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Reading: The Way To Cook, my all-time favorite cookbook

maki — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 19:38:20 +0100

While I have a list of cookbooks and other food-related books that I own and love over on my Amazon Store, there are three food oriented books that I use, read and would recommend above all others - all for different reasons. I've talked about two of these in some depth previously - Hungry Planet: What The World Eats by Peter Menzel and The Art of Eating, which contains some of the best works by my all-time favorite food writer Mary Frances Kennedy (M.F.K.) Fisher. Either would make a fine gift for a food lover or just someone who loves to read great books - or in the case of Hungry Planet, look at great photography too.

However, I've never gotten around to talking about my all time favorite cook book. Saying that one cookbook stands above all others is something, because at last count I owned around 120 cookbooks. I've only glanced through quite a few of them, have used a couple of recipes from others, but the one cookbook I keep going back to again and again for different things is The Way To Cook, by Julia Child.

The Way To Cook was originally published in 1989. This was a time when low-fat was the In thing, and people were scarfing up food with dubious 'low-fat' claims like Snackwells and relying more and more on prepared food and takeout. It was also a time when the world of restaurant cooking was experiencing a backlash against nouvelle cuisine. The Way To Cook was a perfect antedote to both movements. While Julia Child's previous works had mostly stuck to French cooking, The Way To Cook roamed a lot further than that. It had the simple message that home cooking was good for you, body and soul.

It covers basic cooking methods, like how to braise meats or vegetables, how to bake bread, how to make various kinds of pastry doughs, and so on. It has recipes for Boston Baked Beans (and the steamed Brown Bread that traditionally accompanies it), making your own corned beef, and peanut brittle, as well as various French classics from Tarte Tatin to a Salade Niçoise. It is simply a compedium of delicious food, whatever its origins (though strictly from the world of European/American cuisines - this was in the days before Asian Fusion). It's filled with little nuggets of wisdom from Julia, such as her advice for getting rid of the substance in beans that causes flatulence - to bring the beans to a boil, then throw away the water, and start again with fresh water to cook. To people who are worried about losing some nutritional value down the drain she advises to "just eat a minimally greater amount of beans".

The reason I love this cookbook so much though is that it just works. And, it doesn't just work for me - it works for everyone who follows the crystal clear instructions. I can't remember how many times I've given this book as a gift, and everyone who's received it has raved about it. Whether the recipient is an experienced cook or a beginner, this book fits - it's neither too complicated nor does it talk down to the reader. The photographs are clear and to the point too. I use the recipes in here for my pastry doughs, my favorite pizza dough, for coleslaw, for cakes of all kinds...the list goes on and on.

I've looked, and own, many other books that purport to tell me all I need to know about cooking various basics, but I have yet to find anything that surpasses The Way To Cook. It's not an exaggeration to say that it's made me a much better cook, more than any other cookbook I own. If you're stuck for what to get for a food loving friend or relative, you really can't go wrong with this classic volume.

TV: The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton

maki — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:02:21 +0200

Mrs. Beeton attempts to hack off the head of a turtle, one of the skills required of a homemaker in Victorian times, as her maid looks on anxiously. (don't worry, she couldn't go through with it)

I am not sure how much of this dramatization of the life of Isabella Beeton, aka Mrs. Beeton, was based on fact, but it was a fascinating look at the life of the woman who managed to produce a bestselling book that endures to this day, co-manage a publishing company, and give birth to many children (only 2 of whom survived) before her death at 28.

Isabella, or Bella as she is called by her family and friends, is portrayed as a very modern, clear-headed young woman by Anna Madeley. She is definitely the one in charge in the relationship with her husband Samuel, who is a handsome, charming, intelligent yet philandering mess, who contracts syphilis through one of his many extramarital affairs, and possibly passes it on to his wife - this is suggested as a cause of her miscarriages, stillbirths, and her untimely death.

