The Wet and the Dry by Lawrence Osborne

Title: The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey
Author: Lawrence Osborne
Themes: travel, alcoholism
Rating: **1/2

Plot: From Amazon.com "Drinking alcohol: a beloved tradition, a dangerous addiction, even “a sickness of the soul” (as once described by a group of young Muslim men in Bali). In his wide-ranging travels, Lawrence Osborne—a veritable connoisseur himself—has witnessed opposing views of alcohol across cultures worldwide, compelling him to wonder: is drinking alcohol a sign of civilization and sanity, or the very reverse? Where do societies and their treatment of alcohol fall on the spectrum between indulgence and restraint?

These questions launch the author on an audacious journey, from the Middle East, where drinking is prohibited, to the West, w

An immersing, controversial, and often irreverent travel narrative, The Wet and the Dry offers provocative, sometimes unsettling insights into the deeply embedded conflicts between East and West, and the surprising influence of drinking on the contemporary world today."
here it is an important—yet perhaps very often a ruinous—part of everyday life. Beginning in the bar of a luxury hotel in Milan, Osborne then ventures to the Hezbollah-threatened vineyards of Lebanon; a landmark pub in London; the dangerous drinking dens on the Malaysian border; the only brewery in the alcohol-hostile country of Pakistan; and Oman, where he faces the absurd challenge of finding a bottle of champagne on New Year’s Eve.  Amid his travels, Osborne unravels the stories of alcoholism in his own family, and reflects on ramifications of alcohol consumption in his own life.

My Thoughts: Osborne's short memoir on Drinking, predominately in the Middle East and North Africa, is rather rambling but full of interesting historical and societal facts. I enjoyed the sporadic inclusions of alcohol-in-history that Osborne peppers through his travels through the Middle East-searching for illegal alcohol.

Osborne relates his own alcoholism, although the reader is never quite sure how he truly feels about it. Even as he describes the deaths of loved ones who abused alcohol, he never quite connects it to his own alcoholism. He admits that Islamic countries have valid reasons for creating "dry" states, but cannot quite escape the lure of drunkenness...for even a single day apparently. As another reviewer says, it is very morally ambiguous. He seems to worship alcohol, and this is some feeble attempt to praise it's benefits against Islamic practices.

While I found this meandering memoir rather entertaining most of the time, and the "non-fiction/historical" facts absolutely fascinating; I must admit I found the "memoir"-ish parts rather boring and sometimes downright condescending (pg. 32 comes to mind). I think Osborne would make a wonderful writer of social/historical texts, but in this tome I found him self-indulgent, condescending, and plain unpleasant. I have no qualms with alcohol, but the way he glorifies the drunken state rubbed me the wrong way.

Osborne, Lawrence. The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey. New York: Crown, 2013.

A Tiger in the Kitchen

Title: A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family
Author: Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Themes: food, cooking, family, heritage, culture
Rating: *** 1/2

Plot: Born in the year of the Tiger (a rebellious sign), Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left Singapore at age 18 to attend Northwestern University. More than a decade later, as a 30-something living in New York City, she was suddenly gripped with a sense of loss at the knowledge that she was, indeed, "Ang Moh" (a Chinese term that implies "Westernized"). Tan did not know how to make the food of her people, and as any Singaporean will tell you, they don't eat to live-they live to eat. In the tiny Southeast Asian country that straddles the equator, food is both a national obsession and their way of bonding. As a way to pass the time while in the kitchen, they tell stories.

Now, Cheryl Tan invites readers to join her on a quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore as a way to connect food and family with her sense of home. As Tan begins cooking with her family, she learns not just about food, bit about her family history and her heritage. She finds that home is rooted in the kitchen and the foods of her Singaporean girlhood. A Tiger in the Kitchen is a charming story about being a Chinese-American and a food exile, and finding a place for one's heritage in a modern life.

My Thoughts: I was extremely excited to read this book for a few reasons, namely (1) it was a free Early Reviewer copy (I just love those uncorrected proofs), (2) it featured Singaporean food which I have never read about, and (3) I felt connected to the author because I also put off learning to cook until adulthood because I felt like I needed to be doing something less "housewifey" (which is just silly I know).

