Michael Ruhlman

This is nearly impossible for me to rate. Most of these are perfect examples of noir. They are gritty, dark, and hopeless. I can’t fault the writing in 75% of the stories. But, and this is big, I’ve never read a collection that left me feeling as despondent as this one. I wish I could bleach my brain and remove all remnants of these stories. I can’t fault them but I wish I’d never had to experience them. There are two exceptions to this - there's a story with a baseball conspiracy at show more its heart, "The Silent Partner" by Susan Petrone, which was fun, and "Sugar Daddy" by Abby L. Vandiver, which was also entertaining. If the entire collection had been like these, it would have been perfect. They had classic noir elements, but did not leave me feeling hopeless or dirty. If you are sensitive to child abuse and/or detailed horrors of gay conversion therapy (of which I had been blissfully unaware) DO NOT READ "Jock Talk" by Sam Conrad. This was so horrific that it overshadowed the entire collection. I wish it had never been written or included in this anthology, and I absolutely wish I had the warning so I could have never, ever read it. It has haunted me for days. show less

I decided to wait until I'd made several things from this book before I reviewed it. Currently I've made lemon confit (though it'll be 10 weeks before I can use it!), pizza dough, bacon-and-egg pizza, roasted shallots, and coq au vin.

The pizza was brilliant, even though I managed to overcook it a bit at all possible stages. I am hankering to make it again. Both the pizza itself and the crust are dead easy, and taste wonderful! The crust is crisp, but not at all like a cracker; I have some in show more the fridge to make tomorrow, because as written, it only takes 3 hours- that's great! but doesn't leave time for the dough to ferment. It'll be interesting to taste how it is after fermenting for a couple of days in the fridge. For the pizza as a whole, the balance of cheese, bacon, and eggs is just perfect and very crave-able.

The lemon confit was really easy to make, too. I can't use it yet because it requires 3 months curing, but it worked well. I've done 2 jars: one is conventional lemons, and the other is Meyer lemons. The recipe calls for 2 pounds of salt and one of sugar for 5 lemons; that seems excessive, since mine are going well with 9-10 lemons and 3/8ths the amount of sugar, salt and water.

The roasted shallots are like candy; I could eat them all day, but heroically refrained because I need some for the coq au vin, which we just ate and which is rich and flavorful and amazing. It did take me closer to 2 hours than 1 hour to make it, but it's so worth it; it's the best coq au vin I've ever made.

But- I didn't buy this just for the recipes. I really love Ruhlman's thoughtful approach to cooking, and the text parts are what I am valuing as I'm reading this. It is not a book of recipes; it's a considered approach about HOW to cook. If you like Cook's Illustrated, Ruhlman is definitely someone to read.

My only quibble: more and more, ambitious cookbooks seem to be vying for coffee-table-book status: they are getting huge and heavy and unwieldy. This makes them harder to read- and this one needs to be read- and harder to cook from. I do not care for this trend.

Still- I'm about a third of the way through reading it (albeit with difficulty), and have learned a lot from the text- and the recipes I've tried have been spot-on, and I want to make them all again soon. show less

Grocery is an interesting look at the social and logistical elements of the American food system which gets bogged down in tedious moralizing. Ruhlman is a professional food writer, and he focused on his high-end hometown chain of Heinen's. The early book wanders through his father's love of grocery shopping and cooking at the height of Jet Age large steaks, frozen veggies, and canned meals, and dips back to the birth of the American supermarket with the once-mighty Atlantic and Pacific show more company. The A&P introduced sealed, branded, packaged food, shifting the business of eating from subsistence farming and a variety of specialized *-mongers who worked on a commodity basis to the deeply weird and modern one-stop shop full of tens of thousands of unique items. Groceries are a big business, approximate $1 trillion annual in the US, and a tough business, with a profit margin of 0.5%.

Unfortunately, the book then veers into a lengthy assault on processed carbs, and you can have my processed carbs when you pry them from my cold, dead, diabetic hands. There's a really good STS book about the alliance of cheap corn, clever processing techniques, and regulatory somnolence which wrecked the American diet, but this ain't it chief. Heinen's has a staff doctor who approves healthy food, a charismatic health shaman named Dr. Todd, but you can also get your Triple Frosted Cookie-O at Heinen's because it's a business like any other, and people will shop where they can get their garbage. A journey to organic free-range lamb is a similar digression. I can't find out how much Lava Lake Lamb costs, due to Covid related disruptions, but I'm sure the price is Waygu beef like, if I could buy it. Healthy and sustainable food cannot be so expensive as to be a status symbol.

