All You Can Eat, Volume I
Tiffany Tsao • 26 August 2022
We’re back from our publishing break! And what better way to celebrate than a feast of non-fiction? Welcome to the first half of a double issue on food!
That’s right. There were too many delicious writings to choose from, so rather than stuffing you with all of them at once or contributing to food-writing wastage by discarding choice fare, we’ve decided to treat you to a sumptuous multi-course meal spaced out over two weeks.
Traveling the Foodways with Mrs. H
I continue to prepare the recipes that I learned in Mrs. H’s kitchen not only for myself and my family, but also for those Jewish friends whose observation of kosher is relaxed enough for them to consume food prepared in a Muslim kitchen...This isn’t to say that I’m Jewish because I just love Jewish food, any more than the annoying white hipster next door is Thai just because he loves tom yum and spent his gap year in Koh Samui. But it is to say that the flavours of particular recipes have the Proustian capacity to transport me back to a Jewish household where I felt a sense of belonging and safety in an often hostile, though always entrancing, city.
(Note: this piece is part of Liminal’s digital series on TASTE.)
The Enduring Hero of Matilda is Bruce Bogtrotter
Sam van Zweden talks about Roald Dahl’s Matilda in relation to a corpus of children’s literature aimed at discouraging greed and teaching restraint.
I’m coming to realise Bruce was the icon we didn’t know we had, who showed us the power of appetite and body autonomy by eating a whole, heavy, gooey chocolate cake, made with real butter and real cream.
Home Cooking
What joy can we find in honouring adaptability, effort, time and love when it comes to appreciating food’s value? What do we lose when we measure food’s 'authenticity' by its adherence to a standard that lies beyond geographical and practical reach?
The evolution of my dad’s cooking, and the process he has undertaken throughout his life in Australia, excites me too. Something can always be improved or tweaked; it allows for adaptation, so the culinary journey never ends. And the food becomes just that much tastier.
Food Culture in Late Capitalism
So charged is food now with our preoccupations, what we choose to put in our bodies can be read as a contemporary index for who we are and what we want...No longer just an elevated marker of class and aesthetics, in their offer of supreme salvation, these meals are the inversion of contemporary concerns with alienation, the Anthropocene, and the capitalist limitations of the body.
Recipes from Colournary
Colournary is a food magazine that celebrates and amplifies the voices of First Nations, Black and People of Colour through the lens of food and culture. Visit their online recipes page, which includes their Scratch Meals series, centred around affordable, achievable homecooked meals.
Kraków in Nine Meals
A mouth-watering tour of Poland’s erstwhile capital. You’ll find your way back by the trail of saliva.
Big glass jars filled with rugelach and hamantaschen, piles of golden croissants and thick, syrupy scrolls, Bundt cakes drenched in white icing, and whole pies, latticed and scattered with sugar. Behind the counter are baguettes in paper sleeves, big bronzed loaves and shiny round bagels lined up as neatly as schoolchildren.