Potlikker

white jacket required

One of my favorite kinds of culinary memoir to read is what I've dubbed the "corporate-to-culinary" or "grey-suit-to-toque" realizing where one's true passion and/or vocation lies. But Jenna Weber's White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming of Age Story departs from that right out of the oven, because she bypasses the corporate job entirely. Instead of seeking a Fortune 500 job after graduating from the College of Charleston she heads straight for Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Orlando, Florida and is up to her elbows in Meat Fabrication before she can say "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin." 

Another odd thing about Weber, who is decidedly NOT odd as you get into the meat and potatoes of her memoir and learn about her life, is that she isn't going into debt at Le Cordon Bleu to have kitchen underlings snap to and say "Yes, Chef!" and "No, Chef!" at her every whim. Her culinary aspirations are writing about food, not creating it or serving it. 

She wants to do it well, and with authority. And so she seeks a chef's education and this basis for understanding her subject in a way that many food writers do not. Certainly we must admire and respect her for her noble goal. It's an approach I would take if I was young, unmarried, childless, and at the beginning of my career. 

A glimpse at her daily life reveals her mornings at culinary school interspersed with evening shifts as a hostess at a restaurant, negotiations with her childhood friend and roommate who is attending police academy, and occasional dates with her long-time---and older boyfriend-- with whom she has a committed and long-distance relationship with. 

What is a typical day, or course at culinary school like? Undoubtedly each person's experience is different, colored by her personality, classmates, instructors, the setting, and the events culminating in her life. So while Weber captured many typical scenes you might expect, such as hours spent in commercial kitchens replicating recipes until they were perfect, or taking copious notes as her instructors lectured, or working in teams with classmates with whom she got on well (or did not), there were many details specific to her life that make White Jacket Required a timeless rendering of a woman's journey seeking identity. Another thing we learn about Weber is her determination. She takes up running despite the excruciating pain it leaves her body in. She plows through and continues running. With such moxie and determination, readers understand that Weber will easily make it through Le Cordon Bleu and any other trial she must overcome.

Weber's skills improve as we read each chapter, but ultimately she discovers that the Culinary Arts program leaves her dry. Dealing with meat and the other portions of the curriculum leaves her dispirited, and it's not sinking her hands into the bread making course that her spirits rise and she finds her passion. Fortunately, she easily switches to the Baking and Pastry Arts Program and though she has many challenges to meet, she does so readily and cheerfully. 

I loved reading about the time she spent in Napa, which she writes about near the end of the book. And since it's where she currently lives it's nice to know that dreams do come true, smiley face, smiley face. 

Dozens of recipes are tucked within the book's chapters. I made First-Day-of-Class Biscuits because I had a yen for biscuits and the recipe intrigued me: pastry flour in biscuit dough? Granted, I have Nathalie Dupree's mammoth book on biscuits, Southern Biscuits (As If there are Western Biscuits, Northern Biscuits, New England Biscuits? Pah.) but haven't made any from it, yet. These were so so. I credit my failure as a biscuit maker rather than Webber's recipe. And, that I used unbleached whole wheat flour. I don't stock any other kind in my larder. Somehow biscuits don't taste as yummy unless they're made with bleached flour; simply my preference for incorporating more healthy ingredients in my home.

Weber's publicist shared the recipe for Pumpkin Whoopie Pies which she said was available for reprint, so I'm sharing it herein: 

Reprinted with permission from White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story © 2012 by Jenna Weber, Sterling Epicure, an imprint of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Pumpkin Whoopee Pies
By Jenna Weber,
Author of White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story

Makes about 18 whoopee pies

These cookies are very rich, almost like a cupcake, so I suggest saving this recipe for a special occasion or a rainy afternoon. The cookies are best the day you bake them; if you keep them for too long they will become a bit gummy and soft. They would also be perfect with cream cheese frosting in the middle, or on their own, sprinkled with a dusting of powdered sugar.

For the buttercream filling

1 egg white

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups powdered sugar, divided 

¾ cup shortening

For the cookies

2 cups brown sugar 

1 cup canola oil

1½ cups canned pumpkin 

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder 

1 teaspoon baking soda 

1½ teaspoons cinnamon 

½ teaspoon cardamom

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground white pepper 

1½ teaspoons ground ginger

Make the filling: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, combine the egg white, milk, vanilla extract, and 1 cup of the powdered sugar, then mix on high speed until the mixture is creamy and light. Add shortening and remaining cup of sugar, and whip on high speed until very light, about 8 to 10 minutes. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 325°P. and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Make the cookies: In a large bowl, blend together brown sugar and oil with a spoon until well combined. Add pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla and continue to stir until smooth.

Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and spices, and then add to the wet ingredients, stirring only until combined (be careful not to overmix).

For best results, spoon batter into a piping bag with a large tip and pipe mounds of batter (about 1 tablespoon each) of batter onto the lined sheet tray, about 3 inches apart. (If you don't have a piping bag, use two large spoons and space the batter in the same way.)

Bake cookies for about 10-12 minutes, until they begin to turn golden. Let cool completely before sandwiching cookies together with the filling.

Cookie sandwiches will keep in a sealed plastic container at room temperature for a few days.

The above is an excerpt from the book White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story by Jenna Weber. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Reprinted with permission from White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story © 2012 by Jenna Weber, Sterling Epicure, an imprint of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Author Bio
Jenna Weber, author of White Jacket Required: A Culinary Coming-of-Age Story, is the author of the highly successful food blog Eat, Live, Run. In 2007, she attended Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Orlando, Florida. White Jacket Required is her first book. She lives in San Francisco, California. Go to www.eatliverun.com for an up-to-the-minute look at Weber's world of food.

For more information please visit http://www.eatliverun.com, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter

I received a review copy of Weber's memoir from her publicist, just to let you know, so I'm in accordance with the new FTC regulations, but otherwise, I received no other form of compensation for this review. It's just what I do. I love to read. I love to write. And I love to share my opinion.

how to bake your way into a business

If you're a librarian or someone with excellent research skills, then How to Start a Home-Based Bakery Business is not for you because in a matter of minutes you'll discover the information you seek. But if you're like ninety per cent of wannabe bakers and don't know where to begin your research into the ins and outs of a home-based bakery business, this is the book for you. If readers can get past the red-tape aspects of working out of their home and complying with rigorous guidelines, then they'll be well on their way to success after absorbing wisdom shared in this book. 

Detra Denay Davis shares her twenty-five year's of experience in this practical guide to getting your rolling pin in the door in the home bakery business. She lives in Atlanta now, but specifically cites North Carolina laws since she operated in that state for most of her career. Most of the business basics like writing a business plan, financing, and marketing, are easily found in any guide to small businesses. But Davis shares information specific to bakers such as cakeboss and how to locate kitchen incubators.

Because, let's face it, after reading this book, would-be bakers may decide they don't want to start a home-based bakery in their home, but may want to rent time/space in a commercial kitchen. It's not like everybody wants "the man" traipsing through their home, inspecting the bathrooms, etc. And then there's product labeling to consider.

Davis talks generalities about setting your prices. She poo poohes the practice of charging two or three times the cost of ingredients, which seems to be the standard advice given to newbie home-based bakers. She touches on social networking as an aspect of your business as well as offering information about establishing an online presence allowing customers to order products securely. She mentions, several times, how some bakers operate "under the table" in that they aren't cleared to bake and sell potentially hazardous items like cheesecake. She thinks they'll get caught someday and advises operating your bakery business above-board, by the book. Further, she writes about recipe development and marketing your products to a niche, such as sugar-free, gluten-free, etc. 

The first place to start, after finishing How to Start a Home-Based Bakery Business, is to check with your local SBA. They are familiar with foods start-ups in your area and can save time. Cottage laws vary from state to state, as do the particular departments, whether it be Agriculture or the Health Department that your business operates under. Davis points out that often these agencies are unaware of restrictions and guidelines of each other and can give would-be bakers conflicting advice. Check out your SBA office first.

After reading How to Start a Home-Based Bakery Business I'm not sure I'm up for all the problems described with having a home-based bakery in my kitchen. Keeping ingredients, utensils, appliances, etc. separate sounds like a hassle, especially for those with small kitchens and storage space. I'd be more likely to go whole-hawg with a bricks-and-mortar bakery, or rent time/space in a commercial kitchen. Too, I have dogs, and Davis was pretty explicit in saying that, for the most part, home-based bakeries must be animal-free.

