CAPON ON COOKING

by Robert Farrar Capon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1983

From one of our more reliable gurus: 24 brashly and happily opinionated essays on the art of cookery. As ever, Fr. Capon's long suit is a kind of Carlyle-in-the-kitchen enthusiasm, an artfully if noisily communicated pleasure in the tastes and textures and unexpected symmetries of things. Still, one may wonder whether the food sections of large metropolitan newspapers (quite clearly the source of these pieces) are the ideal vehicle for Capon's brand of rumbustious enlightenment. The beauty of a book like his The Supper of the Lamb (1969) is the untrammeled spirit in which it pursues half a dozen trains of thought at once through odd corners of a large and elastic intellectual framework. In these unconnected exercises, on the other hand, one is always coming up against slick little conceits (""The scallion, in short, is no mere party girl. It's a wise cook who takes her home to meet the family"") that might have been expressed differently in a different context. And what a scrambling, too, after ideas for Japanese and Thai menus of no great pretensions to authenticity. But given the dissatisfactions built into this sort of pieced-together anthology, no one could have achieved a higher ratio of original insight--whether on picnicking, rice cookery, the miracle gadget known as the human hand, or the glories of plain table salt--to journalistic drivel.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION