I eat to read 7 October 2007

If you know me mainly because of this blog, you may think I am simply someone who loves to eat.

But there is something else that takes quite a bit of my time. It’s been an obsession of mine since I was quite young. Books. I look at them like they are lifelong friends. And that’s how I’ll introduce my bookblog to you: aloireads.wordpress.com

• I used to read at night under the bedcovers with a flashlight, way after lights out (result: horrible eyesight!) to the frustration of my parents.
• I used to have a recurring dream that I’d get locked up in a huge library. It wasn’t a nightmare, far from it … it was dream come true!
• I’d always have the longest bookworm in primary school. (You know, where you are given a cardboard circle for each book you read and you staple them together. I was really proud of my bookworms!)

In adulthood, I realized that reading took a backseat to a lot of things like making money, and figuring out when to clean the bathrooms (among many many other things). And so, I decided that I needed to make my reacquaintance with my friends of long ago.  

“How one girl risked her marriage, her job, and her sanity to master the art of living” 27 November 2006

 

Julie and Julia
365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment
by Julie Powell

With a teaser like that, who could resist? Have been wanting to read this ever since I ran across the Julie/Julia Project blog during one of my foodie blog trottings. Even just a few entries (recent to old) made me laugh out loud, so when I read that Julie snagged a publisher to transform her blog into a book, I knew it had to be good.

As fate would have it, and being the cheapo that I am - I was able to Bookmooch this!

I could immediately relate to Julie. Who hasn’t felt like life was passing you by? I have these strange urges to launch into projects to give myself a sense a fulfilment. But probably not as insane as Julie’s assignment of cooking every recipe in the Julia Child classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. No skipping recipes, no substitutions. Every egg, every aspic (gelled calves feet), every brain, liver, offal had to prepared as Julia said so. And to heck with the number of sticks of butter to be used.

But right off, you know it’s not as much about the food than it is about the cook/chef, Julie.

Take for example, the simple (and pretty typical for Filipinos) on extracting, cooking and eating bone marrow. Who would’ve gotten thought you could get these (tongue-in-cheek) nuggets of wisdom?

I clawed the stuff out bit by painful pink bit, until my knife was sunk into the leg bone past the hilt. It made dreadful scraping noises – I felt like I could feel it in the center of my bones. A passing metaphor to explorers of the deep wilds of Africa does not seem out of place here – there was definite Heart of Darkness quality to this. How much more interior can you get than the interior of bones? …

I am a fanatical eater of flesh. But bone marrow, it struck me, was something I had no right to see, not like this, quivering on my cutting board. Unbidden, the word violate popped into my head. “It’s like bone rape. Oh God, did I say just say that out loud?” …

The taste of marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that even. (Though who could ask for more than that? I could make my first million selling dirty-sex steak.) What it really tastes like is life, well-lived.

Don’t want to spoil it for you. Go read Julie, she’s got a knack for words. Cooking should never be a serious affair. This book really made me laugh! It also made me realize that French cooking seems to be pretty dangerous! I am officially albeit late Julie/Julia “bleader” (blog reader)!

More about Julie here:
Interviewed by the Gothamist
Gothamist: The Julie/Julia Project draws near the end
Julie’s new blog

Ingredients of a Perfect Meal … Revealed 16 September 2006

Despite the strict weight restrictions on Air Canada, this didn’t stop me from scouring bookstores while in Winnipeg. I would haunt for hours on end the sale sections at each bookstore run in.

So imagine my surprise (shock?) when I stumbled upon a C$6.99 hardbound copy of Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour: In Search of a Perfect Meal. I snapped it up and went home, sneaking peeks into it during the bus ride with, what I am sure was a silly smirk on my face.

(For those who cannot imagine why I would go gaga over a silly outdated book, here’s the context. I wanted to give the same book as a gift to Yeng one Christmas and flitted from bookstore to bookstore to get a copy. To no avail. Eventually my request to order in the book came in. Way past Christmas. And way past my limits of my patience. And Yeng and I had moved on to Jamie Oliver. Oh, at the time, I was willing to buy the book at a crazy close to 2000+ peso tag price.)

Have been reading it (Yeng has again moved on to another author) and marvel at how much better Tony Bourdain writes so much better than he speaks on TV. He’s not much a looker (he IS middle aged and is a 28-year-old veteran of New York kitchens) but his book transforms him in my eyes. He is alternately hilarious, irreverent, insightful, silly … but compelling, strikingly honest, and in-your-face in his quest around the globe for a “perfect” meal.

I especially enjoy “Reasons why you don’t want to be on television” where he lambasts his network on his dilemma of how to make good TV and talking in sound bites and forced conversations at the loss of spontaneity. There is no worse thing than saying something scripted for the sake of TV while digging into a piously painstakingly prepared meal (thank goodness his network didn’t sue him for breach of contract, though I guess they realized this makes for even better TV).

You know the “joys” of eating – like indigestion and sometimes inevitable vomiting, and worries about food poisoning and hygiene issues? Tony tells it like it is, and his graphic descriptions are surely not for snotty gourmet eaters.

I’ve also seen his softer side to his oft-times irreverent humor. He become sentimental about his father, his brother, and his childhood in France.

Then in another section he comments about Jamie Oliver (”a boy”), Nigella Lawson’s breasts, and his utter respect for Gordon Ramsey.

Excerpted from the book jacket:

… the adventurous chef crisscrosses the world sampling local delicacies from the sublime to the bizarre. Throughout his travels, Bourdain discovers again and again the importance of community, of kinship, and the power of food to bring people together.

So did he find what he set out to look for – over Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Morocco, UK, France? His conclusion is surprisingly simple. And so much closer to home.

(I also lugged home Michel Roux’s Le Gavroche Cookbook and Antonio Carluccio’s Italia. I couldn’t very well leave them to languish in an about-to-close bookstore, could I?)