Wednesday, September 4th

Food Primer

A couple years ago, I remember reading about a survey that was conducted throughout the United States. The subject question was: what is your dream job? (My answer: managing my gigantic PowerBall winnings. Ha.)

Everyone else's number one dream job? Professional food and/or travel writer.

I don't know about you, but I found that answer to be somewhat surprising. Sure, being a travel or food writer has perks that other jobs don't: you are paid to travel, paid to eat out. Someone picks up your lunch tab, your dinner tab, your airfare to the next exotic destination. You might not be all that well paid – it's not like you're a doctor, or a Microsoft exec – but hell, you drink for free!

Coincidentally, it was about that same time that I began to read about food in earnest. I've always been an avid cookbook reader, but it's been relatively recently that I branched out into the wider genre of "food writing." To be honest, I don't think I knew that you could write about food without a recipe, or that in fact many people wrote without many recipes but with much passion.

And so, here it is: my list of favorite food writers and the books that go with them, in pretty much no particular order:

1. Laurie Colwin, "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking." Ms. Colwin was a novelist who branched out into food, writing a series of columns for Gourmet magazine. Her columns were later gathered up and reprinted as the two books referenced here. The main thrust of the books taken as a whole is that anyone can entertain and feed friends and yet stay relaxed enough to enjoy their own parties. As a woman living in New York City, Ms. Colwin had the edible world at her feet; but her pieces reflect on the memories and emotions and fun that food can help create more than on the esoteric or luxurious ingredient. Sometimes I forget that I own these two books, but any time I pick them up I just want to curl up with a cup of coffee and read one (or both) of them, straight through.

2. John Egerton, "Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History." Good lord, this is a tome. Mr. Egerton is a scholar and an eater. He spent three years in the mid-eighties traveling throughout the American South, visiting over 330 restaurants and writing this paean to the native foodways. If you want to know anything, and I mean ANYTHING, about the history of Southern food, its impact on the culture, or the culture's impact on it, this is where you should go first. Mr. Egerton is like the Studs Terkel of the barbecue joint; his book is filled with stories and people, all richly drawn and eating well.

3. Calvin Trillin, "American Fried," "Alice, Let's Eat," and "Third Helpings." Mr. Trillin wrote the pieces collected in these three books when he was traveling the United States for the New Yorker, writing a column called "U.S. Journal." Turns out he was the perfect man for the job. Born in Kansas City but based in Greenwich Village, the man has never seen anything he wouldn't eat, run into a festival he wouldn't attend, or declined any sort of food-related adventure. Some of my favorites in this collection? "Stalking the Barbecued Mutton," "Fried-Chicken War," and "Spaghetti Carbonara Day," in which Mr. Trillin posits that the traditional Thanksgiving Day turkey should be bumped aside to make room for his favorite pancetta- and egg-laden pasta. I remember vividly reading these books for the first time on the bus and laughing so loud that other passengers stared. I rest my case.

4. M. F. K. Fisher, "The Art of Eating." This is actually a compendium of five of Ms. Fisher's books, all of which are my favorite. Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was born and raised in California, but left with her first husband at a young age to live in Dijon. The move to France, which occurred in 1929, changed her outlook on food and living forever, and the revelatory nature of that experience permeates all of her books. Ms. Fisher is one of the best writers – fiction, non-fiction, journalism, whatever – that I have ever read. She wrote frankly about even the most horrible experiences (her divorce from one husband, the death by suicide of another), and wove those experiences into her writing with deft hands. These books are elegant. There is no other word for them.

My idea of a perfect afternoon? It's snowy, so I can't go anywhere, and I can just lay around with a book and something hot to drink, or maybe a glass of red wine. I'm reading any one of the books mentioned above. I eventually get hungry and wander into the kitchen, where I find that I have three overripe bananas and some chopped pecans. Soon after that, I'm laying around with my book and a drink, and a slice of banana bread warm from the oven, and hoping that I get snowed in.