Posts

Blood, Bones and Butter: Gabrielle Hamilton

in ,

blood‘My parents seemed incredibly special and outrageously handsome to me then. I could not have boasted of them more or said my name, first and last together, more proudly, to show how it directly linked me to them. I loved that our mother was French and that she had given me that heritage in my very name. I loved telling people that she had been a ballet dancer at the Met in New York City when she married my father. I loved being able to spell her long French name, M- A- D-E- L- E- I- N- E, which had exactly as many letters in it as my own. My mother wore the sexy black cat- eye eyeliner of the era, like Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren, and I remember the smell of the sulphur every morning as she lit a match to warm the tip of her black wax pencil. She pinned her dark hair back into a tight, neat twist every morning and then spent the day in a good skirt, high heels, and an apron that I have never seen her without in forty years. She lived in our kitchen, ruled the house with an oily wooden spoon in her hand, and forced us all to eat dark, briny, wrinkled olives, small birds we would have liked as pets, and cheeses that looked like they might well bear Legionnaire’s Disease.’

~Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones & Butter

Memoirs often leave me cold, and it takes a really strong recommendation from a very well respected reader to convince me to pick one up. Luckily for me, I picked this one up. You should read this book too. Gabrielle Hamilton doesn’t just introduce her readers to the world of the kitchen, she takes us through the crazy world she inhabited that brought her there. And she does it with a writing style that is both engaging and revealing, and at the same time is well written. There is nothing that bothers me more, and I admit when it comes to memoir I read with a critical and cynical eye, than redundancy or too much telling and not enough showing or the overuse of simile and metaphor. (If run-on sentences bother you, you can skip that last one.) I’ll read a bad story written well before I’ll read a great story written poorly.

Gabrielle cooked for over 20 years before she decided she really was a writer and began work on an MFA, cooking only part time to support her education. The path through her MFA convinced her, along with her part-time cooking gig, that in fact she really did belong in the kitchen, perhaps with a pencil in her hand. After returning to New York  she took a crazy leap and opened a restaurant in the East Village in 1999. Since then she has  won awards for both her chef-ing and her writing. Her convoluted path through lies, drugs, sex, travel, marriage and self absorption, took her on a less than direct path to the opening of Prune. I’m not sure if it’s her crazy story or her descriptions of food and her sense of hospitality, but I want to eat there. Lucky for me I have a trip planned to attend a wedding on the east coast this summer…maybe this will give me reason to be less grumpy about being in New York in July.

Keep in touch,
Leslie

award winning cooks and their books

in
the updated interior of the best restaurant in the world photo courtesy Noma

the best restaurant in the world
photo courtesy Noma

I think I’ve mentioned I’m a ridiculous cookbook hoarder. Growing up I loved watching cooking shows on PBS, although I had little interest in actually cooking. As a matter of fact when my mom tried to engage me in the kitchen I balked and left the house in favor of mud puddles and swingsets, and later friends and books. But every Saturday morning would find me transfixed by the Galloping Gourmet and Julie Child. I still enjoy the ‘how to’ cooking shows over the reality based drama-in-the-kitchen shows. There’s something about the story of food that pulls me in. And when it comes to cookbooks, I rarely use them to cook, but covet every beautiful book I see and read them like novels with gorgeous pictures.

Now that it’s award season, I’ll share a few of my favorites from some fabulous award winners and nominees. I’m sure there are quite a few additional books that merit inclusion, but I don’t own them (yet). Maybe next year…..

The Best Restaurant in the World

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy is a group of over 900 mega foodies who eat out. A lot. And based on their own impressions they each vote, in order, for the 7 best restaurants they’ve eaten in during the prior 18 months. Then the votes get tallied and we get their yearly list every April. You can find the whole list here.

Noma is back on top. Chef Rene Redzepi (one of my personal favorites even though I’ve never eaten his food…..sigh…..) tells amazing food stories both about the food he cooks and his approach  to food and dining. Although I’ve never eaten his food, I have devoured his words, both written and spoken, as have many who live closer to the food world than I do. His message of eating locally with respect for the places we harvest ripples to the farthest reaches of the planet and has contributed to better eating for everyone. So yea, I’m happy he’s back on top. Check out his books….they are as much about story as they are about recipes. And by the way, Rene Redzepi: A Work in Progress is also a nominee in the Professional Cookbook category and the Photography category.

   

James Beard Awards 2014

The Beard Awards cover all aspects of the food industry from chefs to designers and are specific to North America. Per JamesBeard.org:

Established in 1990, the James Beard Foundation Awards recognize culinary professionals for excellence and achievement in their fields and continue to emphasize the Foundation’s mission: to celebrate, preserve, and nurture America’s culinary heritage and diversity. Each award category has an individual Awards committee made up of industry professionals who volunteer their time to oversee the policies, procedures, and selection of judges for their respective Awards program.

Award winners for 2014 will be announced on Monday, May 5. Here are a couple of the nominees and their fabulous books.

