Rating: 5/5
Review: A delight
I found this a delight.
It was a present of the best sort; one which I probably wouldn't have
bought for myself but which I am delighted to have discovered.
The Pedant In the Kitchen is a collection of Barnes's
regular articles in The Guardian, so it's a sequence of relatively short
pieces, each on a cooking- or food-related theme. They are often very funny and, like so much
good comedy, based in very shrewd observation and understanding. He recounts his own cooking experiences with
wit and common sense. For example, of
being told to halve and de-seed 200-odd cherry tomatoes: "All together
now: We're not doing that!" Or
after looking at all three chicken recipes in The River Café Cookbook,
"Well, hello again Delia."
(And I love his healthy dislike of The Dinner Party; instead, he has
some friends coming round for supper.)
Barnes loves good recipe books and good writing about food,
and is hilariously withering about a good deal of the pretension and
self-importance which often surrounds it.
For example, he says this of his (quite rightly) beloved Jane Grigson
when comparing her writing to some other cookbooks by celebrity chefs:
"There is no such cult of personality with Grigson: rather her presence
suffuses her writing like some familiar and warming herb in a stew. You are constantly aware of it, the stew
couldn't have been made without it, yet you don't keep having to pick it out
from between your teeth."
If you like that sort of writing you'll like this book. Personally, I loved it and I can recommend it
very warmly.
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