EATING HEAVEN

Rousseau on the joys of eating seasonally

“Nothing is more insipid than forced fruits. A wealthy man in Paris, with all his stoves and hot-houses, only succeeds in getting all the year round poor fruits and poor vegetables for his table at a very high price. If I had cherries in frost, and golden melons in the depths of winter, what pleasure…

Rousseau on the joys of eating locally

“In my food I will always choose what most owes its charms to nature, and what has passed through the fewest possible hands on its way to the table. I will be on my guard against fraudulent shams: I will go out to meet pleasure. No cook shall grow rich on my gross and foolish…

On monks and large coffees

When it comes to coffee, I don’t do large. That Venti at the American chain Starbucks is just gauche! There’s something about excess in coffee that disrespects the genius (and potency) of the espresso shot. No thank you. My regular will do me just fine. That said, the monks of the 18th century might disagree. The…

Slater on what makes food good

“And don’t let anyone tell you that the food is the only thing that matters. That’s rubbish. Where you eat something, who you eat it with and what you do afterwards is just as important. Eating is a whole package, not just what is on the plate. Food always tastes better in the right place,…

Marin on food and eucharist

“One might say that every culinary sign is Eucharistic in some sense and to some extent; or, to pursue this vein of thought one step further, one might say that all cookery involves a theological, ideological, political, and economic operation by the means of which a nonsignified edible food stuff is transformed into a sign-body…

Berry on eating

“The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best….

Nouwen on the table

‘Although the table is a place for intimacy, we all know how easily it can become a place of distance, hostility, and even hatred. Precisely because the table is meant to be an intimate place, it easily becomes the place we experience the absence of intimacy. The table reveals the tensions among us. When husband…

Grocery shopping in the time of coronavirus

I went to the market this morning: the Queen Vic on the edge of Melbourne’s CBD. It’s a Friday morning thing. My son and I load up our fold-away shopping cart in the back of the car and make the short journey to do our weekly shop for veggies, meat, seafood, dairy and coffee. Most of our…

What’s for dinner?

So about this home cooking business. I enjoy it, mostly. But honestly, cooking in this weird time of social isolation and lockdown, the pressure to make each meal an event — a highlight of an otherwise grey day — is considerable. The stakes are higher, don’t you think? It reminds me of a passage from the…

A bellyful of oysters

In 1798 I was at Versailles as a commissioner of the Directory, and had fairly frequent dealings with Monsieur Laperte, who was secretary to the tribunal of the department. He was extremely fond of oysters and used to complain of having never eaten enough of them, or, as he put it, ‘had his bellyful of…

Lemon and poppy seed cake

You could call it my opium cake. I prefer the more genteel descriptor: lemon and poppy seed. It’s a delicious cake, made all the better when, straight from the oven, you douse it in a lemon glaze that seeps all the way through. It’s a lovely addition to afternoon tea. In fact, it reminds me…

Ayres on Good Food

“A quest for ‘good food’ cannot be built solely on aesthetic or cultural grounds, particularly for people of faith. To call food good demands a moral analysis of how food is produced, distributed and consumed in society. Otherwise, the ideal of good food is reserved for the farmers market set, a snobbish exercise of privileged…

A farmer’s wife

I have spent the last month immersed in cookery books; old ones from the 17th through to the mid 20th century. They are mainly handmade books — collations of recipes, medicines and kitchen wisdom from women in humble circumstances. I’ve met some extraordinary collators. One of those is Anne Hughes, the wife of an English…

Muto on gratitude

“To be a taker of food or any other commodity without appreciation diminishes our humanity. The height of selfishness corresponds to the avaricious depths of assuming that we are the reason the giver exits. Mother’s table is for me; all the thanks she needs is for me to eat my fill of what is on…

Poetry from the kitchen #4

Nancy Willard on how to stuff a pepper An award winning writer of children’s books, the late Nancy Willard was also a novelist, poet and an observer of ordinary things. Even better, she wrote recipes … my kind of recipes. I’m a cook who doesn’t like to be told. Entice me with visions then leave the rest to me….

A Steamy Pentecost

In Eating Heaven, I tried to say something about the café and the role its tables play in our cities and lives. Then I find the collected poems of Irish poet Michael O’Siadhail, and discover he says it with more beauty and fewer words. I tip my hat. Lunchtime in a London Café Table by table…

Rousseau on wine

“Indeed, I must say that good wine seems to me an excellent thing, and I do not at all dislike getting merry as long as I am not forced to do it. I have always observed that false people are sober, and that a great reserve at table is quite often a sign of artificial…

Coffee: the rare friend

“Brewed from beans freshly roasted and ground, good coffee is as transient and enchanting as its own steam or the company of an elderly friend, all the more brilliant and wise because he or she is aware of mortal limits. A perfect cup is much less if it has to stand five minutes during an…

Capon on the taste of eternity

“To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever…

Koffmann on embroidery and cheese

“When I am working in the kitchen, I never wear a toque. It is something I find slightly pretentious. I feel the same way over the more recent custom of embroidering chefs’ names on their jackets. I find it ridiculous and more than unnecessary to have my name written on me as though I were…