The Cookbook Test #0001: 'FOODHEIM: A CULINARY ADVENTURE' By Eric Wareheim

INSTALLMENT #0001 (FREE) / A WELCOME LETTER / FOODHEIM BY ERIC WAREHEIM: SMASHBURGERS, AGUACHILE, AND A MARTINI

Dear Readers and Subscribers,

Thanks for giving me a bit of your time (and, potentially, money.) This Substack-based newsletter is a real gamble, and you're the reason it may pay off.

WHO I AM: I'm a jack-of-all-trades. I've been a Middle East news editor for an international paper, a national radio producer and booker, an author, an alt-weekly food critic, a YouTube fast food vlogger, and plenty beyond that.

I was a books guy before I was a food guy - in college, I was the Daily Cardinal's books editor, and when I co-founded Flak Magazine in the late '90s/early oughts, books were my original patch of turf. I interviewed Kurt Vonnegut when he came to UW-Madison, and I'm not sure I've ever completely recovered from the experience.

But I've also been a food guy in a serious way for the past 15 years. That's meant restaurant criticism, long-form reviews, books (including The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin and Lake Superior Flavors), a popular website (The Heavy Table, focused on the food and drink of the Upper Midwest), and a Patreon-backed newsletter. I also co-founded and helped run Chef Camp, a live fire culinary retreat and weekend-long cooking school at a Minnesota YMCA campground.

So: books + cooking = cookbooks, and I hope you'll find that I am a knowledgable, enthusiastic, entertaining-yet-serious / serious-yet-entertaining guide to the world of cookbookery, one week at a time from now until - I hope - my death at a ripe old age, preferably of something like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

WHAT YOU GET: A new or vintage cookbook reviewed every Monday. I'll break down the scope, the voice, the style of recipes included, the oddest finds, and the overall readability and interest of the package.

And then: I'll cook the damn thing. Not everything, naturally, but a few select recipes. You'll get a play-by-play of what worked, what didn't, and how it actually feels to make a dish (or series of dishes) from each book. Many cookbook reviews barely crack the spine of the book, and lean heavily on press materials - I'll read the whole thing and give you notes from the kitchen, to boot.

I'll generally target books that look great, but my approach is always warts-and-all. When I don't like something, I'l say so. When a recipe doesn't work, you'll understand what happened and whose fault it was. (Spoiler: It'll often be my fault.)

Photos will be informal but serviceable, unless my wife Becca shoots them, then they'll be nice. Making stuff look great is a full-time job, so I'll stick to writing words that make sense and are fun to read.

INFLUENCES: It should go without saying that most of the things that influence us get processed and squirreled away deep in our subconscious mind somewhere. That said, some things that have got me going (and kept me going) on my journey:

Time/Life's Foods of the World Series

Anthony Bourdain

The Nero Wolfe novels of Rex Stout

The Celebration (Festen) and Another Round

Serious Eats

The Menu

My grandmother hosting Thanksgiving and Easter every single year

Stardew Valley

Big Night

Epicurious (and the magazines that feed its database)

The presence of NYC-based bagel-bakers in my family tree (grandpa's uncles)

Wisconsin supper clubs (surf-n-turf, brandy Old Fashioneds, pudding in the salad bar, ice cream cream puffs)

Julia Child

The Art of Eating

The Best Recipe / Cooks Illustrated (I taught myself to cook from this book while living in Boston and New York City in my twenties)

WHAT I'M ASKING OF YOU: Read the newsletter. Comment. Share. If you really dig it, and would like one a week (rather than one a month-ish), subscribe. If I can get 100 subscribers in the first six months, I'll keep things rolling. And if I can get to a comfortable level of paying readership within a year, I'll keep things rolling indefinitely, and maybe add some cool stuff (guest contributors, interviews, original recipes.)

FOODHEIM: A CULINARY ADVENTURE

BY ERIC WAREHEIM WITH EMILY TIMBERLAKE

$35 / Ten Speed Press / 291 pages / 2021

Foodheim is where we're starting with cookbooks because there's a lot of rubber-to-the-road on this book, for me personally and hopefully for you as well. Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! was one of the first bits of modern comedy television to successfully break and re-wire my brain (after Late Night with David Letterman but before BoJack Horseman). So, like many folks up until this point, I mostly think of Eric Wareheim as an arch, absurdist, devastatingly committed comedian, not so much as a cook.

