studd to ever catch up. One Australia cheese makes the grade - sadly now out of production - but in general our foods do poorly; no mud crab, crayfish or kangaroo, although the pan-tropical barramundi makes the grade.
I score a lot better with the fish - a section where (coral trout aside) there is significantly more environmental responsibility - but then I hit clams, crabs and other crustaceans of the Northern hemisphere, where my strike rate plummets. Disheartened, I give up counting, and leaf through the rest, more in awe of the bounty of the earth and sea and the ingenuity (or desperation?) of man to produce interesting things to eat from such unlikely and scarce materials as orchid tubers and southern beech trees. It's like a National Geographic for food, and more than once I wonder how long our planet can continue to yield such variety and quantity, particularly when we are encouraged to go out of our way to consume it.
There is no doubt that the individual contributors have deep and extensive food knowledge - the global lineup includes authors and critics such as William Black, Tara Basnet, Glynn Christian, Judy Ridgeway, Reshmi Dasgupta, Christopher Tan, Carole Wilson - and Dani Valent and bush-tucker expert Vic Cherikoff from Australia. There seem to be few chefs, however, and 1001 Foods contains no recipes, although each entry has a taste summary which also includes eating suggestions (apparently 1001 Dishes is coming, and we also have 1001 Wines to wash them down with).
The editor is Frances Case, who writes about food for Britain's The Guardian, and also contributes to UK radio, TV and other publications. Her Introduction captures some of the romance of food and the cultural heritage and history so tied up in its preparation. A pity though that her sentiment 'responsible eating is hip' is not adequately reflected in the contents - I begin to suspect they were in a hurry - the sustainability concepts mentioned do not seem to be followed through in the contents selection.
There is also a Foreward by Simon Thomsen, co-editor of the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food Guide and the SMH's chief food critic, perhaps included for the Australian market, who seems quite happy to state that 'globalization means that sourcing many of these foods is a trip no further than your local supermarket or greengrocer' - for you, not the food, that is. Green guide this is not.
I would have liked this book a lot more if it had been called say "1001 Interesting - or Exciting, Different? - Foods from Around the World". It would certainly then be worthy of a place in a time capsule, of what is - or was - available to eat around the turn of the millenium. 'Must' is a very strong word, especially when you know that it will inevitably leads to a species' extinction, but presumably it's a title theme that sells. If you are selective, however, you can find gems to add sparkle to your own kitchen, and to expand your palate next time you travel or venture into an eclectic foodstore.
Will I be a lesser person if I never eat Nurnberger Elisenlebkuchen? No. But if I do ever spend Christmas in Heidelberg Germany and not Heidelberg Melbourne, it will be nice to know that this is the ultimate spiced gingerbread, perhaps even better than my sister-in-law's, and that no harmless birds will be entinguished in the process.
1001 Foods You Must Eat Before you Die is published by Ebury Press/Quintessence (UK, November 2008) and is distributed in Australia by Random House. VisitVineyards.com/Winepros Archive Subscribers can purchase this book at 12.5% discount from our book partners, Seekbooks (postage extra).
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