The Book of Difficult Fruit
Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
[A] dazzling, thorny new essay collection.' Samin Nosrat, New York Times
'A beautiful, fascinating read full of surprises – a real pleasure.' Claudia Roden
'[A] glorious mash-up of memoir, love note, and cookbook . . . Every sentence is as sensuous as the first bite into a cold, juicy plum.' Vulture, 'Best New Books of 2021'
Inspired by twenty-six fruits, essayist, poet and pie lady Kate Lebo expertly blends the culinary, medical and personal.
A is for Aronia, berry member of the apple family, clothes-stainer, superfruit with reputed healing power. D is for Durian, endowed with a dramatic rind and a shifty odour – peaches, old garlic. M is for Medlar, name-checked by Shakespeare for its crude shape, beloved by gardeners for its flowers. Q is for Quince, which, fresh, gives off the scent of ‘roses and citrus and rich women’s perfume’ but if eaten raw is so astringent it wicks the juice from one’s mouth.
In this work of unique invention, these and other difficult fruits serve as the central ingredients of twenty-six lyrical essays (and recipes!) that range from deeply personal to botanical, from culinary to medical, from humorous to philosophical. The entries are associative, often poetic, taking unexpected turns and giving sideways insights into life, relationships, self-care, modern medicine and more. What if the primary way you show love is to bake, but your partner suffers from celiac disease? Why leave in the pits for Willa Cather’s Plum Jam? How can we rely on bodies as fragile as the fruits that nourish them?
Lebo’s unquenchable curiosity leads us to intimate, sensuous, enlightening contemplations. The Book of Difficult Fruit is the very best of food writing: graceful, surprising and ecstatic.
Includes black and white illustrations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lebo (Pie & Whiskey) considers fruits of all flavors in this sensationally chaotic compendium. She has barely begun her A-to-Z with an entry on Aronia berries ("a tannic pucker that rivals raw quince") before spiraling into a self-deprecating take on her health obsessions. Each chapter features a different hard-to-wrangle fruit, a discussion of its history and usages, and witty medicinal and culinary recipes (elderberry syrup: "Swallow 1 spoonful a day. Or 7. Whatever you need to stay well"), and are leavened with pungently wrought memoir. In these tangential turns, such as connecting her tasting of durian fruit to eating dim sum with "a man who would never love me," Lebo never fails to surprise. On the recipe front, many concoctions feel like the result of hard-won battles—one imagines Lebo's kitchen overflowing with sticky pots and jars—with cravings-inducing taste-combinations such as a barley soup with fennel sausage and "faceclock greens" or vanilla bean cake with buttercream. Unusual and piquant, this off-kilter collection will hit the spot with readers hungry for something a little different.