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Jordan Wright
February 25, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Tina Anderson, Kacie Greenwood and Gayle Grimes - photo credit Eddie Page For whatever reason the thought of attending a class reunion can turn even the most sensible woman into a bundle of nerves. Will an old flame turn up? Can I lose 10 pounds in two weeks? What will I wear? And should I book a hair and Botox appointment on the same day? Mercifully none of these options are considered by The Dixie Swim Club, whose reunion is an all-girl affair in this rollicking bit of sitcom froth from Port City Playhouse. Faithfully returning to a modest cottage on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, five former swim team members make an annual pilgrimage to recapture their glory days. And though one of the ladies prefers to vamp for the men at the fruit stand, swapping tattoo views for blueberries, the women are mostly there to rekindle their friendships.
 Anderson, Hayes. Grimes, Mitchell & Greenwood - photo credit Eddie Page Sheree Hollinger (Tina Anderson) is the group’s ex officio life coach, a no-nonsense drill sergeant cum cheerleader with a knack for organizing and a penchant for bizarre health food munchies, much to the horror of Lexie Richards (Barbara Hayes), an endearing mantrap dripping with Southern charm and sass who calls Sheree’s seaweed canapés of mung bean paste, goji berries and heron oil, “regurgitated ferret food.” A self-acknowledged proponent of three-year marriages and facelifts, she cycles through spouses like a washing machine. “The trouble with husbands,” she admonishes, “is they always say they’ll die for you…but they never do!” Her counterpoint, Dinah Grayson (Kacie Greenwood), a spine-straight Atlanta corporate lawyer, prefers the boardroom to the bedroom and martinis to men.
Jeri Neal McFeeley (Laura Champe Mitchell), who “genuflects at the sight of Miracle Whip”, is a nun reaching out for a second chance at life outside the convent. Her polar opposite is the wisecracking Vernadette Simms (Gayle Nichols-Grimes), an accident-prone perpetually unemployed housewife. “Vern” reports on her children’s regular incarcerations and sermonizes on the joys of biscuit baking.
 Greenwood and Hayes - photo credit Eddie Page The humorous yet sweetly sentimental play, by the veteran comedy writing team of Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten (you’ll love the comic slugfest if you’re a fan of Wooten’s long-running series, The Golden Girls), covers three decades of the women’s personal triumphs and failures marking time with cocktail-fueled weekends of swill-and-tell.
The entire cast is up for the snappy repartee with Nichols-Grimes stealing the show with her deadpan delivery . Director Eddie Page, a self-confessed veteran of “guys” weekends at Nags Head, handily taps into the zeitgeist to achieve an evening that goes down like a well chilled martini served straight up.
 Anderson, Grimes, Greenwood and Hayes - photo credit Eddie Page Port City Playhouse through March 10th at The Lab Studio Theatre at Convergence, 1819 North Quaker Lane, Alexandria, VA 22302. For tickets and information visit www.portcityplayhouse.com
Jordan Wright
February 28, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 John Shackelford (Max Levene), Brandon DeGroat (Joe Pendleton) and Cal Whitehurst (Mr. Jordan) - photo credit Doug Olmsted The Little Theatre of Alexandria’s production of Harry Segall’s stageplay, Heaven Can Wait, got off to a rocky start last night when the play’s Co-Producer and Assistant Director, Mary Ayala-Bush, had to jump into the part of Messenger 7013. Unfortunately she had gotten the part at 2 PM that same afternoon and, truth be told, she was reading lines off a clipboard and adlibbing the rest. No matter, she’s a pro, and by the time you read this she’ll have it down pat, but it was touch and go on opening night.
But even a cast glitch could not have gotten in the way of this lively production, enhanced mightily by the superb portrayal of boxer Joe Pendleton, by Brandon DeGroat, who in real life is a pro wrestler, movie actor and professional stuntman. DeGroat proves that he can handle the topsy-turvy role with more than just swarthy matinee idol looks. Throughout his performance he wows the audience with his talent for boxing feints, jumping rope double time, sofa vaults and stage-shaking pratfalls.
