Guest Review by Irene Wanner

Cooking
Seasonal Fruit Desserts: From Orchard Farm, and Market
By Deborah Madison
Broadway Books
544 pages, hardcover, $27

 

Life is short, an old saying goes, so eat dessert first. Few people follow this advice, but Deborah Madison, Galisteo’s award-winning writer of nine cookbooks, might change our thinking with her new culinary treat, Seasonal Fruit Desserts. She managed her local farmers’ market in Santa Fe, and, as both writer and professional chef, has been active in the Slow Food approach to shopping for, cooking, and savoring what we eat. (Slow Food is a grass-roots movement that emphasizes slower eating—and living—as a way to counteract fast-food culture and the loss of local food traditions.) Admitting to a sweet tooth and a “long-standing love affair with fruit” since her California childhood, Madison now offers, in the beautifully photographed Seasonal Fruit Desserts, treats that anyone would be hard put to resist after—or before—a meal.

“I don’t consider myself a pastry chef,” she notes. And here’s what makes this and Madison’s other books so inviting: She favors recipes “that don’t depend on exacting conditions and considerable manual dexterity.” Great food—usually local, available only seasonally, and organic—“will ensure your success,” she says. Supermarket produce, she explains, is picked before it’s ripe and then shipped long distances: Both texture and flavor suffer. But if we cultivate an appreciation for local foods at their peak, we’ll reap delicious rewards.

To get us off to a good start, Madison offers 10 hints, which include: be somewhat organized, wash fruit carefully, have fun, and don’t worry. These are followed by lists of useful ingredients, techniques, and kitchen equipment. Her first chapter covers basics needed in some recipes. And, Madison reiterates, buy the best fruit you can find.

Now the cooking begins. Experiment with combinations, and try new foods—persimmons, pawpaws, and kumquats all find favor with Madison. So do frozen berries, a “useful asset” for sauces in New Mexico’s high desert, where fresh berries are few and far between; she devotes a section to these flavorful sauces. The richer the dessert, the smaller the serving need be, and usually, serving it at room temperature brings out the flavors more.

Anyone who loves pies but dreads fussing over crusts will find Madison’s easy-to-make alternatives liberating. For example, a juicy cobbler needs only a crumbly top. Apricot Fold-Over Pie lets excess bottom crust encase the filling any which way. Fruit nestles in a tartlet’s rustic shell.

Madison also provides recipes for compotes, whole fruit eaten with utensils or the hands (provide a finger bowl), fresh and/or dried fruits with ice cream or sauce, upside-down cake, tortes, crisps, cookies, puddings, soup (wow!), and even wine jelly. From beginners to advanced cooks, there’s something for everyone in this handsome book.

The other day, already a convert, I began breakfast with dessert: Madison’s scrumptious Mangoes with Minced Strawberries, a simple recipe that celebrates the fruits’ natural flavors, and calls for touches of sugar, lime, and fresh mint snipped from the garden. Perfect.

Irene Wanner, a writer and editor, lives near Jemez Pueblo.

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Book Briefs by Ashley M. Biggers

Memoir
Manhattan Project to The Santa Fe Institute: The Memoirs of George A. Cowan
By George A. Cowan
University of New Mexico Press
184 pages, hardcover, $27.95

Physical chemist George A. Cowan’s career may have allowed him to work with several distinguished scientists, but he points to his early years as being his most formative. It’s fitting, then, that this brief but engaging autobiography begins with his childhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, before he delved into an accomplished career that included time spent on the Manhattan Project, then Los Alamos National Laboratory, on the White House’s council of science advisors, on the councils of advisors of banks in Los Alamos and Santa Fe, and as a member of the group that created The Santa Fe Opera. In his scientific pursuits, Cowan describes himself as a “reductionist at heart,” and his storytelling follows suit: He discharges his mother’s death in a single paragraph, summarizing the experience with “Her death left me bitter and angry.” Later, of his breakup with his first love, he notes simply that “I was devastated.” However, Cowan doesn’t seem callous; rather, he seems to observe his life with the same exactitude that served him well during his 40-year scientific career. With each successive chapter, he builds the components of his life like elements in a chemical formula. In the balance, this self-portrait is one of a thoughtful man who never shied away from life’s complex questions. In fact, his desire to find “common ground between the relatively simple world of natural science and the daily, messy world of human affairs” led him to help found and guide the Santa Fe Institute, an interdisciplinary research community in the City Different that still fosters some of the most dynamic thinkers of our time. Cowan’s memoir is an intriguing eyewitness account of not only modern scientific developments, but also of the human travails necessary to achieve them.