But then Foodheim connects again with its approach to food: It's warm and casual, but the details are tight. First and foremost, it's hospitable. Wareheim is thinking about guests and their experiences constantly.

"To me, one of the beauties of pizza is the communal aspect, the idea of everyone going in on one pie and grabbing a piece. I love making it at home with friends. Everyone gathers around as I stretch out the dough and add the toppings," he notes, in his setup for the pizza chapter.

"There is no more comforting memory than walking into Grandma's house on a Sunday. She gives you that big grandma hug and then you start sniffin' that meat that has been slowly roasting in the oven for hours," he writes while introducing Grandma Foods.

A connection with his German maternal grandparents is another big plank of the book's foundation. When he gets into detail about raclette, he really gets into passionate, thoughtful detail. (As someone who has experienced raclette hospitality provided by a German friend, I can vouch for the fact that this is one of the world's most truly welcoming and delicious culinary events.)

And Wareheim's connection to food feels familiar to me, too - he's an amateur, a really passionate lover of food and eating, who has incrementally leveled up his knowledge and skills until he can talk about what he's doing with conviction and focus. It gives the book a voice that's warm and friendly, but thoughtful and credible, too.

TERRITORY SURVEYED:

The book is broken down to broad and approachable sections including "Pizza," "Grandma Foods," "Green Foods," "Juicy Foods," "Chicken," and "Cocktails." Despite the comfortable accessibility of the book's recipes (think: cacio e pepe, crab cakes, crudo, fried chicken) Wareheim and his co-author (food writer Emily Timberlake) understand that the devil is in the details, and they pin those details down, and put them on the page plainly and clearly.

In his introduction to Cheeseheim (his cheese pizza), he writes that it "looks simple, but it requires finesse." The same could be said for most of what's in this book, but the authors are thinking about that and they write their instructions accordingly.

If you're paying attention, the recipes work. For example:

RECIPE #1: SMASHHEIM SMASHBURGERS

America has a burger problem. It certainly isn't a lack of burgers; they clog up menus from the humblest diners and mass market fast food restaurants and they occupy spots of honor at Michelin-rated steakhouses and other bastions of fine dining.

The problem is that we have come so far from the appealing basic simplicity of Louis' Lunch version that we've completely lost sight of what a burger should be.

Much of this goes back to the meteoric rise in the '90s of chain dining (TGI Friday's, Ruby Tuesday, presumably some other chain with a different day of the week in the title) where the double-digit burger was tantalizingly accessible but had to be loaded down with stunt ingredients in order to justify its price tag.

Hamburgers...

SHOULD BE:

-- Meat and bread and toppings in overall balance

-- "Classic," "simple" toppings and seasonings (salt, pepper, bacon, cheese, onions)

-- An emphasis on char and flavor imparted from the cooking surface

SHOULD NOT BE:

-- A softball-sized chunk of meat

-- Absurd "theme" burgers (Japanese steakhouse, eggs Benedict, Korean shortrib-stuffed wagyu burgers, etc.)

-- Flavor mostly from sauces and high-price ingredients

Naturally, you shouldn't hold me to this. Some of the best burgers I've eaten have been defiantly tricked out, like the pickled jalapeno / bacon / ham / avocado (etc., etc., etc.) monster at Hamburguesas el Gordo. And I've had some legitimately miserable burgers that were simplicity itself (White Castle leaps immediately to mind.)

That said, when I go out to eat or when I'm cooking at home, I'm after something much closer to the original McDonald's cheeseburger than anything you can get for $16.99 at a modern pub grub bistro concept down near the revitalized arts district on the riverfront. (Fries extra.)

Wareheim gets at this in his introduction to his Smashburgers recipe, (Smashheim) when he notes that "I used to be a BIG burger guy - huge thick patty, big bread bun, dozens of toppings latered five feet high," before presenting his much meaner, leaner smashburger as the antidote to American culinary excess.

