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bossymarmalade) wrote2012-01-12 10:44 am
bossymarmalade) wrote2012-01-12 10:44 am
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snowflake challenge: day 5
snowflake challenge
.. Day 5
In your own space, share something non-fannish you are passionate about with your fannish friends.
Skipping Days 3 & 4 because they're not my style.
So I decided to write about something that I love dearly: Cookbooks.
I've told this story a million, but here it is one more time.
When my sister and I moved to Trinidad from North America as children, my mom took with her a bunch of stuff she'd accumulated in Mississauga and Downer's Grove -- videotapes, record player, carpet, appliances -- and a bunch of books. Included in these were her most useful cookbooks (and some that weren't so useful, which I suspect she just enjoyed owning). My sister and I, being food-inclined from a young age, used to read the more picture-filled cookbooks as if they were storybooks, poring over the bizarre pictures and party suggestions in the Bakers' Cut-Up Cake Party Book, discussing quite seriously what a "candy corn" or a "licorice rope" would taste like.
Occasionally our older cousin Arlene would actually try out the recipes, with greater to lesser success (fresh-grated coconut didn't work out quite like we supposed the dessicated packaged stuff would in Cinderella Crisps), but to be honest I was -- and still am -- mostly happy to just read the recipes, look at the photos, and imagine.
. At Grandmother's Table, ed. Ellen Perry Berkeley - This collection of recipes and essays by granddaughters is intensely appealing; there's no food photos, but the stories and the photos of grandmothers more than make up for it. For somebody like me who never knew her grandmothers, it's a wistful, evocative peek at that familial bond.
. Hallelujah! The Welcome Table by Maya Angelou - The truly wonderful thing about this book is the way that -- although we're from different generations, backgrounds, races, and so forth -- Angelou's ability to create a feeling of nostalgia and warmth and fullness and wry affection is so deft that it made me snuggle down in all the nicest parts of my own childhood, echoing her stories with my own.
. The Dumpling by Wai Hon Chu and Connie Lovatt - I read this recently in ebook form and that did nothing to diminish the plump, silky, delightful delicate stodge of the recipes and the writing. The authors take care to simplify preparation so that you only need a few very basic cooking utensils, and take similar care with the cultural foodways they present.
. How to Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson - Despite the somewhat twee title, the book isn't as prescriptive as it sounds ... although, as with her countryman Jamie Oliver, I feel this is more of a "oooh, what scrumptious gorgeous photos!" kind of book than a "let me get these ingredients and try this out" kind of book. Which is fine by me, because I like Nigella's cherry-jam sort of plush humour anyhow.
. Jamie's Kitchen by Jamie Oliver - If you want to use this as a proper cookbook instead of looking at the fantastic, splashy, bright photographs, I hope you're a good, natural sort of cook. Jamie's recipes are notoriously fiddly and loose, and as I learned from his gnocchi recipe, you need enough native instinct to be able to compensate for his shortcomings. He's got great and fearless food ideas, but they're best used as jumping-off points.
. Ogilvie's Book for a Cook, ed. Elizabeth Driver - One of those little oddity cookbooks that's fun to read for its snapshot of Western food history -- gem pans, quick ovens, menus for invalids, that sort of thing -- but also strangely handy, as I learned from its excellent baking powder biscuit recipe.
. Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit by Austin Clarke - As memoir of his Bajan food culture complete with sharp observations about the postcolonial West Indian mind, this book is fantastic. Clarke's food descriptions are bursting with fat and steam and savour, and for all that his sometimes lazy generalizations of the Caribbean irked me in places, I licked the book up greedily.
. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David - I was riveted by her admiring and ravenous descriptions of her food travels in France, less so by the woozy, windy essays involving long-dead and irrelevant white English luminaries of the era. Either skim well, or have an interest in that England, I suppose!
. Food: A 20th Century Anthology by Clarissa Dickson Wright - I offer this one with caveat, because although the photographs are nothing short of stunning and some of the essay selections very informative -- I learned about ortolan from this book! -- other essays and indeed some of Dickson Wright's words are appallingly racist and classist.
Speaking of which, in my online search for Trinidadian cookbooks I came across this chapter of a book called "Are you really going to eat that?: reflections of a culinary thrill seeker", which I pretty much just huffed incredulously all the way through. The actual food descriptions are accurate; the rest of it is ASTONISHINGLY tone-deaf and puffed-up privileged.
I'm sure I'm missing some books in this list because they're at my parents' place right now, but hey, I can amend this post at some later date or something.
.. Day 5
In your own space, share something non-fannish you are passionate about with your fannish friends.
Skipping Days 3 & 4 because they're not my style.
So I decided to write about something that I love dearly: Cookbooks.
I've told this story a million, but here it is one more time.
When my sister and I moved to Trinidad from North America as children, my mom took with her a bunch of stuff she'd accumulated in Mississauga and Downer's Grove -- videotapes, record player, carpet, appliances -- and a bunch of books. Included in these were her most useful cookbooks (and some that weren't so useful, which I suspect she just enjoyed owning). My sister and I, being food-inclined from a young age, used to read the more picture-filled cookbooks as if they were storybooks, poring over the bizarre pictures and party suggestions in the Bakers' Cut-Up Cake Party Book, discussing quite seriously what a "candy corn" or a "licorice rope" would taste like.
