CUISINE REVIEW: Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen - Laurie Colwin

Release Date: 04/10/12

SYNOPSIS:

Published for the first time in the UK, Laurie Colwin's much loved kitchen essays are perfect for fans of Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater. Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, "Home Cooking" is Laurie Colwin's manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. From the humble hot-plate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Never before published in the UK, this is hilarious, personal and full of Colwin's hard-won expertise. "Home Cooking" will speak to the heart (and stomach) of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover. Praise for Laurie Colwin: 'Everything food writing should be: funny, profound, inspiring and unaffected' Nigella Lawson 'I have in my kitchen a book called "Home Cooking". And, in between following the recipes for Extremely Easy Old-Fashioned Beef Stew or Estelle Colwin Snellenberg's Potato Pancakes, I would frequently sit down on a little stool in my kitchen and read through one of the essays in that book. I never read through Joy of Cooking, and I can read "The Silver Palate Cookbook" standing up, but I always sat down to read these' Anna Quindlen Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels - "Happy All the Time", "Family Happiness", "Goodbye Without Leaving", "A Big Storm Knocked It Over" and "Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object" - three collections of short stories - "Passion and Affect", "The Lone Pilgrim" and "Another Marvellous Thing" - and two collections of essays, "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking". Laurie Colwin died in 1992.


REVIEW:

Whilst I wasn’t familiar with Laurie, over in the US she is a household legend on the cooking circuit with columns in food magazines and an approachable way that each of the dishes within this book can be accomplished by cooks of all ages. It has some wonderful ways to take what you know and adapt it to a new level and when added to personal insights and a witty chat style makes this a book that is something out of the norm for many fans of the cuisine world.

Sadly Laurie passed back in 1992 but her cooking lives on and with a wonderful British adaptation here it really will give you something new to try that you may not have thought of. There’s quite a few recipes’ I’ll be making and when you’re at an odd end, you’ll be surprised at what you can whip up. Great stuff.