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Art
Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art
By Joseph Traugott
Museum of New Mexico Press
124 pages, hardcover, $34.95

In Sole Mates, published in conjunction with the eponymous exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art, in Santa Fe, museum curator and author Joseph Traugott considers the cowboy boot a symbol of the American West and part of the enduring legacy of the cowboy. As he writes in his introduction, “Sole Mates spotlights cowboy boots as powerful symbols of American values, social history, and the philosophical outlooks that percolate just below the conventions of mainstream society.” Within the pages of this lovely coffee-table book, photographs of workmen’s cowboy boots appear alongside such elaborate, hand-tooled designs as Albuquerquean Deana McGuffin’s Day of the Dead–themed boots, which feature skirted skeletons dancing on black leather. Also included are more imaginative representations of the boot, as in Betty Hahn’s Starry Night serigraph of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Santa Fean Bill Schenck’s comic-book–style paintings of Western culture, and Truth or Consequences artist Delmas Howe’s lithographs of Village People–esque cowboys. Art aficionados and fans of the Western lifestyle will enjoy this book. The New Mexico Museum of Art’s Sole Mates exhibition runs through October 17, 2010.

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Culture
Santa Fe Nativa: A Collection of Nuevomexicano Writing
By rosalie C. Otero, A. Gabriel Meléndez, and Enrique R. Lamadrid; Photographs by Miguel A. Gandert
University of New Mexico Press
244 pages, hardcover, $29.95

“This place we now call Santa Fe carries the spirit of antiquity and change, yet is a living force that is all around us,” writes Estevan Rael-Gálvez in the foreword to Santa Fe Nativa. As Rael-Gálvez suggests, the book peels back the layers of Santa Fe’s history of more than 400 years to “revel in the glory and also feel the uncomfortable tensions its authors create, those whose pens and points of view have largely shaped this place.” In nine sections that include poems, short fiction, and essays, in both English and Spanish, the anthology explores Santa Fe’s role as an epicenter of New Mexican Hispanic culture. The writers selected range from Fray Alonso de Benavídes, who writes about New Mexico missions in the 1630s, to today’s award-winning author Pat Mora, and most are of Hispanic origin. Whether you thumb through the collection to snack on just one tasty morsel of poetry, or gorge yourself for hours, there are jewels of history and culture on every page. Anyone will enjoy Santa Fe Nativa who can identify with the following passage, from Pat Mora’s poem “Ode to Santa Fe”: “You open your arms wide / when you see me and lift me / from all I
carry, swoop me up / into your glorious light.”

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Memoir
Lonesome Dave: The Story of New Mexico Governor David Francis Cargo
By David Francis Cargo
Sunstone Press

By all accounts, David Francis Cargo, who served New Mexico from 1967 to 1971, changed the face of New Mexican politics and the future of the state. His accomplishments include reforming electoral politics, establishing the nation’s first film commission, and preserving the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad—all stories recounted in Lonesome Dave. A pattern emerges as Cargo sums up his political career in this forthright memoir: He strikes out for reform, but the changes aren’t well received. He perseveres, and New Mexico is, in his mind, the better for it: “I tried, during my two years as governor, and during my two terms in the New Mexico House of Representatives, to change things for the better and to bring so-called ‘modern government’ to the state. . . . I hope my stories in this book—especially those about how New Mexico politics and government used to be—shock some of you. Things backslide, and fighting for good, honest government is a never-ending job.” Whether or not you agree with Cargo’s politics, this memoir is an insightful look into how New Mexico is governed, a defining period in the state’s history, and one of the state’s most energetic and galvanizing leaders.

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Photography
One Nation One Year: A Navajo Photographer's 365-Day Journey into a world of discovery, life and hope
Photography by Don James, Text by Karyth Becenti
Rio Grande Books
132 pages, paperback, $24.99

Albuquerque The Magazine photographer Don James’s project was an ambitious one: to traverse the 26,000-square-mile Navajo Nation in his trusty Ford Expedition and capture the lives of the Navajo, or Diné, people. One year and 105,000 photographs later, he has published the best images in One Nation One Year. As the book jacket observes, growing up on the Navajo Reservation, James felt that photographs of his people usually “depicted ceremonies or cultural icons, and rarely went into areas of everyday Navajo life.” Living on a budget of $100 a week, James immersed himself in Navajo life, capturing everything from BMX riders to rodeo cowboys, and from rock musicians to artists weaving. In most of his images James remains true to his photojournalism roots as evidenced by his documentary style, but he occasionally captures stunning artistic compositions—as in his portrait of a Navajo bride, Andrea, preparing for
her marriage ceremony. This vibrant collection of images
captures the lively, joyful spirit of modern Navajo peoples.

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