The School of Essential Ingredients

by Erica Bauermeister Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

Overview

From the author of Reese Witherspoon's Book Club pick The Scent Keeper comes a “heartbreakingly delicious” national bestseller about a chef, her students, and the evocative lessons that food teaches about life.*

Once a month on a Monday night, eight students gather in Lillian's restaurant for a cooking class. Among them is Claire, a young woman coming to terms with her new identity as a mother; Tom, a lawyer whose life has been overturned by loss; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer adapting to life in America; and Carl and Helen, a long-married couple whose union contains surprises the rest of the class would never suspect.

The students have come to learn the art behind Lillian's soulful dishes, but it soon becomes clear that each seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. And soon they are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of what they create....

Editorial Reviews

A Selection of Barnes & Noble Recommends
An elegant debut novel that serves up an epicurean concoction as memorable as Like Water for Chocolate.

Every Monday evening, eight men and women come to Lillian's Restaurant to learn cooking and, perhaps, also find a healing recipe for the very diverse problems in their own lives. Lillian, a master chef in more ways than one, knows that she teaches lessons more subtle and far-reaching than chopping or blending or achieving the ideal texture. In her classes, she imparts wisdom through the essential ingredients that she combines and shapes into aromatic, delectable treats.

Publishers Weekly

In this remarkable debut, Bauermeister creates a captivating world where the pleasures and particulars of sophisticated food come to mean much more than simple epicurean indulgence. Respected chef and restaurateur Lillian has spent much of her 30-something years in the kitchen, looking for meaning and satisfaction in evocative, delicious combinations of ingredients. Endeavoring to instill that love and know-how in others, Lillian holds a season of Monday evening cooking classes in her restaurant. The novel takes up the story of each of her students, navigating readers through the personal dramas, memories and musings stirred up as the characters handle, slice, chop, blend, smell and taste. Each student's affecting story-painful transitions, difficult choices-is rendered in vivid prose and woven together with confidence. Delivering memorable story lines and characters while seducing the senses, Bauermeister's tale of food and hope is certain to satisfy. (Jan.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Publisher

Praise for The School of Essential Ingredients

“Delectable writing.”—Seattle Magazine
 
“Food Network fans will devour this first novel about a whimsical cooking school run by a gentle chef with a fierce passion for food.”—People
 
“Lyrical and descriptive.”—The Oregonian
 
“Bauermeister deftly combines romance, lyrical language and a dash of sentimentality.”—St. Petersburg Times
 
“[A] warm, satisfying exploration of food, cooking and memory…evocative.”—The Star-Ledger (NJ)
 
“The novel has that...life-is-meals feeling.”—Los Angeles Times

“In this remarkable debut, Bauermeister creates a captivating world where the pleasures and particulars of sophisticated food come to mean much more than simple epicurean indulgence.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Exquisitely written...It’s a luscious slice of life...and you will enjoy every bite.”—*New York Times bestselling author Sarah Addison
 
“The perfect recipe for escaping from life’s stresses...luminous prose.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Kate Jacobs

Library Journal - BookSmack!

If the connected stories of Holly's students and the magic of cooking are what captured your readers, then Bauermeister's lush and evocative story should make a great next read. Ever since Lillian was a little girl, she has understood the power of food to fulfill the heart's desire. As a successful restaurant chef, she now hosts a cooking school, helping others explore the magic ingredients that their lives are missing. Told in a series of character studies, the novel illuminates the lives of Claire, a young mother overwhelmed with her new role; Carl and Helen, a long-married couple with a complicated history; and a handful of others (including a Lillian herself). Each finds hope and solace in this novel that unfolds in a pace similar to Senate's and with the same attention to detail and description. — Neal Wyatt, "RA Crossroads," Booksmack! 2/3/11

JUNE 2009 - AudioFile

Cassandra Campbell's exquisite, sensuous vocal tones set the mood for THE SCHOOL OF ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS—a novel that treats food as emotional metaphor and as therapy. A lovely homage to the soul-healing properties of a sumptuous meal—or an essential ingredient—this work enchants and inspires. The story traces the experiences (internal and external, past and present) of eight cooking-class students who are gathering at Lillian's restaurant. Campbell sweetly and deliberately speaks to the sensations of cookery and taste. While Lillian never shares a recipe in the traditional sense, her culinary creations are “without words," and transform the life of each student with aromas, flavors, and textures that unlock memories and eventual healing. As the students' lives intertwine, there are surprise results—which sparkle with Campbell's lyrical delivery. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171933067
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/22/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

 
Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

 
Lillian

Claire

Carl

Antonia

Tom

Chloe

Isabelle

Helen

Ian

 
Epilogue

Special Excerpt from The Lost Art of Mixing

Special Excerpt from The Joy For Beginners

Acknowledgments

About the Author

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
 
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 
ISBN: 9781101015698

1. Women cooks—Fiction. 2. Cooking schools—Fiction.
 
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For Heidi, Karin, and Dad

Prologue

Lillian loved best the moment before she turned on the Lights. She would stand in the restaurant kitchen doorway, rain-soaked air behind her, and let the smells come to her—ripe sourdough yeast, sweet-dirt coffee, and garlic, mellowing as it lingered. Under them, more elusive, stirred the faint essence of fresh meat, raw tomatoes, cantaloupe, water on lettuce. Lillian breathed in, feeling the smells move about and through her, even as she searched out those that might suggest a rotting orange at the bottom of a pile, or whether the new assistant chef was still double-dosing the curry dishes. She was. The girl was a daughter of a friend and good enough with knives, but some days, Lillian thought with a sigh, it was like trying to teach subtlety to a thunderstorm.

But tonight was Monday. No assistant chefs, no customers looking for solace or celebration. Tonight was Monday, cooking-class night.

After seven years of teaching, Lillian knew how her students would arrive on the first night of class—walking through the kitchen door alone or in ad hoc groups of two or three that had met up on the walkway to the mostly darkened restaurant, holding the low, nervous conversations of strangers who will soon touch one another’s food. Once inside, some would clump together, making those first motions toward connection, while others would roam the kitchen, fingers stroking brass pots or picking up a glowing red pepper, like small children drawn to the low-hanging ornaments on a Christmas tree.

Lillian loved to watch her students at this moment—they were elements that would become more complex and intriguing as they mixed with one another, but at the beginning, placed in relief by their unfamiliar surroundings, their essence was clear. A young man reaching out to touch the shoulder of the still younger woman next to him—“What’s your name?”—as her hand dropped to the stainless-steel counter and traced its smooth surface. Another woman standing alone, her mind still lingering with—a child? a lover? Every once in a while there was a couple, in love or ruins.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The School of Essential Ingredients"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Erica Bauermeister.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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