On Food and Reading
At this time of year, if you can't be eating something, you might as well be reading about eating something.
Cookbooks are one option. One of my favorite authors: Marcella Hazan. Two volumes, The Classic Italian Cookbook and More Classic Italian Cooking, of very opinionated pronouncements on how to cook real Italian food, the real Italian way. You don't find a narrative tone like this in most novels.
Here's Hazan on salad dressing:
"There is absolutely nothing mysterious about the dressing for an Italian salad. The ingredients are salt, olive oil, and wine vinegar. Pepper is optional, and lemon juice is occasionally substituted for vinegar." My friend Lori marvels at the tone. Confident, authoritative, unwilling or perhaps uninterested in considering that there might be another way to do it. Nope, this is it, and let the reader move on.
The recipes are brief, clear, and to the point. Even the newest, least experienced of cooks could open Hazan's books at any page and make a great meal. After each recipe, directives on what to serve before, with, and after the course. Every single thing that I've made from these books has been wonderful. Some have become such stand-bys that I no longer eat them. My husband has a theory that each person can only eat a certain quantity of McDonald's within a single lifetime, and then is done with it forever. I feel this way about Bucatini with tomatoes.
I also like to flip through Fanny at Chez Panisse from time to time. I also have a much-used copy of Chez Panisse Deserts (every fall I make a double batch of the Apple Crisp topping and store it in the freezer for those days when the pears and apples are tired and need to go away - then I cut them up, throw them in a casserole, toss some of the frozen crisp mix on top, and throw it in the oven for the most wonderful desert/breakfast/snack; my friend Michelle's trademark desert at one point was the Lemon Tart) and Chez Panisse Vegetables. Again, food that is simple but the very best of what it can be. And in Fanny, you get a lovely story about what it's like to grow up in a restaurant, have a mom who's committed to the pleasures of eating well, and easy, good recipes.
I rarely use it, but have a certain affection for The Joy of Cooking. Whenever I come across a copy in a used bookstore or resale shop, I grab it. The different editions are little histories of America. Older editions comment on war-time substitutions; newer ones reference the invention of the microwave. And everyone who cooks in America seems to have started with this book. In My Life in France, Julia Child reminisces about lunching with Irma Rombauer, who may have even influenced Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Rombauer told Child that her publisher wouldn't allow the extensive index she wanted in Joy of Cooking. Check out the index in Mastering: hmmm. And though they may not use it much either, I've made it a tradition to give each of my daughters a copy of The Joy of Cooking when they moved into their first apartment.
And Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. As sad as I am whenever I think of this author, who died in her forties and left behind a young daughter, I love to reread her essays on food. Here's what Colwin writes in the introduction to More Home Cooking:
". . . life itself is full, not only of charm and warmth and comfort but of sorrow and tears. But whether we are happy or sad, we must be fed. Both happy and sad people can be cheered up by a nice meal. This book was written for the sustainers and those who will be sustained. I hope both will eat happily and well from it."
Well said.
Cookbooks are one option. One of my favorite authors: Marcella Hazan. Two volumes, The Classic Italian Cookbook and More Classic Italian Cooking, of very opinionated pronouncements on how to cook real Italian food, the real Italian way. You don't find a narrative tone like this in most novels.
Here's Hazan on salad dressing:
"There is absolutely nothing mysterious about the dressing for an Italian salad. The ingredients are salt, olive oil, and wine vinegar. Pepper is optional, and lemon juice is occasionally substituted for vinegar." My friend Lori marvels at the tone. Confident, authoritative, unwilling or perhaps uninterested in considering that there might be another way to do it. Nope, this is it, and let the reader move on.
The recipes are brief, clear, and to the point. Even the newest, least experienced of cooks could open Hazan's books at any page and make a great meal. After each recipe, directives on what to serve before, with, and after the course. Every single thing that I've made from these books has been wonderful. Some have become such stand-bys that I no longer eat them. My husband has a theory that each person can only eat a certain quantity of McDonald's within a single lifetime, and then is done with it forever. I feel this way about Bucatini with tomatoes.
I also like to flip through Fanny at Chez Panisse from time to time. I also have a much-used copy of Chez Panisse Deserts (every fall I make a double batch of the Apple Crisp topping and store it in the freezer for those days when the pears and apples are tired and need to go away - then I cut them up, throw them in a casserole, toss some of the frozen crisp mix on top, and throw it in the oven for the most wonderful desert/breakfast/snack; my friend Michelle's trademark desert at one point was the Lemon Tart) and Chez Panisse Vegetables. Again, food that is simple but the very best of what it can be. And in Fanny, you get a lovely story about what it's like to grow up in a restaurant, have a mom who's committed to the pleasures of eating well, and easy, good recipes.
I rarely use it, but have a certain affection for The Joy of Cooking. Whenever I come across a copy in a used bookstore or resale shop, I grab it. The different editions are little histories of America. Older editions comment on war-time substitutions; newer ones reference the invention of the microwave. And everyone who cooks in America seems to have started with this book. In My Life in France, Julia Child reminisces about lunching with Irma Rombauer, who may have even influenced Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Rombauer told Child that her publisher wouldn't allow the extensive index she wanted in Joy of Cooking. Check out the index in Mastering: hmmm. And though they may not use it much either, I've made it a tradition to give each of my daughters a copy of The Joy of Cooking when they moved into their first apartment.
And Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. As sad as I am whenever I think of this author, who died in her forties and left behind a young daughter, I love to reread her essays on food. Here's what Colwin writes in the introduction to More Home Cooking:
". . . life itself is full, not only of charm and warmth and comfort but of sorrow and tears. But whether we are happy or sad, we must be fed. Both happy and sad people can be cheered up by a nice meal. This book was written for the sustainers and those who will be sustained. I hope both will eat happily and well from it."
Well said.
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