On Reading about Cooking, part 1
Our first ever newsletter! Setting the scene and eight favourite books about food and cooking.
Something to Eat and Something is a celebration of the solace and joy that cooking and reading can bring us all. Any time of day, any age, and stage of life.
It’s a new podcast (launching on Friday October 1), and it’s the creation of us two; Food writer Sophie Hansen and Bibliotherapist/Psychotherapist Germaine Leece.
We believe that you should never go anywhere, or for too long, without something to eat and something to read. And we hope that this podcast gives plenty of inspiration for both. You’ll get an email on Friday with a link to listen in. Whoohoo.
But first, we wanted to set the scene and share a little more about both of us and some of the books about cooking that we love most.
From Germaine…to set the scene
While putting together my stack of favourite books about cooking, I was reminded of an article I wrote back in 2009 about the memories and stories conjured by looking through my recipe journal one afternoon. Reading recipes may be different to reading novels, but it can be just as intimate. Recipes also create family memoirs and personal autobiographies. It makes me wonder about the millions of stories you would all have about handwritten recipes, or scraps of them pulled from newspapers and magazines that are part of your family’s history.
As a way to get to know me, here’s part of my history through recipes.
Scraps of the Past
(First published Sunny Days Parenting website, 2009)
'It’s the making-food-book!' says my son excitedly as I search through the multifarious scraps of paper that live inside this book to find our banana bread recipe one recent Sunday afternoon.
I bought this blank-paged journal soon after I left home when I realised I didn't know how to cook spaghetti bolognaise, tuna mornay or whatever other childhood comfort dishes a 21-year-old thinks she needs to know. I had planned to write all the recipes in it, just as my mother had done and continued to do throughout my life. But after neatly writing a few, the book remains blank and unopened. The spine threatens to break though; it has begun to tear thanks to all the loose paper recipes I 'one day' meant to transcribe but instead are just shoved inside.
My husband walks into the kitchen as I begin to sift. 'I don't know how you can find anything in there.' He adds as he passes, 'We don't even use half those recipes.'
And, as I stare at the mountain of paper in front of me I realise he's right. There are recipes I cut out of magazines five years ago and have never attempted. But now is not the time for a cull. My son has already pulled a chair over to the kitchen bench and is on his way to collect eggs from the fridge. Not the safest job for a three-year-old. It hadn't taken long to find the banana bread recipe anyway. I know the scrap of paper it's on -- my father's old company's letterhead -- and it’s heavily stained with coffee cup rings and traces of, perhaps, egg? As I grab the beaters I wonder why I never bothered transcribing this. Five ingredients and three steps is hardly many words, yet it's been sitting on that piece of paper, inside that book for years.
Once the banana bread is in the oven I decide to declutter. One more recipe could be the metaphorical straw. So it begins: the Coconut and Raspberry Bread torn from a magazine, dated a few months after my daughter's birth nearly six years ago. The same recipe I used for the morning tea after her Naming Ceremony. Instantly I'm back in our first marital home, the sun streaming through the window as I baked. I don't want to throw that memory away.
Moving on, there's a lemon syrup cake recipe which I remember taking on a weekend trip to the country when I was eight months pregnant. We weren't near any shops and had to bring all the food. Next to the list of ingredients are little ticks made by my husband's hand. Obviously it was his job to pack the food. We ate that cake drinking cups of tea while watching the cows and ducks as we contemplated life with a baby. Another memory, another scrap of paper kept.
An old printed email appears from a time before children; a risoni recipe a friend had sent me -- at 10am -- that apparently I wanted to cook that night. Obviously it was a slow work day. It's strange to see the sign-off with my position and company details: another life. Both of us are now home with children and it's not long before I find a handwritten note from that same friend for a kids’ version of chicken casserole. No longer does she end her recipes with 'serve with a full-bodied red'; now it's 'add some chilli and it becomes an adult dinner'.
Some shiny paper unfolds and I realise it's fax paper -- a faxed recipe! -- with writing so faded some letters no longer exist. I notice the measurements are in pounds and ounces. It's the apple crumble recipe from my oldest school friend. Her British mother used to make it for us frequently when we were kids and when this friend's grandmother died she was given the Wedgewood dish her grandmother used to bake this crumble. I've always known it by heart and think of her family whenever I make it. I can't bear to throw out the memory of using our parents' fax machines to communicate when we were 14. Also, how many recipes end with 'Put in a bowl and eat with spoon’?