A16: Best Wine Program

This is a gorgeous restaurant and a gorgeous cookbook that you can actually cook from. And in my case perhaps learn a thing or fifty-eight about wine. Steve will tell you how perfectly hopeless I am when it comes to knowing/describing/understanding wine…but I am good at drinking it!

Daniel Patterson: Best Chef in the West

I’m not going to go on and on and embarrass myself (again), just read about Daniel Patterson and Coi here. The book is gorgeous and Chef has a beautiful writing voice that bring ingredients, place and food to life.

I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do. They are as at home on my bedside table as they are the kitchen counter. Cook something wonderful for dinner, or maybe order in and read a really great story about food.
Leslie

Gumbo Tales: Sara Roahen

in ,

gumbo tales

‘Of all the follies I committed en route to becoming a New Orleanian–pronouncing Burgundy Street like the wine (in New Orleans-speak, the emphasis is on gun), locking my mountain bike on the front porch (once, before it disappeared), agreeing to work on Fat Tuesday–the most egregious was disrespecting the po-boy. Just a submarine sandwich, I’d sneer as another month passed without trying one.  But po-boys are as unavoidable in New Orleans as mousling cockroaches are, and in time the determination of both broke me. I don’t scream anymore when I see the cockroaches limbo-ing beneath the doorsill, and curiosity eventually drove me up Magazine Street to Guy’s Po-Boys.’

My first trip to New Orleans was a few years after Hurricane Katrina. Rebuilding was well under way in many neighborhoods, but there were still piles of rubble that were once homes sprinkled in every neighborhood of the city. And there were neighborhoods that were still nearly vacant. I fell in love with the city on that first trip and have loved it more with every visit since. Food and restaurants, being such a central part of the culture of New Orleans, have led the recovery in many ways. And food has changed in New Orleans since Katrina. You can still get anything fried and seafood with every meal, but there are also fresh vegetables growing in New Orleans and there is a growing movement to eat what is grown locally.

On my first visit I met Nat Turner, a teacher from New York who went to New Orleans after Katrina, then stayed to become part of its future.  Turner, as he likes to be called, is an imposing and charismatic figure who has become an integral part of the Lower Ninth Ward. He opened a school, Our School at Blair Grocery, to teach the local youth that growing and selling tomatoes is more profitable than dealing drugs. They are now selling their vegetables to the once again thriving restaurants of New Orleans.

On my way home from that first trip I picked up Gumbo Tales at the airport. It is, to date, my favorite book about New Orleans and as a newcomer to that amazing world, it was and is my best view in. While each chapter spins around one of the many foods that define New Orleans, the book is about much more than food. It is about the character and feel of the city and people who live there. Just read it.

Keep in touch,
Leslie

Farm City, Novella Carpenter

in ,
Farm City by Novella Carpenter

Farm City by Novella Carpenter

“I took a deep breath and plunged the little yellow seeds into the ground that was not mine.  I snaked the hose around from our backyard and sprinkled water onto the bare patch of soil.  Lana and I stood and watched the water soak in.  What I was doing reminded me a little of shoplifting, except instead of taking, I was leaving something.  But I was worried.  Couldn’t these plants be used as evidence against me?”
~Novella Carpenter, Farm City
icon
I know….Novella Carpenter wrote this book years ago. And I’m finally reading it now. With my ridiculously destroyed back garden (see my facebook page for the reason behind that!), I am ripe for a new start. On top of the mess, we are having a drought in California, so unless it feeds my family, I’m not watering it. Eventually the grass will die, which won’t break my heart.  Then I will follow Novella’s lead and plant food which I will water very carefully so as not to waste a drop. Who knows where this will lead?

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

in ,

never let me go

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.” 
~ Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

This is the beautifully written story of a group of private school children, completely isolated from the outside world, in a very unique circumstance. The prose is lyrical and in striking contrast to the children’s destiny.  Read it without reading any reviews or seeing the movie….it needs to begin at the beginning to really be appreciated.  If you don’t intend to read the story (a pity), you can watch the 2010 movie.  The trailer is below.

about reading

in ,

 

book4

I love books.  Not just reading, but actually the books themselves.  I buy books everywhere and keep them forever…even my grandmother’s 1953 Encyclopedia Brittanica collection.  Growing up we had 2 massive bookshelves in our family room and my mom was an avid reader.  As a teenager I preferred laying on the rug under the piano reading to being outside with friends (I was a bit of a late bloomer).  So in my house we build bookshelves.  When I’m starting a project my first stop is always a book.  When I need to relax, I find a book.  When I’m making dinner, I’ve got a book on the counter.  When I’m standing in line, I’m reading a book.  There aren’t enough bookshelves so books are stacked on tables, on top of other books, littering my desk.  Steve laughs because I can read anywhere, even in the middle of my family’s chaos.  And I’m always bringing more books into our not so huge house.

book1

For those of you who are also readers, ‘good reads’ is a place for me to share books I’ve read and loved.  Check back to see what’s on my bedside table.  And let me know if you read something amazing so that I can read it too.

book2