Historically the play found film incarnation with Here Comes Mr. Jordan starring Robert Montgomery and Claude Rains. Later it emerged as Oscar-winning film, Heaven Can Wait, starring Warren Beatty as football hero, and more recently as Down to Earth with Chris Rock as a comedian. No stretch there.
 Colin Davies (Doctor), Brandon DeGroat (Joe Pendleton), Geoffrey Baskir (Passenger), Michael Gerwin (Williams), Geoffrey Brand (Lefty), and John Shackelford (Max Levene) - photo credit Doug Olmsted In this version Joe is a boxer and erstwhile fighter pilot taken for dead by an over-zealous angel. When the mix up is discovered at the Pearly Gates, the celestial doorman Mr. Jordan, elegantly played by Cal Whitehurst, promises Joe he has another 60 years to go before his number is up. “I could put you in the body of a gnat”, Jordan asserts, and the two go off in search of an appropriately athletic body for Joe to continue his blossoming career. But before he can locate the perfect athletic specimen Joe must first assume the body of murdered millionaire investor, Leo Farnsworth, and it is as Farnsworth that Joe meets the love of his life, Bette Logan (Melissa Berkowitz).
The play begins to breath fire when Joe, as Farnsworth, reunites with agent Max Levene (John Shackelford) to reschedule the pivotal fight that will place him in the pantheon of the world’s greatest boxers. But first he has to convince Max that he is indeed the same Joe…albeit in a millionaire’s body.
 John Shackelford (Max Levene), Brandon DeGroat (Joe Pendleton) - photo credit Doug Olmsted Shackelford and DeGroat are electrifying when they share the stage – which thankfully is the heart and soul of this production. I can’t say enough about Shackelford’s beguiling brilliance in the role of Max, the agent who has one eye fixed firmly on his client’s newly acquired wealth and the other on his old buddy’s success. He’s got a keen sense of timing coupled with a canny ability to seamlessly morph his character from naive to crafty. His performance is nothing less than riveting.
If you’re up for a comedy rolled into a drama and wrapped in a love story, catch this one soon.
Through March 17th at The Little Theatre of Alexandria 600 Wolfe Street. For tickets and information call the box office at 703 683-0496 or visit www.thelittletheatre.com
Jordan Wright
February 14, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
Playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo wants his audiences to know that his play was inspired by three seminal moments in his young life. The first was seeing Doubt, a play by John Patrick Shanley that filled him with both excitement and dread. Excitement that “Theatre could be amazing,” and dread that it, “operates on very few rules and offers no guarantees.”
His second aha moment was, “…the unfolding of an investigation concerning several college students’ involvement in a brutal crime in the months before my graduation from NYU.” – an event that challenged the senior to rethink his own relationships and the questionable character of his peers.
The book by Jean Twenge, Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – And More Miserable Than Ever Before was another influence. “I thought of myself as an obvious exception, when in reality, that mentality alone made me the prototype,” he reveals with a refreshing honesty.
It’s difficult to be patient with the Generation Me college students in Really Really because they are depicted as crass, self-indulgent wannabes, utterly lacking in personal responsibility, while living in a bubble of entitlement and lax morals. Sound familiar? But Colaizzio wants us to take them as they are, “members of what the older generation have created,” as he describes it. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but fodder for reflection.
The world premiere play, an X-rated production oddly reminiscent of the long-running sitcom, Friends, shows Colaizzo’s formidable talent as a comedy writer. Yet aside from the clever comic relief, we are still faced with the dilemma of caring about a self-serving, scurrilous, homophobic, sexist and conniving group of students with paper-thin allegiances – quite a poisonous brew that’s compounded by binge drinking and interminable attempts to hook up and share the deets.
