{"id":1413,"date":"2011-12-21T11:50:13","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T11:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=1413"},"modified":"2011-12-21T11:50:13","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T11:50:13","slug":"food_memoirs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=1413","title":{"rendered":"Food Memoirs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being someone who loves food and literature, food memoirs are a genre of books that I enjoy reading. I love reading descriptions of food and also about the role it has played in the author’s life. By reading their life stories, it’s me living vicariously through them. Here are five I really enjoyed.
\n\"risotto<\/a><\/br>
\nRisotto with Nettles: A Memoir with Food by Anna Del Conte<\/strong>
\nBefore reading this, I had never heard of Anna Del Conte. But her writing captivated me from the start where she writes about her childhood, teenage years and young adult years in Italy. Half-Swiss and half-Italian, she writes fondly of her childhood in Italy in the 1940s and her time spent in Switzerland at her maternal grandparents’ home. When war comes to Italy, we learn about how life was for her family when they had to abandon their apartment in Milan to escape to the countryside.
\nDel Conte grows up to become a spunky, young woman who, craving for some adventure, makes her way to England as an au pair in her early 20s and ends up marrying an English man and settling in England for good in the 1970s. We learn how she becomes one of the pioneers in introducing Italian food to the English and how she began her career as a food writer. Del Conte’s writing is honest – she even admits to two affairs – and accessible. A good holiday read!
\n\"Blood<\/a><\/br>
\nBlood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton<\/strong>
\nGabrielle Hamilton is the chef-owner of Prune, a successful restaurant in New York, but success didn’t come overnight. In this autobiography, she writes about a childhood that was happy until her parents divorced when she was 12. After that, she was left to fend for herself as her parents just kinda left their four children to fend for themselves.
\nBeing a kitchen helper in a restaurant was\/is probably one of the few things a young kid can do and so Hamilton finds herself being part of a professional kitchen crew. Apart from how she eventually ends up as a chef, we learn about her struggles, personal demons and personal relationships. Life in a professional kitchen IS tough, and Hamilton makes no bones about the fact.
\nAs a woman who has succeeded in a profession that’s largely dominated by men, she also writes about how she feels about being but a small number of women who have made it to the top of the game. This book has found its way onto many must-read lists of newspapers like The New York Times<\/em> and The Guardian<\/em>, and I’m giving it a thumbs-up too.
\n\"Heat\"<\/a><\/br>
\nHeat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford<\/strong>
\nOne moment he’s a journalist for the New Yorker, and the next Bill Buford finds himself apprenticing in the kitchen of Babbo’s, a three Michelin-star restaurant owned by Mario Batali who is one of America’s most famous celebrity chefs. An enthusiastic home cook, Buford decides he wants to try his hand at professional cooking. Through an agreement struck with Batali, he gets to fulfil his dream of working in a professional kitchen. He starts at the bottom rung of the ladder and slowly makes his way round to the different stations in the kitchen as his skills improve.
\nBuford’s writing is engaging and the book moves along at a good pace as he gives a behind-the-scenes perspective of what it’s like working in Babbo’s. Buford also presents the reader with lots of interesting facts about Italian cuisine like the different kinds of pastas there are and how pastas should be made. The book is also a short biography of Batali as Buford writes pretty extensively about his boss’ career and his rise to culinary fame.
\nAfter a year’s stint at Babbo’s, Buford heads to Italy where he goes to take on some cooking lessons. He also learns how to slaughter a pig and a cow from the professionals. Part travel and food memoir and part biographical, Heat<\/em> makes for an informative and entertaining read for all foodies.
\n\"Jacques<\/a><\/br>
\nThe Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques P\u00e9pin<\/strong>
\nCharming descriptions of French provincial life in the 1930s-40s where people got food directly from artisan shops and farmers is one of the many pictures celebrity chef Jacques P\u00e9pin paints for the reader in his memoir. We learn that he got an early start in food as he parents ran a restaurant and his and his brothers were roped in to help peel vegetables and wait on tables.
\nWhen he turned 13, P\u00e9pin’s love of food made him decide that he didn’t want to continue studying and chose instead to become an apprentice under a chef. In those days, apprenticing was the norm for young boys. This delightful memoir tracks his career as a young boy who worked his way up the ranks in several top French restaurants and P\u00e9pin even had a stint as chef to then French president, Charles de Gaulle.
\nA wandering spirit and sense of adventure sees him eventually making his way to America and it is here where he becomes one of the pioneers who introduce Americans to French cuisine thus catapulting him to celebrity chef status. I loved this book for P\u00e9pin’s description of France in a bygone era and P\u00e9pin’s love for food and what he does shines through. My favourite of all five books listed here!
\n\"day-of-honey\"<\/a><\/br>
\nDay of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War by Annia Ciezadlo <\/strong>
\nJournalist Annia Ciezadlo takes the reader to war-torn Iraq and Lebanon in her memoir that introduces the less celebrated cuisines of these two countries. Ciezadlo finds herself in both Baghdad and Beirut because her husband has taken up a position as the new Middle Eastern bureau chief for Newsday. A tough and spirited woman because of a difficult childhood, even Ciezadlo finds it challenging when she is plucked from her life as a journalist in New York to be plonked into this conflict-strifed region.
\nBut she manages to survive using food as one source of comfort as she sets out to find out about Iraqi and Lebanese cuisine. The book gives a gripping account of what life is like where bombs and air-raids are commonplace and the facts presented give the reader an understanding of the political and religious conflict. Despite the bigger issues at stake, the book is also an intimate account of one woman’s life, her love for her husband, her struggles in building a new life in a setting and countries she has never known and the role food played in that new life.
\nDay of Honey<\/em> is a more “serious” read compared to the other books, but it’s still a book I’d highly recommend for its succinct writing and interesting subject combination of food, war, politics and social commentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being someone who loves food and literature, food memoirs are a genre of books that I enjoy reading. I love reading descriptions of food and also about the role it has played in the author’s life. By reading their life … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-literature-writings","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}