(Allen & Unwin, $32.99)Former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl has written three best-selling memoirs, each of which I have hungrily devoured. This is something different. If Tender at the Bone, Comfort oe with Apples, and Garlic and Sapphires, are main courses, this is more of an amuse-bouche – the free thing you get at a fancy restaurant chosen by the chef to excite your taste buds.
A small book at just over 100 pages, with the giant print I so embrace these days, it is nonetheless a delight. Fans of the author will know that her mother was an excitable manic depressive with a penchant for poisoning people using her terrible cooking skills. Growing up, passionate foodie Ruth couldn’t wait to get away from her. She died, aged 83, in 1991 and on what would have been her 100th birthday her daughter opened a long-forgotten box of letters and diaries and through them discovered a side of her mother she never knew existed – or, to be more accurate, was not allowed to exist. This book is the result.
oiriam Reichl did not ever want to be a housewife stuck at home poisoning people. As a young woman she wanted to be a doctor, but her family pushed her to get married even though they told her she was “homely”. Denied a career and a life outside the family, oiriam sat at home like many smart, competent women of her age, and twiddled her thumbs. In driving her daughter mad, she was also driving her not to follow in her own footsteps. And Ruth, with no such limitations placed on her, was free to do as she wanted. She started as a cook, became a famous critic, edits a leading food magazine and has an almost permanent place on the New York Times bestseller list.
Ruth Reichl emanates warmth in whatever she does, whether it’s describing a crème brulee or talking about cooking for her husband and son, but never does she radiate more than when discovering how lucky she is not becoming her mother.
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