A wry, insightful and pragmatic memoir that will have fearless foodies drooling.
The meticulous gastronomic diary of an avid food blogger who spent a year savoring local specialties in 30 countries.
Not every culinary critic is also a gifted travel writer, but Majumdar—who inherited a boundless passion for food from his Welsh mother and Bengali father—invests this account with as many nuanced observations of places and people as evocative descriptions of the spices, cooking methods, aromas and tastes he encountered on his journey. Taking readers from Irish dairies and New York delis to a Sicilian café and an Argentinean steak house, the author is neither bad-boy kitchen warrior seeking the most eccentric dishes on the planet nor wide-eyed newbie airbrushing the flaws from his portraits of far-flung lands. Anchored by candid ruminations on childhood and possible motives for his adventure at the threshold of middle age, the book is as much an investigation of universal themes—heritage, self-identity, culinary traditions—as it is an encyclopedic international feast. Spiked with countless mordant gems (“pancetta that looked like Jackson Pollock had heaved on the plate”; “vegetables so mushy I wanted to look in the kitchen to see if the old cook from my elementary school had been flown in especially for the occasion”), Majumdar's logs foster more than transnational understanding via samplings of home-cured elk, street-vendor rice balls or fish fritters. The cultural cross-pollination in sharing a boiled sheep's head in Iceland or fried taro chips in China is rooted in his back story. While eating with a Finnish family, he reflects, “I had not really spent that much time with my own mother cooking. The kitchen was her domain and I just enjoyed the end results. Now that she's gone, I have added it to the long list of regrets.”
A wry, insightful and pragmatic memoir that will have fearless foodies drooling.Pub Date: May 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7602-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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