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Traveling with cookbooks
By Cathy Salter
Tenuta di Spannocchia, an organic working farm in Tuscany. Photo courtesy of Cathy Salter)
In this time when Delta and Omicron Covid variants continue to have us cooking at home rather than eating out, I find myself traveling the culinary world via the pages of cookbooks. Since the pandemic began almost two years ago in March 2020, I’ve become a huge fan of Sam Sifton, editor of NYT Cooking. While reading his suggestions for what to cook while coping with pandemic isolation, I learned about Samin Nosrat’s cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and a four-part Netflix documentary inspired by her epicurious travels.
“Cookbooks help me escape these days,” wrote Nosrat: “Years before I ever set foot in Rome or the Chianti Valley, I traveled there by reading cookbooks.” At that moment, I traveled in my mind to Spannocchia—an Italian villa in the Tuscan hills with 12th century roots, a place I had visited before. The evening my husband Kit and I first arrived there, we were led to a dining room where an open wood fire burned warmly and enjoyed a meal of penne pasta, roasted pork, carrots seasoned with the estate’s own extra virgin olive oil and fresh rosemary, hearty Tuscan bread, and bottles of the villa’s own wines.
That night, we slept the sleep of ages. In the morning, we joined the other guests for breakfast and tasted our first cup of dark Italian coffee, toasted Tuscan bread with butter and jam, yogurt and granola drizzled with local honey, hard-boiled eggs with orange yolks and brown shells still warm to the touch, and a huge bowl of fresh apples, oranges, kiwi fruit and grapes.
That week, I took part in a class with a local cook who grew up on the estate. The tastes that Nosrat experienced while “traveling” through regional Italian cookbooks, I experienced while making fresh pasta in the villa’s kitchen. The Spannocchia: Our Favorite Recipes introduction begins, “In Italian, we speak of saperi e sapori which translates into knowledge and taste…. By creating traditional dishes, made from products grown on the property, by hands who have created these dishes for decades, we forge a connection to the past and keep knowledge and taste alive.”
I also travel to Italy through cookbooks and two of my favorites are written and illustrated by Suzanne Dunaway who lives in Rome and Southwest France. When I make focaccia bread, it’s from the pages of her cookbook, No Need to Knead: Homemade Italian Breads in 90 minutes. If I make a fresh tomato sauce, I turn to Suzanne’s second cookbook, Rome, at Home.
Feeling the need to escape these days? Travel to Suzanne Dunaway’s kitchen via her YouTube demonstrations, and on to The Common Ingredient—a recipe-sharing website started by a small group of women in Columbia, Mo. in March 2020 in response to the pandemic. We encourage donations to local organizations that help feed those in the community experiencing food insecurity. Share a recipe. Make a donation. Start a chapter of The Common Ingredient in your own community. Be a part of working for a better world. Visit www.thecommoningredient.com.
Travel to Tuscany today with this simple, tasty recipe:
Tuscan Crostone Pera e Gorgonzola (Pear and Gorgonzola Crostone)
Recipe from Spannocchi: Our Favorite Recipes by Loredana Betti, Graziella Capanni, and Daniela Casarin
Serves 6
12 slices Italian white bread
1 pear
1 large slice (1 cup) gorgonzola cheese
Pre-heat the oven to 400º F. Cut the bread into thin slices. Peel the pear and cut into 12 thin slices. Put a slice of pear on each piece of bread and then spread a generous layer of gorgonzola cheese on top, covering the pear and the rest of the bread. Place all the crostone onto a baking sheet and put in the oven for 5-7 minutes or until cheese is melted. Best served right out of the oven. Optional: Add a drizzle of local honey to each crostone before serving.
For another southern European favorite, see Cathy's essay on the common cannellini bean here: https://www.cathysalter.com/blog/the-common-cannellini-bean
 Cathy Salter is a writer, journalist, and project member of The Common Ingredient who now lives and cooks out west in the Sierra Foothills. A version of this essay first appeared January 22, 2022, on the author's website.
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Cookbooks carry snapshot of university extension history
By Anne Deaton
Cover of a University of Kentucky Demonstration Portfolio, published in
the 1930s, for use by Extension, providing proof that our mothers and grandmothers
“were in the know” thanks to Extension! Photo courtesy of Anne Deaton
Where to start describing two culinary gems from the late 1930s and early 1940s found in an antique shop in Berea, Ky? The gems are two University of Kentucky Demonstration Portfolios, chock full of recipes. They are cookbooks of sorts, but they were and remain much more. Their contents formed the basis of educational programs that County Home Economic Extension Agents (as they would have been called then) used in making presentations to women’s Home Economic Clubs in Kentucky. Between the sturdy covers of the three-ring binder-style books are wide-ranging materials that include detailed instructions, complete with charts and diagrams for various projects and household responsibilities.