But I was also hesitant to dive right in because I feared (what I see as) an overemphasis on Singaporean/Non-Western culture versus the "vacuum" of American culture. I hate reading stories where becoming "Westernized" means losing culture, that only non-American/Western peoples have culture and that we (I am Western/American) are somehow lacking our own culture-happy just to suck it out of everyone else. I just feel like this approach cheapens everyone's sense of culture, and is a negative world-view in general. I am happy to report that Cheryl Lu-lien Tan handles her discussion of culture with nuance and grace-and I enjoyed every page of A Tiger in the Kitchen.

With that said, I feel I need to justify loving this book (I am a graduate student, I need to justify every claim after all). First of all, the writing is lovely. When Tan writes it feels both personal and professional-you feel like she is talking directly to you, but in a well planned and polished manner. The book flowed surprisingly well, with transitions and events leading into each other in entertaining ways. One would assume a book about learning to cook your family's food would be fairly tedious, but Tan brings together multiple food experiences from New York, Hawaii, China, and Singapore into a cohesive narrative that describes her reconnection to her family and country of origin. Yes it is a food memoir. But really the food is merely a tool to reconnect to family and address a difficult time in Tan's life, with every dish she loving describes and every cooking lesson she shares Tan is sharing her family's love and dedication-as well as its scandals and skeletons. If anything, it seems all the more intimate for its connection to food.

Keep in mind that this book will make you hungry. I have only read two other "food memoirs" but neither of them made me want to cook or eat as much as a single chapter of Tan's did. She describes dishes with such loving detail, I can just smell the pandan leaves and ginger and duck...and I appreciate the recipes at the back of the book just for this reason.

Recommendation: I highly recommend A Tiger in the Kitchen to anyone interested in Asia, food, or memoirs because of Tan's impressive writing, her thoughtful and amusing reflections on food and family, and the bittersweet connection she makes between family long gone through cooking.

Similar Reads: Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, Fannie's Last Supper by Chris Kimball

Tan, Cheryl Lu-Lien. A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family. New York: Hyperion, 2011.

Blood, Bones, and Butter

Title: Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Author: Gabrielle Hamilton
Themes: food, restaurants, growing up, family, drugs, marriage, Italy, New York, responsibility
Release: March 2011

Plot: Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty fierce, hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Hamilton’s ease and comfort in a kitchen were instilled in her at an early age when her parents hosted grand parties, often for more than one hundred friends and neighbors. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became as necessary to her as her own skin.

Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

Blood, Bones & Butter is an unflinching and lyrical work. Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion. By turns epic and intimate, it marks the debut of a tremendous literary talent.

My Thoughts: Hamilton is a writer of great talent; with a steady voice and an unflinching view of her sometimes difficult life. If she wasn't more attuned to physical work (i.e. the restaurant), I think I would be reading some excellent fiction from her instead of this memoir. From the title I had assumed that this book would be about Hamilton's experiences learning to cook and opening a restaurant in New York City. I was pleasantly surprised to find so much more. This is a full biography (up-to-the-present) of a hard working and dedicated individual with a variety of life experiences, both terrible and sublime.

Hamilton's childhood and family are covered in the first third of the book, titled "Blood." Her rather whimsical and unusual family dynamic are explored, and honestly a whole book could be written on her experiences up until age twelve. The radical changing of this family dynamic sets the foundation for the rest of the book, where Hamilton struggles for independence and adulthood through restaurant work, cocaine, several college stints, and eventually an MFA and a restaurant of her own.

"Bones" seems to be presented as an in-between period of her life. In this second third of the book Hamilton has pulled her life together and is now on the straight-and-narrow, exploring writing and cooking both. Of the entire book, all of which is very exciting to read, this is the most dry-simply because the reader knows something more must be coming up, and so much titillating things have already happened.

In the third and final section of the memoir, "Butter" describes Hamilton's more recent experiences, including a difficult marriage and two children, in addition to the running of a restaurant and the strained family relationships she faces from her own family as well as her Italian in-laws. This final segment is the most poignant, and it seems to be very heart-felt, leaving Hamilton's emotions and pains out in the open for all to read.

