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The Man Who Ate Everything: And Other Gastronomic Feats, Disputes, and Pleasurable Pursuits Kindle Edition
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Whether he is in search of a foolproof formula for sourdough bread (made from wild yeast, of course) or the most sublime French fries (the secret: cooking them in horse fat) or the perfect piecrust (Fannie Farmer--that is, Marion Cunningham--comes to the rescue), he will go to any length to find the answer.
At the drop of an apron he hops a plane to Japan to taste Wagyu, the hand-massaged beef, or to Palermo to scale Mount Etna to uncover the origins of ice cream. The love of choucroute takes him to Alsace, the scent of truffles to the Piedmont, the sizzle of ribs on the grill to Memphis to judge a barbecue contest, and both the unassuming and the haute cuisines of Paris demand his frequent assessment.
Inevitably these pleasurable pursuits take their toll. So we endure with him a week at a fat farm and commiserate over low-fat products and dreary diet cookbooks to bring down the scales. But salvation is at hand when the French Paradox (how can they eat so richly and live so long?) is unearthed, and a "miraculous" new fat substitute, Olestra, is unveiled, allowing a plump gourmand to have his fill of fat without getting fatter.
Here is the man who ate everything and lived to tell about it. And we, his readers, are hereby invited to the feast in this delightful book.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateJune 8, 2011
- File size756 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
It's clear that Vogue gave Steingarten carte blanche to write on whatever subjects tickled his taste buds, and the result is a frequently hilarious collection of essays that emphasize good eating over an obsession with health. "Salad, the Silent Killer" is a catalog of the toxins lurking in every bowl of raw vegetables, while "Fries" follows a heroic attempt to create the perfect French fry--cooked in horse fat. Whether baking sourdough bread in his Manhattan loft or spraying miso soup across a Kyoto restaurant, Steingarten is an ideal guide to the wilder reaches of gastronomy, a cross between M.F.K. Fisher and H.L. Mencken.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Review
It was to indulge his obsession that in 1989 Steingarten gave up a career as a lawyer and became the food critic at Vogue. The Man Who Ate Everything is a wonderful book, comprising a selection of his brilliant essays from the magazine and elsewhere. -- The New York Times Book Review, Alexander Chancellor
There's little on the subject of food about which he doesn't have strong views, and much of what he was thinking in the last half-dozen years appears in The Man Who Ate Everything.... Steingarten's storytelling, full of exaggeration, is really a culinary psychoanalysis. He goes off on any old tear but, like a good analyst, manages to come back to a point now and again.... Someone has to obsess over these things, and it might as well be someone as intelligent and entertaining as Steingarten. -- The Boston Globe, Sheryl Julian
What a relief that his own dietary resolve is so flimsy--its frequent rueful collapse prompting month-long obsessions with choucroute, barbecue, and Milky Way Swirl Cake; intense periods of detective work into various condiments (with his wife a kind of wry Watson); and delightful exposés like "Salad the Silent Killer." Whatever he's scrutinizing--and no sardine is safe--this is a superb, omnivorous collection from an obvious man of taste. -- Entertainment Weekly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap
Whether he is in search of a foolproof formula for sourdough bread (made from wild yeast, of course) or the most sublime French fries (the secret: cooking them in horse fat) or the perfect piecrust (Fannie Farmer--that is, Marion Cunningham--comes to the rescue), he will go to any length to find the answer.
At the drop of an apron he hops a plane to Japan to taste Wagyu, the hand-massaged beef, or to Palermo to scale Mount Etna to uncover the origins of ice cream. The love of choucroute takes him to Alsace, the scent of truffles to the Piedmont, the sizzle of ribs on the grill to Memphis to judge a barbecue contest, and both the unassuming and the haute cuisines of Paris demand his frequent assessment.
Inevitably these pleasurable pursuits take their toll. So we endure with him a week at a fat farm and commiserate --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
-- From now on, I will always use conditioner after shampooing. The shower room had pump bottles of conditioner, which left my hair so much softer and easier to manage. Where have I been all these years?
-- I will become a serious weight lifter. See below.
-- I will strive to become merely chubby again. That was twenty pounds ago.
-- Until then, I will wear sweatpants as often as possible. They bind and chafe less than regular trousers and slip on so much more easily.