The most interesting part of this portrayal was that it emphasized the point that Mrs. Beeton, in fact, did not really know much about cookery or household management at all. She had to do extensive research for her books and her magazine articles, and was (though this isn't brought up in the drama) probably plagarized, at least according to current day standards, earlier works by authors like Eliza Acton. She was only a "slip of a girl", not a comfortable, matrony lady with years of running a home under her belt. That image was the one behind which she and her husband concealed "Mrs. Beeton"'s identity.

Isabella Beeton was a writer, editor and businesswoman first, not a skilled cook or housekeeper. She saw the market need for a manual for middle-class women of the time to be able to run their households "like running an army" - and she was quite right to see that need. Having recently read Julia Child's posthumous autobiography My Life in France, I couldn't help seeing the parallels. Julia Child did become a skilled cook of course, and I'm not saying she plagarized anyone by any means, but she had the writing and editing skills plus the business acumen, and determination, to see through the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking; if it had been left up to her French partners in writing, that book probably would have never seen the light of day.

On an entertainment level, this just showed how skilled the BBC is at producing top quality period dramas. (I've also enjoyed the recently aired Jane Eyre series, as well as the prequel Wide Sargasso Sea, immensely.) Everything looked right - the clothing, the sets, even the kitchen equipment. The device of having Mrs. Beeton talk directly to the audience was a bit off-putting but tolerable.

The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton re-airs on BBC Four this Saturday, 21 October, in the UK or on satellite at 22:20 BST / 23:20 CET. If it comes to your version of the BBC, and you have any interest in food, domestic science or women in history, don't miss this one.

The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton (UK Amazon link) - this book is not listed as a source for the TV drama, but it's a great companion to it.
ebook of The Book of Household Management, originally published in 1859 to 1861.
Home Comforts : The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mandelson is the closest recent book I can think of that tries to be a manual for running a house, though it's not as successful as Mrs. Beeton's manual of course...probably a sign of our times, and it doesn't cover 'cookery'.

Isabella Beeton, Fanny Cradock, and Elizabeth David on the BBC

maki — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:32:09 +0200

Julia Davis as Fanny Cradock in Fear of Fanny

The BBC is broadcasting biographical dramas based on the lives of three of the most famous women in food and cooking this month. First up is The Secret Life of Mrs.Beeton (Monday October 16th, BBC Four). Isabella Beeton was a truly remarkable woman, who produced a bestselling book on cooking and household management and gave birth to four children, before her death at the age of 28. She's still probably the most influential cookbook author in Britain to this day - her books, albeit heavily 'revised', are still in print today

Next up is perhaps the woman I'm most fascinated with, Fanny Cradock. Fear of Fanny (October 23, BBC Four) is a dramatization of the life of the woman who was the Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith of the 1950s through the '70s. She wrote cookbooks, a newspaper food column, and was the host of her own tv cooking show, together with Johnny Cradock, who played her henpecked husband. (They only actually married much later.) She was hugely influential in her heyday, but has since become almost forgotten except for her preposterous appearance and imperious attitude. I am not sure if this new drama is going to revive her reputation or bury her in the 'kook' category even further, but I'm looking forward to it anyway. I've written about Fanny Cradock briefly before; since that post, I've collected several of her cookbooks, including the 96-part magazine series that accompanied one of her TV shows. Someday I hope to find the time to compile more about her.

Lastly, there is a rebroadcast of Elizabeth David: A Life in Recipes (October 30th, BBC Four). I saw this some months ago - it was okay, though not great, and seemed to put a lot of emphasis on her love life and very little on why she was such a best selling and influential food writer. It's interesting to see how she has fared in recent times compared to Fanny Cradock though: while Fanny Cradock is little more than a historical footnote, and as far as I know none of her books are still in print, Elizabeth David is revered by current influential food writers and personalities like Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Alice Waters and Nigel Slater as being a pioneer. Ironic, since both of them were at the end of the day doing the same thing, more or less - re-introducing post-war Britain to good (meaning, European with a heavy leaning on French) food. Maybe if Fanny hadn't had so much plastic surgery, or appeared on TV, she's be a food icon too. And granted, Elizabeth David was a better writer. (And yes, the differences go much further.)

