Lucky Peach Issue 3: The Cooks & Chefs Issue

The Cooks & Chefs issue, featuring Joe Beef, Naomi Duguid, and the awful Mario Batali.

The Chefs and Cooks issue, the third installment ofLucky Peach, attempts to answer a few pressing questions: What does it mean to be a cook in todays age of celebrity chefdom? Where is cooking headed? How did the molten chocolate cake make its way from Michel Brass restaurant in Laguiole, France to the Wal-Mart freezer case? What happens, exactly, when bartenders spank mint?

The answers arrive from all over the place Mario Batali recalls the early days of Food Network; Meredith Erickson spends an afternoon with Fergus Henderson; Naomi Duguid visits street vendors in Chiang Mai. We talk to cooks from Fort Bragg to Paris to the South Pole. There are recipes for barbecue-chicken pizza and pasta primavera, and Christina Tosis upside-down pineapple cake, just in time for Mothers Day. Very good.