-- I will become a spa junkie, if I can afford the habit.
Canyon Ranch's publicity material scientifically estimates that more than half of America's population has heard of the original Canyon Ranch in Tucson. I was vaguely aware that it was the first major coed fitness resort, not just another plush pamper palace exclusively for women. And that it was a magnet for socialites, movie stars, and CEOs, a lush oasis where you eat one thousand exquisite gourmet calories a day yet never go hungry. I also knew they were building a Canyon Ranch clone in Lenox, Massachusetts, near Tanglewood and Jacob's Pillow and, for those like me who are old enough to care, Alice's Restaurant. It opened on October 1.
Even if you've been a guest before (three out of four have), the first thing you get is a guided tour with lots of numbers: forty million dollars to build on 120 wooded acres, an inn for two hundred guests with 120 rooms and suites (each with a VCR), a spa with 100,000 gleaming square feet for fitness and health, an 1897 mansion called Bellefontaine for dining and wellness, thirty-two fitness classes daily, sixty massage therapists, three hundred staff members in all. Newcomers may find themselves winded before the end of the guided tour.
Next you fill out some medical forms. The final page strikes you as particularly bellicose and hypocritical. "Do you find yourself obsessing about food?" it asks. "Not at all," you reply, "but I think about almost nothing else." So, you soon realize, does everybody at Canyon Ranch, including the three hundred in staff.
Then you meet with a program adviser who guides you through a bewildering range of possibilities: aquatic fitness, aromatherapy, arthritis consultation, badminton, basketball, behavioral therapy, biking, bingo, biofeedback, body composition, body contouring, breathing, cholesterol evaluation, clay treatment, cranial massage, cross-country skiing, European facial, food habit management, funk aerobics, handwriting analysis, high- and low-impact aerobics, hiking, hydrotherapy, hypnotherapy, inhalation, intensive treatment facial, Jacuzzi, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Lifecycles, Lunch & Learn, makeup, meditation, minitrampoline, nutrition counseling, posture and movement, racquetball, reflexology, rhythms, rowing, running (indoor and out), salt treatment, sauna, shiatsu, snowshoeing, squash, steam room, stop smoking, stretching, Swedish massage, swimming, tennis, treadmills, volleyball, weight lifting, wellness counseling, whirlpool baths, yoga.
I was growing acutely anxious about exercising in public. I flashed back to those agonizing afternoons in summer camp on the dusty baseball diamond--where three of us were always dispatched to far right field and spent two hours in the blinding sun praying that the ball would never come our way. My wife could hardly wait. A dancer and star high-school sprinter in California when she was young, she doesn't get much practice in either of them around me. She immediately signed up for a facial, three types of massage (cranial, sports, and shiatsu), body composition analysis, aromatherapy, and a herbal wrap, and filled in the rest of her schedule with classes in rhythm aerobics, flexibility, and strength training. Then she sprinted across the hall to the Canyon Ranch Showcase shop, unavoidable as you enter the spa building, where they sell athletic clothing, shoes, books, and tapes. She had not gone shopping for thirty-six hours and was beginning to show the strain.
As I had signed up for nothing but a late-afternoon tennis lesson (with an excellent pro), I rented a tape of Tequila Sunrise with Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, and Mel Gibson, and returned to our comfortable room after lunch. Except during meals, there is no coercion at Canyon Ranch, nobody following you around to make sure you are doing what you should. Tequila Sunrise, it turns out, is a much underrated film.
On our second day, my wife's schedule was so crammed with exercise and pampering that we saw each other only at meals. By dinnertime, her skin was pink and smooth as a baby's. The skin-care person urged her to wear plastic bags filled with lotion on her hands all night. The skin-care person is divorced.
I spent my time wandering around, watching but not engaging, until I dropped into Gym 4, where they keep the aerobic and strength-training machines, beautiful glittering things in chrome and brass made by a company called Keiser. The fitness staff were unaccountably squandering their afternoon break lifting weights and futilely trying to climb the StairMaster; when they were done, I asked for a demonstration. Before you knew it, I had completed the full circuit, at modest levels of resistance, of course, and had mounted the treadmill for a snappy walk as I gazed through a huge picture window at the New England countryside. The Appalachian Trail passes just beyond the property.
