My mother's bedside table was laden with books about food. On any given night it might be Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Or Michael Field’s Cooking School. Or the massive two-volume set of The Gourmet Cookbook.

I ended up with her copies of those books, and when I took them home and paged through, I wasn’t surprised that not a single page was soiled. That’s because although she loved, loved, loved food, she didn’t actually cook…except for blanching and roasting the occasional pound of almonds on the cook’s day off. 

The pages with Julia’s roast duck and basic quiche recipes are now well splattered, since I not only read those books but I also love to cook.  My cookbooks are well behaved and stay in the kitchen, but my bedside table is often loaded with books about food. 

Among the best ever food books is “Alice, Let's Eat,” one of Calvin Trillin's hilarious food/travel books in which he and his wife, the inimitable Alice, journey to Kentucky in search of the perfect barbecued mutton, to Nebraska for a steak that looks like a softball and is so tender that you don’t need a knife to cut it, and onward to other delicious destinations discovering each locale’s culinary treats. Do not attempt eating while reading this book, a sit provokes helpless laughter.

Then there’s the Odyssey for meat eaters, Peter Kaminsky’s “Pig Perfect.” In this part memoir, part historical exploration of man’s love affair with pork, self-described “hamthropologist” Kaminsky searches for the perfect-tasting pig. Along the way he chauffeurs twenty-three pigs from Missouri to North Carolina where he plans to turn them loose and let them dine on “hickory nuts and acorns, graze on alfalfa and peanut hay, late-summer greens” and end up tasting absolutely delicious. He traces his obsession to a “country ham epiphany” in Georgia.

Another favorite is Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking.” It’s part memoir, part cookbook, and contains fresh, funny essays including the classic “Repulsive dinners: A memoir” in which Colwin recalls a triumphantly disgusting pie “in which the crust is slit so that the whole baked eels within can poke their nasty little heads out and look at the piecrust stars with which the top is supposed to be festooned.”  The chapters on making gingerbread and frying chicken are outstanding. Sadly, Colwin died suddenly in 1992 at age 48.

Here’s my adaptation of one of Colwin’s gingerbread recipes. Pure comfort food and wonderful with warm, thick sweetened cream, Colwin says the recipe is based on one in British cookbook author Delia Smith’s Book of Cakes (1977).

Damp Gingerbread

9 tablespoons butter, plus butter for coating the cake tin
1 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup molasses
2 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground clovers
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 beaten egg
1 cup milk
9-inch cake tin
Parchment for lining

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Butter a 9” round cake tin and line the bottom with parchment.

3. Melt the butter with the light corn syrup and molasses.

4. Into a bowl, sift flour, salt, baking soda, ground ginger, ground clovers, and cinnamon.

5. Pour syrup and butter onto dry ingredients; mix well

6. Add the beaten egg and milk. Beat well. The batter will be very liquid.

7. Pour into the tin and bake for 50 to 55 minutes until the middle is just set and the edge pulling away from the pan.

8. Cool for 10 minutes before turning out.

Hallie Ephron is the author of “1001 Books for Every Mood” and an award-winning book reviewer for “The Boston Globe.” Her novel, “Never Tell a Lie,” will be published in 2009 by HarperCollins.

0 Comments