I mean, the smashburger is still pretty excessive. But it's focused!

THE RECIPE AS WRITTEN

Smashheim makes four burgers and calls for: 10 oz. ground beef, 2 oz. bacon (chopped), kosher salt and pepper, hamburger buns, butter at room temperature, 4 burger-sized squares of parchment paper, 4 slices American cheese, dill pickles for topping, 1/4 cup diced white onion and 1/4 cup Heimy's Secret Sauce.

You combine the beef and bacon in a bowl and split it into four 3 oz. balls which you season with a lot of salt and pepper.

Get your grill (or cast iron, in my case) really hot. As it's heating up, butter your buns and toast them.

Put a tablespoon of butter in the hot pan, put a ball on top, cover with the parchment paper, and squoosh it. It cooks for about 90 seconds, then you flip it, top it with cheese, cover the pan and let the cheese melt for about 30 seconds.

Assemble your burger: bun bottom, burger, onions and pickles, then bun top (smeared with the secret sauce.)

Secret sauce: 1/4 cup each mayo, ketchup, mustard, plus 1 Tbsp. dill relish and 1/2 tsp mustard powder, combined and refrigerated.

THE RECIPE IN THE FIELD

I made the mistake of trying to execute this smashburger recipe while also frying homemade French fries (via Serious Eats) and boiling a couple ears of fresh-from-the-Hinckley, Minnesota-gas station-parking lot sweet corn. [1] (The sweet corn was absolutely delicious, by the way, at $7 for a dozen perfectly in-season ears.)

These conditions allowed me to notice two things:

One, the recipe is well written and easy to execute when you don't have both hands tied behind your back. The use of parchment paper to facilitate burger smashing is new to me, and I like it - it keeps the patty intact and allows for more even distribution of force. And the burger sauce is really a balm for all maladies, as it contains so much flavor and seasoning that it's a real equalizer for your finished products.

Two, the failures are all pretty much dependent upon the specific cooking conditions (super hot griddle or cast-iron pan or grill) as opposed to the recipe per se. I over toasted (sure, burnt) a couple of my buns, and the cheese on one of my burgers got so over melted that it pretty much disappeared. (I blame the fries for that one, I had to pull 'em out of the frier and get them properly salted before they cooled.)

The only other thing that tripped me up was that a couple of the burgers could have been more thoroughly cooked in the center - in my haste to get them off before they scorched completely or the cheese vanished, I cheated them of a vital 20-30 additional seconds on the grill. This recipe really demands your attention, if only for a few minutes in total.

I took a second stab at these burgers to use up the remaining beef and bacon mixture and went with a slider format on small brioche buns. Even better proportions, a quicker and more even cook, and overall delicious results. It may be that this good smashburger recipe is an excellent slider recipe in disguise.

RECIPE #2: AGUACHILE

I've long been a fan of the Mexican lime-cured shrimp dish known as aguachile, especially in summer months. The bright herbs and lime juice, hot peppers, and minimalist use of seafood and avocado make this a delicate, refreshing, brightly flavored triumph in general, and it's particularly good when the mercury soars above 90 F and cooking of any sort looks less and less appealing.

THE RECIPE AS WRITTEN

Briefly, you grind in a molcajete 2 Tbsp of roughly chopped cilantro with 2 Tbsp of roughly chopped mint, half a jalapeno (seeded and chopped), and 1/4 tsp of kosher salt. Then you mix 8 peeled shrimp (chopped into bite-sized pieces) with 1/3 cup of peeled and seeded cucumber, and 1/4 cup of lime juice. You let them sit until the shrimp starts to turn opaque (8-10 minutes). Meanwhile: dice 1/3 cup avocado, 1/3 cup of seeded Fresno chilis, and 1 Tbsp red onion. Spoon the shrimp and cucumber onto a plate, mix 1/2 cup water with the herb mixture in the molcajete and pour it over the shrimp and cucumber, and then sprinkle the avocado, Fresno chili, and onion mix on top.

If you've got tostadas or tortilla chips, that works for service - I toasted some corn tortillas for about 10 minutes at 300 F and got them crispy chewy which (in my opinion) made them perfect vessels for aguachile.