When I had worked up quite a lather, I signed up for a locker (most guests do this on their first day), tried the men's sauna, steam, and inhalation rooms, took a cool shower (individual curtained stalls), and, against my better judgment, felt almost terrific.
The herbal room was dim and warm. Calming New Age music seeped in through hidden loudspeakers. I lay on a table tightly swaddled in heavy, hot, wet canvas blankets impregnated with five herbs. The herbal therapist could not remember which five herbs they were--I would have preferred a little more tarragon--but promised they would detox me, get all the poisons out of my bloodstream. Like what? Oh, nicotine, coffee, chocolate, like that. With my sanguinary poisons oozing out all over the canvas blankets, I was surprised that she was not wearing a protective suit and helmet. I have always considered people who believe that chocolate is a poison to be twisted beyond redemption.
Then she left me alone. My arms were pinned to my sides by the herbal wrappers, and for five minutes I considered going into a serious panic. At last I settled into a pleasant reverie. I was in Paris again, tucking into a plate of Joël Robuchon's ravioli of langoustines and his roasted rabbit under a fricassee of wild mushrooms. Presently the scene shifted to La Cagouille, where tiny mussels are grilled without oil on a bare open skillet. When the herbal therapist returned to unwrap me, I was sipping a dark morning coffee at the Café Flores, biting into a crusty baguette.
Any of these delights would fit into the Canyon Ranch low-fat, low-calorie regime, yet none of them does. I knew I was in trouble at our very first lunch, the emptiest 285 calories I've ever frittered away. It was a "pizza" with a thin brown leatherette crust covered by a cheese mistranslated as mozzarella and some vegetables that don't even belong in the same room with a pizza. Coffee was a pallid version of brewed decaf. At dinner I would learn how to order a packet of instant Maxwell House to dissolve in my decaf, and the next day I would meet a waiter willing to smuggle out a cup of real coffee from the staff's real coffeepot.
Why all this fuss about caffeine? On my last day at Canyon Ranch, I read a delightful story in the newspaper. Researchers at Stanford have discovered that decaffeinated coffee increases your bad cholesterol (LDLs) by an average of 7 percent! Real coffee has no such effect. The decaf crowd has got so powerful of late that you can no longer find a cup of real coffee at the end of a dinner party. Although these people have deprived me of pleasure for all these years, I now feel a profound sense of compassion toward them and am thankful to Whoever has guided me upon the low-cholesterol, caffeinated path.
I was never hungry at Canyon Ranch but never satisfied. Executive Chef Barry Correia has a strong background in modern American cooking, but he faces four insurmountable problems: the Canyon Ranch Nutrition Philosophy, the official recipes he is required to produce, the ingredients he uses, and the organization of the kitchen. The directors of Canyon Ranch should either start over from scratch or erase the words "exquisite gourmet fare" from all brochures, pamphlets, and advertising.
The Canyon Ranch Nutrition Philosophy is strict, though not as draconian as Pritikin: 60 percent carbohydrates, mainly complex, 20 percent fat, 20 percent protein, 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day, high fiber, no caffeine, oils high in polyunsaturates, two grams of sodium, almost no refined flour. Some of these rules are arbitrary, some outmoded. There is no medical reason whatsoever for healthy eaters to limit themselves to two grams of sodium a day. The tasteless gazpacho came alive after I had a dish of salt brought to the table and added two tiny pinches. Though delicious crusty, yeasty bread is the most wonderful complex carbohydrate in the world, all the breads at Canyon Ranch range from boring to gruesome. All are store-bought but one, and this is made with baking soda instead of yeast. Great brea... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
A James Beard Book Award Finalist
When Jeffrey Steingarten was appointed food critic for Vogue, he systematically set out to overcome his distaste for such things as kimchi, lard, Greek cuisine, and blue food. He succeeded at all but the last: Steingarten is "fairly sure that God meant the color blue mainly for food that has gone bad." In this impassioned, mouth-watering, and outrageously funny book, Steingarten devotes the same Zen-like discipline and gluttonous curiosity to practically everything that anyone anywhere has ever called "dinner."
