Sublime

Among the newer hillbilly hustles is ginseng. Ginseng thieves go onto private or state land and forage for it, under threat of surveillance and chase. The kind of ginseng grown in Appalachia is of a particularly good quality for Asian markets. In traditional Chinese medicine, Asian ginseng cools, but North American ginseng warms the body. A fresh p

I said to Massot that I thought it was a shame the sangliers were hunted quite so relentlessly by so many hunters. “But they taste delicious,” he said. “Specially the young ones, the marcassins. And besides, it’s natural. The English are too sentimental about animals, except those men who chase foxes, and they are mad.”

I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice—and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.

Where else would people get worked up about salt? To the rest of the world, salt is a necessary but anonymous part of the diet, about as fascinating as a glass of tap water. But not in France. Here, salt is something that gourmets argue about. Some of them will tell you that the ultimate saline experience issel de Guérande, the gray crystallized se