The Portfolios are part of a century-plus of nationwide extension education in the U.S. which became an outreach of our land-grant university system. In 1914, the Smith Lever Act formalized extension by establishing a partnership with USDA and land-grant universities to apply research and provide an education in agriculture. But extension roots in the U.S. go back to agricultural clubs that sprang up after the American Revolution in the early 1800s. University extension focuses on improving food production, but often reaches into the kitchen and home to improve not only farming, but lives across the nation.
In these Kentucky books, homemakers could learn how to plant gardens, preserve foods, build food driers, prepare meals, carve meat, and how to buy, grade, store, and freeze meat (fish too). There are sections on table setting and manners, too. The portfolios kept these homemakers in the know about how to choose foods based on their nutrient content, information about what various food nutrients support which parts of the human body, with an emphasis on food value for growing children.
 
Subjects of the Demonstration Portfolios published by University of Kentucky Extension. Photo courtesy of Anne Deaton.
Additional details cover developing a budget and feeding the family within it. The information and recipes are clearly aimed at maximizing food budgets, with special emphasis on Victory Gardens during the war years, while improving the quality of food nutrients in meals prepared for families - surely a year's worth of monthly presentations. The photos throughout are priceless, capturing the life and the centrality of food for the work-at-home moms of the era.
One section designed to educate youth in Extension 4-H clubs caught the eye of Christal Huber, director of Missouri 4-H, and now a project member of The Common Ingredient (see article below, "Youth projects, 4-H clubs, powerful force for food security"). Plans are afoot to bring 4-H’ers into the TCI project to raise awareness about food insecurity in Missouri and throughout the country. In a very meaningful sense, youth engagement brings the mission of these two Demonstration Portfolios into contemporary times. Consider how it could reach to the 4-H Extension program in your state as well!
- Action Idea: Contact the land grant university in your state and find their 4-H Program Director. Tell them about TCI, its mission, and its plan to involve youth. Invite them to visit the TCI website and/or contact Christal (huberc@missouri.edu) to learn how she is thinking about engaging 4-H’ers.
- Find your state's extension service at https://www.almanac.com/cooperative-extension-services.
 Anne Deaton is the founding member of The Common Ingredient project. She and husband Brady Deaton also spearhead the Deaton Institute with the aim of eliminating extreme poverty and food insecurity globally, among other projects.
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Youth projects, 4-H clubs, powerful force for food security
By Christal Huber
1938 University of Kentucky portfolio for Extension aimed at youth. Other
state Extension offices often produced tools such as this to reach the public.
Photo courtesy of Anne Deaton
The holidays reminded me how much I love cooking with kids in the kitchen. It is always a mess and takes twice as long, but it’s so much fun and a great learning experience. Which is just one of the few reasons why I am passionate about the positive youth development organization 4-H, a Cooperative Extension program. 4-H programs provide youth the opportunity to explore what sparks their interest with caring adults through hands-on learning.
While 4-H programs encompass a wide variety of projects they began around food. The first 4-H clubs in the early 1900’s, corn and tomato clubs, taught youth how to grow their own crops. These soon expanded to include many other life skills such as raising livestock, cooking, food preservation, and sewing. Today 4-H programs encompass so much more, including projects in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), but youth still can learn how to grow and raise food through projects such as gardening, agronomy, and livestock projects. Preparing food, cooking it, and food preservation remain a focus.
To capitalize on these food and nutrition projects, Missouri 4-H programs began a new initiative by implementing Student Nutrition Advisory Councils (SNAC) this past year. Youth in SNAC clubs learn healthy habits through cooking, gardening, and fitness programs. In Boone County, MO, a partnership with Columbia Public Schools allowed all eighth grade summer school students to learn basic cooking skills through the Kids in the Kitchen Program. Youth comments included that they “liked how we cooked delicious food while learning about how we can stay healthy and keep our food safe.” Youth in SNAC clubs also complete a leadership project to share what they learned with others. Activities have included making a healthy meal plan, proving healthy school lunch alternatives, and working with local food pantries to educate the public on food insecurity.
While these programs are specific to SNAC clubs, statewide Missouri 4-H has also been collectively working to fight food insecurity as well. January kicked off their fourth annual 4-H Feeding Missouri Drive, in partnership with the Missouri Farmers Care Drive to Feed Kids. Many 4-H members and volunteers are educating their communities about food insecurity by holding food drives, fundraisers and packing events until April 2022 to raise 450,000 meals for Missourians.
 Christal Huber is a project member of The Common Ingredient and a County Engagement Specialist in 4-H Youth Development with University of Missouri Extension where she specializes in non-formal STEM education and career development. To learn more about her work in central Missouri visit: https://extension.missouri.edu/people/christal-huber-104463
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In the language of boys
By Robin LaBrunerie
Aziz is 14, the oldest of seven brothers who arrived in the U.S. along with his parents from Afghanistan three short months ago. Aziz speaks little English. He enrolled in Douglas High School and is gradually adjusting to life in Columbia, MO.
