
Where Flavor Was Born, by Andreas Viestad, hardcover, 288 pages, list price: $40
Andreas Viestad takes this year's award for Best Cookbook Travelogue. Where Flavor Was Born is a work of surpassing ambition: Its reach extends in a giant crescent from Australia through the South China Sea, clear past the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, and all the way back down the coast of Africa as far as Cape Town. This roughly traces the origins and original paths of the spice trade. Chapters are organized by spice (cumin, cardamom, vanilla — but where's saffron?) and filled with exuberantly diverse dishes: South African Spinach Soup rubs shoulders with the equally nutmeggy Balinese Stewed Oxtail. Tumeric Squid with Tamarind Sauce takes deep-fried squid — a universal favorite in the modern world — to new heights: The turmeric in the flour gives it a haunting, ancient earthiness set off by thick tamarind dipping sauce. The photographs are dazzling, and the tales of Viestad's culinary adventures — hauling hundred-pound bags of black peppercorns in Kerala, snatching tamarind pods from elephants in Zimbabwe — are striking enough to make you wonder if they really could be true.
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