The Upper East Side Cookbook

The Upper East Side Cookbook series, a set of faux memoirs (and recipes), was launched in 2009 with the publication of “The Upper East Side Cookbook: Setting the Table in a Time of Slender Means.” That volume was followed, in 2011, by “The Upper East Side Cookbook: Main Course”; the third and most recent volume, “Parsley Does Thyme,” was released last month. The series chronicles the progress of its heroine, the chef Parsley Cresswell, through the worlds of fashion journalism and high-end kitchens, but more particularly the series is a beautiful demonstration of both the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit required by New York freelance life, and the kind of eccentric undertaking that electronic self-publishing makes possible. newyorker.

American Grown

Questa settimana escono i libri di due mogli "politiche":  Michelle Obama, American Grown (Crown), sull'orto organico della Casa Bianca, e Carole Geithner, moglie del Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, If Only (Scholastic Press), su una ragazzina "navigating a landscape of adolescent awkwardness in the wake of her mother’s death."  newyorkdailynews

Scrivere e cucinare

Back in the early 1970s, when I was teaching in California, I had a colleague named Bob Williams who taught fiction writing and was famous for beginning each semester with a lecture on the art of cooking. He'd tell his students, for example, how to prepare a dish of sausages, onions, and peppers - elaborately describing how to chose the right frying pan, olive oil, and sausages, explaining next how they ought to be cooked till browned and then removed from the pan - so that the sliced onions, garlic and peppers, and whatever fresh herbs could be introduced in their own proper order - until he had the entire class salivating. The point, of course, was not just to stimulate their appetites, but to show them the degree of love and devotion to the smallest detail required to turn this simple Italian dish, often poorly made, into a culinary masterpiece. Writing stories and poems was like that too, he told them. Instead of the ingredients he had just conjured, there would be words, experiences, and imaginings to combine. Actually, what he demonstrated to his students was the ancient relationship between cooking, eating well, and storytelling. Charles Simic sul nybooks.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Menù di Thanksgiving: 1900, da Good Housekeeping Cookbook: "Tomato soup, Croutons, Roast turkey, Cranberry sauce, Mashed potatoes, Onions in Cream, Mince and pumpkin pie, Cheese, Coffee".

1905: sulla tavola di Mark Twain: Oysters - Consommé Souveraine, Green Turtle - Timbales Perigourdine - Filets of Kingfish Meunière, Cucumbers, Persillade Potatoes - Saddle of Lamb Colbert, Stuffed Tomatoes - Baltimore Terrapin, Mushrooms on Toast with Cream, Sherbet with Kirsch - Quail, Red Head Duck, Fried Hominy and Currant Jelly - Salad: Celery Mayonnaise - Fancy Ice Cream, Assorted Cakes, Bonbons, Coffee

Served with Sherry, Sauterne, Champagne, Mineral Water, and Liqueurs. newyorker.

Dirty Life

Ho scelto il post di oggi per l'immagine di questa copertina. Sembra un quadro di Hopper. The Dirty Life. On Farming, Food, and Love di Kristin Kimball (Scribner). Kristin Kimball era una giornalista newyorkese, quando, nel 2003, ha avuto l'incarico di intervistare un agricoltore "molto alto e carismatico" che gestiva un'azienda agricola sostenibile Upstate New York. Si è innamorata, l'ha sposato e gli si è affiancata nel lavoro in fattoria. "As much as you transform the land by farming, farming transforms you. It seeps into your skin along with the dirt that abides permanently in the creases of your thickened hands, the beds of your nails. It asks so much of your body that if you’re not careful it can wreck you as surely as any vice by the time you’re fifty, when you wake up and find yourself with ruined knees and dysfunctional shoulders, deaf from the constant clank and rattle of your machinery, and broke to boot. But farming takes root in you and crowds out other endeavors, makes them seem paltry. Your acres become a world." newyorker.