Recently his mom let me know he needed new pants. He’s growing so fast he has outgrown those he got when he arrived in America. So I took him shopping for new long-enough pants, and to get a haircut.
While we were at the mall Aziz let me know he wanted something else. He didn’t know the English word for it, but he kept pointing to men wearing baseball caps. He has a good stocking cap, but he made it clear he wanted a baseball cap. What teenage boy wouldn’t, I suppose.
At the sporting goods store, he spent a long time trying to find one that was right. I didn’t understand why he was being so picky as he hadn’t been particular about his pants at all. Then I started seeing it needed to be a reflection of his personality. He finally saw a Mizzou Tigers ballcap, black with a camouflage bill. I showed him the ones that are all black, or all gold, but he was certain about the one he had found. He asked what the Tiger was, didn’t know what Mizzou was, but pointed, finally to the side of the hat where there was a small American flag insignia. He said, “America. This the hat. America.”
While we waited in line, we looked at his hat and he, usually boisterous and cheerful, was now quiet. He pointed to the flag again and said, “America.” Then he pointed to the camouflage bill and said, “Afghanistan.”
All his years in his home country have been years of war and the country is suffering great food insecurity now.
Aziz’s mom thanked me by sharing some of her homemade bread. I feel so much gratitude for the exposure to this rich culture.
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Travel to the warm hearth of the Afghan people with this recipe:
Zalaja’s Bread (Dodae)
Makes about 18 large flat breads
9 cups very hot tap water +3 cups + 1-1/2 cups +1/2 cup
8 cups all-purpose flour +3 cups
1 tablespoon yeast
1-1/2 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
 
In a large bowl pour 9 cups very hot tap water and add 8 cups flour. Mix well with hands. It will be sticky. After two minutes mix in yeast and knead well. Add 3 more cups very hot water and 3 more cups flour. Knead for about 5-8 minutes or until soft. Sprinkle a little flour on top, cover with floured dish towel and let rise for two hours. Next, add another 1-1/2 cups very hot water and mix with hands. Throw the dough from side to side inside the bowl. Add salt and knead 5 minutes. Add baking soda and 1/2 cup water. Knead to incorporate these and then sprinkle with flour and cover with floured dish towels. Let the dough rise for 1 hour. Remove all shelves from your oven. Heat oven to 500 degrees but leave the door open. Remove the dough from the bowl and separate it into 18 balls, each ball roughly the size of a grapefruit. Add hot water if necessary to make the dough smooth. Flatten the dough pieces until it is like pizza dough, throwing it up and catching it to help in stretching it, if you're able. The finished size should be about 1/2-inch thick and a large enough diameter to fill the bottom of your oven. One at a time, place a flattened piece of bread dough on the bottom of your oven for 2 minutes. Flip over for two minutes. Remove to plate, fold into quarters. Eat while warm or store for up to 3 days.
 Robin LaBrunerie is a project member of TCI, journalist, and food writer. She lives and writes in Columbia, Missouri.
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Missouri podcast highlights food, culture, history
By Nina Mukerjee Furstenau
Hungry for Missouri podcast launched in 2022 by the Missouri Humanities Council and hosts Jenny Vergara and Natasha Bailey.
Click here for archived podcast links.
In Missouri, the state humanities council has launched a podcast series that highlights the food history and food culture of the region. The episode topics range from the introduction of the crock pot in Kansas City in 1971 to George Washington Carver's quiet food revolution. Since food and community are what The Common Ingredient (www.thecommoningredient.com) is all about, it's exciting to see more midwestern voices rise in food media.
Co-hosted by Jenny Vergara, foodie and freelance writer, and Natasha Bailey, a chef, cheesemaker, and home gardener, Hungry for Missouri celebrates how local cuisine connects communities and shapes regional identity. Each podcast episode dives deep—taking the listener on a food journey that highlight’s Missouri cuisine—including interviews with the food inventors, historical events, and unique circumstances or family recipes that went into some of the state’s most iconic dishes. New episodes will be released each week for six weeks beginning August 10, 2022.
Podcast launch announcement, Jenny Vergara (right).
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| FOOD HISTORY SNAPSHOT: This 1845 photo was one of the first that centered food as its main focus, writer, Julia Turshen says in "Food Photography, Over the Years." Prior to this image, when food appeared in photos, it was in the background. "I just love the way that pineapple tips to the right. The beginning of food styling!" Turshen says in her article appearing May 18, 2017 in the New York Times. See the full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/t-magazine/food-photography-history.html. Photo from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. |
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Did you know?
Do you know why every state has a land grant university?
Which is the land grant university in your state?
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The Common Ingredient: Healthier and Better Lives Through Food, Fellowship, and Sharing
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