In Bad Taste?
By Dr. Massimo Francesco Marcone
foreword by Jay Ingram
Key Porter Books ($29.95)
199 pages
So, the other day, you thought it was high time for a little
treat, so you bought a bag of coffee that you've always wanted
to try but really couldn't afford. You drank it with dinner and
it complemented the meal you made with some fancy-schmancy oil
your neighbour brought back from a weekend in Morocco.
Do you know where those exotic foods came from?
You won't like knowing.
But you will like In Bad Taste by Dr. Massimo Francesco
Marcone. In Marcone's book, you'll read about foods that
some people say taste like heaven, but those foods actually
come from very earthy places.
As an adjunct professor of food science at the University of
Guelph in Toronto, it's Marcone's job to investigate food
and to experiment with the stuff we eat.
So when someone asked him to explore the myth of the origins of
Kopi Luwak, Marcone literally went to the ends of the Earth for
the truth.
Kopi Luwak is coffee. It's very expensive coffee, selling
for more than $1,300 (US) per kilogram. So, the appeal of
your neighbourhood barista aside, why is this coffee so darned
expensive?
Kopi Luwak's high price tag begins when the Indonesian palm
civet, a catlike critter, eats ripe, sweet coffee cherries.
The animal digests the cherries, and… well, draw your own
conclusions. Collectors gather these passed beans, which
are cleaned, processed, roasted, and sent to your average
high-end coffee house. Marcone braved crocodiles and
bandits to prove that Kopi Luwak's mythology is true.
Makes your mouth water, doesn't it?
After he did the truth-or-dare thing with Kopi Luwak, Marcone
heard that a similar method of processing (ahem) was the reason
argan oil was considered a delicacy. Indeed, he learned,
Moroccan goats climb trees and eat nuts from the argan
trees. Nuts are collected after they've come out the back
end of a goat; they're cleaned and pounded until the oil is
released, which is sold for lots of money.
But Marcone has an incredible curiosity. He went to
Malaysia and Indonesia to investigate bird's nests meant for
soup; he travelled to Italy to check out Casu Franzigu, or
rotten cheese (don't ask), he hunted morel mushrooms in
Michigan, and he even sampled some tasty insects in a Thai
market.
Is dinner ready yet?
Do you live to eat or eat to live? Either way, In Bad Taste? is
a fun book to bite into. Part travelogue, part adventure, part
scientific investigation, and part food-show-on-a-page, Marcone
writes in a charmingly offbeat way, and his enthusiasm is
contagious. He's gentle and respectful to readers who
might be squeamish, careful to be specific but not so much that
you can't read this book during your lunch hour. He's
also very factual, which will satisfy the science-minded eater…
uh, reader.
If you hunger for the truth about the things you eat, then pick
up a copy of In Bad Taste? and chomp into it. For foodies,
cooks, or anybody who loves adventure, this is one tasty little
book.
Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since she was three-years-old, and she never goes anywhere without a book.