 (from left to right) Danny Gavigan (as Jimmy), Paul James (as Johnson) and Evan Casey (as Cooper) talking about last night’s big party in "Really Really". Photo: Scott Suchman. Grace (Lauren Culpepper) and Leigh (Bethany Anne Lind) are roomies. Their male counterparts Johnson (Paul James), Davis (Jake Odmark), and Cooper (Evan Casey) are on the rugby teammates sharing a frat house-style apartment replete with the requisite beer refrigerator and video games. Jimmy (Danny Gavigan), Leigh’s conflicted boyfriend and son of the college’s dean, comes by regularly for booty calls, much to Grace’s dismay. Smooth scene transitions are accomplished by Misha Kachman’s set design, which places their two apartments side-by-side on the Ark’s long yet narrow stage.
The play opens as Grace and Leigh stagger home laughing hysterically after attending the boys’ annual blowout kegger. The following morning Grace leaves town to deliver a speech to the Future Leaders of America and we begin to sense the morality theme of the play. Hoping to inspire her young attendees to take personal responsibility for their actions, she prophetically warns, “A great part of the formula for success is the ability to say ‘no’,” and notes ironically that all the personal communications devices used by the Me Generation start with the letter “I”.
After an accusation and follow-up investigation of the party’s activities, the friends are forced to face the consequences of their reckless lifestyle and betrayals rise to surface like fresh beer suds, as battle lines are drawn between the sexes and lies of convenience are held out as barter. But memories of the fateful night are clouded. Was there a date rape? Or was it a fantasy? Everyone’s too drunk to remember, or are they?
 Bethany Anne Lind (as Leigh) returning home from an on-campus party in "Really Really". Photo: Scott Suchman. Really Really is a cautionary tale with a familiar ring – that of the headline-grabbing Virginia trial of privileged college scion George Huguely V in the ongoing Yardley Love case, where similar patterns of alcohol, parties, hook ups and violence are a familiar campus way of life.
Fine performances from the ensemble cast, with Lind in the lead crafting a nuanced portrait of the sociopathic coed, Leigh. Wait for the entrance in the second act by Kim Rosen, as Leigh’s feisty sister Haley, who is memorable as the prep outsider conjuring up Snooki from MTV’s Jersey Shore.
Through March 25th at Signature Theatre (at Shirlington Village), 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, VA 22206. For tickets and information call 703 820-9771 or visit www.signature-theatre.org.
Jordan Wright
February 7, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 James Alexander, James T. Lane, Zurin Villanueva, Aisha de Haas, Debra Walton Photo credit: C. Stanley Photography Josephine Tonight hurtles the down the track at lightning speed with a fast-paced, musical bonanza about the legendary Josephine Baker’s early life and meteoric show biz career, beginning with her days as a street performer and on to Harlem’s Cotton Club and the Folies Bergere. Broadway veterans Sherman Yellen, who wrote the book and lyrics; the late Wally Harper, who composed the show; and the megawatt choreographer, Maurice Hines, who took on the additional role of director in this world premiere production. Working with a cast of five seasoned actors, whose bios read like a New York playbill and who play over a dozen roles between them, Hines and co-director Mel Johnson, Jr. bring this dazzling show to Alexandria’s MetroStage.
DC area theatre buffs will remember Hines won a Helen Hayes award in 2009 for his choreography of Cool Papa’s Party at MetroStage and the following year starred in the blockbuster Sophisticated Ladies at the Lincoln Theatre.
 Aisha de Haas as Big Bertha Smith - Photo credit: C. Stanley Photography The story of Josephine Baker’s life is complex and riveting. A bleak childhood on the mean streets of East St. Louis at the turn of the 20th century didn’t provide many avenues to success for a lanky black girl whose mother was a laundress and whose grandmother a slave in South Carolina.
When we meet Josie, “my little blackbird” as her mama calls her, the tough and willful teenager is dancing the chicken strut in front of the local Piggly Wiggly, busking for nickels and dimes and, “Shakin’ her bottom and tossin’ her top,” as the scandalized Reverend Loomis tells Josephine’s mother. Enter The Jolly Jones Family, a minstrel troupe who teach her the ropes and whisk her off with her mama’s approval to play black vaudeville houses on ‘The Sharecropper’s Circuit’.
