The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes and Stories of My Life
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- ISBN13: 9780385532716
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
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 excellent food and the people, places, and fantastic meals he has veteran, Conroy mixes them together with mouthwatering recipes from the Deep South and the world beyond.
It all ongoing thirty years ago with a chance buy 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 stirred swiftly on to veal demi-glace and pâte brisée. With the help of his culinary co-conspirator, 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 tale told with the unique brio of the leader. 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 learned the earnest young chef was none additional 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 Fantastic 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 tale that ends with a excellent meal.”
“This book is the tale of my life as it relates to the theme 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 establish 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 theme 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 tale of the food I have encountered along the way. . . ”
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This is a mouth-watering cookbook with lots of fantastic recipes, and I can’t thank Mr. Conroy enough for sharing them with us. I’m sure that, when all is said and done, a lot of these recipes will become stable staples of my repertoire.
With that said, I have to add that this book is terribly flawed by two things–its inflated speechifying and its clunky dialogue. Granted, all of the events in this book supposedly happened and all of the people spoke the words Conroy claims they spoke. But these “real people” just don’t SOUND real. I’m not accusing Mr. Conroy of fabricating dialogue–I’m just adage that his dialogue just doesn’t ring right. It sounds inflated, artificial. And while some of his descriptions of food are, well, “tasty,” persons descriptions come wrapped in yards of inflated speechifying that, like the dialogue, grates on the reader’s ear.
I should add that these same flaws have prevented me from ever being able to read Mr. Conroy’s fiction. But persons flaws can’t “kill” a superb cookbook. I just wish that Mr. Conroy hadn’t “burnt” it, so to speak.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I have permanently been a fan of Pat Conroy, and although this is the first cookbook he’s written, the recipes sound tasty. I am amazed at his life tales that are running through the book. He certainly weaves them in with the recipes in a most entertaining way.
He’s a fantastic writer … and a fine cook, from what I hear.
You can’t go incorrect with any book with his name on it.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I am sure I will read anything and everything Pat Conroy puts down with pen on paper. He is reasonably simply that excellent a wordsmith. But, I made a bet with myself that he could somehow work in what a rotten father his dad was – as if we didn’t get the thought already – in a cookbook. Only Conroy could delicately fold in the beaten egg whites of his abused childhood with the flavor of walking in on his father having an affair with a recipe for corn pone, shrimp and grits and glazed pecans.
I reflect Conroy needs to know that he is a excellent enough writer that people who read him will have read a lot of him. And to that degree, there is really nothing else he can write about his father that we haven’t already read or really care to read more about. I want to see how he might grow as a writer, not to mention as a human being, when he produces a work that does not find a thread or two about his abused childhood. He mentions that he considers cilantro to be “Satan’s herb” and that it ruins any dish it finds itself in. The Fantastic Santini is apt the cilantro of his works. He would be best advised to use it sparingly, if at all, in the future.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Pat,
I loved Prince of Tides and tried to get my son to read, but the damn fool was immersed in all this Mississippi Delta stuff. You know us long suffering mothers!!! Well, finally, he selected up “Lords of Discipline,” and he said you were “incredible.” About Time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Incredible Grace,
Susan
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is a very unusual cookbook. It was a warm remembrance of life at the time he learned various recipes. It reminds me of events or people that come to mind when I cook certain dishes.
It is a lovely gift for a name who enjoys cooking and remembering! Highly recommend!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5