There’s the 'San Choy Bau' recipe I secretly tore from an office magazine, now crinkled at the edges. I fondly remember this ‘phase’: my husband and I were living together and this recipe became the 'dinner party' one. What could be better than friends, a bowl piled high with iceberg lettuce leaves and a few bottles of chardy? Oh, the mess. The lettuce breaking, the sauce running down chins... the carpet... but who cares when you're 23? Actually, if we cooked this now for our three children it would be a similar experience. Best kept; those were good times.
A green note sticks out. It's the mussels in white wine recipe from an aunt. She and my uncle invited us over for dinner to celebrate our engagement. Afterwards, she wrote the recipe while washing up. It's still water-stained from a stray soap sud. A few years later they divorced and my aunt cut off contact with his family, including me. I was very fond of this aunt and now, with the benefit of age, I can understand her inability to stay involved with his extended family. I don't want to erase the last evidence of her in my life though. Another scrap to keep.
A recipe that has made it inside the book is 'Tim's flourless chocolate cake', written by Tim himself. I remember the night we ate this. He was going out with one of my closest friends and it was perhaps only the second time we met. Each couple brought a course and theirs was obviously dessert. They were late. 'It's my fault,' he began, 'I got stuck at work and got home to discover I was out of flour.' I looked at the flan tin he was holding with the very flat cake. 'But it's ok, it doesn’t need it.' And very quickly, after a few bottles of red, it became Tim's signature dish. He wrote the recipe down late that night and I wondered if years later I would even know this Tim of 'Tim's flourless chocolate cake' fame. As the oven timer goes off and I pull the banana bread out, I question how I didn’t realise he would go on to marry my friend and later become godfather of our youngest son.
Now, looking at the pile mounting in front of me I decide to stuff all these pieces of our past back inside the heaving covers. These scraps are the keepers' of our family's story; I realise this book is one of the most important objects in our house. My husband's trash is my treasure it would seem.
Later, my mother tells me about an old lady who didn't survive the recent catastrophic bushfires in Victoria. She was found in her car and next to her was a complete china dinnerset. The image haunts me. Imagine the tales those plates, soup bowls, cups and saucers would have to tell. What precious memories did they trigger which made the thought of losing that china unbearable for her?
I don't want to throw away my memory triggers. One day when the children are older I will share these stories about how those recipes have shaped our family and later it will be up to them to decide if those scraps of paper are ready to be binned.
*Endnote: It’s 2021 and I never did cull this book; it’s continued to grow over the years and remains a treasured book of “scraps”.
Germaine’s books
In keeping with the recipe theme, I have decided to pull together a few books I have loved that include recipes within their pages. One is a short story, two are Christmas- themed, and the other is a love story across generations. All are filled with food that you can actually make, rather than just read about!
Cockfosters by Helen Simpson
The way she writes about the female experience makes Helen Simpson a favourite short story writer of mine. ‘Kythera’ in her latest collection may be my favourite of all her stories. Structured as a lemon drizzle cake recipe, it is a love letter to the narrator’s daughter and combines motherhood, baking and family narratives beautifully. I have also never read a story that is written as a recipe!
Cooking for Claudine by John Baxter
This Australian writer has lived in Paris since 1989 and he has cooked his French family Christmas dinner for many years. This memoir collects vignettes from previous Christmas meals and journeys around France to source ingredients. It’s a perfect combination of armchair travel and food writing which is the escape I’m looking for at the moment. At the end, you are rewarded with some of those recipes written in full.
Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson
Sticking with Christmas, I reread this book of short stories, essays and recipes by Jeanette Winterson each year. She helps slow me down and reminds me of the pleasure of tradition and ritual. I love reading about her Christmas Eve tradition of smoked salmon on dark bread with a glass of pink champagne while listening to carols on the radio (included is the recipe for Gravlax). She also shares many hilarious pieces of trivia throughout; my favourite being her complaint about too much dried fruit and peel in Christmas dishes! Did you know that in the 1970s there was a political party in England called “No More Fruit In Main Courses”?!
Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Kate Kerrigan
I read this novel about 15 years ago, drawn to the sharing of recipes between grandmother and granddaughter and the two love story timelines of Tessa’s grandparents in 1930s Ireland and the beginning of her own marriage in New York in 2004. Given her grandmother’s diaries as a wedding present, Tessa discovers recipes between the pages and the similarities between cooking and marriage. Each chapter starts with a recipe that ends up not just being about food… A fun read for a weekend afternoon.
From Sophie … to set the scene
My favourite part of any book is always to do with food. I find that descriptions of cooking processes, the taste and impression of a meal or the round the table scene very soothing and transportive.
It’s the same with movies and even podcasts. I love being talked through a recipe and watching people at a table share a meal (my favourite part of Notting Hill is that to seconds or so around the table before they compete for that brownie). I think that this is partly because these are all shared, universal experiences but mostly because they are attainable. We can’t all have that incredible kitchen in Its Complicated but we can make that Croque Monsieur and lavender ice cream. We can drag a table into the garden, set it with candles and create something special.
And that’s why I love cookbooks so much, because given a good recipe, time and access to ingredients we can all cook and create the most magical experiences and make them uniquely ours.
I wrote about this in the introduction to my book In Good Company.
“Ask anyone to tell you about the most memorable, meaningful meals of their life and I promise they won’t give you a chronological playback of what they ate; they’ll tell you how that meal made them feel. They’ll remember the candlelight and the smell of the roses in the centre of table. They’ll talk about the moment everyone first tasted that hot lemon pudding and how it was light and fresh but warm and comforting all at the same time.
They’ll remember the spontaneous game of celebrity head and how they hadn’t laughed like that in ages. Or how on a burning February evening, that big bowl of pasta served outside under fairy lights with a pitcher of tangy, delicious cocktails was like a balm. There is so much we can’t control, but how we feed the people we love and make them feel that love via a table set with pretty flowers, candles, your best napkins and their favourite food? This is in our control and it’s powerful stuff.”
It’s all about feeling something isn’t it. And here below are the books that made/make me feel something every time I come back to them. The descriptions of food, feasting, shopping and cooking all take me somewhere, call up a memory or inspire a meal or feeling I want to go on to create myself.
Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb
I’d never been to Italy when I first read this book but it planted a fascination with the country and its food that has never dimmed. And though it’s part travel book, part commentary of Southern Italy’s mafia and part memoir, it’s the book’s descriptions of food that I love most; from vivid narratives about the street markets of Palermo (which I have since visited and his words were in my head every step of the way) to late night feasts with Mafia dons and a barbecue that becomes an occasion for a lesson on the history of the fork.
The Art of Eating by M.F.K Fisher
This is the book that really got me excited about food writing. I was leant a copy when I’d first moved to Italy and it was a true friend to me, a guide and comfort in those early months before I learnt the language, got a hold on the job and found my people. I read and reread it and still believe that absolutely nobody can capture the magic and importance of a simple, good meal quite like M.F.K Fisher. She was prolific and wrote throughout the thirties and well beyond and this book is a compilation of three smaller tomes.
The bakers among us will love this quote of hers from this collection of stories and observations,
“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight...[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.”― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
The Twins at St Clare’s by Enid Blyton
I have read this book many times but not for many years. It was my favourite as a child, and what I remember most are the descriptions of midnight feasts, picnics and long scrubbed tables in the dining room laid with pots of jam, hunks of bread, tubes of condensed milk, currant buns, tins of toffee, anchovy paste. These books are, I think, why I was obsessed with going to boarding school and why I love picnics so much.
Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger
The most contemporary book in this group of four but perhaps the most powerful. This is a book about grief and love and how we can cook our way through and into both. I think Ella is an extraordinary writer and her recipes, many which I have cooked from this book, all work perfectly and are all delicious.
That’s it from us for now. We hope you’ve found a few new good books to add to the shelf and can’t wait for you to hear our podcast from Friday onwards. Sophie and Germaine x
Ps - From Germaine, If you would like to read about how books became the foundation of a close friendship between me and fellow bibliotherapist, Sonya Tsakalakis, click here to find out more.
Pps - From Sophie, you can find out more about my books A Basket by the Door and In Good Company here too!
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