Max & Eli Sussman - Classic Recipes for Modern People: A Collection of Culinary Favorites Reimagined

PHOTOGRAPHY
Erin Kunkel

ILLUSTRATION
Jon Contino

OLIVE PRESS

certain foods are passed downfoods so timeless that neither the changing world nor any culinary Zeitgeist can shake them from our forks. We enjoy gnocchi now as much as a donkey herder did in Sicily two hundred years ago. A bite of cheesecake is as delicious today as it was to a group of day-drunk women having lunch on Park Avenue half a century ago. We will never abandon these classic dishes, because we find comfort in how unchanged they are in a world where change is constant and undeniable. Damn, that was beautiful.

And then there are the foods that people enjoyed in the past that were insanely disgusting and that, thank god, we dont eat anymore. For every timeless dish that we celebrate, some ten gnarly ones have been long forgotten. In the 1950s, people loved eating everything in Jell-O. Tuna salad in a lime Jell-O mold was a dish that you would proudly serve to those you loved. In the 1970s, people frequently ate a dish called bananas hollandaise, which consisted of bananas with slices of hot ham on top, covered inyou guessed ithollandaise sauce. As a child, I can remember my grandmother telling me that she relished a dessert called vinegar pie, which was a pie that tasted like vinegar . Im not even trying to be dramatic here, but she might as well have told me that eating scabs was her favorite snack, because thats how repulsed my nine-year-old self was at the thought of a vinegar pie. And I still feel that way today. Nobody should ever eat that dessert again.

It makes sense, though: its survival of the fittest for foodsurvival of the foodest. (Sorry, that was bad.) The tastiest stuff sticks around, and the old-timey barf stuff falls into the rearview mirror of yesteryear. But the system isnt perfect, and every so often it experiences a glitch, leaving tasty awesomeness in the past.

They are both Marty McFly from Back to the Future, two hunks with great bone structure and cool shoes reaching back in time to change the course of history. Oh, is that too much? Too bad, this is my foreword, so Ill say whatever I want. If I want to talk about the dots on Morgan Freemans face and not food, I can do that. Okay, sorry, where was I? With their restaurants and their books, the Sussman boys are trying to make things right, to correct our historical culinary mistakes. Like who decided that we no longer eat fondue? Why would dipping fruit and bread into a pot of cheese or chocolate ever become pass? Why did gin become an afterthought? Gin was the preferred drink of tough guys who could kick your ass, guys who had beards at age fifteen and built stuff with their bare hands. This book begs us to reconsider both fondue and ginand countless other dishes and drinksand induct them into the Tastiness Hall of Fame, where they rightfully belong.

These culinary Magellans have a heavy burden on their shoulders, as it is never easy to rewrite history. But if anyone is up to the challenge, it is Max and Eli, because they are cool. After all, they chose me to write a foreword for their book, didnt they?

JOSH OSTROVSKY, aka THE FAT JEW aka FATRICK JEWING

Ol Blue Eyes, a 1963 Corvette, a tailored suit, a dry-aged rib eye, Led Zeppelin, Tom Cruise in Risky Businesssome things are untouchably classic. They work perfectly the way they are, regardless of what iterations came afterward. Recipes, however, should be ever expanding and evolving. We believe that a dishno matter how classic and iconichas the ability to morph into something new and fantastic. So operating with the idea that no food, technique, preparation, or flavor combination is set in stone, and embracing evolution as a good thing, were back to reimagine our choice collection of classic dishes.

In our minds, there isnt anything sacred about food except that it should taste amazing. No recipe should be overly complicated to cook. As you can see from the cover photo, we got dressed up and went all old-time classic good on you. But dont be intimidated by how incredibly handsome we look or how monumentally tasty the food appears. Yes, yes... we look amazing. And yes, the food in this cookbook looks incredible and is absurdly tasty. But the point is, you can cook all of this stuff. All of it. Weve reinvented, rejiggered, reordered, and re-created all of these classics so you can sink your teeth right into them, literally and figuratively.

So crank up the Stairway to Heaven , pop on some Ray-Bans, strip down to your underwear and socks, and slide into the kitchen. Its time to get cooking.