I am indebted to my friend Eileen for alerting me to this nugget of gold from The New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs: The Cursing Mommy Cooks Italian. Perfect antidote for a crap day in the kitchen (or the marriage!) …
Posted in bad food | Tagged Cursing Mommy, Shouts & Murmurs, The New Yorker |
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Love & Hunger: Thoughts on the Gift of Food is a book about the emotional & symbolic meaning of cooking for people you love. It's a distillation of everything writer Charlotte Wood has learned over 25 years of home cooking, about the pleasures of simple food well made.
"Wood writes beautifully about food. Partly it's because she has something to say about life, not just about food ... Wood's nimble food writing shifts seamlessly from the hotly contested topic of table-setting on one page to grappling with hunger on another. No philosophy, snobbery, one-upmanship, no competing with restaurant cooks. Just a lot of honesty and admission of failings, mistakes, triumphs and pleasures.
- Helen Greenwood, Sydney Morning Herald
"In this wonderful cookbook-cum-literary memoir, novelist Charlotte Wood evokes memory and emotion as she explains why she loves to cook and what it means to her. Slotted in among the reveries are recipes as diverse as an Elizabeth David-inspired milk-cooked pork and the hedgehog slice of a childhood in Cooma. It's a book that's satisfying to mind AND stomach."
- SBS FEAST magazine
"Charlotte Wood writes so openly about her cooking habits and history and her thoughts about the ethics of good eating that it’s impossible not to be swept up in her enthusiasm. Novice and experienced cooks alike will find something to inspire them here, as Wood has included a range of wonderful, tempting recipes. Reading Love & Hunger is like being invited into Wood’s home, seated at a table crowded with delectable dishes and encouraged to eat until you burst."
- Kylie Mason, The Newtown Review of Books
"This book has the power to reignite a passion for life, friendship, food and the everyday. Part memoir and part recipe book, Love & Hunger can be read cover to cover, as I did, just like a novel, or can be dipped into when the moment requires. Charlotte's unusual cook book is the wise friend many of us do not have ready at hand 24/7. Love & Hunger is a guide, an encouragement and an inspiration.
- John Purcell, Booktopia
"Love & Hunger manages to be a cookbook for the kitchen, a gentle read for the bedside table and a positive affirmation of the pleasure of cooking for family & friends ... This collection of 27 essays gently and sensitively explores the rich complexity and spiritual sustenance that good food with family & friends imparts to our lives. Each chapter explores, a different aspect of ‘the gift of food’ with a number of recipes ‘attached’; all of them good, none of them complex and many wonderfully comforting. There were many moments when reading, we nodded in heated agreement with the almost commonsense views espoused. As one other reviewer noted, it’s rare for a cookbook to move you to tears; be warned you may succumb. ... If there is a criticism to be made, we would only want more…"
- Tim White, Books for Cooks
"Author Charlotte Wood writes like a dream, wrestling with some of those common cooking conundrums, such as dealing with 'polenta paranoia', getting back your kitchen mojo and pondering just what the difference is between a chutney, a relish and a pickle. Her blog is also packed with scrumptious recipes - beetroot palak paneer, anyone?"
- MasterChef Magazine, June 2011
How to shuck an oyster
Happy New Year Charlotte. Been meaning to email you for ages. Have been enjoying reading your blog. Has inspired my new years resolution to try a new recipe every week. Jen x
While I can identify with the sentiments the article didn’t charm me. Tempted to suggest if said Cursing Mommy wants to keep her title, she should practice a new swearword every day. She will never win Master Cuss this way.
Hi Jen, lovely to hear from you – you have inspired me to get back to work on this blog if you are cooking a new thing every week! hope all is well in your world.
Jules – I will find another article to charm you! Also, I did find the pic of the Empress in 1962 last week and you are right, it was almost IDENTICAL to her – but weirdly, it looked even more like her sister. Very intriguing …….!
So glad you could admire Steph or Sister of Steph’s time travel back to the dance of the long legged crab salad with a raffia hat.
Have been tossing and turning alone in my bath, regretting churlish comment re cussin’chef ever since. I am charmed – like constantly- by your good self and this blog.
Jeez your bath must be pretty slooshy by now – and I perceived no churlishness! However, now you have pointed it out I shall have to put all your future comments through the churlometer to examine for breaches of howtowshuck etiquette. We are becoming very strict on such things round here in the New Decade.