How to survive the apocalypse: a cookbook provides dishes and more for the end of days
- The chef-owners of Montreal’s Joe Beef restaurant are stewing over social media-baked narcissism
- Among the recipes for soap and other essentials are those that show respect for where food comes from
It should be obvious from the title that Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse (2018) isn’t going to be filled with recipes for delicate treats you can make for friends when they come to tea, or extravagantly wasteful dishes.
If the title isn’t clue enough, you’ll know it’s a book with a difference when you read sentences such as, “In 1985, David was selling weed at a pool hall to people who were generally older than he,” and when you find recipes like “brains over matar” (calf brains served on a bed of matar [the Hindi word for peas]) and “beak to butt volaille”, which calls for “one 6½ pound (3kg) chapon de Bresse or any thoughtfully farmed chicken with an equally notable pedigree, raised slowly, 120 days and older”.
It’s not that Frédéric Morin and David McMillan – chefs and owners of the Joe Beef restaurant in Montreal, Canada, who co-wrote the book with author Meredith Erickson – don’t give “normal” recipes, but if you are to survive an apocalypse, you should be open to eating a lot more than steak and chicken breast.
In chapter one, the authors write, “We’re not completely serious when we say that zombies are coming. But we do feel we’re living out the end of something. So, what is this apocalypse?
“The apocalypse is on Instagram. It’s self-praise. It’s the obsession of the self. The glorification of the superficial. It’s the constant noise distracting us from creating anything real. It’s Facebook ads that we’re afraid of. It’s climate change. It’s the lack of jobs. It’s the overzealous adoration for food culture without the most basic understanding of where food comes from.