Portside

My childhood dinners were an international smorgasbord. The scents of these dishes beckoned me from my bedroom to the kitchen, where I’d watch my mother in the final stages of sprinkling garnish. Now, in my forties, I feel I owe it to my children, to the generations that follow, to fully and actively educate myself in my family’s food.

Jonathan Kauffman's new book, Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat, follows the people and places throughout the country that brought organic vegetables and whole wheat bread into the counterculture, and then, eventually, mainstream supermarkets.

This 13th centure cookbook of Syrian recipes shows us the opulent upper limits of the cuisine from those who cooked and ate it—chefs developing recipes, explorers discovering ingredients, the wealthy elite who demanded luxury and ingenuity.