Follow Steingarten as he jets off to sample choucroute in Alsace, hand-massaged beef in Japan, and the mother of all ice creams in Sicily. Sweat with him as he tries to re-create the perfect sourdough, bottle his own mineral water, and drop excess poundage at a luxury spa. Join him as he mounts a heroic--and hilarious--defense of salt, sugar, and fat (though he has some nice things to say about Olestra). Stuffed with offbeat erudition and recipes so good they ought to be illegal, The Man Who Ate Everything is a gift for anyone who loves food. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B00513H3MY
- Publisher : Vintage; Vintage Books Ed edition (June 8, 2011)
- Publication date : June 8, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 756 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 527 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #213,029 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #41 in Biographies & Memoirs of Chefs
- #84 in Gastronomy Essays (Kindle Store)
- #191 in Travel Writing
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Jeffrey Steingarten trained to become a food writer at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Harvard Lampoon. He is the internationally feared and acclaimed food critic of American Vogue.
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Mr. Steingarten has an imperturbable gravitas on the panel, and does deliver his opinions ungarnished with self-deprecation, which tends to rub third-tier show biz types the wrong way. Once a former Dancing With the Stars actress rounded on him hotly because he didn't like something she thought was wonderful. He took it with the placid aplomb of an English Mastiff accosted by an anxious Pomerianian. He isn't arrogant. I know that because I read his book. A man is not arrogant who buys ten orders of MacDonald's French fries to try out 33 kinds of ketchup. Then confesses it was too much food and he and his wife got mixed up. And in the end they decided their favorite ketchup might not be the spiciest, but with fries, "a marriage made in heaven." If he acts as if he knows he's right, it's because he knows he's right. How can you not like a know-all who goes to all that trouble to be sure?
The Man Who Ate Everything is a collection of essays packed with his musings, research, recipes, and travels in quest of culinary perfection. His thing is to search out the experts and recipes, then do it at home. But, "Cesare [his Italian informant] never warned me about making pasta near an open drawer." His crater of flour was breached and twenty egg yolks surged across the table "like molten lava rolling over a Hawaiian housing development," into the silverware drawer. Cooking methods are detailed and the physics behind certain techniques are explained. What an interdisciplinist he is, if that's a word. I appreciated the history lessons, as well as the attention to biology (I am a wildlife ecologist). He reasonably concludes that food phobias make no sense, because we are omnivores, and gets rid of most of his through determined exposure to the hated items, because he wants to be a fair and liberal food critic who eats everything.
He can't write without being funny, but beneath it he's always informed. Mr. Steingarten gets it right about plants' making poisons, and why. Boil that spinach and throw away the water, People. He is also right that we have been hoodwinked into believing that all fat is bad. I notice the dairy section of my grocery store is still loaded with awful Fat Free cheese, sour cream, half-and-half (half of what and what?); and the number of crappy Fat Free salad dressings still crowding the shelves is depressing. I was loading my cart with avocados when a woman next to me sighed and said she loves avocados, too, but(as if surprised I was still alive), "All those fatty acids!" The section Why Aren't the French Dropping Like Flies? should be required reading for anyone with a family history of heart disease.
There's a lot of fun here. He goes on a new French diet that was then all the rage (Atkins, South Beach, etc. were later knock-offs), loses 7 lbs after a month of hilarious obsessing about the number on the scales (he purchases three for comparison), but remains lovably unconverted and returns to "pies, pierogi, pistachios, pizza, popcorn potatoes, puff pastry--and that only covers the P's." He enrolls in waiters school and learns how to trick people into spending more than they intended. He travels to Memphis to judge a barbecue competition and is so in love with the winning ribs that he brings some home, and stoically stops himself from devouring them all before his wife comes home from work--his sensuous description of the meat should be rated PG-13, at least. He says I have been making mashed potatoes the wrong way, with Grandmom's hand masher. But in my defense, Mr. Steingarten's way is not to mash them at all, so I think he shouldn't call them mashed. But I can't wait to try his ketchup recipe.
Just a warning: Don't try to read too much in one sitting, no matter how much you're enjoying it. I was skimming around sampling this and that, and had already read a lot--too much, I guess--by the time I got to Primal Bread. I should have been riveted. I actually kept starter once. My donor just waved her hands when I asked where she got it. "Oh, the yeasts just naturally occur, you know. Every kitchen has them." Now I see why it never tasted very good. But my eyes were glazing over and I put the book down. Keep portion size small.