Good luck to you in your home-based bakery business. Reading the materials covered within How to Start a Home-Based Bakery Business will undoubtedly convince you one way or another whether this endeavor is worth attempting. This is an excellent resource. The only improvement I'd make would be to include more interviews with home-based bakers. There was one. Showing multiple paths to success is the best model to follow and would have strengthened the book.

tips for better food writing

Sometimes my mind races after I finish reading a book. I'm usually in bed. I turn out the light. I toss. I turn. I cannot sleep. This happened a few nights ago when I closed Will Write For Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Reviews, Memoir, and More, second edition. It was published this year. Jacob filled my head with her advice. She inspired my thinking about potential articles, blog posts, and books, I might write. Even though she talks about how very few food writers make a living at only writing about food, she spurred my confidence a bit. It's possible that her best bit of advice would be: Don't quit your day job.

Three quick and easy tips Dianne Jacob shares for better food writing in the second edition of Will Write For Food: The Complte Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Reveiws, Memoir, and More are:

First, she doesn't say it in exactly this manner, but I shall:

Take it to the body. It's something I learned in creative writing class. Describe the food using all your senses and that makes your writing much better and essentially has the reader sitting in your lap sharing your experience. Describe textures, aromas, and the range of flavors. The velvet texture of the soup as it caresses the back of your throat, etc.

Second, write book reviews. Of course, this one works for foodies who enjoy reading. But, sharpening your writing in the analysis of a cookbook, culinary history, or foodie memoir improves your ability to write because examining another writer's work helps in the construction of your own. You find out what you like and don't like and then can strive to write to your strengths.

And third, complete the exercises she includes at the conclusion of each chapter. I don't complete exercises included in most books. But you can bet that I will do these. They're useful endeavors for focusing your writing. For example, at the end of chapter two she advises burgeoning food writers to write a paragraph about "your passion for a favorite food." Then she gives instructions for reviewing your work and changing generic nouns to specific ones.

And, I'll throw this one in as well. Jacob says, don't write about food nostalgia. A little is okay, but if you want to write a cookbook, or food memoir, then don't write about learning to cook at your grandmother's knee. Every food writer owns this impulse; it's where we start. Agents and editors are bored with reading about cooking from grandmother's knee.

Those were a few nuggets I panned from this second edition. In fact, I own the first edition and never read it. Silly me. Stupid me. I bought it. Didn't read it. I should have because Jacob's advice is relevant for general writers, too. Whether you're writing about kookaburras or monster truck racing, this book helps writers hone their craft and target audiences as well as, or better than, any other general book geared toward wannabe-writers.

The biggest difference between this book and the first edition published in 2005 is the section called "Getting Started with a Food Blog." If I'd known this information earlier, I'm sure that I could have parlayed my online presence into something grander by this time rather than the humble following it is. She interviews food professionals in both books. One of the most helpful devices she employs is her comparative sidebars.

Most of all, I appreciated "How some food writers got their start." Jacob presents from one to three paragraphs liming the career trajectory of people such as Colman Andrews, Molly O'Neill, Russ Parsons, Greg Patent, Ruth Reichl and Alan Richman, to name a few. I'm a sucker for biography short or long. Seeing how others enter a field and evolve helps me more than anything else. Not that I want to replicate anyones path, but seeing the progression from one aspect of a career to the next helps me understand how one could enter a field and eventually expand. It helps with coming up with a short-term (or even long-term) plan.

As to the technical aspects of the book like the bibliography and index, both are tops. Jacob liberally shares resources appropriate to each section. She suggests several books to read if writing a food memoir is your bag, baby. Naturally, my favorite suggestion of Jacob's (other than writing book reviews and blogging) was to read food writing. 

These are the writers she recommends:

• James Beard. 1964. Delights and Prejudices
• Jean-Anthelem Brillat-Savarin. 1825 The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy
• Samuel Chamberlin. 1943. Clementine in the Kitchen
• Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking & More Home Cooking
• Elizabeth David. South Wind Through the Kitchen
• Roy Andreis De Groot. 1937. Auberge of the Flowering Hearth
• M.F.K. Fisher. The Art of Eating
• Edna Lewis. 1976. The Taste of Country Cooking
• A.J. Liebling. 1959. Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris
• Harold McGee. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
• Angelo Pellegrini. 1948. The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life
• Waverly Root. 1994. Eating in America: A History
• Joseph Wechsberg. 1953. Blue Trout and Black Truffles: The Peregrinations of an Epicure

The chapter on writing and testing recipes was most instructive for me, since my experience in that area is limited. Most of the information she shared in "Secrets of Restaurant Reviewing" I'd learned from reading Ruth Reichl's book a few years ago.

