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    Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
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    Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
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    Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
    Ebook226 pages2 hours

    Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen

    By Laurie Colwin

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A delectable mix of essays and recipes from the critically acclaimed writer: “As much memoir as cookbook and as much about eating as cooking” (The New York Times Book Review).

    In this delightful celebration of food, family, and friends, one of America’s most cherished kitchen companions shares her lifelong passion for cooking and entertaining. Interweaving essential tips and recipes with hilarious stories of meals both delectable and disastrous, Home Cooking is a masterwork of culinary memoir and an inspiration to novice cooks, expert chefs, and food lovers everywhere.

    From veal scallops sautéed on a hot plate in her studio apartment to home-baked bread that is both easy and delicious, Colwin imparts her hard-earned secrets with wit, empathy, and charm. She advocates for simple dishes made from fresh, organic ingredients, and counsels that even in the worst-case scenario, there is always an elegant solution: dining out. Highly personal and refreshingly down-to-earth, Laurie Colwin’s irresistible ode to domestic pleasures is a must-have for anyone who has ever savored the memory of a mouthwatering meal.

    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Laurie Colwin including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateNov 18, 2014
    ISBN9781497673809
    Unavailable
    Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
    Author

    Laurie Colwin

    Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels: Happy All the Time; Family Happiness; Goodbye Without Leaving; Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object; and A Big Storm Knocked It Over; three collections of short stories: Passion and Affect, Another Marvelous Thing, and The Lone Pilgrim; and two collections of essays: Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. She died in 1992.

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    Reviews for Home Cooking

    4/5

    208 ratings16 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Condescending tone and flat writing made this so difficult to get thru. Author seemed intent on patting herself on the back. Ugh
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed these essays, but what continually struck me is just how different my life and cooking experiences are from the ones described in this book. I have never been to a butcher to purchase meat (I am not even quite sure where I would find a butcher in my area, though there must be at least one around). Many of the recipes call for cooking things "in the usual way", but I am not even sure what the usual way would be. The recipes themselves are far more conversational than is typical in modern cookbooks.