In any case, if you are interested in food and British history these three dramas should make for fascinating watching.

Women's History Month: The Women Who Have Influenced My Food Life

maki — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:14:44 +0100

March is Women's History Month, and today, March 8th, has been declared as International Women's Day. The theme of Women's History Month this year is Women: Builders of Communities and Dreams.

I do not know of a more significant way in which women build community and nurture our bodies and souls than through food and cooking. While men have figured much more prominently in the world of professional/public cooking (and continue to do so), most of the public figures in the world of food that have had the greatest impact on me have been women. So here is a short list of the women who have most influenced the way I approach food, and what they have meant to me.

Julia Child

Cookbook author, television personality

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Julia Child was instrumental in causing a revolutionary change in American kitchens, when she published the first edition of Mastering The Art of French Cooking in 1961. I encountered her many years after that, via her 1980s PBS cooking series Dinner With Julia.

The appeal of Julia Child was that she was a very homely, and homey, lady. She was very tall, and hunched over a bit over her stove and cutting board, her outfits were rather dinner-lady like, and of course she always had that "impeccably clean towel" about her person. She had a distinctive slightly fuzzy, lilting voice, and a perpetual twinkle in her eye. At first she was mostly just entertaining to me. But when her old series The French Chef was rebroadcast on some channel in the 1990s, I was in a position and frame of mind to spend time really watching and studying them. I was amazed at how technically proficient she was, and how clear her explanations were of classic French techniques. Through The French Chef, I learned how to make a proper omelette, assemble a proper cassoulet, fold a puff pastry so that it realy puffs, and many other things that I would have otherwise never have been able to do.

Of her books, The Way To Cook is my absolute favorite. As the title says, it really does teach you how to cook so many things, and not just French. The numerous Master Recipes scattered throughout the book, which describe foundation recipes on which so many recipes are variations of, makes so much sense to me that I've adopted a similar approach here. My copy was given to me as a Christmas present back in the early '90s, and though I've moved about 4 times since then, it has always travelled with me.

M.F.K. Fisher

Essayist, author

I have written extensively about Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher before. She's one of the main influences in the way I approach food, and how I aspire to write about it. Her writing is restrained and elegant, yet her love of food and wine is unmistakable. Many of her lighter-hearted works show that she had a wicked, if not sometimes twisted, sense of humor too. If you have never read her works, you are depriving yourself.

And by the way, her gingerbread recipe in How To Cook A Wolf is light and yummy. I have yet to get up the courage to try the survival sludge though.

Katsuyo Kobayashi

Cookbook author, TV personality

Katsuyo Kobayashi is unknown outside of Japan, with the exception of her Iron Chef appearance back in 1994. (She beat Iron Chef Chen hands down in Battle Potato, by the way.) Katsuyo Kobayashi was "just an ordinary housewife" with an extraordinary knack for making cooking fun, efficient and tasty. She is a cookbook author and longtime fixture on the long-running NHK TV cooking series Kyo no ryori (Today's Cooking). She has a bubbly personality; when she's on the screen, it's like I am watching my mother, except that Ms. Kobayashi loves to cook. (My mom is a good cook but it's not a passion of hers.)

Like Julia Child, Katsuyo Kobayashi has the gift for explaining cooking methods so that they easy to understand. She's also a treasure trove of kitchen hints: one that I remember in particular is when she explained on one Kyo no Ryori show that the way to cut peppers easily if your knife wasn't very sharp was to cut it from the non-skin side. Her books also show how to put together a complete meal, and what goes with what - a detail that's so often omitted. She is my primary source of inspiration for Japanese home cooking, aside from what my mother and aunts passed down to me.

