Talking with My Mouth Full
Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
What does America really eat? Which recipes do real home cooks turn to again and again? More often than not, they are dishes handed down from great aunts and painstakingly copied out of smudged recipe boxes rather than the creations of celebrity chefs. Bonny Wolf, food commentator for NPR's "Weekend Edition", writes about the great regional and family food traditions in this country—birthday cake and dinner party food, hearty American breakfasts and Fourth of July picnic dishes. In Talking with My Mouth Full, she writes stories about food, and also about the people who eat it.
This book gives a snapshot of the American traditions that have contributed to what and how we eat. Food trends come and go, but many delightful national treasures—bundt cake, barbecue, roast chicken, fair food—are timeless. Each of Bonny Wolf's chapters, whether she's writing about true regional specialties like Minnesota's wild rice, Texas' Blue Bell ice cream or Maryland's famous crab cakes or about family favorites like noodle pudding or Irish raisin soda bread, ends with a perfectly chosen group of recipes, tantalizing and time-tested.
In the tradition of Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, Talking with My Mouth Full is a book you will turn to over and over for wonderful food writing and recipes for comfort food, a great nosh, or the ideal covered dish to take to a potluck supper.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this charming, lighthearted collection of essays, Wolf, a commentator on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday, explores the foods we eat and the ways they bind us to one another. Much of the book is devoted to regional foods: a Minnesota native of Eastern European Jewish descent, Wolf has an abiding love of kugel as well as wild rice and state fair food on sticks. More than two decades living in the Washington, D.C., area has brought other edible joys, like products from the Eastern Market and a ritual shad roe dinner with friends. While not breaking any new journalistic ground, Wolf reports on popovers and pickled antipasto with enthusiasm, melding personal and culinary history, narrative and instruction. Her how-to pieces delve the difficulties that many home cooks struggle with, such as how to make the perfect roast chicken or rescue a dinner party disaster. Interspersed throughout these ruminations are the recipes she's collected from friends and family. It's clear that Wolf's sophisticated, well-traveled palate coexists peacefully with a predilection for the fuss-free, traditional foods that have never gone out of favor ice cream with chocolate sauce and meatloaf. Readers will find both her writing and the cooking refreshingly accessible.
