From the Table to the Beach
I’ve already had my beach trip this summer. It was very short, very sweet, and capped by one amazing meal at the Left Bank in Duck - gazpacho with crab and lemon mosto oil, I’m looking at you…though I’ve got another eye on a potato gratin made with tartufella cheese. Unless I’m lucky, I won’t be going back. But I love the idea of beach reads, pool reads and porch reads, just piles of great books to plow through in general, and oh, yeah, now the excuse is that it is hot. On the radio and in print, there’s scores of summer reading suggestions, so this time of year, my library hold list gets especially long. Of course I drool over food books, and at home, I’ve got about a shelf and a half devoted to food memoir and journalism, and these are just the books I’ve bothered to shell out some coin for. These aren’t cookbooks, per se, though some of them have recipes tucked among the stories. Here’s a quick list of the ones I think are keepers:
- My Life in France - by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme. Julia Child was in her late 30s and 40s when she moved to France, went to cooking school, started teaching American ex-pats the ways of soufflé, and published her legendary tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1, with two French collaborators. If that’s not inspiration to re-invent your life, I don’t know what is.
- Alice Waters and Chez Panisse - by Thomas McNamee. Alice Waters got started a little earlier than Julia, but she was equally important to reviving American taste buds. Legend has it that we have proper salad greens today because of her…once upon a time, she smuggled some mesclun seeds back to California with her on a trip to France.
- Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. Novelist Laurie Colwin is/was Martha’s alter-ago (she died in 1992, so I guess the past tense is in order). Funny, light, Home Cooking includes essays such as “Easy Cooking for Exhausted People” and “Baking Bread Without Agony” and a handful of recipes that barely qualify as that, they’re so spare.
- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl. Most of the food world worships at the altar of Ruth Reichl…such is the power you wield as the editor of Gourmet magazine. But I love her writing. That, and the fact that that she is so self-effacing as she nibbles on truffles and foie gras. She simply loves food - and you can hear the joy in her voice as you read her words. Some of her writing best in this book, where she leads us through the ridiculous world of being America’s most high-profile restaurant critic.
- The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner. by Jay Rayner. Think of a softer, British Anthony Bourdain - perhaps a version of him soaked in brandy, kind of like a Christmas plum pudding - and you have Jay Rayner. The restaurant critic for the London Observer, Rayner travels from the big-name-chef franchises of Las Vegas to the secret top-flight restaurants of Toyko’s elite, all in the name of The Perfect Meal. Most of us will never have a $430 meal (that’s per person), so why not read about one?
What are your favorite food books (let your nerdy side shine!)?
