Posted by admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 06-09-2011
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Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink
A sample of the menu: Woody Allen on dieting the Dostoevski way • Roger Angell on the art of the martini • Don DeLillo on Jell-O • Malcolm Gladwell on building a better ketchup • Jane Kramer on the writer’s kitchen • Chang-rae Lee on eating sea urchin • Steve Martin on menu mores • Alice McDermott on sex and ice cream • Dorothy Parker on dinner conversation • S. J. Perelman on a hollandaise assassin…Sale at book sale library
I notice that this hasn’t been reviewed yet so I had to come on here and say something…I’ve had this book for a few weeks now, right after it was released. I’ve been slowly savoring each piece and because it is over 600 pages, it will fill you for months to come.
This is the best food writing and cartoons from the past 70 years or so from the magazine, what can be better? There are several different sections to enjoy with pieces by favorites such as MFK Fisher and Calvin Trillin, including a section of short stories that involve food, and the cartoons make it especially amusing. I am particularly enjoying the food history I may otherwise have been unaware of – a favorite piece of mine is on the tradition of “Beefsteaks”, which came before the NY steakhouses.
Fascinating stuff! John Seabrook’s delicious profile of the Fruit Detective makes you ponder AND miss what you’ve never had. Another is by John McPhee about an incredible forager named Euell Gibbons with whom he spends a few days living off the land. WOW. To think that the piece, which is almost 40 years old, is way older than me and I wouldn’t have read it otherwise or anywhere else just amazes me and brings to mind the quote about writers reaching out to readers across time. It is outstanding.
The sections are entitled Dining Out, Eating In, Fishing and Foraging, Local Delicacies, The Pour, Tastes Funny, Small Plates and Fiction and each has up to ten articles, profiles etc that you will thoroughly enjoy, just like that magazine’s food issues!
Highly recommended for a gift, or for yourself. As with any anthology, it is nice to be turned on to other writers’ works because you like what you read here. I’m going to check out AJ Liebling’s collection of writings along with the other anthologies The New Yorker has to offer.
In praising Secret Ingredients, I’m torn between praising the writing style or the content more highly. Both are superb.
As a reading experience, you’ll find your mouth watering, your mind remembering tastes and aromas you haven’t experienced in years, your eyes alight with remembered scenes you’ve enjoyed, your mouth smiling as you enjoy great turns of phrase, and your hand writing down things from the book you want to try. At the same time, you’ll be learning more about food, beverages, cooking, gathering food, catching fish, preparing food, and dining than you had ever thought you would know.
I normally plow through a book like this in an evening, but I was having so much fun I stretched the pleasure out over several days. I recommend you do the same.
The opening section on dining out was a revelation as I learned about huge feasts that all-male groups would eat unbelievable quantities of food in New York without benefit of tables or utensils. The theme of that section is how overeating has slowly disappeared from eating out as diners more often included women and weight concerns and health consciousness rose.
The book’s title is an allusion to how those who are proud of their recipes often pretend to share their recipes while secretly sabotaging the results by leaving out an ingredient or an instruction. That reference appears throughout the book, not just in M.F.K. Fisher’s essay by that name.
About the Author
Susan Gibbons: Google Book Project
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