Ike! I heard an NPR? interview with Russ Parsons, LA Times cooking writer. He is pushing his book, “How to Read a French Fry.” It deals with the science of cooking,i.e. why things do what they do in the kitchen and in your pan.
My question–have you read it and is it worth it? He seemed a bit over the top in the interview.
Would John Thorne buy his book?
Just bumping this up, lest it get lost on Page Two . . .
Eve You always were a softie. Thanks.
. . . for all the good it did. I guess Ike is off in Lupe Velez’s bathroom, holding her head in the terlet.
She was dead when I got here, Eve! I swear!
Sam: I haven’t read the book, or anything by Parsons.
It’s an astonishing NUMBER TWELVE at the moment on the Amazon.com sales-level list, which means it’s trailing only John Grisham and ten versions of the Bible at the moment. The sole reader-review is a very poor “one star.”
I dunno if Thorne would want a copy. I don’t think I do. I can look up any of that kitchen-science stuff in my old copy of Harold McGee’s ON FOOD AND COOKING: THE SCIENCE AND LORE OF THE KITCHEN.
One book you do NOT want in your kitchen library, though,if you don’t mind a digression, is AMERICAN APPETITE: THE COMING OF AGE OF A NATIONAL CUISINE by Leslie Brenner.
I picked this up last week, anticipating an interesting cultural read, and was struck by the bitchy/snobby tone of the author, whose taste is the antithesis of John Thorne’s “Simple Cooking” attitude. Where Thorne finds value in the most basic of dishes, Brenner wants everything as complex as possible, which is very weird in a writer who is as smitten with Alice Waters as she is.
Brenner also seems never to have heard of regional or ethnic cuisines, stating that everyone in the USA was subsisting on Spaghettios and Kool-Aid in the 1950s.
She was dead when I got here, Eve! I swear!
Sam: I haven’t read the book, or anything by Parsons.
It’s an astonishing NUMBER TWELVE at the moment on the Amazon.com sales-level list, which means it’s trailing only John Grisham and ten versions of the Bible at the moment. The sole reader-review is a very poor “one star.”
I dunno if Thorne would want a copy. I don’t think I do. I can look up any of that kitchen-science stuff in my old copy of Harold McGee’s ON FOOD AND COOKING: THE SCIENCE AND LORE OF THE KITCHEN.
One book you do NOT want in your kitchen library, though,if you don’t mind a digression, is AMERICAN APPETITE: THE COMING OF AGE OF A NATIONAL CUISINE by Leslie Brenner.
I picked this up last week, anticipating an interesting cultural read, and was struck by the bitchy/snobby tone of the author, whose taste is the antithesis of John Thorne’s “Simple Cooking” attitude. Where Thorne finds value in the most basic of dishes, Brenner wants everything as complex as possible, which is very weird in a writer who is as smitten with Alice Waters as she is.
Brenner also seems never to have heard of regional or ethnic cuisines, stating that everyone in the USA was subsisting on Spaghettios and Kool-Aid in the 1950s.