As Josephine Baker, Zurin Villanueva (who last tread the local boards in Crowns at Arena Stage) has all the right sass as she taps, struts and slinks into your heart with the ferocity of a lioness, capturing Baker’s persona from gangly teen to the toast of Paris. Her sinuous interpretation of Baker’s notorious banana dance in a skirt of the waxy fruit and a top of marshmallow-sized coconuts, is mesmerizing.
Aisha De Haas, another veteran of Ain’t Misbehavin’, (are you feelin’ the Fats Waller vibe yet?) plays two characters that are polar opposites, Baker’s mother, Carrie, and Big Bertha Smith, her confidante and mentor, yet she segues seamlessly between them. Her voice is a rich blend of powerhouse gospel, blues and red-hot sizzle, and when she delivers the number “Pretty Is” in the second act, it’s guaranteed she’ll rip your heart out.
With smooth Astaire-like steps, precise and lightening quick, and a tender soulful voice in his rendering of the song “Never Thought I’d Find You Tonight”, James T. Lane displays elegant restraint playing both Eddie, Baker’s first love, and Paul, her Parisian Pygmalion, who introduces Josephine to a life of luxury and sophistication.
 Zurin Villanueva and James T. Lane as Josephine Baker and husband Eddie Baker - Photo credit: C. Stanley Photography The small adaptive cast is rounded out by the high-energy super-adorable Debra Walton (Broadway veteran of Ain’t Misbehavin’) and the old-school cool James Alexander.
Settle in for more than two dozen terrific toe-tapping numbers backed by arranger, conductor and pianist David Alan Bunn and a five-piece band whose members have played for the greatest names in the music business from Aretha Franklin and Jennifer Holiday to Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie.
Josephine Tonight is sheer entertainment from start to finish with all the delicious ingredients to fast track it to Broadway – joke-cracking, high-stepping, hard times and love songs featuring a strong cast that delivers its emotional heat with heart and soul.
Through March 18th at MetroStage 1201 North Royal Street, Alexandria, 22314. For tickets and information visit www.metrostage.org.
Jordan Wright
January 17th, 2012
Special to The Alexandria Times
 Amy Conley (Rona Lisa Perretti) and Jeff Davis (Vice Principal Douglas Panch) - Photos by Shane Canfield For those of us whose middle school memories harken to a time of anxieties, crushing insecurities and the dread of not fitting in, have I got a musical for you! The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will remind you that you have plenty of avatars in the challenging world of teenage angst. Dorks, dweebs, do-gooders and overachievers will be your new BFFs in this uproarious production featuring the oddball world of spelling bee competitions. (Note to parents of aspiring qualifiers: The annual Scripps National Spelling Bee is held right here in Washington, DC.)
That the characters in this musical are decidedly unique doesn’t get in the way of composer William Finn and conceptualizer Rebecca Feldman tapping into universal neuroses. We really do feel their pain, squirming and agonizing over obscure words like capybara or hasenpfeffer. Can you use that in a sentence?
The twist is that four actual audience members are brought on stage to join the “bee”. Opening night had the beautiful blonde theatre reviewer, Jeanne Theismann, who when introduced by Vice Principal Panch, was skewered with an intro as, “the cheerleader who hopes to marry the quarterback,” a reference to her ex-husband former Washington Redskin, Joe Theismann. She played along good-heartedly till her elimination when Panch declared, “All the 7th Grade boys are in love with this brunette!” Gales of laughter from the in-on-the-joke audience.
 Carl Williams (Mitch Mahoney), Josh Goldman (Leaf Coneybear), Eric Hughes (Chip Tolentino), Matt Williams (William Barfee), Claire O’Brien (Marcy Park), Maureen Rohn (Olive Ostrovsky), Emily “EJ” Jonas (Logainne Schwartzandgrubenniere), and Amy Conley (Rona Lisa Perretti) Photos by Shane Canfield Along with the six quirky students and their super-cool, jive-talking professional “Comfort Counselor”, Mitch Mahoney (Carl Williams), they share the stage with Vice Principal Douglas Paunch (Jeff Davis) and Secretary Rona Lisa Peretti (Amy Conley).
