When I found an easy recipe for angel food cake, I decided it was time to liberate the dozen eggs sitting in my crisper. The cake was wonderful with seasonal fresh strawberries. The only drawback was cleaning the ungreased footed bundt pan. What a horror.
Finding Olivia Ford’s “Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame” seemed timely, and reading through the table of contents from Tea Loaf to Treacle Tart had me wondering if it was a cookbook rather than fiction.
When Jenny becomes a finalist for the popular British Bakes, she bakes pastries for the show based on memories of what she ate at crucial points in her past. Who hasn’t had a bout of nostalgia when eating a favorite dish, but Jenny’s trip down memory lane has a secret she has hidden from her husband of almost sixty years.
You will probably guess the secret and predict the outcome – an easily digestible book.
Still hungry, I fed on Ruth Reichl’s “A Paris Novel,” an amazing tour of food and art. Having been a fan of Reichl’s nonfiction (“Garlic and Sapphires” is my favorite) based on her stint as a food critic, I wondered if her research for this novel has been in person at the restaurants she so carefully details. Her enamoured descriptions from appetizer to dessert, with accompanying wines, is the work of a true foodie with professional experience.
According to the author’s note, this book grew out of her editor’s request that she expand a chapter from her memoir about trying on a little black dress in Paris. The dress is the catalyst to finding new people, food, and art in Paris.
Although the many plot turns are sometimes pedantic, Reichl’s food writing is superb. She makes you hungry to find the dishes she is eating with such relish. I remember Gigi in the American musical based on the French novel by Colette, being schooled in how to eat ortolans, whole baby birds, but here Reichl’s heroine Stella eats them with gusto – “All her senses were concentrated in her mouth as her teeth crashed down again and again. She felt the skull crackle and tasted what must be brain. It was hot, it was primitive. It was exciting.”
Lots of reasons to go to Paris – and Ruth Reichl’s fictional food travelogue is a good one.