FROM SCRATCH
Adventures in Harvesting, Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging on a Fragile Planet
by David Moscow & Jon Moscow
An actor, producer, and director recounts his tour of various countries’ cuisines and economic challenges.
David Moscow, star of the cable television series From Scratch, combines his dual love of food and international travel in this whirlwind gastronomic adventure in search of food sources, history, cooking styles, botany, and biology. Together with his creative partner and father, Jon, Moscow spent four years visiting 20-plus countries in search of the most vivid atmospheres, agriculturally challenging environments, and interesting food-related stories he could find. Each culinary jaunt results in an unadulterated, smart, beautifully rendered, and often thrilling entry to a travel journal that begins in New York with lessons on oyster cultivation in the Long Island Sound and ends with a pizza tasting in Naples. In South Africa, Moscow explores the region’s economic inequalities while learning about its native foods from a pair of seasoned chefs. One chef introduced the author to the delicacies of “boiled and blowtorch-seared sheep’s head” while they “bonded over my repulsion.” (Everyone’s tastes vary, and even Moscow calls some dishes “gut-turning.”) The American is gleefully welcomed in Malta to forage for snails and fish for octopus while learning that the region’s potable water resources are roughly 50% reliant on desalination plants. He hunts for feral pigs in Texas, scouts out a memorable elk dish from a Wyoming food truck, discusses sustainability options with a cafe and bakery owner in the Philippines, cooks scallops in Iceland, and learns about some of the over 2,800 native varieties of potato in Peru from a “potato whisperer.” Moscow gets his hands dirty harvesting mushrooms in Finland before fishing for anchovies on the Amalfi Coast and comparing pizza styles in Naples.
Moscow lavishes his evocative descriptions on every local dish and landscape (on Iceland: “Trees give context to your own size, but there—with only the volcanoes and glaciers and fjords to measure yourself—you just feel incredibly small”). He also has clearly done his homework in researching these far-flung locations. Each section is a history lesson as well as an informed discussion on food sourcing, preparation methods, and the economic and climate conditions enhancing (or threatening) each area’s ecosystem: “The economics of South Africa’s impoverished, landless majority has also led to poaching by large cartels, which can hire local people to do the actual poaching. We’ve heard about the rhinos, but not about the macadamias, avocados, oranges, etc. There is a huge security industry of cameras and fencing set up to catch bands of burglars who pull up with trucks in the middle of the night and clean out a harvest.” While depicting the ways food moves from farm to table in each country, Moscow’s narrative opens up larger conversations on more serious issues of food-production hurdles and critical global current events, like monocultures, wildlife preservation efforts, and harmful overfishing. Included are 10 recipes for favorite meals from the author’s journeys, like “Trout Piscator,” “Da Michele Pizza Dough,” “Acorn Fritters,” and “Snails in Maltese Landscape.” This is delicious, adventuresome entertainment for the mind, soul, heart, and stomach.A dynamic, ruminative journal for food lovers and armchair globe-trotters.