After my sleepless night I visited a bookstore the next day. I bought M.F.K. Fisher's Art of Eating and Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life. I devoured the latter and will possibly share my thoughts about it in a later post. I'm so late to the Homemade Life party, I wonder if I have anything to say that is new. Art of Eating is such a tome. Hope to start it soon.

About blogging: Something Jacob wrote affirmed what I've discovered recently. Most food blogs are recipe blogs. They have recipes as their main content. Jacob says you have to develop storytelling skills to compel readers to return. She talks about blogs being a visual medium. I love to peek at someones kitchen and see the latest dish they concocted. 

Yet, I've noticed how hundreds (at least) of food bloggers follow Ree Drummond's lead in posting a dozen plus photos of their process. Somehow, it worked for her. There's something called the rule of 5 plus or minus 2. Or maybe it's 7. Regardless, people process only so many images. And remember what I said Jacob said about storytelling? If the post if fifty photos plus a recipe, where's the narrative? Where's the writing? I want the storytelling and a great transition. That's my two cents worth.

succor in confections

Don't we all dream of escaping our soul-sucking jobs for what we were really meant to do? The numbers of people finding succor in the food industry grows each quarter, it seems. Everyone escapes cubicle nation for the kitchen. That is one of my dreams, too. The big one, the untenable one, is owning/running my own bookstore. How foolish is that given the advent of online book retailers?

And yet, my food dream revolves around opening a small restaurant that only sells desserts: pies, cakes, cheesecakes, tortes, etc. I stare longingly at vacant storefronts and imagine what the reality would be: That everyone in my small city names it their number one after-meal destination because no other restaurant's desserts could possibly compare to mine. Ah, dreams.

Gesine Bullock-Prado can tell you what the reality is. And her advice for those wanting to take similar flight is to start small and work in a kitchen to learn the ropes before taking on too much as the owner of a business. She quit her career in Hollywood with a production company and moved to Vermont to open a bakery and confectionery. After attending law school she entered the entertainment industry at the bequest of her sister, a famous actor. Dealing with the insincere, soulless people with whom she worked dragged her morale through the mud and left her wanting more satisfying work. 

Bullock-Prado lived a double life: Hollywood executive by day, baker by night. She spent more and more of her free time in her kitchen, cooking, as a means of channeling her creative talents into personal projects. When she "came out" as a baker, she drew a great amount of support from folks who loved her creations and that  reception caused her to consider a major life change.

Confections of  Closet Master Baker: A Memoir chronicles her days as the owner/baker of a successful bakery in Montpelier, Vermont. She gets up at 3:30 a.m. every day and tackles recipe after recipe. It sounds like sweet work though, squishing your hands in buttery croissant dough and inhaling the yummy sugary, yeasty aromas in the air.

There were so many things I liked about this book. First, it's so well-written. Her prose zips along the page. I gobbled up this book. Obviously, her skills in the kitchen are not her only talents. Her flair for writing is evident from the start. And her style/voice, is amazing, too. Describing it, well, really doesn't do her justice. Characterizing it as spunky or flirty might leave you with the wrong idea, like she's flip or irreverent. Perhaps it's that her whip smart wit and personality shines through on every page. 

The truth is that the book is a glowing testament to her mother's legacy. Bullock-Prado credits her mother's example as a master baker as propelling her toward a career as a baker. Likewise, the limits Bullock placed on the amount of sugar her daughters consumed made the confectionery an especially rebellious affair.  Her mother's death from cancer inspired  Bullock-Prado's change of focus. The strength of the mother-daughter relationship is revealed in the book's pages and will warm every reader's heart, because we all love our mothers and can relate so easily to the author's sentiments and her experiences as a daughter. 

There are three recipes I cannot wait to try: Golden Eggs, Carrot Cake, and Helga's Cake; named after her mother. Golden Eggs sound mouth-watering. Simply divine. Bullock-Prado describes them as originating from a "technique that made ordinary cake taste like donuts, without all the deep-frying." (13)

I'm always eager to try a new Carrot Cake recipe. The simple fact is that I've never made one and have never been gung ho about carrot cake. I've had scrumptious carrot cake a few times in my life, and that was when I lived, of all places, in Sitka, Alaska. The Backdoor Cafe had the best carrot cake, ever. Carol Rice Spurling promised to share her recipe when she finds it, but I shall make do with the one from Confections... until then.

