On the Noodle Road -- a review

I am on a mailing list for advanced reader's copies of new books. Most of what I receive is fiction, but every once in a while another title slips in. This one really caught my interest:

    On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu
    (publication date is 7/23....publisher page is here)

The author is a Chinese-American, raised in California and who now owns a cooking school in Beijing. While at a dinner in Italy, she began to wonder about the "age-old question" on the origin of noodles. Did Marco Polo really introduce the noodle from China to Italy?

This work is a little cultural anthropology, a little cooking skills, a little travel guide, a little meditation on the role of women and feminism. It is a delightful, eclectic mix of all of the above. At the time of her trip, she had recently married, and that is part of the rumination on the role of women in society and feminism.

Her trip was by surface transportation (for the most part - there was one hiatus where she flew back to Beijing, and then flew back to where she left off). Some of the trip is by train and car, but she also did some hiking, and some of the penultimate legs were by boat (ferry). Her trip took her across China, through several of the "-stans" into Iran and Turkey, and then to Greece and Italy.

I thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of this book. Especially at home, food is the province of women. In some of the countries she visited the role of women is strictly circumscribed. There are many societal implications. Several of the people she cooked with and learned from are women who do it because it is expected, not because they enjoy it. (I find that sad, but then again, I like to cook.) I gained insight that I did not expect about several of the areas she visited.

I did not cook any of the recipes, and even though I usually give away ARCs when I get them, I will keep this one for a bit to try some of the recipes.

New Orleans Restaurants

I have now written several emails about this so I decided to blog it. Folks who know me are coming to town, and looking for places to eat. So, I have decided to cut and past from one of those, the general information which I am sharing.

ALA's Annual Conference will be at the Morial Convention Center which is located in the area generally known as the Warehouse District. The Convention Center is a long building (not very deep) which runs along the river for over a mile.

Let me point you to a web site, and give you some neighborhood names. The web site lists all the restaurants in greater New Orleans which are sit down, and not fast food places. There are over 1100. The web site is done and reviews are written by the food critic for the Times-Picayune, Tom Fitzsimmons.

Here is the web site: http://www.nomenu.com/ For any of the restaurants reviewed, there is a link to Google Maps (you may have to zoom in).

Now for the neighborhoods:

Warehouse District - This is the area nearest the Convention Center. These are all definitely in walking distance from meetings

CBD - This area is a little further away from the river, and is between the Warehouse District and the French Quarter. Some places will not be open for dinner since they cater to the business day crowd.

French Quarter - This is the area most folks think of as "New Orleans." It is bounded by the River, Canal Street, Rampart Street, and Esplanade. Loads of places to eat, many will be pricey.

Marigny and Bywater - These are funky neighborhoods on the other side of the Quarter (downriver) from the Convention Center. It takes about 15 minutes to walk through the Quarter from Canal to Esplanade. There is the riverside streetcar which will take you close.


Lee Circle and the Garden District - these are a little further away (going upriver). If the restaurant is on St. Charles, then you can easily take the streetcar ($1.25 each way, exact change) which runs along St. Charles to Lee Circle, and then to Canal along Carondolet, and back to Lee Circle along St. Charles (one-way streets).

Uptown, Riverbend, Carrollton -- (that is the order you go through them going out from the City towards where I live) are all further away, but very accessible along the St. Charles Streetcar line.

Now, if you want to be really adventurous, you can take the ferry (free) from Canal Street to Algiers. Several times my wife and I have eaten at the Dry Dock Cafe which you can see from the ferry terminal. Oh, be sure to get on the Algiers Ferry not the Gretna Ferry. [There may be restaurants in Gretna, but I *really* don't know that area.]

Since I mentioned the streetcars, here is a link to the RTA site: http://www.norta.com/?page=home

Links -- End of February

OK...first some fun. In New Orleans, food is always a good topic of conversation. Last summer Food TV did The Great Food Truck Race. Around the same time, I started noticing food trucks around Baton Rouge, particularly on North Street, and on Tuesdays, along Spanishtown Road. (I can see the latter from my office window.) I have eaten from a couple, and today, I found a great web site which lists all the BR food trucks along with their most recent tweet, twitter name, and web site (where applicable). Loads of fun, and the food is good, too!

Now on to the more serious stuff!

Iris Jastram is always thoughtful. Her job is so very different than mine that she gives me a valuable insight into the world of an academic reference librarian. (She works at Carleton College in Northfield MN. It is a highly regarded, small liberal arts college.)

Part of her official job includes instruction. Admittedly much of that is to what seems to a public librarian a fairly homogeneous audience. They are usually between 18 - 21 years old, and bound by the topic of the class which they are taking. More recently she blogged about learning goals.

