Another season, another entirely too long roundup of links I’ve put off posting to this undertended blog.
It’s true: Everybody loves Samin Nosrat.
Extremely relevant to my interests: IS there an apostrophe in farmers market? (Results inconclusive; I’ve opted to do without going forward.)
I got into making kimchi a few years ago, when my CSA delivered enormous heads of Napa cabbage that defied easy meal planning. Brining the cabbage and stuffing it into jars with ginger and chili garlic sauce turned out to be a delicious and economical solution, and I have continued to make 4-6 jars at a time several times a year because I like the pungent spice it brings to soup, fried rice, and occasionally eggs.
But in no world would I ever label my kimchi use authentic, brag about its probiotic cultures (does my preferred recipe create cultures? I’m not sure), or sell it. So enjoyed the horror and also the mouth-watering descriptions of different pickling traditions in this Catapult essay about Korean kimchi versus hipster kimchi. The article made me click through to read author Noah Cho’s previous articles, and although our regional backgrounds could not be more different, I felt very seen when he describes the pleasures of melting American cheese onto ramen noodles (something I did as a teenager). He is also a fan of Maangchi, whose recipes for kimchi-guk and kimchi-bokkeumbap inspired my soup and fried rice habits, and who I foolishly did not realize was a YouTube star.
While I follow a number of artists who play with their food and post it to Instagram, I don’t follow many food photographers, so I was completely unaware of the trend of freezing berries to give them a sort of fairy-dust look in photographs. I did, however, enjoy the plaintive report by this Vox writer who does not appreciate “ghost berries” even after learning more about them.
Having recently read (and been bemused by) Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread, I was very interested to read about her baking on Mother Jones. I hadn’t considered that fiction might entail a recipe-testing step.
The Atlantic: Millennials Are Sick of Drinking, but they’re not giving up booze just yet.
Atlas Obscura: Every Page of This Book Is a Slice of Cheese
Despite American cheese’s durability, the book probably won’t last forever. That is an important part of the work, says Vander Broek. “You get information from feeling the squishy pages and from worrying about it decaying.” She compares it to 17th-century Dutch still lifes—exquisitely detailed paintings that often show fruit and meat in various stages of rot. “They make you think about death. How often do you worry that a book is
Relatedly, on Mental Floss: Belgium is home to the world’s only sourdough library
Smithsonian Magazine: Scientists Played Music to Cheese as It Aged. Hip-Hop Produced the Funkiest Flavor
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