Japan is so trend-oriented that Katsuyo Kobayashi is not as "in" as she used to be. But she's passed on her gift to her son, Kentaro, who is one of the hot young food personalities right now. Still, I prefer his mother any day. It would be wonderful if some of her books could be translated to English. The problem may be deciding on which one, since to date she's published more than 150 books. There is also a line of kitchen products bearing her name. I have her dove-shaped silicon pot scraper, and it's marvelous.

Alice Waters

Chef, cookbook author, restaurant owner

My connection to Alice Waters is rather indirect. I've never been to her famed restaurant in Berkeley, California, Chez Panisse. But there is absolutely no denying that the kind of cooking she advocates is what I try to follow myself: using foods in season, using locally produced food. It's a bit harder for me to follow this all time, since at the moment for instance locally produced vegetables mainly means members of the cabbage family. Also, the food of my heritage (Japanese) has to be shipped to me in some form. But I try to stick to her philosophy as much as possible, especially when it comes to seasonal produce. No pears in March or strawberries in November!

Nigella Lawson

Cookbook author, journalist, TV personality

Nigella Lawson is the Food Goddess to so many people; she brought sexiness to the realm of food with a vengeance. I have to admit that I had a hard time getting over her image. Once I finally broke down and got a copy of How To Eat, her first book, I was a convert. I have all of her books now and love every one of them.

Nigella Lawson is a descendent of sorts of British writers such as Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, who educated their readers about the pleasures of food, especially those from exotic (to British readers) locales. Where she has broken new ground is in making previously maligned American-style food sexy and appealing. One of her most famous recipes is for a ham cooked in Coca-Cola, which has been known in the American South for decades. It's not haute cuisine but it sure is tasty. The very fact that she is British, I think, has made it easier for her to validate this kind of food to American readers, who often have a sort of inferiority complex about their own cuisine in comparison to say, French food.

All of the recipes I have tried from her books have been excellent, with a more-ishness to them. Her writing has an intensity that shows that she is a true foodie.

This is a very short list, and I've omitted many other women who have shaped my food life in one way or another, such as Elizabeth David, Delia Smith, Marcella Hazan, Jane Grigson, Madeleine Kamman, Silvana Franco, Ruth Reichl, Fanny Cradock, and yes, even Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart. I would love to see other people's lists - if you do decide to write one up, please maki[at]makikoitohNOSPAMDOTcom

Technorati Tags: alice waters, julia child, katsuyo kobayashi, mfk fisher, nigella lawson

Reading: Feast and Toast

maki — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 16:54:39 +0200

I've recently re-read two books about food, that are not cookbooks. One of them is a book that I must have picked up some years ago, probably during one of my bargain bin raids at Barnes & Noble or a similar store. It's called Feast Here Awhile: Adventures in American Eating, by Jo Brans. It's quite an enjoyable read for a foodie, as the author winds her way (sometimes at a slightly annoyingly leisurely pace) through her life through food and vice versa, from growing up in Mississippi to the early '90s the first incarnation of the price-of-the-year number Restaurant Week lunch event in New York. This book is out of print, but seems to be available from many used book outlets.

The other book is Toast: The Story Of A Boy's Hunger, by Nigel Slater. Nigel Slater is a food columnist for the Observer in London, and his writings and recipes are a pure delight. He's not as well known outside of the U.K. as Nigella Lawson, but his cookbooks are every bit as worthwhile as the Domestic Goddess's. Toast is his autobiography, in a sense, told again through the prism of his relationship to food. It's a more powerful narrative than the previous book, and more personal. If you spent any of your growing up years in middle-class suburban England, as I did, it will give you some serious pangs of nostalgia too.

I love to read books like these. It allows me to discover yet another person as obsessed with food and tastes as I am, and also reminds me again how powerful and influence food is in our lives. I don't think that food is just about eating, or coming up with a recipe or another. When you start to think of important moments in your life in terms of what you ate, and the places you travelled in terms of what dishes you savored, then you have become a true foodie. In some ways, I think this is why I have a blog thats just about food. I think that all foodies channel Proust in our ways, though we may not be as masterful at narrating our memories.