      I definitely would like to read it again, and try some of the recipes.
    • 4/5
      This was a pleasant, short read. Which may sound like I'm damning it with faint praise, but actually, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, given that neither food writing nor memoir are favorite genres of mine (I was reading this for a book challenge). Colwin's writing is funny and casual, and got me to read "just one more chapter" about foods I'm not interested in eating, much less cooking. I enjoyed "arguing" with her about what is necessary kitchen equipment, shuddered at her description of the "Suffolk Pond Pudding," and wondered if I'd like her gingerbread recipe better than the one I use. I'm happy to report that I liked this book enough that I may even read more of her writing.
    • 5/5
      This woman was dryly funny. All of the essays are entertaining.
    • 5/5
      What happens when one of your favorite novelists/short story writers, with a wicked ability to observe and comment wryly on human foibles, takes up her pen to write about food and cooking? If you're me, you reluctantly confess that you have been lazy for far too long, and make a firm and binding resolution to get back in the kitchen, pronto, and to stop relying on cheeses and crackers and takeout.And when I'm there, I'm going to be relying on the recipes in this book for feel-good, straightforward meals ranging from baked eggs and shepherd's pie to myriad creative ways to tackle vegetables and what to do with chicken even when you think you're about to grow feathers and start to cluck, you're so bored by the bird. I may even waive my no-chocolate mantra to try out the chocolate pudding recipe...In short, essay-like chapters, Colwin (who died suddenly in 1992 from a heart attack) rejoices in tastes and textures, flavors and the very experience of putting together a delicious meal. This isn't a fancy cookbook, but rather a series of encounters between one woman and the food she prepares for herself, her friends and her loved ones. Colwin is often deadpan funny, lurking in the background instead is one woman's encounters with preparing food for herself and those she loves. Her observations are sometimes deadpan funny, such as her discussions about the wide array of vegetarians she has encountered. Some, she reports, describe themselves as vegetarians when "they mean they do not lead red meat, leading you to realize that for some people, chicken is a vegetable." She writes about feeding picky people, dinner party guests, vast quantities of homeless people, and trying to impress boyfriends; even something as simple as scrambled eggs gets its moment in the sun here. (Of these, she reports, "almost anyone can turn out fairly decent ones, and with a little work, really disgusting ones can be provided.")This isn't going back to the library until I've combed through it and copied out the recipes; meanwhile, I'm going to order up the sequel, published posthumously. (More Home Cooking) Onto my favorite books of the year list this goes; I wouldn't have thought I'd be sticking a book about food there, but then this is a book about food by LAURIE COLWIN, for heaven's sake, and I should have realized I'd end up awarding it 4.7 stars; her short story collections are unequivocally 5-star books.
    • 4/5
      Fun chatty discursive essays on aspects of cooking, food and people. Based very much on the authors experiences of growing up in the 70s and 80s in New York, but open and available to anybody who enjoys food.I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but in some respects that's not what this book is about - they recipes are just the basis on which Laurie starts or ends a story. It may not have much re-read appeal. but it'#s certainly entertaining in a light unpretentious style. The topics range from catering for 150 homeless women through to a dinner parties and comfort food.
    • 4/5
      When I got this book from NetGalley.com, I realized that I have owned the paperback for years. "Home Cooking" is a classic book of food essays and Laurie Colwin's gingerbread recipe is possibly the most famous gingerbread recipe in the English language.That being said, as I reread the book, I wondered if it has stood the test of time. Contemporary readers, with thousands of delicious food options an Internet click away, may not understand, or warm to, the confined gentility of Ms Colwin's New York City childhood and marriage.I like it though, old fogey that I am.I received a review copy of the ebook "Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen" by Laurie Colwin (Open Road Integrated Media) through NetGalley.com.
    • 4/5
      Who would think a book called Home Cooking would bring laughs, other my children, who speed past signs that read "food like your mom made"? I expected the first few pages would tell me the things I needed to make my kitchen complete, but what I was told is that I didn't need the latest of any kitchen item; she used a couple of knives the grater and a blender instead of buying a food processor. and until she went to a yard sale and found a food mill for three dollars, the kitchen strainer and the wooden pestle were all that she had to help her puree food. She makes toast under a broiler, and feels that things like garlic presses are useless. Throughout the book, recipes are given and a story goes along with most of them. Funny, personal, revealing her own cooking mistakes and giggling at every disaster she has is what keeps the reader turning each page, and until the end, realizing how you would have liked to know Ms. Colwin. Sadly she passed away in 1992, but her humor and cooking adventures live on in this book.
    • 4/5
      A collection of essays on cooking, entertaining, and eating that is in turn, inspiring, humorous and thoughtful. A great motivator to get into the kitchen and cook up something yourself.
    • 5/5
      I love Colwin's voice, and I love the recipes of hers I've tried! Even her ideas for eggplant intrigue me, and I am not a fan of eggplant.These are very personal essays on food, and self and family and friends. Intimate, rather than public- reading them makes me feel like Colwin and I have been having a conversation while we cooked something simple but delectable.Other reviewers have critiqued her recipes as "plain", given our current cheffy biases- and it's true, they are. But plain can be wonderful, when the ingredients are the exact right ones; one of my favorite meals- my "signature dish" if you will- is also very plain. There are a number in this book I want to try: the yam (sweet potato) with Chinese black beans; the vegetable fritters; The gingerbread; and in a couple of days we will be eating the green almond sauce with baked fish.More than the recipes, though, this conveys an attitude toward cooking as a lens with which to view life in general.I love the way she does this!
    • 3/5
      Sort of a history of what was happening in her life when she cooked (changes with each chapter) with recipes.
    • 4/5
      In Home Cooking, a slight book which is somewhere between cookbook and memoir, Laurie Colwin chats, pontificates and eases the mind on all things kitchen. She is very opinionated in the nicest possible way. I like that about her. She eats whole bags of red peppers walking home, manages to throw dinner parties in a Greenwich Village apartment so small she has to wash her dishes in a basin in the bathtub, and loves English food. There are recipes in every chapter, though not exactly calibrated, unless you do well with instructions such as "put it in the oven and bake it as long as you like to bake chicken." I have a horror of having guests keel over from salmonella, so I get very nervous about chicken. Very nervous. One winter when there heating was out she decided to keep things warm by baking beans. She didn't have a lid, so she made one of dough. Imagine! Then she made Boston brown bread. An anti-food channel, celebrity chef (she died before these really took hold) Laurie Colwin had no problem serving brown bread and baked beans, chili and potato salad to guests. She loved having friends about and she loved feeding them. This I understand.
    • 4/5
      Lovely, with just the right amount of snark. Some recipes, but not too many. I read it for the stories rather than the recipes or cooking ideas, but I think it would work either way.
    • 4/5
      Better than Collwin’s fiction. A light, breezy, enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      The only thing worse than reading a book and loving it and then finding out that it's the only book a writer has produced so far … is reading a book and loving it and then finding out that the author passed away hideously young. Reading the biography at the end of the book – and I'm glad it was at the end and not the beginning – came like a bolt from the blue: never saw it coming. Suddenly all the loving stories of her daughter made me want to cry.Such is, I'm afraid, the case with Laurie Colwin. I enjoyed these essays immensely – and yay for the ability to highlight swathes of text on my Kindle, because I now have a cookbook gleaned from these essays. Funny, poignant, resonant, and – in terms of I'm making a grocery list as I read - inspiring… I can only hope her fiction "feels" the same. (Ooh! There's a "More Home Cooking"! Excellent.) The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. Many thanks!
    • 4/5
      I find myself reading this (and the sequel) about once every 5 years or so because it's like visiting an old friend. She writes about food like I wish I could -- like a long term acquaintance that never disappoints and always provides pleasure. I might read it every five years if it wasn't so painful to remember she died at such an early age. As good as anyone (except maybe MFK Fisher) about food -- and that's saying something.