Gentry
"Peninsula FYI"
July, 2003 |
Amanda Hesser I rarely read the Food
section of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. I would take a look
on the way to the crossword puzzle, but didn't stop in. Until a stylish
water color illustration by the artist Izak caught my eye: a long-limbed
girl, a bespectacled guy, a galley kitchen, -- sort of "Big Eyes" artist
Margaret Keane meets Irving Penn. And there was actually a story! Instead
of a treatise on the chemical properties of white truffles.
The "Food Diary," written by Amanda Hesser, appeared twice a month,
chronicling her culinary adventures, along with her romance with New
Yorker writer Tad Friend (dubbed "Mr. Latte" when he ordered the
frothy drink after dinner on their first date, apparently a major taboo
among foodies). I was immediately charmed and totally hooked.
And I wasn't the only one. You'd mention the column to the most unlikely
people -- socialites with full-time cooks, mothers who were trying to
prove you could raise four healthy children on takeout -- and they'd seize
on the subject with the ardor twelve-year-olds reserve for American
Idol's top ten. We avidly followed the ups and downs of Tad and
Amanda, floating along on Hesser's appealing voice and a style that was
intimate without being confessional. "Mr. Latte and I were visiting his
parents for the weekend," began one column. Then, "Mr. Latte and I were
not getting along as well as I had hoped." And finally, eighteen months
later, "The weeks leading up to our wedding were a frenzy of work."
Along the way, as well, we were treated to Hesser's portraits of foodies
like Jeffrey Steingarten and Julia Child, a comforting post-9/11 dinner
with friends, Sunday suppers, and dinners at the shore, each episode
followed by recipes that could inspire even those who use their ovens for
extra storage. Her directions -- whether for an apricot slump, a fried egg
sandwich or roasted Chilean sea bass with chive oil -- gave unfailingly
good advice and didn't overwhelm you with their ambition -- with the
exception of a poached peach and almond tart where the original recipe ran
for three pages in Cook's Illustrated.
Now, for those of you who missed being part of the Monday morning water
cooler cult of Amanda, there is Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's
Courtship with Recipes, a collection of Hesser's columns that has been
updated and expanded to include 14 new chapters, as well as additional
recipes. If you are one of those who believe that, at dinner, there is
nothing so gratifying as a tablemate who is a delightful storyteller, you
may well feel the same way about a recipe that comes with a good tale.
(And careful and precise instructions -- when she tells you to use a
baking dish, she will note either Pyrex or enamel are fine.)
This cookbook-cum-romance has a number of recurring themes: what to cook
when you want to impress someone -- whether your mother-in-law or your
husband's friends -- and the importance of having a repertoire of recipes,
dishes so well loved that you can whip them up in the kitchen of a
friend's house without a cookbook in hand. But the leitmotif is the power
of food to create intimacy. You will want to make her mother's chocolate
dump-it cake for your own children, hoping they will remember it as fondly
as Hesser does. And you'll want to feed your friends her linguini with
parmesan, Meyer lemon and crème fraiche. Takeout will never be as
memorable.
Hesser started out chopping vegetables and hauling sacks of flour in the
restaurants and bakeries of Boston, worked her way around Europe
apprenticing in restaurant kitchens, and attended the noted Ecole de
Cuisine La Varenne. During a year she spent as the cook to the head of La
Varenne, she persuaded the elderly man who tended the school's garden to
let her observe him at work, which resulted in her first book, the
award-winning The Cook and the Gardener. For now, Hesser has
returned to her regular beat as a reporter for the Wednesday Dining
section of the New York Times, where she will soon start writing
about wines. There will be no more Diaries.
But you are going to be hearing a lot more from Amanda Hesser. Mark my
words, she is food writing's Next Big Thing, joining a group -- M.F.K.
Fisher, Ruth Reichl, Laurie Colwin -- that writes as much about mores and
manners and people, as the daube de boeuf on the table. As the
novelist and food writer Laurie Colwin once wrote, "What is more
interesting than how people live? I personally cannot think of anything."
I couldn't agree more. Read Cooking for Mr. Latte and you'll see
what I mean. |
