'The 'New Yorker' Food Issue: Secret Ingredients, New Apple Varieties And More

The annual food issue of the New Yorker is out this week, featuring a range of stories from foraging in Copenhagen to exploring new apple varieties. The highlights (many are subscription only, but all offer an abstract of the story):

• In "The Food At Our Feet," Jane Kramer asks why foraging is all the rage. She visits Rene Redzepi in Copenhagen to find out.
• Like wine, not all coffee tastes the same. Kelefa Sanneh travels to El Salvador to talk to Aida Batlle, a fifth-generation coffee farmer, to learn about the changing tastes, and current state, of American coffee culture.
• The creation of the SweeTango apple, a new variety of apple that has been making waves these past few years, did not happen overnight. John Seabrook explores the history of apple cultivation in "Crunch."
• British historian Lucy Worsley studies the meals that royalty ate several centuries ago. Lauren Collins reports on these feasts in "The King's Meal."
• Adam Gopnik sees the turkey as a symbol of America and Calvin Trillin reflects on summers spent cooking in Nova Scotia.
• In a series of smaller pieces on the subject of secret ingredients, a former restaurant owner remembers an evening with her daughter, Paul Theroux waxes poetic about heirloom tomatoes, Mohammed Naseehu Ali recalls the yaji, "the king of all spice mixtures," Judith Thurman discloses why the pine nut is her dirty little secret and Louise Erdrich explains how she finds a use for almost everything that appears in her garden.