Monday, January 07, 2019

Food Memoirs




I love reading food memoirs as much as I love reading cookbooks.   Here are some that I have loved:

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. It's about a young woman who spends a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". It is the book version of a blog she kept of the experience. Very funny!  But sray away from her second book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, which was just awful.  


Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin. Laurie Colwin wrote in a way that makes you want to cook something. She was a columnist for Gourmet, and she died young at 48.  I've read pretty much everything she ever wrote in her short life.  

Speaking of Gourmet, I loved everything nonfictionRuth Reichl has written, especially
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table . It describes her coming of age with food and love and motherhood.   Also good is Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

Pot on the Fire: Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook by John Thorne and Matt Lewis Thorne. They can really write beautifully about simple foods.

Everyone that has ever fantasized about working in a restaurant should ready  Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. 

Some more to come!