(Incidentally, New York Restaurant Weekis still going on - if you're visiting New York during that week, be sure to phone your favorite restaurant way in advance. This year, of course, the price for lunch at many of the top city restaurants will be a mere $20.05.)

Where's Fanny Craddock (or Cradock!) ?

maki — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 13:54:50 +0200

[Update, added October 2006:] my review of the BBC bio-drama about Fanny, Fear of Fanny.

When my family lived for a while in the '70s in England, my mother was given a small paperback cookbook by a neighbor. It was by Fanny and Johnny Craddock, who were television cooks on British TV in the 1950s to 1970s. (My mother told me later that she was rather shocked and amused that her neighbor had given her a used, tattered book, since such a thing would be rather unthinkable in Japan. She took it as an indication of how frugal English people were.) I was too young to watch the programs (or if I did watch them, I don't remember doing so) but much later I remember reading the book over and over and being simply fascinated by it. It had a very bossy and conversational tone, and started with a very bombastic declaration as to how awful British cooking habits were.

Unfortunately, that book got lost in the many moves various members of the family made. For the past few years, since I started to buy cookbooks for myself (or rather had the means to do so) I've been looking for a Fanny Craddock book. But...nothing. Given the current fascination with food and food writing, and the re-issue of many older cookbooks in the UK from authors like Elizabeth David, Constance Spry and even Mrs. Beeton, I'm really puzzled as to why there's been no revival of Fanny Craddock. I think I saw a brief mention of her once on Ready Steady Cook, as to how she did something wrong... but what? Does anyone in the UK know? ~~Better yet, is there anywhere that might have her old books?~~

Edit: wow, someone's already kindly emailed me (thanks Julie!) that Craddock is spelled Cradock! (Though most recent media mentions of spell it Craddock...very confusing.) So now I've bid on a couple of "Fanny Cradock" books on ebay. I'll report back here after I've read them!

Reading: M.F.K. Fisher, the greatest of them all

maki — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 17:31:00 +0100

Quite a few people have pointed out that the title (and the subheading) of this site are quotes from M.F.K. Fisher, one of my favorite authors period, not limited to just food-genre writing. I've neglected to give her the proper attributions however. Here they are, finally:

The title "I was just really very hungry" is taken from the title of one of her travel essays, "I Was Really Very Hungry", which is included in As They Were.

The subtitle is paraphrased from the forward to the autobiographical The Gastronomical Me, which is included in the anthology The Art of Eating.

I first discovered M.F.K. Fisher, or Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, when the aforementioned essay I Was Really Very Hungry was included in an anthology of food essays. (I'm afraid I can't remember the title of that anthology, and it seems to have disappeared into lent-book-land.) It recounts a visit she made to a small restaraurant somewhere in France, and it's funny, observative, and full of the delights of delcious eating all at the same time. I didn't actually jump and try to collect her books immediately for some reason though. A couple of years later, as I was praising another book, The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten, to someone, who said emphatically that "noone can touch M.F.K. Fisher when it comes to food writing". I had to find out if that was true.

She was right. From the moment I started reading The Gastronomical Me, I was mesmerized. Mary Frances Fisher thinks about, and relates to, food in the way that I do, but certainly expressed her thoughts and feelings about it much better. The full quote from which the subtitle of this site is taken from expresses it best:

People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security and about love, the way others do?

They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft.

The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it...and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied...and it is all one.

Writing about, and thinking about, food to the extent that "foodies" such as I do is almost pornographic in this day and age, perhaps even more so than it was in M.F.K. Fisher's time. I sometimes feel that food, and the consumption of it, is something too decadent and frivolous to think about. (That's one reason why I split off this food blog from my main site - which is more serious, talking about the usual subjects for me, like computers and CSS and stuff.)