It is an interesting post...there is a lot of content there. However, I'll note that what she talks about is what Boy Scout Leadership Training (both for youth and adults -- note: I have participated as an adult in both courses linked here) as well as my current work place call "learning objectives." When I do a presentation currently, one of the first slides is always. "By the end of this session you will know..."

The ALA Washington Office has a long (for them) post about what is going on in Congress over net neutrality. It is a good place to catch up on the latest.

Casey Bisson's blog often has topics which are so techy that they are way over my head. However, he recently posted about saving space and time while backing up his computer. (Note to self: YOU need to be better about this!)

Maybe this belongs in the post about e-books, but Jessamyn West posted before the current kerfuffle about e-books and libraries. She starts with "This is shaping up to be the year that people really start seeing ebooks and libraries as things that can go together." I hope she is correct.

Finally (for this post), the ever thoughtful Karen Schneider has a nice piece on advice for new librarians and mentoring. It is worth reading, and if you haven't read her other posts on the topic recently, follow her links.

Hungry Town

Huh? I can hear you say?

I just finished reading Tom Fitzmorris's Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans: The City Where Food Is Almost Everything. Now, I don't usually do book reviews here, but this one inspired me.

I met Tom at the Maple Street Bookshop when they held a book signing a few weeks ago. I will admit that it was the offer of free Sazaracs, that pulled me in.

Tom Fitzmorris has been a New Orleans food critic for a number of years, and for a variety of publications. He also has a very successful radio show. He gained national prominence with his web site which tracks the number of restaurants in the New Orleans area. Post-Katrina, it began serving as an index of the recovery of the city.

One of the statements that lives with me (and I had subconsciously found to be true), is that in New Orleans, the most common topic of conversation is food. In other cities it could be politics, or the weather, but here it is food and restaurants.

On August 26, 2005 there were 809 restaurants in the index. This includes small neighborhood "joints," but not fast food or take-out only locations. By April 17, 2007, there were exactly the same number of restaurants, and today it is almost 1,100. Not a bad place to live.

The books includes a great deal of history about various establishments, both current and closed. It also includes a few recipes, and tales about some of the famous chefs from New Orleans.

I highly recommend this book.

Food - and misc thoughts

Several times recently, in Baton Rouge in particular, I have ordered "macaroni and cheese" as a side dish. In each case I have been surprised to get what I would call "spaghetti and cheese." To my literal, Eastern US mind, that is a different dish. [Actually, sometimes it was a mixture of spaghetti and linguine.]

A number of months ago, we were at our favorite barbecue joint in New Orleans, Squeal (on Oak Street). It is walking distance from home, go there! We asked why they did not have M+C on the menu. The owner/co-owner said that they had not been able to develop a dish which would stand up to waiting and being served with the right consistency. [As a home consumer, mostly immediately, I had not thought about the heat-table issues.] By the way, the menu at Squeal rocks...and they sometimes have "bacon vodka." The latter is a real treat!

I got to thinking about the meaning of the word "macaroni." For me, macaroni refers to a hollow shape of extruded pasta which has a hollow interior. For the most part, it is "elbow macaroni" (i.e. with a slight bend) and could be extended to ziti, rigatoni, and other hollow shapes. Interestingly, Wikipedia seems to agree.

I have heard Italian-Americans in the northeast use the term "macaroni" to refer to all pasta as macaroni, but that has been rare. Now, I have made pasta (linguine, spaghetti, spaghettini, etc.) but all of those are noodles, not extruded.

It has been an interesting change. BTW, Italians have been in the New Orleans area almost as long as they have been in the Northeastern US.

Food and Language

It has been a bit, and I have posts perking. The next of which will explain the lacunae.

I bought my lunch today at a downtown Baton Rouge sandwich shop. The menu got me to thinking. I got the "Tuna Salad Po' Boy" (only because I had not noticed that they have a pastrami one!).

What is a "po' boy"? The Wikipedia entry says:

A po' boy (also po-boy, po boy, or poor boy) is a traditional submarine sandwich from Louisiana. It almost always consists of meat or seafood, usually fried, served on baguette-like Louisiana French bread.

It goes on to talk about bread, etc.

It seems to me that while in a large number of restaurants, the definition above is correct, it does not seem to be universally true in Louisiana today. My sandwich was on the same type of bread as a sandwich from Subway, or Quiznos, or any number of "mom and pop" sandwich shops. And while I would count tuna salad as meat, and certainly pastrami, neither of those is fried.

I have seen "Italian po' boys" offered which are little different than what I grew up with being called a "grinder." In the New York area, it would have been called a "Hero" (different from a Gyro which is pronounced the same). It is also the same as a "Sub" (and that is the origin of the Subway chain, founded in my former home-town of Bridgeport CT). Indeed, Wikipedia bears this out.

[I guess if I were really inspired, I'd segue into the milkshake/frappe/cabinet discussion...but I need to run.]