If a single lavishly illustrated tome could satisfy the armchair traveler, the armchair gourmand, and the armchair anthropologist alike, this delightful book would be it. Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras, published in October, is the work of Atlas Obscura, the online magazine/newsletter/book/travel company whose mission is to unearth the less familiar travel destinations of the world.
Always fascinating and occasionally mind-bending, Gastro Obscura is a marvelous tour through the odder elements of cuisines and cultures from around the world, and reminder of the endless variety of what human beings can–and are willing to–consume, from spiced kebabs featuring the world’s largest snails in Ghana, to ackee and salt fish, the national dish of Jamaica, which is made from a fruit so deadly before boiling that it is illegal to export when fresh.
Personal favorites included the last wild apple forests of Ile-Alatau National Park in Kazakhstan; hoshigaki, the “pampered persimmons” of Japan, which are individually hung and massaged daily for a month, until they have transformed into nectar-like pouches; Portuguese bacon fat and wine pudding, described as a “magic trick of gastronomy because the custard is so ethereal it vanished in your mouth”; and tongba, the bottomless millet beer of Nepal, widely drunk but also ritually important to the Limbu people in the eastern part of the country.
Other foods require a strong stomach just to read about, never mind eat. Witness the hagfish, a jawless fish that can excrete five gallons of slime when agitated, or hongeo, fermented urine-cured skate–described as “smelling like an outhouse”--a divisive dish even in South Korea.
It is a poignant time to read of Ukraine’s festive traditions: while elaborate breads form part of wedding ceremonies throughout Eastern Europe, Ukrainian korovai is among the most beautiful and intricate, each swirl of dough having specific symbolic meanings for the future of the bride and groom.
Lest the reader come away a continent short in their appreciation for the interest of food traditions around the world, there are brief profiles of the specialties of a dozen base stations in Antarctica, most of which get their delivery of fresh ingredients just once a year. Poland’s Henryk Arctowkski Station serves a full traditional Polish Easter breakfast, and Chile’s Villa Las Estrellas, home to most of the children who live on Antarctica, provides meals of chicken and mashed potatoes; but it is China’s Great Wall Station that is reputed to serve the best food on the continent, prompting researchers to suit up and head out by snowmobile from other stations for an evening out.
And it’s good to be reminded of local traditions, old and new. Vermont gets credited with switchel, our pungent “colonial sports drink,” while New Hampshire gets a profile of the AMC huts dotting the White Mountains, and the simple but hearty meals prepared by their indomitable croo.
This book is a fascinating reminder of the immense variety of the hows and whys of human food consumption across cultures: symbolic, adventurous, nostalgic, aphrodisiac, epicurean, festive, historical, psychoactive, literary, religious, and of course fundamental to the business of staying alive. It’s a browser’s delight, perfect for whiling away the hours if you find yourself cut off from civilization by miles of liquified earth.
Jared is an adult services librarian at the Howe Library in Hanover. He purchases a range of nonfiction for the library and conspires with a colleague to devise the library’s programming. When otherwise free, he’s usually in the mountains, swimming in local ponds and rivers, trying his hand at new cuisines, reading, or dreaming of walking the Scottish Highlands.