Reading Group Guide
Our Book Club Recommendation
Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking is a unique book indeed, one that will provide special opportunities for reading groups. Combining memoir and cookbook, the author demonstrates her passion not merely for food but for friends, family, home, and all the pleasures that make up a well-seasoned life. The result is a mapping of one woman's mind and heart in the language of the kitchen -- a language that in Colwin's hands proves to be rich and versatile. Book groups will find Colwin's reflections on eating and life as rewarding as the thoughtfully constructed recipes that are threaded throughout this classic.
The author's method is appropriately homey: Colwin uses anecdotes to introduce key themes, giving the book a storyteller's flavor rather than an abstract or essayistic quality. To illustrate the value of discovering the full range of sensory possibilities in eating and life, she tells the story of how she was forced by her doctor to give up salt in her diet -- a privation that eventually opened the door to a new way of thinking about taste. In another instance, the author memorably itemizes the worst meals she has ever been served. The effect is not merely comedic but also explores the ways in which "bad" experiences give our lives the contrast necessary to really be worth savoring. Reading groups will be moved to share their own experiences with everything from cooking disasters to party planning -- and to reflect on these seemingly ordinary experiences through the lens of Colwin's light but thoughtful essays.
Of course, many book clubs will find the most tantalizing part of Home Cooking to be the recipes that the author provides her readers. Rather than existing as mere punctuation to the chapters, these pieces are stories in their own right. The chapter "Bread Baking Without Agony" is a call to arms for a return to self-sufficiency in the kitchen -- and also a reassuring tale of baking success that reveals the author at work learning a basic skill that often intimidates many cooks in the home. Book clubs will savor Colwin not merely for her careful prose, or her straightforward recipes, but for her ability to spur us on to try new experiences. Perhaps the best result of choosing Home Cooking for your reading group: the delicious dividends that members can bring to future sessions. Bill Tipper
Introduction and Discussion Questions From the Publisher
In her two collections of essays on cooking and eating, Laurie Colwin shares not only her skills and knowledge in the kitchen, but her wisdom about how food is a reflection of our lives. With humility and humor, she confides that she was never much for traveling: "My idea of a good time abroad is to visit someone's house and hang out, poking into their cupboards if they will let me." In this age of extreme sports and adventure travel, her honesty is both refreshing and reassuring. Likewise she assures us that fancy ingredients and equipment are not required to make a splendid meal. Her encouragement and certainty that a good cook dwells inside each of us is liberating.
It is easy to imagine what Colwin's home must have been like -- filled with food, books, and people talking about food and books. She knew that reading and eating go together. Whether we are consuming brilliant, original ideas or a pan of gingerbread that brings back childhood memories, books and food evoke our most basic, and best, instincts. They are both meant to be shared.
Questions for Discussion Colwin says, "It is not just the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it." Discuss how the meals you eat daily or on special occasions reflect your own culture and your own personalities.
Much of what Colwin knows about cooking she has learned from members of her family and friends. Are there any dishes that have been passed on to you which you, in turn, make a habit of passing on to others? What makes these dishes special? How does learning a recipe from a loved one, rather than from a book, enhance the experienceof cooking that dish?
Colwin encourages us all when she says that, "Cooking is like love. You don't have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It's the same thing with food." As a group, discuss how each of you learned to cook. For those who don't cook, or feel they can't, share what you may have learned about cooking by reading Colwin's thoughts on the subject.
Make a Reading Group Cookbook Ask each member of your reading group to choose his or her favorite family recipe and probide a short story about the person who first created the recipe or a situation that this particular dish reminds them of. Make enough copies for the group and as you all assemble your cookbook, hold a potluck where each member bring his or her dish and have a taste of history and tradition.
Old-Fashioned Gingerbread from More Home Cooking This recipe is an all-around hit and combines many of gingerbread's virtues. It is spicy, heartwarming, and cake-like. You do not need to add one thing: no ice cream, no icing, no poached fruit on the side. It is really and truly good by itself.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and line the bottom of a buttered 8-inch round tin (2 inches deep) with parchment paper. (Parchment paper has come to have great importance in my kitchen, and it is my opinion that the person who invented it should get a Nobel Prize.)
Melt 1/2 cup cane syrup or black treacle with 6 tablespoons butter.
Beat 1 egg with 4 tablespoons buttermilk.
Sift together 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 heaping teaspoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and a pinch of salt. Mix in 3/4 cup dried currants or raisins.
Add the egg mixture, then add the syrup mixture, and mix well.
Bake 10 minutes in the 375-degree oven, turn the heat down to 325 degrees, and bake 35 to 40 minutes more. A few crumbs stick to a tester when the cake is done.