M. F. K. Fisher Among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens

by Joan Reardon

Book Overview

From her very first book, Serve It Forth, M.F.K. Fisher wrote about her ideal kitchen. In her subsequent publications, she revisited the many kitchens she had known and the foods she savored in them... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520255550
• ISBN13: 9780520255555
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Perseus - Ucal Pod
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A fascinating woman

A friend in the culinary field lent me this book and it is charming! I knew a little about Fisher -- primarily thro' books about Julia Child -- and don't have any of her cookbooks. But I had read two of her novels: NOT NOW BUT NOW and THE BOSS DOG, both which I thoroughly enjoyed. AMONG THE POTS AND PANS told me so much more about this very interesting, ahead-of-her-time woman, and it shares a few recipes, too. Very well written and beautifully illustrated. And yes, I've already ordered one of her cookbooks. Enjoy!

Ode to a writing cook and a cooking writer

Joan Reardon's M. F. K. Fisher Among the Pots and Pans is a brief biography of America's greatest food writer. Reardon wrote a longer bio in 2004; here, she's decided to keep her touch light by documenting the different kitchens rented, remodeled or simply passed through by Fisher in her progress through three marriages, the birth of daughters legitimate and illegitimate, and the writing of many, many books and articles. Most of Fisher's kitchens consisted of little more than a hot plate and a pantry. Fisher insisted on eating and cooking in the same space, and her best meals were apparently also her simplest. Her 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf, written during the first years of World War II, addressed "the preparation of food in times of scarcity and bomb shelters." Watercolors by Avram Dumitrescu recreate the kitchens. Designer Sandy Drooker has given the book a small footprint suitable for your airplane carry-on. A suite of updated recipes divide each chapter, providing some hands-on sustenance for Fisher fans. I read the book in an evening (as if it were "a cheese souffle and a light salad"), but is well worth holding onto for its compelling portrait of "a writing cook and a cooking writer," "bold at the desk as well as at the stove." [....]