Summer Cooking

by Elizabeth David

Overview

For Elizabeth David, summer fare meant fresh, seasonal food—recipes that could be prepared quickly and savored slowly, from Gnocchi alla Genovese (‘simply an excuse for eating pesto’) to La Poule au Pot to Gooseberry Fool. Her 1955 classic work, now reissued in a handsome, attractively priced hardback edition, includes an overview of herbs as well as chapters on impromptu cooking for holidays and picnics.

Divided into chapters on Soups, Salads, Eggs, Fish, Meat, Poultry and Game, Vegetables, and Sweets, it contains recipes from all over the world. Summer Cooking is a witty, precise companion for feasting in the warmer months — every bit as unexpected and enchanting to read today as it was 50 years ago. But the purest thrill of Summer Cooking, as in all of her books, is the pleasure her food delivers and the graceful way her prose captures the reader’s delight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781908117045
Publisher:	Grub Street
Publication date:	07/14/2011
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth David (1913-1992) was brought up in an outwardly idyllic seventeenth-century Sussex farmhouse, Wootton Manor, and her interest in cooking may well have been a response to the less-than-stellar meals on offer there. During World War II she lived in France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt (where she worked for the Ministry of Information), and spent much of her time researching and cooking local fare. On her return to London in 1946, David began to write cooking articles, and in 1949 the publisher John Lehmann offered her a hundred-pound advance for A Book of Mediterranean Food. When it came out the following year, it proved a revelation to Anglo-Saxon appetites. Summer Cooking (1955, also published by NYRB Classics) consolidated her position as the foremost food writer of her day. David continued to be a student of her art throughout her life. Always an innovative force, she even persuaded Le Creuset to extend its range of cookware colors by pointing at a pack of Gauloises. “That’s the blue I want,” she said. Elizabeth David was awarded a CBE, made a Chevalier de l’Ordre de Mérite Agricole, and—the honor that pleased her most—elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Molly O’Neill writes profiles and feature stories for The New Yorker. She was the longtime food columnist for the New York Times Magazine. She is the host of the PBS series Great Food and has published three award-winning cookbooks, The New York Cookbook (1992), A Well-Seasoned Appetite (1995), and The Pleasure of Your Company (1997).

Table of Contents

	Foreword	1
	Introduction	7
	Introduction to the 1965 Edition	11
	Acknowledgements	13
	Fresh Herbs	15
	Hors d'oeuvre and Salads	26
	Soups	46
	Eggs	60
	Fish	73
	Meat	89
	Poultry and Game	109
	Vegetables	124
	Sauces	146
	Sweets	158
	Jams, Jellies and Other Preserves	173
	Buffet Food	188
	Improvised Cooking for Holidays and Week-ends	197
	Picnics	208
	Conversion Tables	218
	Index	221

Editorial Reviews

These debuted in 1950 and 1955, respectively, thrusting the British-born David into the cooking limelight. She is credited with debunking a lot of myths involving foods and their preparation. These editions contain new forewords by Clarissa Dickson Wright, one of TV's famed Fat Ladies, who introduces the Mediterranean volume, and New Yorker columnist Molly O'Neill who offers her take on Summer Cooking. With the remarkable popularity of cooking shows, these might be more popular now. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"Decorated with a portrait of twin cherries, yellow runner beans, and the sweet, petite wild strawberries known as frais de bois, to urban eyes starved of July's sensual delights, the sunny cover of Summer Cooking seems to promise a storybook world...Summer Cooking is a wonderfully subversive volume — every bit as unexpected and enchanting to read today as it must have been 50 years ago...But the purest thrill of Summer Cooking,as in all of David's volumes, is the nearly pugilistic punch of pleasure her food delivers, and the graceful way her bright, well-mannered prose captures the artist's fleeting delight...Whether read in bed in a baking tenement or at the breezy desk of a lolling barge, her words still ring like hypnotic prayers." —Salon.com

From the Publisher