Rowan Jacobsen – författare

In his classic A Geography of Oysters, Rowan Jacobsen forever changed the way America talks about its best bivalve. Now he does the same for our favorite fruit, showing us that there is indeed life beyond Red Delicious—and even Honeycrisp. While supermarkets limit their offerings to a few waxy options, apple trees with lives spanning human generations are producing characterful varieties—and now they are in the midst of a rediscovery. From heirlooms to new designer breeds, a delicious diversity of apples is out there for the eating.Apples have strong personalities, ranging from crabby to wholesome. The Black Oxford apple is actually purple, and looks like a plum. The Knobbed Russet looks like the love child of a toad and a potato. (But don’t be fooled by its looks.) The D’Arcy Spice leaves a hint of allspice on the tongue. Cut Hidden Rose open and its inner secret is revealed. With more than 150 art-quality color photographs, Apples of Uncommon Character shows us the fruit in all its glory. Jacobsen collected specimens both common and rare from all over North America, selecting 120 to feature, including the best varieties for eating, baking, and hard-cider making. Each is accompanied by a photograph, history, lore, and a list of characteristics. The book also includes 20 recipes, savory and sweet, resources for buying and growing, and a guide to the best apple festivals. It’s a must-have for every foodie.

From James Beard Award-winning author Rowan Jacobsen, the thrilling story of the farmers, activists, and chocolate makers fighting all odds to revive ancient cacao and produce the world’s finest bar.When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. A childhood of waxy mass-market chocolate had left him indifferent to the sweet, and most experts believed wild cacao had disappeared from the rainforest centuries ago. But one dazzling bite was all it took. Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen explores the abandonment of wild and heirloom cacao in the 19th and 20th centuries in favor of the high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by “Big Chocolate”—the handful of giant corporations that control the industry and have historically paid its five million developing-world farmers less than a dollar per day.In Wild Chocolate, Jacobsen journeys deep into the rainforests of the Amazon and Central America with the chocolate makers, activists, and indigenous leaders who are bucking the system, pulling the last vestiges of ancient cacao back from the edge of extinction and forging an alternative system in the process—one that brings prosperity back to local economies, returns fertility to the land, and protects it from the rampages of cattle farming. Serendipitously, the rediscovery of these heirloom and wild strains has also triggered a chocolate renaissance, as a new generation of “bean-to-bar” chocolate makers races to get their hands on these rare varietals and produce extraordinary chocolate displaying a diversity of flavors no one had thought possible. Chock-full of unforgettable characters, hallucinatory landscapes, hair-raising encounters, and surprising history, Wild Chocolate promises to be as rich, complex, bittersweet, and addictive as good chocolate itself.