CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/28/2019

Thanksgiving activism in a new cookbook from Michael Rakowitz

Featured photograph, of Sam and Sam Clark’s grilled quail with date syrup, is reproduced from A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve, the new date-syrup-centric cookbook compiled by recent Nasher-prize-winner Michael Rakowitz. Though this book certainly has a critical/political component—an Iraqi-American Jew, Rakowitz is known for work that draws attention to issues surrounding cultural heritage, appropriation and the history of postcolonial displacement—it really is what it says it is: a cookbook, and a superb one at that. Other contributors include Yotam Ottolenghi, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Reem Kassis, Prue Leith, Jason Hammel, Nuno Mendes, Thomasina Miers, Giorgio Locatelli and Marcus Samuelsson, to name a few. “We never really cook anything the same twice,” the Clarks write. “You are only as ever as good as your last meal, and you have to really expose yourself and put yourself on the line. It is like a new performance each time. This simple quail recipe, adapted from a previous favorite in the restaurant, is improved by using one’s hand to devour it.”