Helga's Cake was originally called Orgasm Cake. Its a three-layer chocolate pecan torte iced with chocolate buttercream that her mother made. She was never a fan of it when she was a child. The first time she made it she described it as "a complicated piece of goodness," and essentially a sensual piece of cake. (217)

Another thing that I enjoyed about the memoir was the insight into life in Vermont. Bullock-Prado writes about her regulars. They are her dear friends. They are for whom she bakes. A criticism from one about her disappointment with a cherry pie causes our heroine to spend additional hours tweaking the recipe and learning how it went wrong. The problem, of course, was that she had not made it herself and one of her staff failed in one or two steps. Her customer raved with the next cherry pie and declared it the best ever. 

Learning about a baker who delights in the delight of her customers just made my day and made me wish that there were more craftspeople so dedicated to producing outstanding items. Bullock-Prado inspires the service industry to do better at serving our public and creating long-term relationships with them that inspire protracted conversations.

Cupcakes. There were no cupcakes. I suppose that was the only glaring ommission. But not everybody must make cupcakes. 

And I almost forgot this: Bullock-Prado is a tease. That's right. She launches into what I think is going to be a Vivian Ward moment. You know, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman? When she enters the fancy shops and the women won't help her? Bullock-Prado sets up a similar situation. After living in Vermont for a while, she returns to Rodeo Drive with a gift certificate for a fancy-schmancy shop in hand. "The beautiful shopgirls weren't very nice the first time, and their replacements were exactly the bony prestige-handbag creatures I'd loathed when I lived there." (30) But then, once her friend introduced her as the one who made the macaroons he gave the shopgirls at Christmas, they were lovely and helpful.

Macaroons.

I expected a recipe for macaroons. I love macaroons. Bullock-Prado strung me along about forty more pages and that's when I learned that the macaroons are her lifeblood. It is one recipe that she doesn't share. Once those macaroons were profiled in InStyle magazine, Bullock-Prado was inundated with orders. She hires legions of high school students to help with each order. 

So the lack of macaroon recipe is the one glaring limitation of the book. But we all have to keep some secrets.

shall i compare thee to a dense wheel of cheese?

All sorts of cheesy sayings came to mind as I read The Cheese Chronicles. Oh, "The cheese stands alone," and "Big cheese," and maybe another one, "Say cheese!"

The book is intensely cheesy. In the best way. It shamed me, really. I thought I loved cheese. Never said I knew anything about it, but whoa. I'm just blown away.

Liz Thorpe overwhelms the reader with everything you ever wanted to know about cheese, and then some. I know what I like: feta, chevre, bleu, brie, gorgonzola, etc. But other than knowing that I like almost everything except for "factory cheeses," as Thorpe calls them, I knew nothing.

Thorpe is one of the growing legion of corporate refugees who traded in their dress for success duds for a chance to pursue their passions. I'm thinking of Dalia Jurgenson and Kathleen Flinn. She went into cheese because she thought it would be cool, that knowing about cheese would make her cool. Everybody likes cheese, ergo she's the most popular person at the party. Not a bad strategy. She cut her chops at Murray's, "New York's oldest and best shop for cheese since 1940."

She grounds the reader in the aspects of cheese making early on. She highlights differences between cow, sheep, and goat milk and what that means for cheese, exactly. There's pressed cheese, unpressed cheese, raw milk cheese. You get the point. This provides context for later on, when she expands her research to individual farms.

Besides chronicling her path from office drone to cheese expert, she chronicles the diverse industry of cheese making across the country. That might be overstating it a bit. What makes the industry diverse are several things: ingredients, techniques, and personality. Otherwise, you have a few select regions where cheese is produced. Vermont. Wisconsin. New York.

Around page eight-eight my eyes glazed over because this is a dense topic. I love the book. Thorpe's writing is irreverent, witty, intelligent. She's thorough. She knows her cheese.

The problem, for me, is that my palate is so limited, I can only imagine the deliciousness of the cheeses she describes. My mouth watered. I yearned for cheese. One thing that would improve the book is if samples accompanied it, so that as you read about Willow Hill's Autumn Oak, you could taste it, too. Reading her tasting notes was an exercise in frustration because my cheese quotient is low.