You’ll meet Chip (Eric Hughes) whose budding adolescent crush will dredge up all the awkwardness of early testosterone unpredictability and Logianne Schwartzandgrubenniere (Emily “E. J.” Jonas), a goofy pig-tailed Catholic School conformist who boasts a pair of bossy dads. Her fail-safe technique: To pre-spell words on her arm.
And then there’s the pretty and terminally insecure, Olive Ostrovsky (Maureen Rohn), whose abandonment by her ashram-trotting mother and distant father, bonds her with a dictionary. Olive talks into her hand to puzzle out the words, while the user-friendly, Leaf Coneybear (Josh Goldman) has successful eleventh-hour visions for memory aids. Leaf is home-schooled and makes his own capes. Are you reading a Charles Shultzian presence yet?
For the sestalingual Marcy Park (Claire O’Brien), rocking her cheerleader outfit, it’s all tediously beneath her. The hyper-accomplished, classical piano playing, baton-twirler informs us, “I’m sick and tired of being the best!”
And you’ll want to meet the adorably gawky William Barfee (Matt Williams), “It’s pronounced Bar-fey, ”he corrects, employing the Gallic accent aigu. He’s the personification of teenage bluff and bluster and a shoo-in representative for the Lollipop Guild. But his peanut allergies seem to get the best of him until he’s given the word “antihistamine”. “Luck of the draw,” he stammers before acing it.
 Maureen Rohn (Olive Ostrovsky) and Amy Conley (Rona Lisa Perretti) - Photos by Shane Canfield Crack cast members nail their character’s kooky persona to the letter, and the entire hyper-talented bunch sing their faces off through thirteen riotous numbers. Watch for ingénue Maureen Rohn who tears the roof off with the heart-breaking “The I Love You Song”.
Producer Mary Beth Smith-Toomey, Director Frank D. Shutts II, and Music Director Christopher Tomasino can add another notch to Little Theatre’s long-standing mega-repertoire of successes!
At The Little Theatre of Alexandria 600 Wolfe Street through February 4th. For tickets and information call 703 683-0496 or visit www.thelittletheatre.com.
Jordan Wright
December 14, 2011
In no specific order, we read, cooked, gobbled down and swooned over this year’s prolific crop of cookbooks. There were experiential books, back-to-the-farm books, compendiums, (Escoffier was reissued!) and books on baking that hitched their star to the cupcake craze. I chose ones that are unusual and memorable, with an important voice that rose above the din and others that might change the culinary paradigm forever.
Through decades of preparing recipes from the teetering piles of cookbooks in my personal collection, as a former restaurateur and private chef, added to countless hours spent reviewing restaurants, I try to imagine the flavor profile of the combinations of ingredients and techniques in recipes, often without so much as lifting a ladle. I use my culinary imagination, which is forever wired to my palate, reading a recipe for both flaw and flavor – a handy skill for evaluating the complex concoctions presented to a cookbook reviewer.
Winnowed down from the year’s abundant selection of enthusiastic chef/authors (save for a selection written by a scientist who has invented a new field of study called “neurogastronomy” and another marrying technology with kitchen wizardry), I selected nine from a veritable blizzard of tomes chock-a-block with photos luscious enough to make you want to gobble the pages. Four local writers are also featured for their contributions.
Months of bedtime reading were clocked, winnowing out and chucking the ones that are repetitive or recklessly composed. You won’t find those books listed here. On a positive note several books broke new ground and belong on every collector’s shelf.
Below is a list of my favorite cookbooks of the year. None are French. Sacre bleu! One is a re-issue, but deserves revisiting all the same.
 Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough (Stewart, Tabori & Chang)
The authors of this book have penned over 20 cookbooks, including The Ultimate Ice Cream Cookbook so chances are you have at least one in your collection. Weinstein and Scarbrough remind us that not only are goats a sustainable commodity but that they are “the most widely eaten meat across the globe”, though decidedly less in US kitchens.
Riding on the crest of the artisanal goat cheese fad they are positioned perfectly to take us to the next level – how to prepare and serve goat meat. In this latest of their ventures they provide a myriad of recipes (and humorous tales) celebrating goat cheeses and the now readily available goat’s milk. But it is the introduction to the many cuts and uses of goat meat and the rich, deep flavors it brings to roasting, stewing and grilling that are exciting and new.
