Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite

by Matt Lewis Thorne and John Thorne

Book Overview

Ever since his first book, Simple Cooking, and its acclaimed successors, Outlaw Cook, Serious Pig, and Pot on the Fire, John Thorne has been hailed as one of the most provocative, passionate, and accessible food writers at work today. In Mouth Wide Open, his fifth collection, he has prepared a feast for the senses and intellect, charting a cook's journey from ingredient to dish in illuminating essays that delve into the intimate pleasures of pistachios,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865476284
• ISBN13: 9780865476288
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: North Point Press
• Length: 410 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Another great book from the Thornes

I've been a big John Thorne fan since reading Outlaw Cook, and if you like his prior work, you'll enjoy this one too. It's more interesting food discoveries and observations, with tried and true recipes.

Hits just the right note

This is my favorite John Thorne collection yet. He strikes just the right notes of crank and passionate investigator. Of cooking and thinking about food. If, as he says, he's out of step with the current food-mania culture, it's in a good way. He has always been an independent thinker. His cooking has always been about manipulating simple ingredients, not buying fancy ones. (Wasn't it Julia Child who sniveled about the difference between cooking and shopping?) Of working with what you have. Of reinterpreting recipes to please yourself. His approach is very cerebral and literary: he includes more reading recommendations at the end of each chapter. And his enthusiasm is contagious--I've gathered a big reading list from just my favorite few chapters.

A Thorne in my side; or, good cooking for the less than elite

I always appreciate the careful reviews of Mr. Marold. I see he has fallen into Mr. Thorne's trap. I myself did until I figured out that Mr. Thorne is a bona fide crank. He is a cranky writer and a bitter observer of the food scene. Hence his appreciation of bitter marmalade. And then he turns right around and gives you new direction on good jams and preserves that he now prefers. Now that am poor again, "Mouth Wide Open" is the perfect book for me in these miraculous times of ours. I have not yet bought this latest book of his, I but keep renewing from my library as I slowly work through it. He makes hash of our cult chefs and turns on the kitchen sink disposal for our kitchen celebrities. He is looking to pick a fight. He does not like to spend money. He wants to play with his food. Bravo! There is nothing much more fun than a food fight. So long as you hang in with his extended diatribes, Mr. Thorne eventually gets around to his points. He got me so excited with something he got from a box of De Cecco fusilli pasta that I went out and bought a box. I had been buying boutique pasta at three times the price, but there it was with the same dang "Fusilli with Tomato and Green Olive Sauce" on the back. Thorne turns the makings inside out and upside down (NO TOMATOES!!), but he works into a variation that rhymes pretty well. His chapter on Cod and Potato is for the ages. This is a book for reading, argument (even if only alone) and only then cooking. He likes powerful cooking concepts that can play out in different ways without quite loosing touch. Try his fooling around with making mayo on a plate with a fork. You could learn sumpin'. What finally sold me on him and this book is how often he sent me scurrying for more information before making anything. Two dozen searches on the internet and nearly as many in the local low brow market. He gives credit to all who have helped him on his way and lets fly against all those who presume and posture. Spend much pre-cooking time with him and argue along the way, but never fail to give a fair hearing. I notice tag suggestions include Alice Waters and California Cuisine. Guess again... At the end of each workout has transformed an inspiring recipe into a new incarnation. His hope is that you can develop the same knack. Worth every star.

Superb Meditations on Classic Recipes. Buy it NOW!

`Mouth Wide Open' is John Thorne's fourth book, each volume being a collection of articles from his self-published journal `Simple Cooking'. I cannot be more delighted in seeing this book, as I was just recently wondering whether we would ever see any more from the good Mr. Thorne and his distaff collaborator and wife, Matt Lewis Thorne. Even more than in all his previous books, Mr. Thorne validates exactly my approach to reading and reporting on cookbooks. At one point, he states that the most interesting kind of writing a professional chef can do is to describe how they cook at home. This fits exactly my feelings about books such as Jacques Pepin's `Chez Jacque' and `Fast Food My Way', Alice Waters' `The Art of Simple Food', and Eric Rippert's `A Return to Cooking'. Thorne's own food writing embraces an approach to recipes which matches my own reading and writing, and which probably drives some of my readers to distraction, when I don't get around to actually cooking the recipes. This approach may be compared to Biblical textual criticism, where scholars adjudicate the authenticity of many different versions and fragments of versions for the canonical works in scripture. My favorite Thorne exercise of this sort is his essay on New England clam chowder in an earlier book, `Serious Pig'. If there is any lesson to be learned from his many exercises in this form, it is that one may never find the `genuine' version of any traditional recipe, but it is certainly fun to make the journey. You come out the other end with an enormously improved understanding of a cuisine and the needs of the people who created it. Thorne's essays in this genre in this book start with that rather unfamiliar sauce native to the Piedmont in Italy, bagna cauda. Among his researches are `depositions' from twelve different modern recipes for the sauce, including such notables as Elizabeth David, Faith Willinger, and Jeffrey Steingarten. And, lo and behold, each one is different from one another, and different from Thorne's eyewitness of a preparation in Piedmont. It is no surprise that Thorne cites David and Steingarten, as his work owes much to David's style of writing, as is also allied to the writings of Patience Gray and Richard Olney. As the title of his newsletter attests, Thorne is a great proponent of `simple cooking', which, however, is different from either fast or easy cooking. Thorne presents an excellent exercise in `simple cooking' when he describes his first exposure to making homemade mayonnaise. Like an omelet, it is utterly simple, involving nothing more than an egg, oil, some lemon juice, and some dexterity. Another evidence of Thorne's great orthodoxy is that his conception of good cooking is to make the best with what you have. This is virtually identical to Tom Colicchio's elegant description of cooking creativity in his `How to Think Like a Chef'. In the course of my rambling, I have not taken the time to point out that Thorne's books are definitely mean

An ongoing conversation

What a truly pleasurable book. John Thorne continues his ongoing conversation about cooking, food, and life, and the rest of us are privileged to listen in. His intellectual rigor is notable, but there is no element of pretention in it. Rather, he tuns his attention to good things and gives a great deal of careful thought to their history and how best to do them justice. It is also a very funny book, and the best antidote I've found to the current depressing parade of egomaniacal chefs'compendiums and "smile big and get your cooking over with in a hurry" non-cookbooks. Highly recommended for any serious cook and for anyone who likes to think about food. Lovers of good essays will like it too.