The book returns to some interesting areas, with a trip to buyer's conference for new products, where thousands of small vendors and grocery store product managers are competition to get the new fad food on shelves. Heinen's plays a fascinating role in this, as a company big enough to make a small kale granola manufacturer's product line, but without the immediate nationwide scale demands of Whole Foods or (god forbid) Walmart. Ruhlman also covers the rise in prepared foods, which he describes as "store-made leftovers", and which are an increasingly large but spottily profitable area.

So, interesting, but also a self-consciously foodie book, with foodie politics. show less

A little hard to be objective - I thought all this time I was the only one! I LOVE grocery shopping! It is without exaggeration the highlight of my week. I can fathom that some people might not love it, but consider it a "chore"? Would rather sit at home and click things online and have them delivered? Just suck all the joy out of life, why don't you!

And not only that, but Ruhlman traces his love of grocery shopping back to supermarket visits with his Dad - ME TOO! Periodic mass grocery show more shopping for the household was my Dad's task, too, and I loved being his helper. He made everything a game; and it didn't hurt that he too had a liberal hand in allowing me to toss into the cart any manner of dessert and snack items I wanted (because he loved them too). He did occasionally raise a very feeble protest against the sugary cereals me and my sibs insisted on eating – but he lost that battle one time when he brought home Whole Wheat Total and tried to claim it was “all they had.” We refused to eat it. We probably ate donuts or instant breakfast or pop-tarts instead.

But I should get back to the book. It has history, it has plenty of cultural and nutritional commentary, it has a big focus on the small Cleveland chain of grocery stores patronized by Ruhlman throughout his life, but it also has further digressions where Ruhlman channels his inner Michael Pollan to take us on in-depth exposes, interviews with experts, and adventures which reveal the underside of the simple act of grocery shopping.

I was on the edge of my seat throughout almost all of it... though I have to admit he lost me a couple of times, such as when he spent a chapter on supplements. Supplements!? Who cares! That's not food! And likewise when he spent a chapter traipsing through the woods with some dippy guy who talked about how we absorb healing chemicals just by being present in the forest. Again... THAT'S NOT FOOD.

And I'm sorry, one more quibble. As I said, I did appreciate his talking about his experiences with his Dad. But I think that in place of the endless "My Year Of..." books we were subject to a decade ago, now we all have to deal with "Coming to Terms with the Death of My Parent When You Thought All You Were Going to Learn about was Hawks/Whales/Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail/Supermarkets." Every non-fiction book these days seems to have to have a connection to the author's dead mother or father. I know, it sucks to lose your parents. Lots of things remind you of them. By all means, tell me about dear old Mom/Dad. But then they always get so maudlin and overwrought about it! S/he's dead, I know, it's very sad. That's exactly why you don't have to tell me that much about it. Ever heard of "nuff said'?

So, indeed, supermarkets ARE amazing. He references a New York Times Magazine article from 1996 that I distinctly remember reading and trying to share with my friends; similar to this book, it talked at lengths about the modern miracle that is the supermarket, and engaged in some cultural commentary and comparison as the writer visited some other styles of food procurement, such as some kind of farmer's market/open-air market in Spain, if I remember correctly... and that was cool too. Farmer's markets are awesome too. But that doesn't detract at all from my love of the supermarket. The friends with whom I tried to share my excitement over this article, were, I recall, definitely non-plussed, unfortunately.

Ruhlman also weighs in here and there with his opinions on best nutritional practices, which are nicely inconsistent. He has a beef against the misguided notions that eggs are bad for you and fat is bad for you (I forget which one of those gets his goat the most). He has plenty bad to say about processed food, but also doesn't hesitate to tell us all the less-than-chef-worthy things he loved in his childhood and to which he still doesn't seem totally averse.

My biggest takeaway was a quote from one of his interviewees, on the topic of how bad processed food is, and restaurant food is, and practically everything is, unless you bring it home and cook it yourself... bad for you inherently healthwise, and bad for you because its convenience leads you to eat too much of it. The quote was, more or less: "You want a diet? Eat anything you want - but cook it yourself." I love it! I could eat cookies and brownies and pasta Bolognese and all my favorites, so long as I cooked them myself, which would be a joy anyway. But I'd miss my frequent restaurant meals. And occasional Chinese/Vietnamese takeout. And occasional pizza. And... so this really wouldn't work for me.

What a joy this book was! I can hardly shut up about it. And I just ended up liking Ruhlman enough to want to read more by him - it seems he's written a lot. I see lots of food books coming into my Kindle in the year ahead! show less