Provence to Pondicherry: Recipes from France and Faraway
by Tessa Klros
This volume feels a bit like proposed to chronicle the effects of visiting spas around the world—a nice gig if you can get it. In “Provence to Pondicherry,” Tessa Kiros travels to France, Vietnam, India and islands in between. Literary conceit aside, I found much to like: a simple roast chicken with fennel, pepper and olives; potato gratin; entrecôte with anchoïade (a garlic-olive sauce); red peas and rice; chocolate cake; and a lime dipping sauce. Though the concept is a stretch, the design is charming, and the recipes are sensible and frequently inspiring. Post-It notes abound in my copy. (Amazon, $24)
There are writers who write about food, and there are foodies who write. Lebovitz is the former, though he started as the latter. He has attitude, he can turn a phrase and he understands narrative, making this book more than a collection of anecdotes. Yes, there is a smattering of recipes (of note, pain perdu caramelisé and cervelle de canuts). But Lebovitz’s rich understanding of the French psyche is the engine that drives this tale of looming disaster as he finds, buys, then attempts to renovate an apartment in the 11th arrondisement. Along the way, he discovers that the word for toilet seat (“lunette”) also refers to eyeglasses and that, when shopping for shower gear, one must be able to converse fluently about la douchette anale. He gets his grand American kitchen, but I am not certain he gets what he really wants. (Amazon, $21)
L’Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home
by David Lebovitz
Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations
by Roy Blount Jr.
Roy Blount Jr.’s persona is as presented on “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me,” on which he is a frequent panelist. When he feeds his dog, Blount imagines it thinking, “Everything that’s happened in my life so far has led up to this moment.” Of eating gizzards he says: “You are having the rare experience of chewing on what chews.” He loves wordplay, as in this ditty about onions: “Every layer produces an ovum: / You think you’ve got three, then you find you’ve got fovum.” He caught me unaware when I mistook small newsy sidebars in “Save Room for Pie” for real news items; instead they are mostly a mix of stories he made up for “Wait Wait...”(Now he can’t quite remember which are real.) That was too bad, as I was enamored of the slightly bawdy song ascribed to Dick Van Dyke singing to Mary Poppins about his strawberry, his teacake and his nuts. Like the book itself, it’s a satisfying bit of old-fashioned fun. (Amazon, $8)
Gary Taubes looks back over a half-century of blaming fat and finds a sugar conspiracy, or at least organizations such as the Sugar Research Foundation doing their best to promote the alluring white powder. And what a job they did. Sugar is used in breakfast cereals, paint and flue-cured tobacco. Servicemen in World War II consumed 220 pounds per year. All in all, Taubes makes us question: Is a calorie of sugar the same as a calorie of broccoli? Taubes says no. Should that make you quit sugar? Nope. But it goes to show government agencies, dieticians and medicine often get it terribly wrong. Sugar may not be the devil, but things have gotten out of hand. You can make up your own mind as to why. (Amazon, $17)
The Case Against Sugar
by Gary Taubes
At Elizabeth David’s Table: Classic Recipes and Timeless Kitchen Wisdom
by Elizabeth David
This 2010 volume is a cookbook that demands our attention, no matter what culinary age we live in. Its advice is timeless, as are Elizabeth David’s culinary sensibilities. Potatoes cooked in milk; chicken pot-roasted with fennel and ham; fava beans with egg and lemon; peaches in white wine. Her books are why I got started in the kitchen in the first place. (Amazon, $26)
