One of my guilty secrets as a food person and a word person is that I have never fallen for Elizabeth David. When Summer Cooking and A Book of Mediterranean Food were reissued by NYRB Classics in 2002, I bought...
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My family has a dinner-table tic: whether we’re at a restaurant or at home and especially good bread is served, someone always says, “You know, I could just eat bread for dinner. This is all I need.” When my father...
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“The women of Freetown were amazing because they participated in the work of the fields and barnyard and yet would step right out of the field work when an unexpected friend or traveler turned up,” Edna Lewis writes. “They would...
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Whenever you hear about how people don’t have time to cook because we’re all so busy with work and kids and the gym and eight hours per day of reality television and internet surfing and whatnot, don’t you think, “Hey,...
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In her cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking, Edna Lewis says there was always pound cake on special summer occasions to eat with whatever berries and fruit were left over from canning and preserving. This cake is dense and delicious,...
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When I made Edna Lewis's blueberry cake with blueberry sauce from her cookbook The Taste of Country Cooking I used a 9 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan, and my cake bubbled over a bit; next time I’ll set it...
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When I read an older cookbook, I am drawn to the recipes that sound a little funny and old-fashioned: stuffed breast of veal, pork chops flambé, Indian pudding. I’m pleased to say that not once did this method lead me...
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While your other correspondents were dolled up and hobnobbing at the Beard Awards Sunday night, I was just a few blocks and a world away, wearing an old Mexican dress and perusing The James Beard Cookbook. I thought I should...
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About a month ago a headline on Gourmet.com caught my eye: What Ever Happened to James Beard? Once indisputably the central figure in American food, today James Beard is for most people the name attached to a cookbook award or...
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The first time I really sat down and read Entertaining was when I was planning my wedding. I opened it looking for ideas and closed it thinking, “Yes, I could make all the food for our wedding, wouldn’t that be...
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