Is There a Nutmeg in the House or Best Food Writing 2003

Is There a Nutmeg in the House?: Essays on Practical Cooking with More Than 150 Recipes

Author: Elizabeth David

The sequel to her much-acclaimed An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, Is There a Nutmeg in the House? gathers a selection of Elizabeth David's writings, spanning four decades. Insisting that food need not be complicated to be delicious, she emphasizes the practical aspects of cooking and eating. More than 150 recipes from many countries are included, all bearing David's unmistakable personal touch. Always elegant and witty, her writing conveys her sense of season and place, as well as her passionate interest in food, its history, its myriad personalities, and its role in civilized society.

Publishers Weekly

An Englishwoman who traipsed through Africa and the Mediterranean countries in the early 1940s, David (1913-1992) opened up a world of flavors and techniques that must have seemed seductively exotic to a postwar Great Britain still struggling with food rationing. She was perhaps best known for French Provincial Cooking, but was also the author of food essays in such publications as Vogue, the London Sunday Times and Gourmet, some of which were eventually published in the highly regarded collection An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. This volume is a compilation of essays and recipes that didn't make it into the first, chosen by editor and longtime associate Jill Norman. The title essay succinctly sums up David's demand for cultural and gastronomic accuracy in cooking, as well as shows off her exacting writing. In it she bemoans the passing of the 18th-century tradition of carrying one's own nutmeg box and grater. She asserts that in fine London restaurants, she must ask for nutmeg to grate on her pasta and spinach dishes, a spice she considers as integral to Italian cooking as "Parmesan cheese and oregano and for that matter salt." A labor of love, the result is yet another evocative and entertaining exploration of cooking and the time, place and personalities that shaped it. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

David was one of the preeminent voices in 20th-century food writing. Her recipes read like narratives that recited more the spirit than the letter of the law, and she addressed her subject with opinionated wit. She was certainly prolific, but given her authority, it is difficult to imagine that there have remained works of hers unpublished. Yet there have. A sequel to her 1984 An Omelet and a Glass of Wine, this collection of essays and more than 150 recipes, compiled by David's long-time associate Jill Norman, brings some new work to light. There are 12 sections, from "Stocks and Soups" to "Ice Creams and Sorbets." Within each, topics run the gamut: making stocks, leaf salads, poached eggs and cr me br l e and treatises on the dream kitchen, perfumed toothpicks, and why garlic presses are "utterly useless." Certain English references might momentarily give some U.S. readers pause, but that's nothing compared with the bounty of great culinary and social and cultural material in this book. Anyway, no cookbook collection is grand enough to pass up a volume by David. Highly recommended. Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Book review: Students for a Democratic Society or Crime and Detection

Best Food Writing 2003

Author: Holly Hughes

Best Food Writing 2003 assembles, for the fourth year, the most exceptional writing from the past year's books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and websites. Within its six sections—Stocking the Larder, Home Cooking, Someone's in the Kitchen, Dining Around, The Recipe File, and Personal Tastes—read our best writers on everything from celebrated chefs to extraordinary restaurants, from histories of vital ingredients to food-inspired memoirs. Included are pieces from such stars of the genre as John Thorne, Amanda Hesser, and Calvin Trillin. Selected as required reading by the Culinary Institue of America for all of its undergraduate students, neither cook nor food lover should be without this remarkable annual collection.