50 Foods, Edward Behr
50 Foods, Edward Behr
List: $20.99 | Sale: $14.70
Club: $10.49

50 Foods
The Essentials of Good Taste

Author: Edward Behr

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Unabridged: 13 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/31/2013


Synopsis

With 50 Foods, noted authority Edward Behr has created the definitive guide to the foods every food lover must know. A culinary Baedeker, 50 Foods will delight and inform the connoisseur as well as the novice.

Like Behr's celebrated magazine, the Art of Eating, 50 Foods presents simple, practical information about buying, using, preparing, and enjoying. Behr focuses on aroma, appearance, flavor, and texture to determine what "the best" means for each food. He tells you how to select top quality—signs of freshness and ripeness, best season, top varieties, proper aging. If the way to prepare, serve, or eat something is little known, then he explains it (how to open an oyster, why the best way to cook green beans is boiling, how to clean a whole salted anchovy, when to eat and when to discard the rind of a cheese). Behr also names the most complementary foods and flavors for each of these fifty marvelous foods and the wines that go with them.

The fifty selections provide a broad sensory range for the modern gourmet. Most of the foods are raw materials, but some have been fermented or otherwise transformed—into bread, ham, cheese. Six of the fifty are cheeses. As Behr explains, cheese is probably the best food, as wine is the best drink. Behr argues that food tastes more delicious when it is closer to nature. Skilled low technology is almost always superior to high technology. But with scientific insight, the old methods can be refined to achieve more consistent high quality.

We can't always have the best, but with the information in this book we can eat better every day. Knowing good food is part of a complete understanding of the world—part of a full enjoyment of nature, a full experience of the senses, a full life.

For the connoisseur at any level, 50 Foods is a beautifully written guide to deliciousness.

About Edward Behr

Edward Behr is the founder of the acclaimed food magazine the Art of Eating and the author of 50 Foods and The Art of Eating Cookbook. His writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Forbes, and the Financial Times. He lives in Vermont.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sharon

50 Foods: The Essentials of Good taste..By Edward Behr..I won this book through Goodreads. This book list 50 foods, how to prepare them,what wines if any to go with them. A history of the variety, the best or most popular cut of meat. How to purchase the food item, the taste, how to store. Complimen......more

Goodreads review by Eric

This book made me hungry.......more

Goodreads review by Carolyn

This was an extremely light-weight book. Behr is a food snob. There is one proper way to cook asparagus. Strawberries last only one day. There are maybe six villages in France that produce good goat cheese. Good food comes from France, Italy and sometimes Spain. That sort of thing. I learned some co......more

Goodreads review by Luke

Should I know who Edward Behr is? Maybe he's a big name in the food world and I've just never heard of him? He must be, otherwise why would someone publish a book about their 50 favorite foods? And when I say foods I don't mean dishes, I just mean foods. Apples, pears, vinegar, sweetbreads, and a lo......more