"You need to read this..."

I can remember where and when I was when someone, somewhere, said to me, “you should read this.” It happens often enough, thankfully, but it also sticks in my mind, because someone is about to tell me about something that may change my life.

The ones I remember the most are the ones that were suggested to me not for the usefulness of the title, but for the openness of the act: the open heart of the person doing the suggestion, and the suggested title itself.

I buy books not out of an obsessive need to hoard or collect (though some may jokingly disagree), but because I love the idea of ideas. The ideas contained therein, rendered immediately or slowly through dissection, discussion, or digestion. The method doesn’t matter to me, but what does matter is that people find an opening that befits them, their needs. And there are few needs as strong as the need to be nourished. 

The conversations I have had with booksellers, especially in cookbook stores, have been some of the conversations I have cherished the most. These are people who understand that love of ideas, and how love begets love. I still remember my first trip to Kitchen Arts and Letters in NYC, where I told Nach what I had read, and I asked for suggestions of  what I should read next. Titles started getting pulled from shelves. 

“This one and this one, if you don’t own it,” he said. At first I wondered why I needed to read The Oysters of Locmariaquer by Eleanor Clark, but Nach didn’t want to give too much away. “You will see this title come up again and and again. You know the idea of a musician’s musician? This is that, but for lovers of food writing.” It went on the pile, and into the suitcase. I’ve been fortunate enough to have many a conversation that lead to many a pile, and I have rarely been disappointed by either of them. 

This year, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Portia Clark at CBC’s Information Morning about holiday shopping for cookbooks and books about food (have a listen here). But like all things, a lot was left on the floor of the editing room, much of it my own doing.* There is only so much one can say/write/glean in a few minutes of radio.  So I wanted to do what many had done for me, and say, “you should read this, and here is why.” I do not own a bookstore, and so I can’t pull a book off the shelf, show you a cover and tell you the why’s and when’s. I am also not limited by “best of”s, or calendar years in publishing. In other words, not everything here came out in 2021, though some did. But as someone who buys, reads, shares, and enjoys books a lot, I did want to give a touch more information than what I was able to in my interview.  

(A note: Many of the new titles are available at local independent bookshops, or can easily be ordered through them. I got all of the 2021 titles at Bookmark here in Halifax, just on Spring Garden Road.)

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For the baker: Mother Grains,  by Roxana Julapat. Julapat’s love letter to whole grain flours, non-wheat flours, and the flavours found therein is easily one of the best baking books I have ever read. Getting a person to bake in a manner they may have not done before is never easy. People talk about bringing confidence to the page, but oftentimes that confidence only lives on that page, and is never transmitted to the reader. With Mother Grains, Julapat is an expert in the act of translation and transmission. Her recipes, ideas, and confidence are there to function so that you, the reader, are as confident as she is, even if you’re walking into possibly new or unknown territory. 

For the (culinary)history lover and/or the cultural studies fan: Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women who Revolutionized Food in America, by Mayukh Sen. If you’ve made a stir fry at home, cooked regional Italian food, or sung the praises of Persian rice dishes, Sen’s book is here to tell you why. The author looks at the culinary and cultural impact of women such as Buwei Yang Cho (the first to use the the terms stir fry and pot sticker), Marcella Hazan (who brought regional Italian food to North American audiences), and Najmieh Batmangliej (who published one of the first major books of Persian cooking in the English language).

For the essayist: The Book of Difficult Fruit, Kate Lebo. An A to Z of fruit, filled with factoids you may not have considered (cherry pits may be poisonous) or fruits you may not never had heard of (such as medlars, also known as monkey’s arse.) Lebo uses each fruit as a launching point to tackle personal topics and essays, while still making you wonder about how many cherry pits you swallowed as a kid.

For the chef who thinks they have everything: Anything by Jane Grigson, especially Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book or Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book. Patience Grey’s Honey from a Weed, tells the story of a British cookery writer who finds herself living in remote parts of the Mediteranean, living off the land, and finding sustenance both culinary and personal. 

For the armchair traveller: Caroline Eden’s books are stunning travelogues onto themselves, even without the recipes found therein. Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes looks at the countries that surround that aforementioned body of water, dipping through the history and people of Bulgaria, Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, Russia, and Georgia.  Her other books, Red Sands: Reportage and Recipes Through Central Asia and Samarkand: Recipes and Stories from Central Asia and the Caucus are also worth your time.

Holiday cozy: Nigel Slater’s The Christmas Chronicles is an advent calendar of recipes. A personal journal, a methodology around cooking and baking around the holidays, and with straightforward recipes that read like a friend telling you what to over your shoulder.  If you don’t own any of his books, it’s a good start. if you do, it’s a perfect holiday capo.

Bonus inspiration for all food and literary lovers: Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal.  Whether you just started dipping your fingers into a mixing bowl or are well acquainted with your stove, Adler’s book is an honest love letter to the process of cooking: there is joy, there is annoyance, there is a lot of work, and all are valid. There is also knowledge, knowledge that is much easier to access and much more satisfying than you can ever glean in that moment. From the book:

“If we were taught to cook as we are taught to walk, encouraged first to feel for pebbles with our toes, then to wobble forward and fall, then had our hands firmly tugged on so we would try again, we would learn that being good at it relies on something deeply rooted, akin to walking, to get good at which we need only guidance, senses, and a little faith. We aren't often taught to cook like that, so when we watch people cook naturally, in what looks like an agreement between cook and cooked, we think that they were born with an ability to simply know that an egg is done, that the fish needs flipping, and that the soup needs salt. Instinct, whether on the ground or in the kitchen, is not a destination but a path.”

*Full disclosure: Some of the writing in this piece may appear within the audio of the interview I did which aired on Information Morning on December 6th.