Pairing 45 single-serving sized essays with one or two recipes each, Wizenberg exchanges the dreamy photos that usually attend her words for quaint Camilla Engman illustrations. I was delighted to recognize a sprinkling of my favorite lines from Orangette slightly re-spun; 'Getting married is tricky. First when you get engaged a few things happen. You agree to marry someone, for starters. Also, your head sort of explodes. Third, you are handed a ticket — rather sneakily, I should note, with no warning at all -- to an amusement park ride known as THE WEDDING.'
Phrases like this one are too delicious to be used only once in the soon-buried form of a blog post. Laughing out loud, -- and thinking, ‘Exactly!’ -- as a reader it is impossible not to identify with Molly, or perhaps more accurately feel that she identifies with you, as if you had experienced something together and then she went and put it to words. It's a sentiment, I believe, that she hears often. Indeed, this affinity was expressed in the very first email she received from her future husband (reproduced entirely, with her reply, in the book) as he said, '...(My friend Meredith and I) relate to you because your writing is exactly how we feel and talk about food and life.'
Ah yes, the food. The food that Molly believes worth making must be unpretentious, and yet it must be delicious, something worth whipping up every day for a week since she freely admits she is a sucker for routine. If she can add a ginger glaze without being fussy she will. A potato salad that is perfect in its original incarnation should be left alone. She has a knack for reducing something intimidating, like pickling carrots or grapes, to a one page description with soothing assurances that it will be impossible to mess up.
If the stories comprise the meat of the book, the recipes are the special ingredient and I would be remiss in neglecting a test run and summary of at least one. A impromptu trip to the grocery store was necessary to make the delectably described Buchons au Thons, since canned tuna had not entered my kitchen since that long ago snobby phase when I also gave up mayonnaise. I will not make that mistake again. An unlikely combination of gruyere cheese, egg, tomato paste, crème fraiche and yes, canned tuna produced one of the most puzzlingly satisfying muffins I have ever tasted. Molly's description is accurate: 'They tasted like what I imagined France itself would taste like, if it were small enough to fit in my mouth.'
Article comments
1 - Peter
I don't cook. I don't read about cooking. I only eat. But your review actually made reading about cooking an interesting future prospect...especially if it were to result in good eating.