The Bread and the Knife
A Life in 26 Bites
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"You'll wish the alphabet had more letters just so Dawn Drzal would keep on writing.”—Laura Shapiro, author of What She Ate, Julia Child, Something from the Oven, and Perfection Salad
As it was for M. F. K. Fisher in The Gastronomical Me, food is more than a metaphor in The Bread and the Knife. It is the organizing principle of an existence. Starting with "A Is for Al Dente," the loosely linked chapters evoke an alphabet of food memories that recount a woman’s emotional growth from the challenges of youth to professional accomplishment, marriage, and divorce. Betrayal is embodied in an overripe melon, her awakening in a Béarnaise sauce. Passion fruit juice portends the end of a first marriage, while tarte Tatin offers redemption. Each letter serves up a surprising variation on the struggle for self-knowledge, the joy and pain of familial and romantic love, and food’s astonishing ability to connect us with both the living and the dead.
Ranging from her grandmother's suburban kitchen to an elegant New York restaurant, a longhouse in Borneo, and a palace in Rajasthan, The Bread and the Knife charts the vicissitudes of a woman forced to swallow some hard truths about herself while discovering that the universe can dispense surprising second chances.
The book includes six recipes that run the gamut from "Crepes Filled with Huitlacoche" to her stepfather’s homely “Stromboli Stuffing,” including a couple that are more entertaining to read about than to prepare, like liquified olives with pimento.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drzal, freelance writer and one-time cookbook editor, charmingly reflects on her life with food. In chapters arranged by food name from A to Z, Drzal examines her personality, relationships, and professional encounters. She recalls the sound of her grandmother beating an egg or the steam from her father's sizzling kielbasa on a Sunday morning. Her voice is honest and approachable as she shares the messy side of her work in the food business, such as when she served pheasant and sauerkraut to her idol M.F.K. Fisher, who commented "This has no taste, dear" and then choked after biting into the pheasant's leg. When working with Josefina Howard, the "force of nature" behind the New York restaurant Rosa Mexicano, Drzal recalls how the restaurateur kicked out a cookbook editor who didn't know who Noel Coward was. Throughout, she includes a few recipes for such unexpected items as gruel (with amaranth, almond milk, and hemp seed) and urab sayur, a Balinese salad of bean sprouts, coconut and lemongrass. Drzal artfully demonstrates how certain meals, no matter how simple or ornate, can resonate for years.
