Food writing

[mom_to_zoe]

Does anyone else enjoy reading food writing? Some of my favorites food writers are:
M.L.K. Fisher: she's classic and one of the first in the genre
Laurie Colwyn: a wonderful author of fiction and non-fiction; her Home Cooking books make me want to cook and cook. I like how she writes about feeding her family. I relate to that as a mother myself.
Calvin Trillin: his work just makes me smile. No one likes to eat as much as this guy! I only know his magazine pieces from Gourmet and the New Yorker, but I intend to buy some of his books.

I keep meaning to read Ruth Reichl's memoirs, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

What food writers do you enjoy?

[alootikki]

Some of my favorites are:

Cooking for Mr. Latte - Amanda Hesser

Monsoon Diary - Shobha Narayan

I did read the first of Ruth Reichl's memoirs, but just couldn't get into it for some reason.

[magrat]

I really liked "The Man Who Ate Everything" by Jeffrey Steingarten. I also love the magazine Saveur.

[mom_to_zoe]

Oh, "The Man Who Ate Everything" is definitely on my list. His reviews for Vogue are excellent.

I think I will start with Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, about her time as the Times restaurant critic, not the childhood stuff.

[SiValleySteph]

These are two of my favorite books:

From Here, You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and Its Restaurant
by Michael S. Sanders
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060959207.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg


The Soul of a Chef : The Journey Toward Perfection
by Michael Ruhlman
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0141001895.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg


I'm currently reading:
A Cook's Tour : Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines
by Anthony Bourdain
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060012781.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,32,-59_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

It's not bad, but nowhere as good as the first two. I don't care for Anthony Bourdain's writing style in this book.

[mom_to_zoe]

I'll have to check out that first one!

I read Michael Ruhlman's book The Making of a Chef, which is about a year at the Culinary Institute of America. It was actually the book that made me NOT want to go to culinary school. ;) But it is a great book. I should check out his other ones.

I'm not a big Anthony Bourdain fan, however. I feel like he is the "shock jock" of the cooking world.

[mgrace]

Great thread! :)

SiValleySteph, I just checked out You Can't See Paris From Here from the library. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm not a big Anthony Bourdain fan, however. I feel like he is the "shock jock" of the cooking world.
Ditto!


http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=0679731148
A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle

Love all of Peter Mayle's books--they are sort of food writing, but I guess more about French life.

This one is more of a foodie book
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=0375405909
French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew, Peter Mayle

[magrat]

I think I started a Cook's Tour (it was a book by him about travelling around the world anyway) and I didn't enjoy it so I put it down. The bits about the pig killing in Portugal were kind of interesting, but then he started whining about his family holidays in France and I got irritated and bored and put it down!

[Sadie]

I have read all 3 of Ruth Reichl's memoirs and have really enjoyed all of them. My favorite though is definitely the earliest one, Tender at the Bone .

[SiValleySteph]

I'm not a big Anthony Bourdain fan, however.

I don't think I am either. :p Even though I am reading A Cook's Tour. It was in the Bargain Books section at Borders. I will read anything (almost!) that is $1 and most things that are $4 or under. I think this one was $4.

I can't wait to get some of these other selections! I should check my library and see what they have.

[polarama]

Oh my gosh, what a perfect thread. :) I love food writing! My favorites are Jeffrey Steingarten, Calvin Trillin, and Ruth Reichl. I definitely liked Garlic and Sapphires better than her memoirs, but her memoirs provide a much more complex picture of her mother, which is kind of talked about in Garlic but not quite fleshed out.

I also enjoyed Cooking for Mr. Latte even though I felt like I could predict many of her recipes towards the end (everything had Meyer lemon, creme fraiche, and cheese in it.:))

I recently picked up an anthology off of Amazon.com, Women Who Eat which has pieces by Amanda Hesser and some other writers (not all are food writers by trade) on food and eating.

[looch]

this is fantastic!
i actually read cookbooks end to end...i know i am weird!
i enjoyed reading amanada hesser, and i tend to lean towards the scientific type books or the historical ones, like history of food.

