So there's this subgenre of the foodie books: Coming into adulthood while learning about food. Younger adults, like 30ish, who are trying to figure life out and find food is the answer.
Well of course it is.
So the books read basically the same:
(Person) is trying to figure out life as an adult because they are (going through a crisis, getting over their childhood, recovering from a difficulty). (Person) goes to (place). Person realize part of the answer to life, the universe and everything is to eat and cook (specific region) cuisine.
This isn't to mock this subgenre, it's just an interesting pattern. With some nice writing and some great recipes, so I'm not complaining. Here are some samples:
1. The Comfort Food Diaries by Emily Nunn. If you liked Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Gottlieb, you'll like this one, too. The author has the same type of wit and brutal self-honesty. In this case, Emily is searching for comfort food. One of her chapters has possibly the best character descriptions I've read. It gets the "Show Not Tell" prize for these descriptions. Here's my favorite passage:
"This is the way southerners are. No one simply tells you something directly and leaves it at that. Each conversation is loaded down with other conversations and extraneous information and inconsequential observations and non sequiturs. While discussing a neighbor who has rudely nailed ugly PRIVATE PROPERTY signs on the trees near your house, suddenly someone else will start telling a story about how her husband killed a giant snake in the driveway in the dead of winter "just chopped its ugly head off with the snow shovel."
It's not entirely meaningless, it's circular, a secret code you either learn to decipher or just not worry about too much." (pgs 70 and 71)
Love it.
2. From Scratch by Tembi Locke. Tembi loses her husband, find comfort in his homeland and the food if Sicily. Writing is fine, read it if Sicily calls to you.
3. My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss. Luisa is half German and half American, and goes back to Berlin in her adult life. And cooks and falls in loves. The recipes look lovely.
4. Mastering the Art of French Eating by Ann Mah. Mah is Chinese American and lands in France with her husband for his embassy job. He leaves, she stays in France, lonely. So to cope, she visits different regions of France, discovering what type of cuisine that region is known for: Paris and Steak Frites, Provence and Soup au Pistou, Burgandy and Beef Bourguinon, etc. The structure works: one chapter, one new region, one new food. I enjoyed this, especially during our family quarantine for Covid. If I can't go to France then I'll read about it.
5. Growing a Feast by Kurt Timmermeister. Timmermeister doesn't go anywhere; he stays in his farm in Washington state and grows a garden and then cooks a big feast for friends. But the writing is lovely: slow, steady, elegant. He makes making ricotta fascinating. This was another good quarantine read: my mind needed an excuse to slow down, take a deep breath, and think about cheese and tomatoes and baking pasta.
Out of all these books, I'd rank them in this order:
Comfort Food by Nunn and Growing a Feast by Timmermeister (tie)
French Eating by Mah
Then Berlin Kitchen and then From Scratch
6. One last one: the Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn. Flinn teaches not-very-good home cooks to cook. The book is fine, especially good for a maybe-novice-or-new cook. I was lucky to grow up in a house where homemade bread, homemade jam, and home cooked meals were the norm, so I absorbed a lot of these skills growing up.
But my number one take away: I do need a chef's knife.
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