Feel so honored by having my book named to this prestigious list.
A Desert Feast
Celebrating Tucson's Culinary Heritagel
by Niethammer, Carolyn J.
Tucson is a food city, boasting, as Carolyn Niethammer writes, the best 23 square miles of Mexican food north of Mexico. It is also the first US venue designated as a City of Gastronomy by the United Nations. Why should that be? Niethammer explains: the honor grows from having a food tradition that extends back thousands of years, making use of hundreds of desert plants, and then adding on to it, like so many ingredients in a good bowl of cocido, elements from many other food traditions and cultures. We can eat food from just about every corner of the world here, and we've made it part of an almost inexhaustible culinary lexicon. You'll want to try Niethammer's carefully curated recipes--and develop a greener thumb by growing ingredients yourself and a broadened geography by visiting the growers and chefs she highlights. Every Southwestern city--every city, period--needs a book like hers, and it's Tucson's good fortune to have this. --Gregory McNamee.