Snail Eggs & Samphire: Dispatches from the Food Front

Rating:
Summary: All you could possibly want to know about food and then some
Review: Derek Cooper is a well known British food writer. Snail Eggs and Samphire is a collection of his writings. This work has the problem common to anthologies of this sort; a long string of essays don't really form a single book. I also feel it is too long. Many of the essays overlap, and Cooper often makes the same point in several pieces. Although only about a decade old, the commentary often seems outdated. For instance, many "new trends" Cooper observes here, such as in natural foods, seem like ancient history by now. A final caveat --Cooper is writing primarily for a British Isles audience and much of the material is specific to that region. After all these complaints, believe it or not I can still find much to recommend in this book. One of the points that Cooper repeatedly makes is the preferability of natural foods over highly processed ones. This is probably worth hearing over and over again, as many people remain addicted to junk foods. And Cooper isn't talking about trendy health foods (not primarily anyway); there are many detailed narratives about fresh fish, cheese made the old-fashioned way,
free-range chickens, organic vs. commercial produce and so forth. Squeamish vegetarians should probably avoid this book, as there are some rather graphic descriptions of fish and animal organs. Cooper introduces us to many fellow food enthusiasts along the way (don't expect me to remember any names); other writers, owners of fine restaurants, organic wine growers in California, and countless others. Although most of the writings are concerned with his native England (and its Celtic neighbors Ireland, Scotland and Wales), Cooper also takes us to Russia, America, Israel and Italy in his search for great cuisine. At times he comes across like a crusader, but it's hard to question the rightness of his cause. Since this book came out, the commercialization of food (along with everything else for that matter) has only increased. Despite the growing natural foods movement, fast foods, convenience foods and just plain boring and tasteless homogenized foods are still the norm. Food enthusiasts will love this book and be more tolerant than I was of its redundancies. Others should still listen for their own education, or seek the same information in a more concise format. As this is an audio book, I should also mention that the reader is excellent. He successfully brings to life the many diverse personalities Cooper interviews, perfectly capturing accents from French to Cockney to American.