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By John Thorne with Matt
Lewis Thorne
378 pages; 150 x 227mm; paperback
ISBN 0907325866 £16.00 |
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John Thorne will need no introduction to readers plugged
in to America as well as little England. He is, perhaps, the most thoughtful,
sympathetic writer on food imaginable. To quote from American hyperboles:
'like reading Proust on love'; 'a dimension and resonance of experience';
'in the manner of a Zen master'; 'an iconoclast without a mean streak';
'an amusing but serious searcher after culinary truths'. These are pieces
first published in Simple Cooking, the newsletter published by John
and Matt Thorne since 1980. It revolves around his kitchen-there are recipes
as well as thoughts-and about the books he has read. If Margaret Visser
is seen by many as a fine negotiator of the back-alleys of foodway curiosities,
Thorne is more contemplative and yet tied to the stove.
He revolves cookery facts and adages in his brain to produce an amalgam
of thought and action at once revealing and entertaining.
An Artisanal Loaf: Meatball Metaphysics: Plowman's Lunch [we have retained
the American spelling and layout, for we are not trying to naturalize this
very particular author]: Learning to Eat: Italians & Pasta: Russians
& Mushrooms: Forty Cloves of Garlic: Giving Up Stock - doesn't this
make you want to read? and eat?
This is the first British edition of a writer little known over here,
although some may have met him in the pages of Paul Levy's food-writing
anthology. |
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