Love in a Dish... and Other Culinary Delights

129 Pages·2011·1.23 MB·English

by  M.F.K. Fisher

selected and introduced by anne Zimmerman u.s. $18.95
M.F.K. Fisher helped shape the genre we call food PrAise FOr M.F.K. Fisher Whether the suBJect OF her FAncy is
writing. Over her expansive career Fisher’s work the lowly, unassuming potato or the love
comprised twenty-six books. she received lifetime “if i were still teaching high-school english, i’d use [Fisher’s] books to show life of that aphrodisiac mollusk the oyster,
achievement awards from the James Beard Founda- how to write simply, how to enjoy food and drink but, most of all, how to Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher writes with
tion and the American institute of Wine and Food. enjoy life. her books and letters are one feast after another.” a simplicity that belies the complexities of
she died in 1992. the life she often muses on. she is hailed as
—FrAnK MccOurt
. one of America’s preeminent writers about

Anne ZiMMerMAn is the author of An Extrava- “she writes about fleeting tastes and feasts vividly, excitingly, sensuously, . gastronomy, but to limit her to that genre

.
gant Hunger, a biography of M.F.K. Fisher. she lives exquisitely. there is almost a wicked thrill in following her uninhibited would be a disservice. she was passionate
a
in san Francisco. track through the glories of the good life.” n and well-traveled, and her narratives fill over
d
—JAMes BeArd o two dozen highly acclaimed books. in this
th collection of some of her finest works, we
“M.F.K. Fisher is our greatest food writer because she puts food in the e
r learn that Fisher’s palette was not only well
mount, the mind and the imagination all at the same time. Beyond the c trained in gastronomical masterpieces, but in
gastronomical bravura, she is a passionate woman; food is her metaphor.” u
l life’s best pleasures as well.
—shAnA AlexAnder i
n Love in a Dish . . . and Other Culinary
a
r Delights is an instructional manual on how
“i do not know of anyone in the united states . . . who writes better prose.” y
to live, eat, and love, brought together by
—W. h. Auden d
e prolific researcher and culinary enthusiast
l
i Anne Zimmerman. With great care she has
g
h selected essays that sometimes forgive
t
s our lustful appetites, yet simultaneously

celebrate them, as in “Once a tramp,
Always . . . ” and “love in a dish,” which
m guides us down the path to marital bliss
.
f via the family dining table.
. it is through these carefully chosen selec-
k
. tions, which include two essays never before
COUNTERPOINT
www.counterpointpress.com f collected in book form, that we encounter
i
distributed by Publishers Group West s Fisher’s bold passion for cuisine and an
h introduction to her idea of what constitutes
cover art & Jacket by: Briar levit e
the delicious life.
r
ISBN 978-1-58243-741-5
51895
m . f . k . f i s h e r
9 781582 437415
Love in a Dish . . . and Other Culinary Delights
MARY FRANCES KENNEDY FISHER (1908–1992) is consid-
ered one of the greatest American food writers of the
twentieth century. In 1929, the newly married Fisher
travelled with her husband to Dijon, in France, where
she tasted real French cooking for the first time and
learned how to live and eat well and economically. She
returned in 1932 to an American appetite weakened by
the Great Depression and began to write essays of her own.
The author of many books, including the wartime clas-
sic How to Cook a Wolf, she aimed always to inspire
cooks and combined recipes with reflection, anecdote
and passionate storytelling. Considered the ‘poet of the
appetites’ by John Updike, and hailed by W. H. Auden as
the greatest American prose writer, her culinary essays
have become American classics.

Love in a Dish . . .
and Other Culinary
Delights
M. F. K. FISHER
Selected by Anne Zimmerman
counterpoint
berkeley
Love in a Dish . . . and Other Culinary Delights
Copyright © 2011 by M.F.K. Fisher c/o Robert Lescher, Trustee of the Literary Trust.
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fisher, M. F. K. (Mary Frances Kennedy), 1908–1992.
Love in a dish : and other culinary delights / by M.F.K. Fisher ;
edited by Anne Zimmerman.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58243-741-5 (hardback)
1. Gastronomy. 2. Cooking. I. Zimmerman, Anne, 1977– II. Title.
TX633.F5194 2011
641.01’3—dc22
2011005393
ISBN 978-1-58243-741-5
Cover design by Briarmade
Printed in the United States of America
counterpoint
1919 Fifth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction vii
Uncle Evans 1
I Was Really Very Hungry 4
Let the Sky Rain Potatoes 17
How Not to Cook an Egg 22
Love Was the Pearl 33
G is for Gluttony 38
Once a Tramp, Always . . . 45
Love in a Dish 58
Two Kitchens in Provence 65
Love Letter to an Empty Shell 92
Wine is Life 101

