By Ruth Reichl
Paperback, 320 pages, April 9, 2002, $14.95, ISBN: 978-0-375-75873-7 (0-375-75873-9)
Ruth Reichl is not a great writer, nor does she appear to be a great cook. But she is a great food journalist and this, the second of her autobiographical food books, is easy to enjoy without being free of quirks which make you stop and wonder what she is up to before compulsively reading on. The book succeeds Tender At the Bone, which exposes her childhood with her erratic, imposing mother and remote, aristocratic father, and precedes Garlic and Sapphires which describes her period as the New York Times Food critic.
In Comfort Me With Apples she describes her life in Berkeley during the earliest days of the food revolution which is best symbolised by the legendary restaurant, Chez Pannise. She lived in Berkeley with her husband and many others in a communal house and eked out a tiny income to live as a food writer and cook.
Judging by her books, this seems to be the only time during which Reichl worked as a cook and it may have been this distance from the practicalities of the art she documents that ultimately led to the Conde Naste organization chopping Gourmet magazine last year. Reichl was its editor and the decision appears to have been based on the somewhat academic if not esoteric approach to food which was Gourmet’s main attraction, and ultimately the reason for its demise.
After an affair, the end of her marriage, the death of her father and her appointment as food reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Reichl ends this book with a new marriage, a hideous experience while attempting to adopt a Mexican child and, despite negative fertility tests, a child of her own. That’s about it.
Towards the end of the book Reichl embarks on a self defeating argument in favour of her status as a serious writer, yet nothing in this or any of her other books matters which is not related to the exhilarating experiences she has every day with food. It is as if she is literally incapable of writing well about anything else. But her accounts of food make her books compelling. They not only illustrate her expertise in the discrete, if not discreet, art of taste, but in understanding the science and technique of cookery, the influence of time, place, and environment on how we regard what we eat, the psychology of food in our society and even the increasingly significant role of the celebrity chef, several of whom are expertly drawn in Comfort Me With Apples.
Literary skill aside, every reading of Reichl is an education, every anecdote is a fascinating expose of something new and most of what she writes is underlined by a subtle irony which might not always be intentional but is always very welcome.
Visit Ruth Reichl's website
Paperback, 320 pages, April 9, 2002, $14.95, ISBN: 978-0-375-75873-7 (0-375-75873-9)
In Comfort Me With Apples she describes her life in Berkeley during the earliest days of the food revolution which is best symbolised by the legendary restaurant, Chez Pannise. She lived in Berkeley with her husband and many others in a communal house and eked out a tiny income to live as a food writer and cook.
Judging by her books, this seems to be the only time during which Reichl worked as a cook and it may have been this distance from the practicalities of the art she documents that ultimately led to the Conde Naste organization chopping Gourmet magazine last year. Reichl was its editor and the decision appears to have been based on the somewhat academic if not esoteric approach to food which was Gourmet’s main attraction, and ultimately the reason for its demise.
After an affair, the end of her marriage, the death of her father and her appointment as food reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Reichl ends this book with a new marriage, a hideous experience while attempting to adopt a Mexican child and, despite negative fertility tests, a child of her own. That’s about it.
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| Ruth Reichl with Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto (photo by Corkery/News) |
Literary skill aside, every reading of Reichl is an education, every anecdote is a fascinating expose of something new and most of what she writes is underlined by a subtle irony which might not always be intentional but is always very welcome.
Visit Ruth Reichl's website
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