Pot on the Fire
Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Pot on the Fire is the latest collection from "the most enticingly serendipitous voice on the culinary front since Elizabeth David and M.F.K. Fisher" (Connoisseur). As the title suggests, it celebrates-and, in classic Thorne style, ponders, probes, and scrutinizes-a lifelong engagement with the elements of cooking, and elemental cooking from cioppino to kedgeree. John Thorne's curiosity ranges far and wide, from nineteenth-century famine-struck Ireland to the India of the British Raj, from the Italian cucina to the venerable American griddle. Whether on the trail of a mysterious Vietnamese sandwich ("Banh Mi and Me") or "The Best Cookies in the World," whether "Desperately Resisting Risotto" or discovering the perfect breakfast, Thorne is an erudite and intrepid guide who, in unveiling the gastronomic wonders of the world, also reveals us to ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
How to come up with yet more laudatory adjectives to describe the continuing excellence and inventiveness of America's premier philosopher of food? If the sustained historical reckonings of Thorne's last book, the ambitious Serious Pig, overwhelmed some readers, this one will gladden the hearts of fans of the looser IACP/Julia Child Award-winning Outlaw Cook. Thorne, who has relocated from the northerly reaches of Maine to Northampton, Mass., here abandons his forages into dour Puritan food culture and throws himself joyfully into the pursuit of, among other things, the perfect pizza, the ideal savory breakfast and the quintessential Vietnamese sandwich. As usual, Thorne's exploratory approach to cooking leads to the debunking of much conventional wisdom. He discovers, for example, that risotto, theoretically a finicky dish, is in fact simple and forgiving; that homemade bread, so often coveted in its fresh-baked state, is perhaps more breadlike two days later. "Knowing Nothing about Wine" reveals more in 17 pages about wine drinking (and wine anxiety) in this country than any number of full-length books. Illuminating disquisitions on pot-cooks vs. knife-cooks, the Irish potato famine and the legacy of Richard Olney divert Thorne from practical experimentation, but he always ends up back in the kitchen. Such is his giftDthe ability to range back and forth from armchair to stove top, inspiring cooks and readers alike.