As a woman, I feel especially that food is almost a taboo subject in some ways. An overweight woman is probably the most ostracised type of human being in most socities these d ays. As a woman, you're supposed to keep your body as thin as possible, consuming as few calories as possible. Each bite of something "not allowed" has a furtive feel to it: will that extra swirl of cream over my pie be compensated for by a few more minutes on the treadmill? Fans of classic American sitcoms may remember the classic line uttered by Rhoda in the Mary Tyler Moore show, as she took a piece of chocolate: "I don't know why I bother putting it into my mouth. I might as well apply it directly to my hips".

Another side of the food equation is that the preparation of it, for family, children, and others, often becomes a chore and burden. As much as I love food and cooking, when I am preoccupied with daily life it's a bother to even think about it.

But a few hours with Mary Frances as your companion and you realize again how comforting, and joyous, food can be, and how it ties you to warm (and other) memories, to family and loves of the present and past.

The other aspect of Mary Frances that I love is her cool detachedness and elegance, even while writing about the most intimate experiences such as the painful deterioration of her second husband (and love of her life). When one writes, be it for a humble weblog or anything higher, one can't help showing your private parts, methorically speaking. Personal experience often forms the nucleus of a writer's 'material'. But the degree to how you show the private parts, and how you show them, is quite a difficult line. For myself, my goal is to do it the way Mary Frances did it - with objectivity, passion, and never quite revealing all.

M.F.K. Fisher reading list

Be aware that a lot of M.F.K. Fisher books are collections of her essays, and so you will find some overlap of the odd essay here or there. Start with the first one, and progress further if you fall in love with her writing.

The Art of Eating is really five books in one. It contains the following works: Serve It Forth, Consider The Oyster, How To Cook A Wolf, The Gastronomical Me, and An Alphabet For Gourmets. Of these, the last two are by far the best in my opinion, though the rest are great also. I would read the books contained here in the following order: start with The Gastronomical Me, then take a lighthearted break with How To Cook A Wolf, go to An Alphabet for Gourmets, then finish up with the more heavily "historical" Serve It Forth and the rather light Consider The Oyster. If you can only get one M.F.K. Fisher this one is it.
Two Towns in Provence, recounts her time spent living in Provence with her two little daughters. A must for any Francophile.
As They Were, collected essays of an autobiographical nature.
Among Friends, recounting her early days in Whittier, California. Less food, more autobiography.

Julia

maki — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 02:05:18 +0200

Julia Child passed away yesterday, at the age of 91. Probably most people who are passionate about food and cooking, and spent any time in the U.S. in the last 30 years or so, have felt her influence. I'm no exception - one of my standby cookbooks is her Way to Cook (a perennial recommended book in my sidebar here).

I think I'm too young to have known the huge impact that Julia Child had on American cooking, and American housewives, in the 1970s. I've heard women who were young marrieds in that decade speak of Julia with a mixture of awe and resentment. When I heard of the elaborate dinner parties one was supposed to be able to serve to guests then, I'm quite thankful that we're in a much more informal era, food-wise, now. (I always think of the Veal Orloff served by Sue Ann Nivens in a Mary Tyler Moore episode.) However, for the most part the Julia Child I knew was indeed more relaxed, enjoying food rather than being weighed down with worry about how to prepare it. Her recipes can be simple or very long and complicated, but they are always clear, and most of all, they always always work.

I watched several of her TV shows too, and loved them all. The one that I clearly remember still is, I think, from her Cooking With Julia show from the 1970s, which I saw as a rerun on TV in England some time in the mid '90s. There was a younger Julia, wearing a blue blouse that sort of made her look like Alice in the Brady Bunch, standing in a typically '70s looking drab colored kitchen, with her unique high-pitched voice and her "impeccably clean towel". She showed how to make a perfect omelette, and I almost ran to the kitchen afterwards to try out her technique. It worked perfectly.

That was the magic of Julia. She may be best known for introducing America to fine French cooking, but she could also show you how to do a simple technique just right. And her sense of humor was always wonderful too.

I am sure she is enjoying herself now in her new kitchen.