I’ve been a Food Network zombie this morning, so I thought I’d take that as an excuse to talk about some of my favorite books about eating.
At this time of year, I almost always stock up on the better food-porn cooking magazines, and Gourmet is always a reliable choice. The magazine’s editor, Ruth Reichl, is a wonderful writer. She had a long stint as the restaurant critic for the New York Times, and she has two collections of biographical essays that are great reading, even if you think the most important ingredient to keep on hand is a selection of take-out menus. Reichl’s first is Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, where we meet her mother, a disaster in the kitchen, and see Reichl start to explore the world of food. In the follow-up, Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table, where she starts to cultivate a career as a food writer. Reichl is anything but a culinary snob, and her stories have a very warm, expansive feel.
From the snarky side of the equation, there’s Anthony Bourdain, chef provocateur. In Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, he painted a vivid and sometimes terrifying picture of what goes on in the kitchens of high-end Manhattan eateries. I normally find this kind of self-indulgent gonzo stuff grating, but Bourdain is just self-aware enough to keep things on an even keel, and he’s got a great ear for an anecdote. A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisine is a different animal entirely, and it’s even more entertaining. Bourdain goes to the ends of the earth for defining dining and provides an exciting, illuminating travelogue from his crusty perspective. (And he obliquely rags on Food Network darlings like Emeril, even as he inches towards becoming one himself.)
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I couldn’t put down Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America. It’s an inclusive history of the food industry’s attempts to dumb down the American palate even as it pretended to liberate homemakers from the drudgery of food preparation. That last sentence makes it sound like a screed, but it isn’t. Author Laura Shapiro has a wonderful sense of humor, a strong command of facts, and a wonderful way of analyzing events and personalities to create a terrific portrait of a transitional moment in cooking.
On the cookbook front, you can’t go wrong with Julia Child. I turn to Baking With Julia all the time, and Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (with the wonderful Jacques Pepin) is a great textbook for classical techniques, but it’s completely accessible. I love the way Nigella Lawson combines flavors in no-nonsense ways, and her How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food is a pleasure to read and cook from. She’s the polar opposite of frosty Ann Willan, but Willan’s From My Chateau Kitchen is food porn of the first order, with plenty of French countryside wish fulfillment thrown in the mix. I don’t cook from it that often, but Willan’s prim, sly way of writing is a treat.