Definitely do the uni thing. I did a STEM degree in Days of Yore but went back to uni ten years ago (remote, part time) to do a humanities degree, now just finishing up a Masters and trying to apply for PhD. I’ve loved studying so much more the second time round (partly because I’m definitely older and arguably wiser, and partly because I’m actually doing subjects I love). Five stars, would recommend.
This is so nice to hear, also congrats to you. I thought university was wasted on the young even when I was a young person at university, so what you say absolutely resonates.
What a treat this is! Can I add Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea which I remember mostly for the descriptions of very particular meals and also the film Babette's Feast, which I loved. And I love the sound of Stella Gibbons' rice dish.
I'd completely forgotten about Iris Murdoch! From (patchy) memory The Sea, The Sea is stuffed full of food, right? Wish could remember properly. The love of his life but older and in a tent-like dress? Is that the one?
That is brilliant, what a find! I confess I read it over 30 years ago, but the descriptions of his meals, detailing every ingredient, has stayed with me.
Marvellous. (How did Elizabeth Jane Howard write so much when she was running after Amis and cooking for huge house parties?) I love food in books. I’d really recommend The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman. She helped herself cope with anorexia by reading (often classic)books with food and walking round London. The lightbulb moment for her was when she realised that empathic characters always enjoy their grub. Such a good read that it’s on my special shelf of delight.
Thinking of Elizabeth David and her shop in Bourne St brings to mind her sister Felicité, who helped found the wondrous John Sandoe Books in Blacklands Terrace; both emporia being roughly equidistant from Peter Jones. Felicité also lived on a floor of ED’s house in Halsey St, and sadly died of malnutrition, a fact which ED tried to hush up.
So glad you included the timballo from the Leopard! I love it so much that I have not really been able to contemplate Stanley Tucci's version (which I am sure is delicious), because it seems so second-best. Also, ratty's picnic! One of the best and most joyous. Also, what about Alice Thomas Ellis, and the 27th Kingdom? I thought her very good on food, and very funny.
ATE: I've searched online for one of my favourite bits to quote, but can't find it, so will have to paraphrase. Also, one needs to bear in mind for this she was very Catholic - it was something like this, that the only possible explanation for the invention of mayonnaise was that an angel had appeared and given the seemingly insane instructions for how to make it, and then (my favourite bit, and just as insane if never before encountered) as the angel was leaving s/he had said over his/her shoulder "and with the whites you can make meringues!"
Briiliant, brilliant post. I loved Nabokov's egg recipe. I loved Didion's kitchen. I have never read her work and that feels like an oversight given that I live in California. Any recs on where to start?
I was telling an American friend the other day about the food in Enid Blyton's books. Those picnics, with their sandwiches and chunks of cheese and ginger beer, and pots of jam, scones, lashings of cream. Fruit cakes. Juicy plump plums. Whenever I'm out on a walk in the country, its the kind of picnic I pack for myself.
Didion - am not breathless fan, which puts me in tiny minority. Start with Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which is THE portrait of California in the 60s. With you on EB picnics!
“Dishes went this way and that from paw to paw, snowcream pudding, hot fruit pies, colorful trifles, tasty pasties, steaming soup, new bread with shiny golden crusts, old cheeses studded with dandelion, acorn and celery. Sugared plums and honeyed pears vied for place with winter salads and vegetable flans.” - Yum!
Oh that timbale of macaroni! One of the reasons I love Andrea Camilleri so much is how passionately he makes Inspector Montalbano care about food- a trait he shares with the great fictional Spanish detective Pepe Carvalho created by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (to whom Camilleri pays homage through his hero’s name). Some of the Carvalho books provide descriptions of Carvalho cooking in such detail they practically constitute recipes. And Carvalho’s food snobbery and fear of eating badly- which I think Montalbano also shares - are endearing and hilarious but entirely understandable from the perspective of human lives being short and coming to unexpected ends: carpe diem. So I would add Camilleri and Vázquez Montalbán to your list. And an adorable story set in France and larded with actual tested recipes: The Cook’s Tale by Elizabeth Ayrton (1957). Long out of print but a vintage copy would make such a wonderful gift.
I shall make Katherine Mansfield's orange souffle - a "party pudding" apparently. Lots of lovely things to investigate here, of course. Goodness, all I can think about now is delicious food and where I found it. Very much geographically - peaches = Alabama, for instance. Odd.
Trays of them being sold at the side of the road. My mother would potter along in "The Little Brute" (her reluctant to start car - no air conditioning - the three of us in the back squabbling ....) and load up. I can't remember whether she used them as ingredients or whether we simply wallowed in peachiness. Probably the latter.
Ordered the book immediately. When I was still living in NY, I used to go to a deli on Lexington Ave. around 67th Street and one day, a waif-like woman standing next to me ordered a pastrami on rye. It was Joan!
‘O stop, stop,’ cried the Mole in ecstacies: ‘This is too much!’
