Dispatches From The Field: Joe on Food Heros

In Food Heroes, Georgia Pellegrini introduces readers to the lively stories of artisanal food devotees such as New York mushroom forager Marion Burroughs, French fig collector Francis Honore, fish missionary Jon Rowley in Washington State, and Ugo Buzzio in New York City, one of the last makers of traditional dry-cured sausages in the United States. Filled with colorful anecdotes, photographs, and recipes, this book offers an accessible introduction to the artisanal food movement, and vicarious living for armchair travelers, food lovers, and others who might won­der what it would be like to drop everything and start an olive farm, or who yearn to make and sell their own clotted cream butter. Thirty-two fantastic recipes follow the profiles, and encourage readers to find their own local suppliers.

Joe says:
"In Georgia Pellegrini's latest book, Food Heroes, she introduces the reader to 16 culinary artisans preserving tradition around the world. These 16 people may be some of the unsung heroes of the localvore food movements. They are keeping the traditional methods of preparing delicious and nutritious food alive.

I found myself rereading portions of this book again and again, underlining, dog-earing pages, and trying out the recipes before I'd even finished the book. It is a lively and entertaining book and one that will likely sit well-used among my cookbooks. In this book, traditional methods are king, and very often the USDA and county health departments are the enemy, squashing the older ways of doing thing through red tape or checklists created to sterilize quality and taste. Of interest to Denver readers is Jake Norris, who is the head distiller at Stranahan's Whisky distillery on Alamada & Kalamath. His whiskey has recently beat out the more "traditional" whiskeys of Ireland, Scotland and Kentucky to be voted Whiskey of the Year,
and his story is one of 15 proving that our new ways of doing things are not always the best."