I have a confession to make: I cheated on my husband. And my
children. I snuck off with Gabrielle Hamilton all last weekend, not caring who found out.
Okay, so it is not in the conventional way one speaks of
philandering. As chef/owner of the New York City eatery, Prune, Ms. Hamilton
has written an all-consuming memoir called “Blood, Bones and Butter: The
Inadvertent Education of a Restaurant Chef.” There is no other genre of writing
that sucks me in more than that of the food memoir. For years, I’ve consumed so
many of these titles and yet, Ms. Hamilton’s is simply the best. Ever. I found
myself sneaking off to my bedroom, holing up to devour chapters at a time.
I let the kids play Wii for hours forced them to nap,
cajoled them into taking the dogs for a walk around the block, let them loll in
the bathtub— just to spend time with this story.
You see, not only is Ms. Hamilton an accomplished cook, she
holds an MFA in fiction
writing from the University of Michigan. She spent more than five years
hammering out
Blood, Bones and Butter, which begins with the story of being abandoned at age
12 (along with one of her four siblings) by her mercurial parents who decided
they no longer had the energy for marriage or parenting. She learned to cook
for herself, found a way to make money, and graduated from high school at age
16. She worked double- and triple-shift s in catering kitchens, “vacationing”
by cooking for hundreds at summer camp, holing up in a makeshift beachside yurt
in Greece after serving locals all day in a tiny cafe. At 34, serendipity and
naïveté lead her to open her first restaurant, Prune, a nickname given to her,
oddly enough, by her own mother.
Her story continues for another couple hundred pages, and is
remarkable for not only its
content but its prose. She can cuss like a sailor but does not need to stoop
that low to make herself heard and understood. As I stole another few pages on
a visit to the loo, it dawned on me that this book is like the female version
of Anthony Bourdain’s early memoir, Kitchen Confi dential. Both authors work
the kitchen scene in an allout, balls-to-the-wall fashion. They demand
excellence from everyone in the crew and are verbal in accepting nothing less.
Speaking of other food memoir authors, one unexpected
surprise I had recently in that category is that of Sandra Lee, of Semi-
Homemade fame. To be honest, I am not a fan of this woman’s culinary career and
propensity for fussying up the most mundane, which is schtick.
But the story she tells in her hastily written (taking only
six weeks), Made from Scratch is
eye-opening. Abandoned by her birth parents and left with only her younger
sister and doting grandma, young Sandra Lee learns the lessons of frugality,
turning “nothing” into “something,” and that she can really only rely on
herself. Through a series of peaks and valleys, we follow this incredibly
ambitious woman, who will stop at nothing to achieve self-reliance and control
over her own destiny. She makes and loses and makes millions of dollars along
the way. She turns her hard-scrabble tale into something she can be proud of,
and I admire that determination and never-say-never attitude that serves her so
well. I’m just not eating her food.
Another of my favorite food memoirs is Jacques Pepin’s
memoir, The Apprentice: My
Life in the Kitchen. Aft er reading it, I can feign knowing what it was like to
cook for Charles de Gaulle, turn down working in Kennedy’s White House and opt
instead for the opportunity to revamp the restaurants of the Howard Johnson chain.
I can imagine a career where I publish numerous acclaimed cookbooks, work with
Julia Child and am awarded the French Legion of Honor. In this autobiography,
Mr. Pepin proves that busting ass beats luck every time, and he does so with a
winning attitude that is empowering and uplifting.
So, now that I have returned from my semiclandestine affair
with Gabrielle Hamilton, with whom shall I take up next? It is only mid-June and
the stack of books on my bedside table is only growing, almost touching the
base of the lampshade. I am eager to take off for the Middle East as I make my
way through Annia Ciezadlo’s Day of Honey: a Memoir of Food, Love, and War.
Documenting civilian life in wartime, as told through the language of food,
Honey includes chapter titles like “Fear and Shopping,” “Chicken Soup for the
Iraqi Soul” and “The Flavor of Freedom.”
Then I’ll head for Upstate New York, to Hyde Park, the
setting of Jonathan Dixon’s book Beaten, Seared and Sauced: On Becoming a Chef
at The Culinary Institute of America. Enrolling at the venerable institution at
the ripe old age of 38, he is the oldest in his class. I want to stand beside
him as he learns to properly bone out a young hen, strains to keep up with
classmates half his age and navigate the rigors of a culinary education. I am
sure his recipes will include equal parts hard work, humility and a lot of
burns and bruises.
I encourage you to support your local bookstore and pick up a few of these tasty tomes. If my family comes calling, tell them to look for me between the pages.
Christiana Roussel lives in Crestline and is a lover of all things
food-related. You can follow her culinary musings on-line at ChristianasKitchen.com
or on Facebook (ChristianasKitchen) or Twitter (Christiana40).
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