I heartily enjoyed this memoir of a chef, because it wasn't just about cooking and the restaurant business. Hamilton writes about life experiences and all of those things that lead to food and inspire food. Her life as a chef wasn't a given, this memoir shows the twisted path that led her there and examines incidents along the way. Her writing style is casual yet well-crafted prose, and her willingness to expose so many faults, mistakes, and current problems are bound to engender respect, at the very least.

Recommendation: Anyone who likes memoirs, food, tales of family troubles and triumphs, will enjoy Hamilton's well-crafted memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter. Be forewarned, there is rampant cursing, in addition to drugs, theft, and melodrama.

Similar Reads: Fannie's Last Supper by Chris Kimball, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell*, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain*, Heat by Bill Buford*, The Devil in the Kitchen by Marco Pierre White*

Hamilton, Gabrielle. Blood, Bones, and Butter:The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. New York: Random House, 2011.

* I haven't read any of these, but similarities do seem to exist!

Book Review: Fannie's Last Supper

Title: Fannie's Last Supper: Two Years, Twelve Courses, and Creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook
Author: Chris Kimball
Themes: Food, Victoriana, Boston, Entertaining, Food History

Plot: In the mid-1990s, Chris Kimball moved into an 1859 Victorian townhouse on the South End of Boston and, as he became accustomed to the quirks and peculiarities of the house and neighborhood, he began to wonder what it was like to live and cook in that era. In particular, he became fascinated with Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Published in 1896, it was the best-selling cookbook of its age--full of odd, long-forgotten ingredients, fascinating details about how the recipes were concocted, and some truly amazing dishes (as well as some awful ones).

In Fannie's Last Supper, Kimball describes the experience of re-creating one of Fannie Farmer's amazing menus: a twelve-course Christmas dinner that she served at the end of the century. Kimball immersed himself in composing twenty different recipes--including rissoles, Lobster à l'Américaine, Roast Goose with Chestnut Stuffing and Jus, and Mandarin Cake--with all the inherent difficulties of sourcing unusual animal parts and mastering many now-forgotten techniques, including regulating the heat on a coal cookstove and boiling a calf's head without its turning to mush, all sans food processor or oven thermometer. Kimball's research leads to many hilarious scenes, bizarre tastings, and an incredible armchair experience for any reader interested in food and the Victorian era.

Fannie's Last Supper includes the dishes from the dinner and revised and updated recipes from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. A culinary thriller. it offers a fresh look at something that most of us take for granted--the American table.

My Thoughts: I received this book from Early Reviewers, but didn't really know what to expect-a memoir? A cookbook? Or something more akin to "Julie and Julia?" While I wasn't sure in the first few "courses" I decided I really enjoyed the style of Kimball's book by the time he discussed "brain balls" and making gelatin from boiled calves' feet. This is a combination food history, cookbook, as well as a brief telling of a very grand 12 course feast.

Kimball decides to prepare a 12 course Victorian (well, American circa 1880s) feast in his vintage Boston house on traditional coal/wood burning ovens. Naturally, such a feat required two years of prep in which recipes are tried, methods are discussed, a "cast" is assembled, and appropriate dinnerware/silverware is found. But this makes up only about a third of the book. Another third is entirely a history of food, etiquette, science, technology, and cooking patterns in American (mostly Boston) homes in the late nineteenth century. The final third is made up of a select few handpicked recipes. The book is divided into courses, beginning with the punch served pre-dinner and ending with wine and cheese. While it may sound disjointed and perhaps a little frivolous and self-indulgent I found this book very enjoyable, and Kimball reflects on some serious issues as well as the frivolous.

As a lover of history, of food, of cookbooks, and of making as much as possible from scratch-I found this to be an entertaining as well as educational book. I closed the book far more excited then when I cracked it open.

Recommendation: While I loved this book, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. But, if you love food, cooking, the nineteenth century, entertaining, or just unusually memoirs I think Fannie's Last Supper worth checking out.

Similar Reads: While I haven't read either, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell and My Life in France by Julia Child both sound like similar reads. Surprisingly, I have not read anything similar to this before!

Kimball, Chris. Fannie's Last Supper: Two Years, Twelve Courses, and Creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook. New York: Hyperion, 2010.