Colwin, Laurie

Home Cooking: a writer in the kitchen

New York, Alfred A Knopf, 1988.
Second-hand hardcover

Colwin, Laurie. Home Cooking: a writer in the kitchen. [FIRST EDITION] Alfred A Knopf: New York, 1988. 8vo (220x150mm) illust dj, qtr bnd blue cloth, blue bds, deckle edges, t.e blue, x,193,[3]pp. (illustrated by Anna Shapiro) Near Fine

COLWIN, Laurie. (1944 - 1992)

Home Cooking: a writer in the kitchen.

New York : Alfred A Knopf, 1988. First edition. Illustrated by Anna Shapiro

Octavo (220x150mm) illustrated dust jacket, quarter bound blue cloth, blue boards, deckle edges, top edge blue, x,193,[3]pp. Faint foxing to endpapers and dust jacket flaps.

¶ Colwin was an American novelist and journalist based in New York. In the 1980s, she wrote regular columns for Gourmet. Home Cooking is a collection of her culinary essays (much of which first appeared in Gourmet). Taken together, they are a gentle, amusing and warm reflection on cooking simple joyful delicious food at home with recipes: as much memoir as food writing. Colwin's gentle and conversational style is highly relatable and particularly evocative.

"Unless you live in a cave or hermitage, cooking and eating are social activities: even hermit monks have one communal meal a month. The sharing of food is the basis of social life, and to many people it is the only kind of social life worth participating in. No one who cooks cooks alone. Even at her most solitary a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past,the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers." (p.ix)

“I will never eat fish eyeballs, and I do not want to taste anything commonly kept as a house pet, but otherwise I am a cinch to feed. My only allergy is a slight one to caviar, making me a cheap date. Furthermore, I am never on a diet regime I cannot be talked out of.” (p.38)

In 2012, Colwin was posthumously inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook Hall of Fame; making her perhaps the only fiction writer better known for her recipes than her novels, particularly her Pepper Chicken with Polenta and Broccoli di Rape (p.113).

An excellent copy.

Item #9780394559698-1
ISBN: 9780394559698

Price: $200.00 AUD

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