Occasionally our older cousin Arlene would actually try out the recipes, with greater to lesser success (fresh-grated coconut didn't work out quite like we supposed the dessicated packaged stuff would in Cinderella Crisps), but to be honest I was -- and still am -- mostly happy to just read the recipes, look at the photos, and imagine.
. At Grandmother's Table, ed. Ellen Perry Berkeley - This collection of recipes and essays by granddaughters is intensely appealing; there's no food photos, but the stories and the photos of grandmothers more than make up for it. For somebody like me who never knew her grandmothers, it's a wistful, evocative peek at that familial bond.
. Hallelujah! The Welcome Table by Maya Angelou - The truly wonderful thing about this book is the way that -- although we're from different generations, backgrounds, races, and so forth -- Angelou's ability to create a feeling of nostalgia and warmth and fullness and wry affection is so deft that it made me snuggle down in all the nicest parts of my own childhood, echoing her stories with my own.
. The Dumpling by Wai Hon Chu and Connie Lovatt - I read this recently in ebook form and that did nothing to diminish the plump, silky, delightful delicate stodge of the recipes and the writing. The authors take care to simplify preparation so that you only need a few very basic cooking utensils, and take similar care with the cultural foodways they present.
. How to Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson - Despite the somewhat twee title, the book isn't as prescriptive as it sounds ... although, as with her countryman Jamie Oliver, I feel this is more of a "oooh, what scrumptious gorgeous photos!" kind of book than a "let me get these ingredients and try this out" kind of book. Which is fine by me, because I like Nigella's cherry-jam sort of plush humour anyhow.
. Jamie's Kitchen by Jamie Oliver - If you want to use this as a proper cookbook instead of looking at the fantastic, splashy, bright photographs, I hope you're a good, natural sort of cook. Jamie's recipes are notoriously fiddly and loose, and as I learned from his gnocchi recipe, you need enough native instinct to be able to compensate for his shortcomings. He's got great and fearless food ideas, but they're best used as jumping-off points.
. Ogilvie's Book for a Cook, ed. Elizabeth Driver - One of those little oddity cookbooks that's fun to read for its snapshot of Western food history -- gem pans, quick ovens, menus for invalids, that sort of thing -- but also strangely handy, as I learned from its excellent baking powder biscuit recipe.
. Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit by Austin Clarke - As memoir of his Bajan food culture complete with sharp observations about the postcolonial West Indian mind, this book is fantastic. Clarke's food descriptions are bursting with fat and steam and savour, and for all that his sometimes lazy generalizations of the Caribbean irked me in places, I licked the book up greedily.
. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David - I was riveted by her admiring and ravenous descriptions of her food travels in France, less so by the woozy, windy essays involving long-dead and irrelevant white English luminaries of the era. Either skim well, or have an interest in that England, I suppose!
. Food: A 20th Century Anthology by Clarissa Dickson Wright - I offer this one with caveat, because although the photographs are nothing short of stunning and some of the essay selections very informative -- I learned about ortolan from this book! -- other essays and indeed some of Dickson Wright's words are appallingly racist and classist.
Speaking of which, in my online search for Trinidadian cookbooks I came across this chapter of a book called "Are you really going to eat that?: reflections of a culinary thrill seeker", which I pretty much just huffed incredulously all the way through. The actual food descriptions are accurate; the rest of it is ASTONISHINGLY tone-deaf and puffed-up privileged.
I'm sure I'm missing some books in this list because they're at my parents' place right now, but hey, I can amend this post at some later date or something.
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(& it's funny you mentioned the Dumpling, as I just made some yesterday, heh!)
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I used to read my mother's Women's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery and wonder how so many things tasted ....
(As cosmopolitan as LV is, I still don't know what gooseberries or mutton tastes like.)
We had that too!
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Your comments on racist, classist and privileged cookbooks reminds me of one I own.
If the man was a fraction as awful in person as his book, it's a wonder Sayers managed to live with him. I do gather that he misled her into thinking that he would adopt her son and bring him to live with them, which never happened. Jerk!
Ironically, it's Fleming's stepchildren (no relation to Sayers) who own the rights to the Wimsey novels and the rest of Sayers' body of work, and who have allowed the dreadful (IMO) Jill Paton Walsh Wimsey novels to be written.
Re: Your comments on racist, classist and privileged cookbooks reminds me of one I own.
Those recipes that suggest the home cook exercise some WILD ABANDON by wiping her salad bowl with a clove of garlic baffle me. Especially because they earnestly recommend gilding all sorts of unholy food items (bananas, pineapple) liberally with MAYONNAISE.
Not even homemade mayonnaise, at that
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Hee.
I love this rec! Putting it on my list...
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Oh dear. I got this for my sweetie because she wanted to cook more different things, and I thought this would be an easy intro sort of book that still had food that was actually interesting. Maybe I should swap it to her with something else.
The Rebar Cookbook is quite good and I've never had a recipe fail on me. Amazing chocolate cake.
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Thank you for the rec!!
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I remember reading my mom's old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook with a great deal of curiosity as a child, especially the front section before the actual recipes, with all the prescriptive accounts of how to plan meals and set the table and so on. The authors seemed so certain of their rules.
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