America's favorite storyteller, Pat Conroy, is back with a unique
cookbook that only he could conceive. Delighting us with tales of his
passion for cooking and good food and the people, places, and great
meals he has experienced, Conroy mixes them together with mouthwatering
recipes from the Deep South and the world beyond.
It all started thirty years ago with a chance purchase of The Escoffier
Cookbook, an unlikely and daunting introduction for the beginner. But
Conroy was more than up to the task. He set out with unwavering
determination to learn the basics of French cooking--stocks and
dough--and moved swiftly on to veal demi-glace and pâte brisée. With the
help of his culinary accomplice, Suzanne Williamson Pollak, Conroy
mastered the dishes of his beloved South as well as the cuisine he has
savored in places as far away from home as Paris, Rome, and San
Francisco.
Each chapter opens with a story told with the inimitable brio of the
author. We see Conroy in New Orleans celebrating his triumphant novel
The Prince of Tides at a new restaurant where there is a contretemps
with its hardworking young owner/chef--years later he discovered the
earnest young chef was none other than Emeril Lagasse; we accompany Pat
and his wife on their honeymoon in Italy and wander with him,
wonderstruck, through the markets of Umbria and Rome; we learn how a
dinner with his fighter-pilot father was preceded by the Great Santini
himself acting out a perilous night flight that would become the last
chapters of one of his son's most beloved novels. These tales and more
are followed by corresponding recipes--from Breakfast Shrimp and Grits
and Sweet Potato Rolls to Pappardelle with Prosciutto and Chestnuts and
Beefsteak Florentine to Peppered Peaches and Creme Brulee. A master
storyteller and passionate cook, Conroy believes that "A recipe is a
story that ends with a good meal."
"This book is the story of my life as it relates to the subject of food.
It is my autobiography in food and meals and restaurants and countries
far and near. Let me take you to a restaurant on the Left Bank of Paris
that I found when writing The Lords of Discipline. There are meals I
ate in Rome while writing The Prince of Tides that ache in my memory
when I resurrect them. There is a shrimp dish I ate in an elegant
English restaurant, where Cuban cigars were passed out to all the
gentlemen in the room after dinner, that I can taste on my palate as I
write this. There is barbecue and its variations in the South, and the
subject is a holy one to me. I write of truffles in the Dordogne Valley
in France, cilantro in Bangkok, catfish in Alabama, scuppernong in South
Carolina, Chinese food from my years in San Francisco, and white
asparagus from the first meal my agent took me to in New York City. Let
me tell you about the fabulous things I have eaten in my life, the story
of the food I have encountered along the way. . . "