Introduction
By Anne Zimmerman
The title of this book: Love In a Dish . . . and Other Culi-
nary Delights, was picked long before I sat down to write
an introduction to this small collection of amusing,
occasionally sad, and always profound essays. This is
often how it works in the book world. The title comes
first, and the introduction last, whereas in school, you’d
pen your introduction right off the bat, and then finish
it off with a zinger of a title.
But this book is far more than a petite chocolate box
of M.F.K. Fisher delights. It’s a feast of classic M.F.K.
Fisher. There’s an article about the astonishing perfec-
tion of the egg, trademark Fisher musings on oysters,
and advice on how to seduce (and keep) a husband. The
essays illustrate the arc of her brilliant career as one of
America’s greatest food writers and gastronomes.
The selections were not easy to pick, or find. Six
months after Gourmet magazine shuttered, I sat in the
reading room of the Schlesinger Library on the campus
of Harvard University where M.F.K. Fisher’s archives are
stored. Beside me on a rolling library cart were five over-
sized boxes, filled with magazines. There were stacks of
House Beautiful, piles of Travel and Leisure, and a thick
collection of Gourmet.
I flipped through the pages, a bit horrified. Many of
these print magazines were out of business or teetering
vii
M. F. K. Fisher
on the edge. With each passing, a collection of work by
M.F.K. Fisher was cataloged and delegated to deep
library storage boxes. There they waited for someone
like me—a scholar and fan—to call them forth from the
basement.
But how many people, I wondered, would make the
journey I had: requiring the requisite permissions, the
red-eye flight across the country, and the hours of sitting
in a chilly library reading room. Not many. The result?
As beloved as she is, it is becoming increasingly hard to
enjoy the full range of M.F.K. Fisher’s work. As beloved
as she is, many of her characteristically amusing pieces
are now officially hard to find, even for the most devoted.
Thus, I took my task seriously. For this book, I wanted
essays that were stylistically adept and beautifully writ-
ten—typically poised and completely M.F.K. Fisher. Yet,
I also wanted pieces that, perhaps, weren’t as popular
and well-known as many of the excerpts from her
favored, oft quoted books like Serve it Forth, The Gastro-
nomical Me, and An Alphabet for Gourmets.
I had originally fallen in love with M.F.K. Fisher, the
book author. I was spellbound by her affair with food
and the way, it seemed, she viewed meals as one of the
central characters in the most profound moments of her
life. But the work I found in those boxes of magazines
introduced me to a M.F.K. Fisher I hadn’t thought much
about. Yes, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was the author
of many honest, entertaining, and gastronomically rich
books. But she also churned out numerous shorter arti-
cles. These were the words that paid the bills, bought
viii
Love in a Dish
groceries for her family, and purchased clothes or a fancy
new hat.
Several of the pieces in this book are ones that were
periodically due to demanding editors. These were
pieces she loved to write because they were quick, easy,
and enjoyable. Yet they also represented numerous pres-
sures: the pressure to create, to sustain her reputation as
a culinary doyenne, to earn money and notoriety, and
fame. From a practical standpoint, they were also, I
imagine, assignments that were occasionally frustrat-
ing—just how many ways could she describe a delightful
ladies lunch?
As a working writer who began her career in the late
1930s, M.F.K. Fisher wrote with extreme honesty about
her personal hungers and the things that made her
happy—specifically the resounding pleasure of a deeply
satisfying meal.
The first piece in this book, casually titled “Uncle
Evans” recounts a formative cross-country trip with her
uncle. She was a teenager, he an accomplished lawyer
and sophisticate. It was her true introduction to travel:
“I probably heard and felt and tasted more than either of
us could ever be aware of,” she admitted.
But it was this awareness of food, and the role it
played in her life and the lives of others that birthed a
writing career. M.F.K. Fisher loved Europe, particularly
France, and wrote about it often. In “I Was Really Very
Hungry” she teases readers with a grandiose story of
how she was an “accidental victim” of passionate gour-
mets at a country restaurant where the waitress and
ix