So strike up a friendship with your nearest halal butcher and try the Braised Goat Meatballs with Artichokes and Fennel, Goat Shanks with Cabbage, Port and Vanilla or the sweet dessert-like Goat Cheese Tamales, a Southwestern treat.
 Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi (Phaidon)
The most exquisitely elegant cocktail table-sized book this year harkens from René Redzepi, whose Copenhagen restaurant, Noma, is now considered the most innovative cuisine in the world, relegating the now-shuttered elBulli, his former employer, to the back burner. Written in diarist style, Redzepi takes us on a “North Atlantic study tour” beginning three months before the opening of Noma in 2003 to the present. We tromp along with the intrepid gastronome through Sweden for lingonberries and Blue Ducks; Denmark for birch sap, rowan shoots and bark; and Greenland for rosenrod, and campanula, a sweet tasting blue flower that grows along the moors and is used for vinegars, marmalades and parfaits. Lavish photos by Ditte Isager .
Whether you will actually cook from this book is not the point, but you will be inspired, as I predict will all chefs worth their sea salt once they crack the spine – tripping over each other to source the exotica – Icelandic moss, spruce shoots and reindeer. This is a love story – a romance of the Nordic land, sky and sea – and an inspiration to the forager inherent in us all.
 Neurogastronomy – How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters by Gordon M. Shepherd Neurogastronomy – How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters by Gordon M. Shepherd (Columbia University Press)
Far be it from me to claim any knowledge of chemistry past the years-ago high school version I took, barely passing the class to the threat, “Here’s a C, now don’t come back!” But in a book on a subject he seems to have invented, neuroscientist, Gordon Shepherd, carves up a well-researched explanation for why Proust so craved the madeleine. Apparently it’s all about “smell and flavor and their relationship to the neural basis of consciousness, ” the Yale professor convincingly claims – all without recipes. If you can follow this weighty topic filled with references to the olfactory cortex, and if combinatorial interactions are in your vocabulary, you are going to have a lot of fun figuring out how to get the kids to eat their veggies and to look back in wonder at what an evocative experience it was. This explanation of the science of flavor and memory might just fire up your receptors and synapses for a swell tour through the laboratory of your sensors!
 Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi (Chronicle Books)
At last this searingly-hot UK chef, whose has four traiteur-style delis and a single sit-down eponymously-named restaurant, has brought his latest book across the pond – thankfully translated from the metric system – to better serve the American cook. Using a casually conceptual approach (chapters are organized by ingredients) he has blessed the reader with his stylishly imaginative approach to cooking. He focuses on one central ingredient, which he then enhances, and as he says “elaborates” on, only to keep the ingredient at the center of the final dish. The sleek line drawn cover belies its ramped-up vegetarian options and scrumptious desserts.
Ottolenghi, who was born in Israel to a German mother and Italian father and writes a column called “New Vegetarian” for Britain’s Guardian Weekend Section, provides many of his most intriguing recipes from his column (along with gorgeous photos from Jonathan Lovekin) like Turkey and Sweet Corn Meatballs with Red Pepper Sauce and Raspberry and Peach Tea Cakes or Sour Cherry Amaretti. For a simple winter weekend dinner try the Caramelized Garlic Tart with Winter Cole Slaw made with apples and celeriac.
 Ancient Grains for Modern Meals: Mediterranean Whole Grain Recipes for Barley, Farro, Kamut, Polenta, Wheat Berries & More by Maria Speck Ancient Grains for Modern Meals: Mediterranean Whole Grain Recipes for Barley, Farro, Kamut, Polenta, Wheat Berries & More by Maria Speck (Ten Speed Press)
As far as I’m concerned there are not enough chefs serving whole grains and pulses. My sense is that they are not perceived to be posh enough ingredients for fine dining. I hope that will change soon and proteins can take a lesser role in high-end restaurants. Along comes Maria Speck who not only triumphs that notion but also offers plenty of recipes to guide you along – Barley Salad with Figs and Tarragon-Lemon Dressing, Leek Salad with Grilled Haloumi Cheese and Rye Berries, Lamb Stew with Wheat Berries in Red Wine Sauce, and Purple Rice Pudding with Rose Water. This whole grain primer belongs on every nutritiously conscious cook’s shelf.
