IT?S not uncommon for people who have a passion for all things fashionable to also be enamored with all things edible. Both have the ability to render one completely enthralled for hours on end. Most fashionistas, moi included, will confess to getting as much of a high out of ordering a decadent dessert sampler as shopping online for the latest Marc Jacob spring selection. Every city must have its fair share of hopeless carbo-loading chocoholics with a closet full of 5-inch designer platforms. What else do you think all those ladies who love to lunch do after they lunch?
As for me, I got hooked on edible books when I happened to read the June 2002 Vogue issue from cover to cover on a long haul flight. Jeffrey Steingarten?s article, ?The Sweetest Thing,? which recounted his almost fanatical three-year quest with no expenses spared in finding the perfect peach, caught my attention because it so closely matched my own quest for that magical pair of straight cut denims that would make my thighs look skinny no matter what I ate. Discovering epicurean lit opened up a whole new world for me, not only in all things digestible but cultural as well. My choice of travel destinations now had to satisfy both my closet and my stomach.
Here is what I consider a mouth-watering shortlist of authors and their works that should be on your plate:
1. Jeffrey Steingarten??The Man Who Ate Everything?
Steingarten?s many degrees from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is probably more than most award-winning writers will ever need. But they prove handy in his ability to research a topic to its bitter end. This is a man dead serious about his food. As a feared food critic on TV (?Iron Chef?) and Vogue magazine?s resident food critic, his credentials are unassailable and his countless awards make him the ?foodie rock star.?
Here?s what critics say about his book, ?Whether he is in search of a foolproof formula for sourdough bread (made from wild yeast, of course) or the most sublime French fries (the secret: cooking them in horse fat) or the perfect pie crust... he will go to any length to find the answer. At the drop of an apron, he hops on a plane to Japan to taste wagyu, the hand-massaged beef, or to Palermo to scale Mount Etna to uncover the origins of ice cream.
2. Anthony Bourdain??Kitchen Confidential?
This book got him the dream job of traveling the world and eating anything he wanted. Released in 2000, the book is a brash no-holds barred louder-than-life expose on life behind the kitchen counter, debunking the glitz of the culinary industry. Bourdain describes the commercial kitchen as an intense, unpleasant and sometimes hazardous place of work staffed by what he describes as ?misfits.? Bourdain is absolutely insistent that this is no place for hobbyists. Anyone entering this industry will run away screaming, he contends, if they lack the almost masochistic, perhaps irrational, dedication to cooking.
Using his own experience, Bourdain details his personal misdeeds and weaknesses, including drug use and excessive lifestyle as an example of your typical celebrity chef. He reveals how consumers should be aware of various restaurateurs? tricks, i.e. warning them against ordering fish on a Monday as these would most likely be leftovers from the weekend orders.
An excerpt from the book: ?What most people don?t get about professional-level cooking is that it is not at all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking ? the real business of preparing the food you eat ? is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator... Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions. ?
3. Peter Mayle??A Year in Provence?
The author and his wife purchase a 200-year-old farmhouse in the remote countryside of Provence, France. With their two dogs, they move into their new home in time to celebrate the New Year. The book is written in chapters from January to December and details their everyday life, interactions with neighbors and the wonderful seasonal meals they enjoy. It?s an Englishman (read foreigner?s) take on the oftentimes quirky but always colorful life in a village in the South of France.
The first surprise the new residents to the area are met with is the cold wind, known as the Mistral, which blows through the Lubyron valley each winter for stretches of two weeks at a time. The author and his wife have thought the wind to be merely a rumor, but it proves true. The Mistral is the catalyst for a meeting between the Mayles and their first contractor.
?Our architect, an expatriate Parisian, had warned us that building in Provence was very similar to trench warfare, with long periods of boredom interrupted by bursts of violent and noisy activity.?
4. Ruth Reichl ? ?Garlic and Sapphires?
For years, this columnist had the power to make or break a restaurant. Her columns in The New York Times had a mission: to demystify the world of fine cuisine. She writes about her experiences as a food critic in her third book, ?Garlic And Sapphires.? The book is not only about the many disguises she wore as the critic, but also about how her personal life (maybe even her soul) was affected during this period.
With her picture posted in every resto and restaurant managers being offered cash bonuses for advance notice of her visits for the owners to roll out the red carpet, what?s a critic in search of the truth to do? She dons frumpy wigs and gets an acting and voice coach. This results in her famous ?double review? as she gets pampered and coddled as a famous food critic on the one hand, and ignored as an unknown diner, on the other.
?What I learned is that how we present ourselves to the world is really how we get treated,? Reichl tells ?The Early Show? co-anchor Harry Smith. ?So if you want to be treated really well in a restaurant, you have to dress up. You cannot just show up,? she says in the book.
To make sure she was not recognized at restaurants, she was advised not just to wear a wig but also to be sure to know everything about the character she was portraying. She says, ?When I started the idea of disguises, I went to an acting coach who said to me, ?You can?t just put on a funny wig and makeup. You really have to become these people.? So, for six years, I transformed myself into many people and she made me have the back-story: What do their husbands do? What do their children do?... And so as Betty, a slightly disheveled old woman, Reichl noted that she was treated like dirt in every restaurant. As Molly, a retired high school teacher who is suddenly rich from her husband?s real estate speculation, Reichl noticed that, because of her character?s shyness, she was ignored, mishandled and condescended to by the high-powered staff.
Writes Reichl: ?She didn?t know how to stand up for herself as opposed to, say, my mother, who was an old lady. But given the worst table in the house, she made such a fuss and was so demanding and obnoxious, eventually she got everything she wanted and then some.?
But the most fun Reichl had was when she impersonated Chloe, the blond interior decorator. Writes Reichl, ?I did not know I had that person inside of me. Chloe can get a cab, stop traffic. Doors are opened for you, everything changes for you. Not only that, Chloe knew how to flirt, something I didn?t think I knew how to do.? The champagne blonde in the mirror did not seem to be wearing a wig. The hair looked real, as if it were growing out of the scalp. Even the dark eyebrows looked right, as if this woman had so much confidence she didn?t care who knew that she dyed her hair. My mouth dropped open. ?Oh!? I said stupidly, ?oh my.?
?I don?t think I would have recognized myself if we had met walking down the street, and I had yet to put on any makeup. Somehow this cut, this color, made my cheeks pink, my eyes almost violet, my lips seem redder than they had ever been. I felt new, glamorous, bursting with curiosity. What would life be for the woman in the mirror?
?You were meant to be blonde!? cried the saleswoman, packing the wig into an old-fashioned hatbox. She looked wistfully at the hair and said, ?You?ll come back and tell me what happens, won?t you??
?You mean whether I?m recognized at Lespinasse??
?Well,? she said, ?that too. But what I mostly want to know is ? do blondes really have more fun??
Given all those delicious reads, travel for me these days is both about discovering hidden gems in the worlds? retail meccas and uncovering their culinary delights as well. Eavesdrop on one of my dinner conversations sometime and you will find that I am no longer gushing about my new favorite accessory designer from San Francisco but am now waxing poetic about the caramel macaroons from my favorite Parisian bakery. ?
