Penguins: Can We Eat Them?
The Penguin Companion to Food
Reviewed by Elliot Essman
Full Review at www.stylegourmet.com.
I grew up in a house filled with books. Even before I could read, the books fascinated me, especially the markings and tiny logos I’d note on the bindings. I’d know the books by those little logos: the Random House set of houses, for example, or the Alfred A. Knopf leaping dog. The small paperbacks, the ones I’d first come to actually open, my favorites, were the Penguins. I think I even had a name for that penguin, but it is now lost. These were the original Penguin Classics, the ones in the plain paper covers before the firm decided to go a slick black, books like Don Quixote or Crime and Punishment or The Canterbury Tales. I wouldn’t read these books until later in life, but I’d fondle them, leaf through the front and end matter, the lists of other titles, and know that they had value, and a certain evocative British-ness to boot. Penguin is part of a big international conglomerate today, but I find they still maintain a link to that original perceived value. Alan Davidson’s The Penguin Companion to Food is a perfect example.
The Companion (in its hardcover original the Oxford Companion to Food) runs more than a thousand pages and contains more than 2500 entries on every plant and animal product, every cooking tradition and technique, of any relevance to the well-schooled cook. It is universal in its scope, yet at the same time, how can I put this, British. A team of eminent culinary scholars put this one together. Now I know you’re wondering, before anything else, if that flightless bird of the Antarctic itself is edible. The answer is, with some reservations, yes. The book’s 500-word entry on its namesake ingredient shows at once the usual detail and characteristic humor of the Companion’s approach. We are told that we are often reminded of the penguin by the paperback edition of a book or by “observing at social functions those few Englishmen who still dress up to look like waiters or penguins—it is never clear which.” The problem with the technically edible penguin is that it eats only fish and hence tastes strongly like its diet. The penguin is most important in the food chain for the guano it leaves as waste, an excellent fertilizer. South Africans eat the eggs of some species of penguins. Read the Full Review at www.stylegourmet.com.
Reviewed by Elliot Essman
Full Review at www.stylegourmet.com.
I grew up in a house filled with books. Even before I could read, the books fascinated me, especially the markings and tiny logos I’d note on the bindings. I’d know the books by those little logos: the Random House set of houses, for example, or the Alfred A. Knopf leaping dog. The small paperbacks, the ones I’d first come to actually open, my favorites, were the Penguins. I think I even had a name for that penguin, but it is now lost. These were the original Penguin Classics, the ones in the plain paper covers before the firm decided to go a slick black, books like Don Quixote or Crime and Punishment or The Canterbury Tales. I wouldn’t read these books until later in life, but I’d fondle them, leaf through the front and end matter, the lists of other titles, and know that they had value, and a certain evocative British-ness to boot. Penguin is part of a big international conglomerate today, but I find they still maintain a link to that original perceived value. Alan Davidson’s The Penguin Companion to Food is a perfect example.
The Companion (in its hardcover original the Oxford Companion to Food) runs more than a thousand pages and contains more than 2500 entries on every plant and animal product, every cooking tradition and technique, of any relevance to the well-schooled cook. It is universal in its scope, yet at the same time, how can I put this, British. A team of eminent culinary scholars put this one together. Now I know you’re wondering, before anything else, if that flightless bird of the Antarctic itself is edible. The answer is, with some reservations, yes. The book’s 500-word entry on its namesake ingredient shows at once the usual detail and characteristic humor of the Companion’s approach. We are told that we are often reminded of the penguin by the paperback edition of a book or by “observing at social functions those few Englishmen who still dress up to look like waiters or penguins—it is never clear which.” The problem with the technically edible penguin is that it eats only fish and hence tastes strongly like its diet. The penguin is most important in the food chain for the guano it leaves as waste, an excellent fertilizer. South Africans eat the eggs of some species of penguins. Read the Full Review at www.stylegourmet.com.
posted by Elliot Essman at 8:13 AM
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