Modernist Cuisine – The Art and Science of Cooking by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet (The Cooking Lab)
Three modern day Escoffiers set out to write the ultimate guide to cooking, replete with the nouvelle vague of high-flying molecular gastronomy acrobatics. It will be eons before there will be anything more comprehensive than this six-volume compendium. Dazzling, iconic and courageous!
 Spirit of the Harvest – North American Indian Cooking by Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs Spirit of the Harvest – North American Indian Cooking by Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs (Stewart, Tabori and Chang)
This reissue was a James Beard and IACP award-winner for good reason. It is a well-researched book filled with over 150 traditional recipes from native cultures – Cherokee, Navaho, Comanche, Chippewa, Hopi and many others.
Recipes are accompanied by tribal lore and legends and include uses for indigenous ingredients like cholla cactus, chokecherries and Jerusalem artichokes. Stunning photography by Jacobs incorporates artifacts and objects. Divided into five major US regions, you’ll enjoy preparing Cherokee Pecan Soup and Oneida Sauteed Morels from the Northeast to Olympia Oyster-Potato Cakes from the Northwest. Zuni Corn Soup, a specialty from the Southwest and Pueblo Roast Turkey with Pinon-Raisin Stuffing would be standouts on any holiday table.
FYI: The closest restaurant for sampling regional native cuisine is Mitsitam Café, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (my all-time favorite lunch spot on the National Mall), serving up regional native cuisine. Their popular Mitsitam Café Cookbook is filled with recipes from the café.
Food Trucks – Dispatches and Recipes from the Best Kitchens on Wheels by Heather Shouse (Ten Speed Press)
A world away from the bastions of fine dining and haute cuisine comes the food truck – now establishing itself as the counterculture’s kitchen-on-wheels for foodies that eschew formal restaurants but love great food. Shouse has been on a countrywide mission to find the “best of” and has done a bang up job uncovering this burgeoning underground food scene. Follow her map and you could be chowing down on some the nation’s most creative gourmet-leaning fast food bites.
Filled with snapshots from the road, the book gives recipes for Winter Squash Soup from Oregon resident and Thai native, Nong Poonsukwattana’s sidewalk cart; Butter Chicken from DC chef Farhad Assari’s Sâuçá truck; and Laurent Katgely’s recipe for Braised Beef Cheeks Sandwich from his gleaming silver truck in San Francisco’s South of Market District. This stuff is big on flavor light on formalities. Use twitter to keep up with these chefs on the move.
 The Sweets of Araby by Leila Salloum Elias and Muny Salloum (Countryman Press) The Sweets of Araby by Leila Salloum Elias and Muny Salloum (Countryman Press)
Channeling the “Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights” and other medieval texts for inspiration, these Syrian sisters draw back the veil on some of the most delicious and elusively recorded recipes for Arabic sweets. Culled from 10th century Arab culinary manuscripts the authors (who are also professional scholars and historians) tested and tweaked countless recipes to arrive at this exotic and authentic collection, the likes of which have never before been published. With charming brightly colored art by Linda Dalal Sawaya, this beautiful, evocative book of recipes and ancient stories is a treasure as rich and mysterious as the alluring tales from Scheherazade’s lips to her husband King Shahryar’s ears.
Local and Notable
 The Glorious Pasta of Italy by Domenica Marchetti The Glorious Pasta of Italy by Domenica Marchetti (Chronicle Books)
Spoiler alert. This writer is partial to the author/chef whose cuisine she has sampled from Marchetti’s own hand.
