Food Memoirs

I just finished reading Untangling my Chopsticks and I thoroughly enjoyed it, mainly because of the rather poetic descriptions of food that other reviewers seemed to dislike.

I have read a few others like Climbing the Mango Trees and Monsoon Diary and enjoyed those as well. I also have read Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors which is more of a food history but also enjoyed.

Anyway, any other recommendations for Food/Cooking Memoirs (or even histories)? I know I can do tag mashes and come up with answers but what do you folks recommend?

Cherries in Winter is on my wishlist right now.
The Sharper your knife the less you cry is in my TBR pile.
Both are supposed to be quite good! :)

Clementine in the Kitchen by Phineas Beck
The Unprejudiced Palate by Angelo M. Pellegrini
Reminiscence and Ravioli by Nika Standen

These also have the benefit of being funny.

The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family
by Laura Schenone

What I loved about this book is that it explored the whole issue of "authenticity" and how subjective the notion of "authentic cuisine" can be. Fascinating what one can learn about self and family in the context of a search for a particular family recipe.

There's more on this on a thread over at our sister-group.

I prefer the essay format in this genre, as gassing on about food too long gets a bit tiresome --- so, I recommend Laurie Colwin and John Thorne.

If I can cook, you know God can, by Ntozake Shange, is a good one.

Oh, I really didn't care for the story, Like Water for Chocolate, but the food descriptions! Let's just say, I was more "moved" by the food than the other explicitly described activities.

Toast by Nigel Slater is a funny and at times poignant memoir of the cook and food writer's childhood. I see that the US edition has a glossary of possibly unfamiliar terms.

The Esquire Culinary Companion Being An Exotic Cookery Book Or, Around Europe With Knife, Fork, and Spoon

This book by Charles H. Baker, Jr. is both a cookbook and an account of his trip around the world. Each section is surrounded by his descriptions of the people, area, restaurants, and of course, the food.

His flamboyant purple prose can make me laugh outloud.

#9: the touchstone should be Toast. And I fully agree it's both funny and poignant - recommended.
However, if you're not English, the glossary is not going to help you much. I recommend keeping Wikipedia open for food terms.

Apricots On The Nile is a good food-memoir, and on my wishlist is Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's The Settler's Cookbook. On the history/culture side, anything by Chitrita Banerji on Indian food!

Echoing the Laurie Colwin recommendation in #6 above. I still use Home Cooking and More Home Cooking all the time . . . some real gems in those . . . and her emphasis on keeping things simple but good is something I need reminding of as I have a tendency to overdo in the kitchen :)

I just noticed a huge, glaring, missing book here. My Life in France by Julia Child. The book was completely delightful and inspiring and of course the food reading was to die for.

I have had Toast on my wishlist for the longest time. One of these days, as well as the Julia Child's My Life in France, having read Julie and Julia I thought it was only appropriate.

I will add the others onto my list, I have a rather large TBR pile but every now and then I go on thematic runs.... where all I want to read is a certain genre of book.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

The Apprentice by Pepin. I do hope he plans a second volume.

I highly recommend American Terroir, a recent Early Reviewer book. Not really a memoir, except that the author describes his journeys and discoveries as he searches out the really special food of the Americas. Fun and witty, as well as very interesting.

I won a copy of American Terroir in the ER program and it does fit the bill for what I'm looking for. I have only been able to read the first chapter about Maple Syrup so far, but it is enough to make me want to go visit the area and try some of the different grades mentioned.

I won the book American Terroir as well, and am very much looking forward to reading it.. it is just taking a couple extra days to wing its way to Canada I think :P I am glad to hear that you are enjoying it (We love our Maple Syrup up here. heheh).

I like maple syrup as well, but we only get a couple of brands down under. No doubt aficionados can find other brands/grades etc but not where I live. I just used some S&W brand in some baked beans with smoky bacon that I made on Sunday.

What is the deal with the tiny ring on the neck of the bottles? Have Canadians evolved a really tiny index finger or something?

Not a food memoir, but I vaguely remember a childhood book about a young person (girl?) who was, for reasons that I forget, displaced from her family (in the USA? UK?) and ended up with a part of her extended family in Canada. There she (and this is really the only part that sticks in my mind) learned all about maple syrup, its harvesting and processing. One episode of taking hot syrup and pouring it into snow to make a toffee-like treat really sticks in my head. The rest of the details are long gone, I'm afraid.

The more I typed that, the more I think I might take it over to the 'Name that book' group. Nostalgia is a strange thing. If I came across the book now, I probably wouldn't give it a second glance!

