Bittersweet: Lessons from My Mother's Kitchen
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.63 (704 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1408809605 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-02-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"elegant prose, beautiful and tragic" according to David A. Lawrence. A moving and fascinating book by a gifted journalist, who focuses his investigative talents this time on his own childhood. Years covering the world's most complicated conflict zones apparently gave McAlester great practice at untangling individual tragedy and spinning it into elega. A touching memoir - couldn't put it down! I was very moved by this book. After Matt McAllester's mother dies, he uses her cookbooks to reconnect with the warm, loving woman of his childhood, before she was consumed by mental illness. As he is doing so, he reflects on his own struggles to conceive a child with his new wife. . "A page-turner" according to Louise Harris. Matthew McAllester's memoir is a beautifully written book about coming to terms with the death of his mother while he makes the difficult journey towards being a parent himself. A highly acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, Matthew writes sparely but tenderly
Using the wise work of British celebrity chef Elizabeth David, his mother's true north in all things culinary, McAllester masters cassoulet, lobster, elaborate omelets, and steak with bordelaise sauce, gaining not only in confidence and ability but in understanding and acceptance. . As he tries to makes sense of his mother's declining years, visiting past residences and even requesting her medical files, McAllester loses some of his enthusiasm for cooking, but brings his mother's complicated, troubled soul into focus. The process involves McAllester's touching descriptions of his mother's dishes and the memories they elicit: strawberry ice cream, homemade bread and a stolen taste of fresh parsley all provoke fond stories of his mother in her prime. From Publishers Weekly In this eloquent tribute, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McAllester (Blinded by the Sunlight: Surviving Abu Ghraib an
Pole-axed, and also astonished to be grieving for a woman who had been largely absent from his life, lost for two-and-a-half decades in her private world of madness. Bittersweet is McAllester's poignant account of rediscovering his mother's life, coming to terms with her death, and travelling towards a new future as a father. On a sunny morning in May 2005, foreign correspondent Matt McAllester's mother, Ann, died unexpectedly of a heart attack, and despite having spent six years reporting on death and devastation from the world's most brutal war zones, he was pole-axed by grief. In the weeks and months that followed, Matt found himself poring over old family photos and letters, searching for the warm, quick-witted and beautiful woman he remembered from his earliest childhood, who had now vanished for the second time. But as he looked anew at her long-cherished collection of cookbooks, it occurred to him that the best way to find her again might be through something they both treasured: the food she had once lovingly prepared for her family before she was snatched away from them by illness. With the help of Elizabeth David, the cookery writer his mother most revered, Matt embarked on a culinary journey, returning from the front lines to cook Ann's much-loved recipes: from cassoulet, to spare ribs, to steak with Bordelaise sauce, to oeufs en cocotte, to str