Ed Behr :: 50 Foods

The Galaxy Bookshop and Claire's Restaurant welcome Ed Behr for a conversation about the pleasures of eating over a dinner celebrating the pure tastes of food! Ed Behr will be at Claire's for a special dinner  Tuesday, November 19th, at 5:30 P.M.  The prix-fixe dinner includes five courses paired with wine for $65 per person, tax and gratuity not included.  Please call 472-7053 for reservations.

Mr. Behr agreed to answer a few questions ahead of his visit.

1.  How did you come to write 50 Foods:  The Essentials of Good Taste?

EB:  After 25 years of travel, research, interviewing, and writing about food and wine -- and not least editing and publishing the work of others, including some of the greatest experts -- 50 Foods was the natural book to write, my magnum opus, to risk a grand description. It gathers and presents a large part of my work and of all I've learned. I've always focused on taste. I've often specialized in ingredients and the basic elements of eating -- in bread, cheese, ham, for instance -- the foundations of the pleasure we find in eating. This a sort of how-to book for eaters, a guide to deliciousness. It's full of practical information about food.

2.  Do you have a favorite go-to cookbook?

EB:  No. For me, that's potentially a big question, which doesn't lend itself to a quick response. I look to books more for inspiration than for recipes. But if I were to cite what I think are the two best cookbooks in English, they are Richard Olney's Simple French Food and Patience Gray's Honey from a Weed. Those two writers understand food and drink, they have, or really had, vast experience, and they write extremely well. They are, almost by definition, in the library of every Western cook who loves food and books.

3.  What's your favorite passage or line from a book? 

EB:  Possibly Richard Olney's description of cassoulet in Simple French Food, which I quote in 50 Foods.

4.  What are you reading currently? Non-food, Trollope's Eustace Diamonds. Food:  Jon Bonné's The New California Wine.

You can hear Ed Behr on Vermont Edition on Vermont Public Radio this Monday, November 18th, at noon and 7 P.M as well!