THE RECIPE IN THE FIELD

This thing really worked - it's got four really easy-to-execute components, and combining them is a snap. This is one of those dishes where the hardest thing is getting to the store and buying small quantities of various herbs and peppers, followed by cleaning up your kitchen after you've made a bunch of very small messes in different vessels. Like any good aguachile, the Foodheim version is spicy, it's herbally powerful, it's citrus-y, and it wakes you the hell up from your mid-August torpor.

RECIPE #3: MARTINI

I had so, so many bad martinis over the years that I refused to believe that it was a real drink, pop culture be damned. And then: I was at a party thrown by a radio producer in Manhattan (note: not a typical thing for me even in my sybaritic twenties) and someone pushed a martini into my hands. It was love at first sip. And then I was DRUNK. But, fortunately, I could stumble to the subway and then stumble to my apartment in Cobble Hill.

A really good martini is all about controlling temperature and dilution. Most recipes make a big fuss about the gin versus vermouth question (I personally like vermouth and invite it to the party), but it's temperature and dilution that make this drink work - or fail. In Stanley Tucci's recent food memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food, he goes into excruciating detail about his martini practice, and I was able to use his recipe to put together a martini I was proud to serve to my friends (and happy to drink myself.)

With that as background, you can see why I was excited and wary about trying out another approach to a martini via the Cocktails section of Foodheim.

And then I read Wareheim's method. It's not great. I'm gonna slate him on this, even though his heart is in the right place. Let's compare the two methods:

TUCCI (as paraphrased by me in my house cocktail manual): Fill a beaker with ice. Add 1/2 shot of vermouth. Stir 15 seconds. Rest 15 seconds. Add 3-4 shots of good gin or vodka. Stir 30 seconds. Rest 30 seconds. Stir 30 seconds. Rest 30 seconds. Strain into glass with 1 or 3 olives on a skewer, or a lemon twist.

WAREHEIM: Pour a splash of dry vermouth into a martini or Nick and Nora glass, swirl to coat the glass, and then discard any excess. Place 2.25 oz. gin in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled and diluted. Strain into the prepared glass, garnish with the olives, and serve.

Wareheim calls out the importance of temperature and dilution in his introduction (the ice needs to be stirred "just so," he notes, unhelpfully), but he fails to drill down on what those words mean, and how they're practically achieved. It's a good description of a martini, but not a terrific method. Tucci's method seems like overkill - it's agonizingly prescriptive and takes a lot of fussing - and it is the one method I've found to date that reliably gets a great result.

Anyhow, the rest of his cocktails section is solidly written and the guy clearly knows what he likes about a good martini, which is to his credit. I just wish he'd shared the method in more detail.

THE VERDICT ON FOODHEIM: A CULINARY ADVENTURE

(***BUY IT*** / BORROW IT / BROWSE IT / SKIP IT / BURN IT)

I hate to come off soft and start this newsletter out with a "buy" recommendation, but this is a legitimately super cookbook. A ton of voice, a warm sense of hospitality, real command of culinary details, a lot of fun and a great many recipes that you'll want to begin cooking immediately. Soon after buying this book I purchased a second copy for my friend with the raclette set-up, and I may well buy a third copy to give away sometime in the near future. It's a hell of a book.

GO FORTH AND SEEK OUT ...

Before starting THE COOKBOOK TEST, I sat down for a few drinks with Doug Mack. He's a dude in my Minneapolis neighborhood, but he's also a talented author (I recommend his book The Not-Quite States of America pretty constantly) and the creator of the Snack Stack Substack newsletter. Every edition is a deep-dive drilldown into a specific snack (from pizza rolls to seven-layer dip to Astronaut Ice Cream), larded with deep research and laced with wit. Well worth a subscription!

FOOTNOTES

[1] If you're from somewhere with really great sweet corn (I grew up in Wisconsin and now live in Minnesota, so, yep), you probably know that the stuff is damn near perfect when it's in season. I boil it for two scant minutes, pull it, drag it across a stick of butter and lightly salt it. That's it; it's fantastic.