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Eloise Wall
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Are you looking for that perfect gift for the food lover on your list? Here are five great reads that will take them on culinary journeys through history and around the world. Before “farm to fork” was a well-known phrase, Chef Normand Laprise was using locally produced ingredients in his artful creations at the Montreal eatery, Toqué. After twenty years, Laprise takes us inside his famous restaurant for a look at the recipes and the philosophy that rule Toqué’s kitchen. Home chefs can now replicate the cuisine that Anthony Bourdain claims “raised the profile of Canada to an international level.” Complete with breathtaking photos, Toqué! is an epicurean masterwork. Issues surrounding women, family, friendship and food dominate Jessica Soffer’s Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. Set in New York City, Lorca is searching for a way to her mother`s heart. Victoria is a recently widowed woman suffering from regret. As the two come together to prepare traditional Iraqi dishes, they each learn the meaning of family and forgiveness. Parts of this book are emotionally draining, but the redemptive story will stay with you long after you have turned the last page. Federico Fellini called life a combination of magic and pasta. In her enthralling memoir, On the Noodle Road from Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta, food writer Jen Lin-Liu proves him right. While vacationing in Rome, Lin-Liu is struck by the similarities between the delectable Italian offerings and the noodle dishes her family cooks back home in Beijing. She begins to ponder the origin of the noodle and thus begins her journey over the ancient Silk Road, a 7,000-mile-long network of trade routes dating back to the 13th century. Part travelogue, part social discourse on the status of women and, yes, part cookbook, Lin-Liu takes us on an odyssey we will not soon forget. Lawrence Norfolk’s novel, John Saturnall’s Feast, offers up a repast like no other. With an uncanny sense of smell that allows him to identify each ingredient and the mystifying knowledge of spices and herbs left him by his mother, John becomes the Master Chef of Buckland Manor. It’s the 17th Century and there is war and there is romance but most of all, there is food. As Norfolk himself says: The food became the language of a vexed love story. The dishes became the means to express their emotions across the social divide: quaking puddings, rose-flavoured sugar syrups simmered for hours, quails roasted and dusted in bay-salt then stuffed with pistachio-cream and set in ‘nests’ woven from parsley stalks… The story is magical, the characters are endearing and the details are rich and sumptuous. Recently retired and in his mid-sixties, Ron Gaj decided to indulge his love of food and cooking and return to school. Purple Chicken: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Wannabe Chef is a hilarious and often eye-opening account of his experience as a culinary student. From the interview and admissions process, the endless days of slicing and dicing, to the 180-hour required externship, Gaj’s narrative, while witty and peppered with interesting characters, is definitely food for thought for anyone considering the culinary arts as a profession. Eloise Wall is a freelance and fiction writer. Find her at consummatecopywriter.com.
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CITY PALATE.ca NOVEMBER DECEMBER 2013