In the words of Portlandia, the dream of the 1890s is alive. In The Lost Art of Real Cooking, Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger Henderson focused on making dishes from scratch. Now, in their second book, The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home, they want to teach you how to make everything from fish head stew to 1000-year-old eggs. Albala is a Brooklyn-born, suburban New Jersey-raised Jew who works as a professional historian in Stockton; Henderson, who's based in San Francisco, was raised Mennonite on the East Coast and is about to have her first child. Albala spoke to Creative Loafing from his office at the University of the Pacific about pig’s blood, stinky fish parts and the rise of DIY.
Creative Loafing: What inspired you and Rosanna to write The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home?
Ken Albala: Many things the industry has convinced people cannot be done at home always have been. So we literally started from scratch a few years ago and began making our own bread with wild yeast, even grinding grain ourselves, and I ended up building a wood-fired oven. People ask how we find the time to do these things, but it’s really only in a few spare hours on weekends. No more time than most people would spend watching TV.
In the introduction, you talk about how you wanted to make this a practical guide.
Yes, we only included things people could do at home. Nothing in this book is easy, mind you, or quick. A few things I don’t think I’d do again, like the 1000-year-old eggs, but they worked, so I included the instructions, even though I’m not crazy about them. The soy sauce was also pretty funky, but I used it. It just took a year to age!
In several sections, like the Fish chapter, you’ve woven in current issues like the commercial fishing industry.
Seriously, it’s because we like stinky little fish and people only eat a few species nowadays, and it’s a shame. I’m especially depressed that the fish in the markets where I live is already cleaned and fileted. The head and bones shouldn’t be thrown away. It’s the same with offal and parts of animals that get regularly tossed.
What were some of the lost arts that didn’t make the cut?
My Italian ices story almost got cut, but I’m very glad it didn’t. But almost everything else did make it in, if it tasted good and was fun. That was the basic criterion; even though there are things I can imagine many people not wanting to work with, like fresh blood. But I adore it. In fact I recently made a chili based on blood and pig’s ears.
Where did you find some of these lost arts? What kind of research did you have to do?
I’m a Renaissance food historian professionally, so I cook from old cookbooks all the time. The recipes in this book are mostly not taken from old cookbooks, though, simply because many procedures aren’t explained. Or even more importantly, we have to work with local bacteria, yeasts and molds, which are not the same as those people would have been working with elsewhere and in the past. So in a sense it took departing from the historic cookbooks.
With sites like Pinterest taking off, more people want to know how to do things themselves. Do you see this as a momentary trend or a long-term shift?
DIY is definitely on the rise. I think interest in this is cyclical. High-tech molecular gastronomy is worn out and now people want to eat locally, make things themselves and not have to deconstruct food or use expensive equipment. It has a lot to do with the economic downturn, too. Eating rare exotic luxuries in snooty restaurants is a bit unseemly when people are out of work.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.