One episode of taking hot syrup and pouring it into snow to make a toffee-like treat really sticks in my head.

The author does mention this in American Terroir. In fact one of the reasons I want to plan a trip up there at some point.

As I continue to read the book I begin to realize how our habit of paving over and polluting every inch of land is dooming the future to a diet of bland factory-farm foodstuffs :(

I have done that, very tasty :)

Not sure about the book, but if I come across it in my Canadian/Foodlit travels, I will let you know. :) I know in the Guests of War trilogy various children displaced by WWII were placed in Canada, but that is still buried in mount TBR.

#19 - One thing I found odd about the maple syrup chapter is that Canada barely got a wink for syrup production. Having been the blessed recipient of wonderful syrup from some Canadian friends, I know it's a big thing in Canada too. Perhaps it is just because the author is from Vermont (I think)?

Oh, Vermont. That rings a bell as well. Maybe that's where my character (#20) ended up. I only thought of Canada because that is what I now, probably 40 years later, associate with maple syrup.

>20 justjim: I vaguely remember a childhood book about a young person (girl?) who was, for reasons that I forget, displaced from her family (in the USA? UK?) and ended up with a part of her extended family in Canada. There she (and this is really the only part that sticks in my mind) learned all about maple syrup, its harvesting and processing. One episode of taking hot syrup and pouring it into snow to make a toffee-like treat really sticks in my head.

Jim, I wonder if you are thinking of the children's book Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder?

No, I don't think so, sarah. The book I'm thinking of would, these days, be called Young Adult not Children's. It was definitely more complex than Little House in the Big Woods seems.

sarahemmm, I also immediately thought of Little House in the Big Woods. Justjim, Wilder's prose is actually written at a YA level, more appropriate for tweens than young children.

This is the scene both Sarah and I are recalling :

Suddenly Grandma stopped laughing. She turned and ran as fast as she could into the kitchen. The fiddle had stopped playing. All the women were talking at once and all the men teasing George, but everybody was still for a minute, when Grandma looked like that.

Then she came to the door between the kitchen and the big room, and said:

"The syrup is waxing. Come and help yourselves."

Then everybody began to talk and laugh again. They all hurried to the kitchen for plates, and outdoors to fill the plates with snow. The Kitchen door was open and the cold air came in.

Outdoors the stars were frosty in the sky and the air nipped Laura's cheeks and nose. Her breath was like smoke.

She and the other Laura, and all the other children, scooped up clean snow with their plates. Then they went back into the crowded kitchen.

Grandma stood by the brass kettle and with the big wooden spoon she poured hot syrup on each plate of snow. It cooled into soft candy, and as fast as it cooled they ate it.

They could eat all they wanted, for maple sugar never hurt anybody. There was plenty of syrup in the kettle, and plenty of snow outdoors. As soon as they ate one plateful, they filled their plates with snow again, and Grandma poured more syrup on it.

The book is out of copyright so you can read the entire chapter (or book!) online at Project Gutenberg: Dance at Granpa's

Oh, maybe... That excerpt didn't sound like what I would have expected from checking the work page, which I've just noticed didn't touchstone, for Little House in the Big Woods. I'll have to check it out further at PG.

Thanks guys!

Edit: second attempt at touchstone, this time manually using work number 3962. Small number!

I remember that scene with the syrup in the snow - it's just about the only thing I do remember from Wilder's books, of which I read quite a few.

I have my own maple syrup story. I remember when I visited North America in 1976, I brought back from Canada a tin of what was called Maple Syrup Butter.

This got the Customs people into a rare old lather! They wanted to confiscate it, importing dairy products was absolutely verboten. I insisted it was like creamed honey, just whipped until it thickened. Higher Authority was summoned, and after he read the lable they gave it back to me.

How were the baked beans Jim? Did you use the pressure cooker?

The beans went over a treat at the Melbourne Cup barbecue to which I took them. No presssssshure cooker this time, the oven was hot from a baked cheesecake and I had plenty of time.

I recently finished Fannie's Last Supper by Christopher Kimball. I enjoyed the book and the information in it very much, but sometimes the author's condescension towards Fannie was annoying. Not enough to make me dislike the book, but enough to make me itch a little. What I loved about it were the intimate insights into Victorian life in the kitchen and food preparation.

I'm about 200 pages into Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. It's a bio of both the restaurant and it's owner/chef. It has some recipes that are written in the cook's words, so it's "...then I cook it in olive oil, but sometimes I use butter..."

I just finished The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones and highle recommend it! There's recipes too!