Rustic and approachable these dishes are bold, elemental and divinely delicious. Not just another Italian cookbook, this is food to impress your guests as well as shine at a potluck supper. Of course, if you bring one of these dishes, be prepared for an onslaught of impending invites. Slow-cooked Pot Roast Papardelle; Maccheroni Alla Chitarra with Ragu All’Abruzzese and Palottine (mini ground veal meatballs); and dishes made for the holidays with sweet pasta dough – La Cicerchiata are tiny fried dough balls held together with honey and decorated with almonds. These recipes highlight the many different styles of cooking in Italy and reveal the author’s passion for her roots.
Serve Yourself by Joe Yonan (Ten Speed Press)
Dinner for one (known in waiter-speak as DFO) has never seemed so appealing as when Yonan presents one of his ratcheted down recipes. This James Beard Award-winning food editor of the Washington Post has found an underserved niche and filled the void with ethnically eclectic recipes that anyone can cook.
Let’s start with dessert, no one does but we all would like to. I am all over the Cardamom-Brown Sugar Snickerdoodles, ditto for the Spicy Coconut Sorbet that uses a dash of tequila. Imagine that in your next margarita! But just try keeping a fellow diner at bay when you tell them you are home alone eating Duck Breast Tacos with Plum Salsa or Fig, Taleggio and Radicchio Pizza that can be made on the flipside of a cast iron pan. There are lots more neat solo tricks and super healthful recipes to glean from this seasoned chef and writer of the delightful “Cooking for One” column.
 For Cod and Country: Simple. Delicious. Sustainable. by Barton Seaver For Cod and Country: Simple. Delicious. Sustainable. by Barton Seaver (Sterling Epicure)
Barton Seaver is a human lighthouse for the sustainable fishing industry. A former DC area chef, he has taken his mission around the globe earning him recognition and kudos. The National Geographic Society awarded him a fellowship, and he is a sought-after lecturer on topics ranging from sustainability to protecting the environment.
Seaver is well known in Washington for his career as a local chef, working with Jose Andres at Jaleo, Executive Chef of Café Saint-Ex, and later at Bar Pilar. His sustainable seafood restaurant Hook in Georgetown, was named Bon Appétit’s Top 10 Eco-Friendly Restaurants. In one year alone the restaurant had over 75 different species of seafood on its menu. He was named Esquire magazine’s 2009 “Chef of the Year,” and in 2008, was honored as a “Seafood Champion” by the Seafood Choices Alliance and as “Rising Culinary Star of the Year” by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington.
His first book, organized by seasons (Yes! Most fish have seasons too!), is a collection of recipes based on seafood that hasn’t been overfished or harvested using destructive methods. Seaver shows it can be done with simply prepared and flavorful dishes for the average cook. Grilled Clams with Lemon-Chive Butter, Crab and Corn Toast and Smoked Bluefish Spread are a few of the seafood recipes that beckon. But there are lots of side dish, grains and veggie recipes, perfect for pairing with the seafood.
 Beyond the Red Sauce – Classic Italian Cooking Without Tomatoes by Matt Finarelli Beyond the Red Sauce – Classic Italian Cooking Without Tomatoes by Matt Finarelli (Self published by www.finarelli.com)
Using a novel approach to Italian cooking, by eliminating the use of one of its most familiar ingredients, this highly personable DC cooking instructor thinks out the proverbial box. Emphatic about his love for the red fruit, he nonetheless challenges the reader with over 100 recipes that skirt around it. That the tomato is primarily a Southern Italian ingredient, still leaves him with a plethora of Northern climes from which to source his recipes. Star dishes include Farfalle with Mascarpone, Asparagus, Hazelnuts and Smoked Salt; Roasted Branzini with Arugula, Prosciutto and Lemon; and a lovely Orange Vanilla Panna Cotta.
Finarelli is a local chef with a huge fan base from the classes he conducts at Sur La Table in Pentagon Row, CulinAerie in DC, Open Table in Falls Church and the Adult Ed programs in Fairfax County. Few cookbook authors spend real time answering basic cooking questions. Even fewer have faced their readers in a kitchen setting. In his young career he estimates he has taught over a thousand budding cooks who he continues to empower and encourage. You won’t find glossy pages filled with alluring photos, but you will be guided by a gentle teacher with a terrific sense of humor whose driving force is sharing his knowledge and experience.
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