But then she visited the Amish. That was interesting, different. Her theory was that, perhaps, the origins of cheese making in America were based in Pennsylvania/Ohio Amish country. Then she discovered something else entirely.

There are easily two or three dozen sidebars throughout the chapters explaining answers to questions like "What's a washed curd," "How do you define good milk?" and "Why is goat cheese white?" Each chapter tackles a different kind of cheese: Sheep cheese, American cheddar, Factory cheeses, Grass-fed cheeses.

By this point, again, I'm saturated with cheese and tired of hearing about Vermont. Wisconsin. New York. Finally, about the third chapter from the end, there is it: "Down South: Grass and the business of milking."

Yay Galax, yay Climax, yay Thomasville. There are cheese makers in the Southeast. And the best thing about that is that grass fed cheeses are fabulous, according to Thorpe. You can taste the earth and grass in each morsel. Apparently cheese makers in the southeast are doing something right. Land is cheap and each cow requires about an acre of grass to produce milk regularly. The southeast's mild climate is fabulous for cheese making as well; there's no need to stable the cows, or feed them grain, or shovel manure out of your barns. The model is sustainable, which is great.

So besides the cheese samples to nibble as I read,  another improvement I'd make is to add a tear-away appendix listing all the cheeses she features. Or, maybe just the farms. Because how can I remember which ones to look for at the grocery?

That brings up another problem that I have personally: My location. You read about how democratized the grocery is anymore. That all parts of the USA have access to fruits and vegetables that were never seen in stores 10, 20, 30 years ago. But the chains that serve my area mostly stock factory cheeses.

Factory cheeses: rubbery, tasteless, mass produced products. Kraft, for example. 

I haven't had a chance to check out Earthfare's cheese selection, to compare it what Thorpe says is worthwhile. But I'm betting, that even Earthfare won't have the bulk of the cheeses Thorpe raved about.

Anyways, I'll also concede, that there are cheese makers in states other than those three I mentioned: Washington, Oregon, and Indiana, even.

Again, this is a fabulous book. Thorpe provides a wealth of information about cheese making today. Her stories about traveling to different regions of the USA in search of cheese are filled with depictions of lush scenery, quirky structures, and her interactions with the "locals."

And boy, she sure looks pretty on the cover posing with goats and a cheese wheel. Who else could pull that off successfully?

must save dogs' lives

photo by  Christopher Hirsheimer

I was reading Tenth Muse:  My Life in Food (2007) when I flew to Philadelphia back in January.  Judith Jones is just one of THE finest book editor who brought out books like Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking  as well as cookbooks by Elizabeth David, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, and Lidia Bastianich. Besides bringing those women's work to a larger audience, Jones discovered The Diary of Anne Frank while working in Paris for Doubleday. She pushed to have it published in America and we have her to thank for promoting the manuscript.

Her memoir was not so heavy on her personal life. We learned a few details of her childhood and marriage, but the book's focus was on her career and the food circles she traveled in. I learned a fabulous trick that I hope never to use. And I've forgotten the exact details except for what notes I jotted down. At some point Jones's friends had a dog who swallowed a razor blade. She recommended feeding the dog asparagus because it's fibrous  composition would pillow the razor in the dogs stomach/intestine, thus allowing it to pass the razor without killing itself.

Another fun anecdote she shared was while she worked with Julie Child. Child was working with a whole pig and she recommended covering its ears and tail with aluminum foil. Or better yet, to tuck the tail into the hole beneath it. What a hoot!

At the end are recipes that I have not tried. They were classics. English and French, I believe. Must return to the back of that book and select a few to try.

culinary ghosting

Have you thought about who really writes those celebrity cookbooks?

I had not.

Financial Times has a story about how translator/writer/recipe tester does not have his name on the cover, even though he wrote the book.  Seems horribly unfair to me.

Especially since believing that cooks are triple-threats; you know, good at cooking, writing, and singing/dancing/acting/ is difficult.

Found via http://www.kiplog.com/food/

food writing alert

Great article in the IHT about food writing. That's all. Good day.

food writing

Haven't read it yet, but there's an article about food porn at CJR.

wanna be a critic?

CBS News features a story about the trails of being a food critic. First there are the disguises, and then there's gorging yourself on 13-14 meals each week. There's a bit of history in there about the profession's emergence at the beginning of the twentieth century. Prominent food critics like Craig Claiborne and Ruth Reichel are mentioned as well.