[wine_o_girlie]

Total foodie here, love reading about food. I just added From Here you Can't See Paris to my book list - thanks for the rec. I did read The Man Who Ate Everything but found it a bit long and I was getting tired of his obsessiveness by the end. I really liked Cooking with Mr. Latte but I do agree the writer has a few favorite foods and uses them for everything (enough about the Meyer Lemons!!). I really like "foodie" books that are set in a part of the world I would love to visit. I really enjoyed Under the Tuscan Sun because it delved into the typical Tuscan diet. I liked A Year in Provence also but not his Hotel Pastis. I need to check out French Lessons.

[Katy]

I"m bumping this up as I think this is a genre that I might want to delve into. I read Garlic and Sapphires a month or so ago and really enjoyed it.

[mgrace]

Garlic and Sapphires was great and I enjoyed From Here You Can't See Paris, too.

[Rosebud]

I also really enjoyed From Here You Can't See Paris. Great book!

I recently read the Julia Child autobiography, My Life in France. It's not really food writing, but I think people who are into food writing would find this fascinating. It's all about how she falls in love with cooking when she moves to France as a newlywed and the beginnings of her career. Lots of discussion of food, dissection of recipes, etc.

There's also a collection of food writing published annually which might interest you. They're all available on Amazon.

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k284/rosebud03_2006/Misc/foodwriting.jpg

[Rosebud]

Bumping up this thread for more recommendations.

Saw this title online and thought it sounded interesting. Anyone read it?

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School (http://www.amazon.com/Sharper-Your-Knife-Less-You/dp/0670018228/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=IXNYBMV335C56&colid=N89NNNGIR14P) by Kathleen Finn

In 2003, Kathleen Flinn, a thirty-six-year-old American living and working in London, returned from vacation to find that her corporate job had been eliminated. Ignoring her mother’s advice that she get another job immediately or “never get hired anywhere ever again,” Flinn instead cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream—a diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the touching and remarkably funny account of Flinn’s transformation as she moves through the school’s intense program and falls deeply in love along the way. Flinn interweaves more than two dozen recipes with a unique look inside Le Cordon Bleu amid battles with demanding chefs, competitive classmates, and her “wretchedly inadequate” French. Flinn offers a vibrant portrait of Paris, one in which the sights and sounds of the city’s street markets and purveyors come alive in rich detail. The ultimate wish fulfillment book, her story is a true testament to pursuing a dream. Fans of Julie & Julia, Almost French, and Eat, Pray, Love will be amused, inspired, and richly rewarded by this seductive tale of romance, Paris, and French food.

[Rosebud]

I just finished reading Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America (http://www.amazon.com/Cookoff-Recipe-America-Amy-Sutherland/dp/014200474X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220416820&sr=1-1) by Amy Sutherland. It was completely fascinating. I absolutely couldn't stop reading it. Highly recommended for anyone who's ever been curious about this world.

From Publishers Weekly:
In this engrossing look at the competitive cooking circuit, journalist Sutherland follows the trail of competitions and a small group of regular participants. These often fanatical competitors, complete with their own Web sites and chat rooms, square off against the amateur one-time-only contenders at local and national levels across the country. With a healthy dose of humor, Sutherland conveys the inside stories and nail-biting moments as the regulars face off. From developing recipes to matching serving wear to outfits, the bravado of the male players and the disasters and pitfalls that can ensue for both regular and amateur alike, this work takes a long, thorough look at this American phenomenon. From chili contests that are more like frat parties to the National Chicken and National Beef competitions, Sutherland crisscrosses the country and along the way conveys her growing enthusiasm for and fascination with why one recipe or dish wins and another loses. She intersperses winning recipes with the account of her own growing delight, which leads her to enter a competition herself. Doing for cookoffs what Anthony Bourdain did for the restaurant business with Kitchen Confidential, Sutherland delivers a wonderful portrait of a true slice of Americana that should have readers reaching for their recipe files and saying, "I can do that."