‘Do you really think so?’ enquired the Rat seriously. ‘It’s only what I always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it VERY fine!’
H E Bates was another favourite with Ma Larkin's gloriously bountiful cooking.
I am currently reading À La recherche du temps perdu (for the first time, shamefully) and am delighted to find that food is mentioned a lot, and not just the famous madeleines and lime blossom tisane.
I hate it when writers take their characters out for a meal and gloss over what they ate. I want to know every detail!
I also read about Joan Didion recently and her extremely petite figure. An excessive control of food intake is as telling as an excessive lack of control.
Finally, Eating In is one of my top 10 cookery books. The food is exactly what one wants to eat at home.
Oh my God, the bliss of that extract, thank you. Absolutely HE Bates, can't believe I left him off - I used to read them and feel as ravenous as when reading Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. TONS in Proust. I so agree about characters going for a meal - it is maddening and such a wasted opportunity. Totally re Eating In, bought it second hand and still use it often.
And throwing comedy into the mix (maybe another idea for your long term plan India!) The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester and Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton Paterson
Ooh, so much in here, even if none of the recipes look remotely tempting. Could Elizabeth Jane Howard have written as she wrote if she wasn't so beautiful? (She wrote wonderfully about being odd, and different, and not beautiful, but she wrote about being beautiful (and often objectified) from the inside out, rather than as an observer). I had not seen that picture of Joan Didion's kitchen before, and now it is Life Goals.
Definitely do the uni thing. I did a STEM degree in Days of Yore but went back to uni ten years ago (remote, part time) to do a humanities degree, now just finishing up a Masters and trying to apply for PhD. I’ve loved studying so much more the second time round (partly because I’m definitely older and arguably wiser, and partly because I’m actually doing subjects I love). Five stars, would recommend.
This is so nice to hear, also congrats to you. I thought university was wasted on the young even when I was a young person at university, so what you say absolutely resonates.
What a treat this is! Can I add Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea which I remember mostly for the descriptions of very particular meals and also the film Babette's Feast, which I loved. And I love the sound of Stella Gibbons' rice dish.
I'd completely forgotten about Iris Murdoch! From (patchy) memory The Sea, The Sea is stuffed full of food, right? Wish could remember properly. The love of his life but older and in a tent-like dress? Is that the one?
AHA I found this https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/01/cooking-with-iris-murdoch/
That is brilliant, what a find! I confess I read it over 30 years ago, but the descriptions of his meals, detailing every ingredient, has stayed with me.
In our local tea room in Heptonstall where Sylvia Plath is buried they make Sylvia Plath’s perfect lemon meringue pie 😊
How wonderful!
Marvellous. (How did Elizabeth Jane Howard write so much when she was running after Amis and cooking for huge house parties?) I love food in books. I’d really recommend The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman. She helped herself cope with anorexia by reading (often classic)books with food and walking round London. The lightbulb moment for her was when she realised that empathic characters always enjoy their grub. Such a good read that it’s on my special shelf of delight.
I've read it - wonderful book. She's such a good writer.
Thinking of Elizabeth David and her shop in Bourne St brings to mind her sister Felicité, who helped found the wondrous John Sandoe Books in Blacklands Terrace; both emporia being roughly equidistant from Peter Jones. Felicité also lived on a floor of ED’s house in Halsey St, and sadly died of malnutrition, a fact which ED tried to hush up.
God, how extraordinary! I remember the shop in Regents Park Road too.
So glad you included the timballo from the Leopard! I love it so much that I have not really been able to contemplate Stanley Tucci's version (which I am sure is delicious), because it seems so second-best. Also, ratty's picnic! One of the best and most joyous. Also, what about Alice Thomas Ellis, and the 27th Kingdom? I thought her very good on food, and very funny.
Had completely forgotten about ATE, adding her to my list immediately. And YES, Ratty's picnic!
ATE: I've searched online for one of my favourite bits to quote, but can't find it, so will have to paraphrase. Also, one needs to bear in mind for this she was very Catholic - it was something like this, that the only possible explanation for the invention of mayonnaise was that an angel had appeared and given the seemingly insane instructions for how to make it, and then (my favourite bit, and just as insane if never before encountered) as the angel was leaving s/he had said over his/her shoulder "and with the whites you can make meringues!"
hahaha, that is perfection!
Briiliant, brilliant post. I loved Nabokov's egg recipe. I loved Didion's kitchen. I have never read her work and that feels like an oversight given that I live in California. Any recs on where to start?
I was telling an American friend the other day about the food in Enid Blyton's books. Those picnics, with their sandwiches and chunks of cheese and ginger beer, and pots of jam, scones, lashings of cream. Fruit cakes. Juicy plump plums. Whenever I'm out on a walk in the country, its the kind of picnic I pack for myself.
Didion - am not breathless fan, which puts me in tiny minority. Start with Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which is THE portrait of California in the 60s. With you on EB picnics!
Thanks India, this book solves one particular Christmas present conundrum.
Excellent!