I keep very few books. But this one, I will. I already ordered It Must Have Been Something I Ate, and I wish there were others. The Man Who Ate Everything is funny, intelligent, informed. Just like Mr. Steingarten.
Steingarten's greatest strength as a writer to the amateur foodie is his ability to put himself in our position vis-à-vis the experts. He never pictures himself as an expert like Harold McGee on food science or Mario Batali on Italian cuisine or Nick Malgieri on baking or even like gifted neophyte Alton Brown on cooking technique. Unlike these professionals and teachers, Steingarten's shtick is how he gets there, not what he as learned after arriving. He is the culinary everyman's surrogate who can travel to Venice to visit Marcella Hazan for an education in cooking and eating Venetian seafood and have cooking expert Marian Cunningham fly in to teach him how to make a perfect piecrust.
Steingarten's introduction which gives an explanation of the book's title makes one seriously wonder what our dear reporter did before he was tapped to write on food for `Vogue'. His list of culinary aversions could fill several major cookbooks, and have. One wonders if Steingarten had any food related assignment before he embarked on reforming his tastes to fit his `Vogue' assignment. While I sometimes fear that my sense of taste is remarkably dull compared to those of talented chefs, my compensation is that there is literally nothing I will not eat and there are very few things I will avoid. In contrast, pre-Vogue Steingarten had aversions to kimchi, dill, swordfish, anchovies, miso, falafel, clams, and all Greek food. The introductory essay is the story of how Steingarten overcame all of these aversions except to the one for eating insects.
This first essay is a perfect exemplary of Steingarten's style. It may have been easier to say these are the aversions he overcame, but it is much more fun to describe how he overcame them. This is not to say that the book is all about the tourist to the banal. Steingarten is well prepared for most of these trips and we, along with the author, learn much in the course of his trials and errors.
While this is not a book about food science a la Robert Wolke's `What Einstein Told His Chef', there is a lot of scientific method afoot in many of the essays. My favorite is Steingarten's excursion into the world of the perfect piecrust. As dedicated `Good Eats' fans know from Alton's episode on pie crusts, the building of the perfect pie crust involves resolving two contrary properties, flakiness and tenderness while doing battle with properties of wheat flour gluten which work so well when creating bread, but which, it is said, cause all sorts of undesirable characteristics in pie crusts, known to the French as `pate brisee'. Before expert Cunningham flies in from California, Steingarten surveys the entire body of writing in English on what makes a good pie crust and comes up with a perfect procedure involving a whiz of the flour in a food processor with half the shortening followed by a careful folding in of the remaining shortening and a hint of water to bring everything together. The result is a disaster.
The lesson from this attempt is that that villain gluten is not so irrelevant to a pastry crust as some writers would have you believe. When Madame Cunningham arrives on the scene, she whips up a dandy piecrust in about as much time as it may take you to write about it. Ms. Cunningham then flies off before Herr Steingarten has gotten everything about her technique down on paper. This leads to many transcontinental telephone calls while our Jeffrey perfects his fingering with the dough and gets everything down in black and white. The really ironic outcome of this exercise and the resulting essay is that Steingarten's description of the complete procedure takes SEVEN (7) full pages. And, that is with a recipe using shortening rather than my preferred butter. I may not follow his procedure, but I certainly enjoyed his journey needed to get him to that result.
Like Villas, it is quite likely that you will find much in Steingarten's writing with which to disagree. This is part of the fun. For example, he can find little to like about roasted turkey, the national American holiday meal. Since `Gourmet' and `Bon Appetit' and Nigella Lawson (among others) are still cooking up new recipes for the maligned bird, I suspect Steingarten has not talked anyone out of eating their gigantic poultry, but it is certainly fun listening to him rant about it and, as Ms. Lawson so aptly points out, tradition may be as much or more important than the turkey's culinary virtues.
As we are approaching the dark evenings of winter, I definitely recommend this book as a classic of American culinary writing. It is our Yankee answer to B'rer Villas' writing about food from the Southern perspective. As an essayist, Steingarten has the eye and mind of Stephen Jay Gould and the wit and wordsmithing (and similarly strong prejudices) of H. L. Menchen, my two favorite American essayists.
Highly recommended.
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