Book Reviews

By Marty Martindale
Illustrations by Ian Nagy and colleagues

This book is a foodie's joy and a hoot! It's also a very quick catchup if you have been totally out of the kitchen for the last decade or two. It's the Mediterranean scene, not the Asian scene, however. The book contains many recipes, great ones, too.

Author, Ari Weinzweig, no not Ari Zingerman, taught himself to be very food savvy, and he's graciously willing to share his self-taught connoisseurship methods through this book. Though a Chicago native, Ari went to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan where he had to decide on a major and stumbled into the food business at a the lowest end. Finally he and a partner thought the Ann Arbor area could support another deli, for who doesn't hate to leave their college town!

Many think the original delicatessens were markets selling Jewish/Kosher foods, the loxes, earliest sour creams, delightful pickles and to-die-for hot pastrami. Not so. It seems Germans, not Eastern European Jews, opened New York's earliest deli. Actually, the dictionary definition of a deli is: "a small shop that sells high quality foods, such as types of cheese and cold cooked meat, which come from many countries."

Naming the new Ann Arbor deli was a challenge for the new partners. Ari knew "Weinzweig" would be difficult for customers to pronounce much less remember. After a fashion, they agreed on "Zingerman's" for their Jewish-sounding store name, vendor of Mediterranean delights. They laughed, because the name had, "Zing," and they opened their new market in 1982.

When Weinzweig works to make you a greater discerning connoisseur, he calms you with, "How to overcome your fear of the guy behind the counter." Most of this means, "feel entitled to the sample you are offered," or downright ask for one (else how will you ever learn?). Then he gets scientific and devotes sections to:

1. Introduce yourself to the new food (this can be done silently)
2. Look at it, describe its color (privately).
3. Smell it, "The nose knows what it's doing," he claims.
4. Taste it. Move it around in your mouth, discover how it tastes differently in different part of your mouth. (think like a wine taster ... Legs? Woody? Bold?)
5. Next he admonishes, Afford the best"," (he's not paying).

Weinzweig winds up his connoisseur training with, "Go wild. Taste early, taste often, and above all, have fun!" He then gets serious and confesses, "I'm convinced that smaller quantities of better-tasting raw materials will buy you more satisfaction for the same, or even less, outlay."

Ari devotes 23 pages to olive oils opening with a Greek proverb: "Without oil, without vinegar, how can we take a trip?" His quick olive history is a world adventure. Nut oils are also in, and he gives careful particulars for Pumpkin Seed Oil "Green Gold from the Austrian Alps." His recipes for Tuscan Pecorino Salad with Pears and Provencal Mashed Potatoes are only two of the recipes in this chapter.

When it comes to breads, Ari Weinzweig waxes almost romatically. Crusts are a big thing with him, and he's totally opposed to plastic bags for bread. He even lines out all the basics and fixin's for a fun bruschetta party. His defense of anchovies (two pages) is noble. He offers his Bread and Tomato Salad recipe. It calls for pine nuts, sea salt, Banyuls wine vinegar, toasted almonds, piquillo peppers and other delicious ingredients. Of the special vinegar from French Pyrenees, he states, "It's subtly sweet, softly spicy with a touch of almond, almost a whisper of dark chocolate and a hint of aged sherry."

Ari's section on pasta is as entertaining as it is informative. He ponders your choices between dried pasta and fresh pasta. All pasta shapes have a reason, and he helps you decide what you need for a particular dish. His visual glossary is handy, too. He explains pasta's cousin, polenta, and his recipes take the mystery out of it. No lesser cousin is risotto, or Spanish rices, and he detours a bit for Minnesota's Ojibway wild, wild rice compared with latter-day paddy rice.

Cheeses run the gambit from parmigiano-regiano, cheddar, mountain, blue and goat cheeses. He looks at "Cows and Curds," and the knotty area of aging. He explains Mountain cheeses as "... were created out of a common struggle to deal with the difficulty of life at high altitudes, ... huge snowfalls in Switzerland, Italy eastern and western France and Greece." He expounds on their personality and character. He also answers that thorney question, "What makes blue cheese blue?" He defines many blues from many countries.

Ari's big on Prosciutto de Parma and Spanish Serrano Ham. Besides these and Salamis, he addresses salmon, both of farmed and non-farmed origins. He defines Lox and smoked salmon, as well.

When it comes to seasonings, Zingerman's gets very basic: Pepper-milled pepper, sea salt and that very expensive stuff, Saffron. That's it. Ari makes Saffron read lore like an Italian fairy tale: "Seeing the Saffron harvest..." "Field of Dreams, From Bulb to Stigma, Culling the Crocus, At Home with the Strippers, Toasting" and finally, "Lunch With the Man Of Lamancha."

Vanilla and chocolate get their due. The book includes a very interesting two-and one-half-page chocolate timeline and a section, "Turning Beans into Bars: How Chocolate is Made." Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating gives us much to digest. At the end Ari Weinzweig teases the teas he mentions with three trendy Chai recipes. The recipes in the Guide are excellent and earn their own index.

Zingerman's: www.Zingermans.com
You can contact Marty Martindale at www.FoodSiteoftheDay.com.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

Lee Mellott