French Provincial Cooking Book

I grew up reading through cookbooks as if they were novels. I spent a lot of time in my Seattle grandmother's kitchen, or my family's kitchen, sitting on the floor and reading cookbooks and looking at pictures (when I wasn't doing sous chef duties). Cooking or baking occurred throughout these times, as did conversation on many topics, but the cookbook in my lap always had a lot of my attention. I still read them like novels.

I learned to cook and bake through osmosis - watching and helping and eating and talking about all kinds of good food, what made it good, and why certain choices were made. Once I was on my own I really started cooking. My primary tools were The Joy of Cooking and L'Escoffier along with others that I picked up on my own.

Still I often think of Elizabeth David, especially reading A Taste of the Sun on a rainy winter evening, or even a bright summer day. She's up there with Julia Child and James Beard as my favorite writers of what we call food porn in my family. There's something so lovely and conversational about Ms. David, always writing in clear precise prose with sketches of recipes rather than the precise lists that we're used to - Ingredients/Serves/Recipe. I realized when reading this book again that that's the way recipes are shared over the table. "How'd you make that?" "Oh, I took the chicken and did this with it with these herbs and oils and cooking techniqued it for however long." My father and grandmother were very fond of this kind of recipe exchange and for a long time I had sketches like this on the back of envelopes or on notebook pages or whatever else came to hand - these lay around in various places until I wanted them. Once I committed them to memory (by cooking them over and over again) they went the way of all things on the backs of envelopes.

If you haven't read David, you must. She's probably more familiar in England than here (although that may have changed). Her style is anecdotal, but exacting - full of details that may seem picky, but that prove their worth when you use them. Honestly, I think Nigella Lawson wishes she was Elizabeth David - not to criticize Lawson, but David is obviously the template for much of what she does.

What a wonderful read and a great book for building technique and ideas. One word about format - I bought this for my Kindle for the ease of novel reading, but may buy a printed copy depending on how well cooking from this goes. I'm not sure the e-book format has the right feel for cookbooks which should be hefty, well-used, and covered in places with sauce stains.