Reminds me that all of the Redwall books have at least one feast described and I still have dreams about deeper ‘n’ ever pie 😂
I've not read them but someone else was saying in the same thing with a great degree of passion - I must have a look.
“Dishes went this way and that from paw to paw, snowcream pudding, hot fruit pies, colorful trifles, tasty pasties, steaming soup, new bread with shiny golden crusts, old cheeses studded with dandelion, acorn and celery. Sugared plums and honeyed pears vied for place with winter salads and vegetable flans.” - Yum!
VERY yum.
Redwall! I loved those books, but never re-read them as an adult. Do they hold up?
Yes, so lovely to revisit a few now and then. Salamandastron and Redwall esp.
Oh that timbale of macaroni! One of the reasons I love Andrea Camilleri so much is how passionately he makes Inspector Montalbano care about food- a trait he shares with the great fictional Spanish detective Pepe Carvalho created by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (to whom Camilleri pays homage through his hero’s name). Some of the Carvalho books provide descriptions of Carvalho cooking in such detail they practically constitute recipes. And Carvalho’s food snobbery and fear of eating badly- which I think Montalbano also shares - are endearing and hilarious but entirely understandable from the perspective of human lives being short and coming to unexpected ends: carpe diem. So I would add Camilleri and Vázquez Montalbán to your list. And an adorable story set in France and larded with actual tested recipes: The Cook’s Tale by Elizabeth Ayrton (1957). Long out of print but a vintage copy would make such a wonderful gift.
I know Insp Montalbano and I quite agree but I've not read actual Montalbán, who is now very firmly on my list, thank you VERY much. Ditto E Ayrton.
I shall make Katherine Mansfield's orange souffle - a "party pudding" apparently. Lots of lovely things to investigate here, of course. Goodness, all I can think about now is delicious food and where I found it. Very much geographically - peaches = Alabama, for instance. Odd.
I am very jealous of the Alabama/Georgia peach situation. I want to have so many peaches that I make peach pie. Alas, they are like treasure.
Trays of them being sold at the side of the road. My mother would potter along in "The Little Brute" (her reluctant to start car - no air conditioning - the three of us in the back squabbling ....) and load up. I can't remember whether she used them as ingredients or whether we simply wallowed in peachiness. Probably the latter.
Ordered the book immediately. When I was still living in NY, I used to go to a deli on Lexington Ave. around 67th Street and one day, a waif-like woman standing next to me ordered a pastrami on rye. It was Joan!
You'll love the book I think. Cheered by the pastrami - she looked so malnourished.
As usual, I have lived a spookily similar life. Books that mentioned food grabbed me from a very early age viz. Ratty's picnic hamper:
“There’s cold chicken inside it,’ replied the Rat briefly;
‘coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwiches
pottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater—-‘
‘O stop, stop,’ cried the Mole in ecstacies: ‘This is too much!’
‘Do you really think so?’ enquired the Rat seriously. ‘It’s only what I always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it VERY fine!’
H E Bates was another favourite with Ma Larkin's gloriously bountiful cooking.
I am currently reading À La recherche du temps perdu (for the first time, shamefully) and am delighted to find that food is mentioned a lot, and not just the famous madeleines and lime blossom tisane.
I hate it when writers take their characters out for a meal and gloss over what they ate. I want to know every detail!
I also read about Joan Didion recently and her extremely petite figure. An excessive control of food intake is as telling as an excessive lack of control.
Finally, Eating In is one of my top 10 cookery books. The food is exactly what one wants to eat at home.
Oh my God, the bliss of that extract, thank you. Absolutely HE Bates, can't believe I left him off - I used to read them and feel as ravenous as when reading Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. TONS in Proust. I so agree about characters going for a meal - it is maddening and such a wasted opportunity. Totally re Eating In, bought it second hand and still use it often.
Ah, I came here to say The Wind in the Willows too!
Thank you - an excellent contribution!
And throwing comedy into the mix (maybe another idea for your long term plan India!) The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester and Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton Paterson
Very much both of those.
I’m trying to remember which chef in their cookery book recreated the Black Dinner described by Huysmans in Against Nature - does anyone remember?
This is ringing a bell but I can't make the memory come into focus. I went to a dinner inspired by the Futurist manifesto once - revoting, obviously.
I remember one of those - I seem to remember nipples on jelly... and I THINK it's come back to me : Antony Worrall Thompson
I’m trying to relax my memory and summon up all those cookery books that I never cooked from
Are you sure? AWT and JKH seems a really unlikely combination.
Ooh, so much in here, even if none of the recipes look remotely tempting. Could Elizabeth Jane Howard have written as she wrote if she wasn't so beautiful? (She wrote wonderfully about being odd, and different, and not beautiful, but she wrote about being beautiful (and often objectified) from the inside out, rather than as an observer). I had not seen that picture of Joan Didion's kitchen before, and now it is Life Goals.
That is a very good question. I think her writing was necessarily informed by her beauty.