Food writing highlights
This summer I discovered I loved prawns. As lockdown eases in June and my birthday arrives, my friends and I meet up for the first time in ages to celebrate in the garden. We scoop up bademjansalata with warm pitta, and share prawns that shimmer with garlic oil, split down the centre and stacked in foil trays. When winter brings another lockdown, my dad buys prawns from the fishmonger who rings at the door. He grills them and they are laid across a risotto, or buried treasure in a salad. As the New Year crawls in, I travel back up North with a bag of these frozen doorstep prawns. I love eating them in spaghetti slick with olive oil, catching specks of pepper and bruised tomato skin on its strands. The small bag in the freezer serves me two meals, and I haven't had a prawn since. Food and eating become different in a kitchen shared with six other people, each cooking their own meal. Fridge and freezer space is limited, earning your turn on the hob a careful game of strategy. I become lazy with cooking when I return here, choosing meals that are quick to prepare, the same ingredients week on week. I think this is why I get drawn into food writing when I don’t feel like cooking. There's something so satisfying about reading through the steps of a recipe you don't intend to make. Comfort and second-hand joy from other's flavours and consuming through their writing. Here are some of my recently read favourite examples of food writing - so dig in, I hope you enjoy.
Midnight Chicken - Ella Risbridger
I read Midnight Chicken from cover to cover one weekend. It made me cry. Twice. Once when I read it, then again when I tried to explain it to my sister (she cried as well). Part memoir, part self-help book, part cookbook, Midnight Chicken focuses on the transformative nature of cooking. How food can heal, soothe and reconnect. It is a collection of all the meals and recipes that make life worth living: slick towers of pasta and warm fudgy blondies, pizza sauce stains and the crispy skin of a roast bird. The beauty of Risbridger's book is in its acceptance that food doesn't have to be perfect, and in fact, like life, often goes wrong, but nonetheless can still offer comfort, guide and pick you up. I haven't cooked any of the recipes from Midnight Chicken yet, but Risbridger has created a cookbook that nourishes in many ways - it is full of hope, love and intimacy, asking you to enjoy the small moments, acknowledging that the best food is messy, cooked in a tiny dark kitchen and served on mismatched plates by someone you love.
The Food Almanac - Miranda York
An assortment of recipes, stories and essays, The Food Almanac guides you through each month, focusing on seasonal ingredients and celebrations. It details how every month promises great food, whether that be sinking down into the warm starchy comforts of winter, or the unfurling freshness of spring. Accompanied by beautiful illustrations, it includes stories of food, meals and festivities from different countries and cultures. Each month starts with a list of produce in season and ends with a menu to celebrate the culinary highlights of those weeks. I also really appreciated the list of further reading at the end of each section, marking The Food Almanac's place as a beginner's bible to food writing, and an ideal gift.
What's She Having - Various authors, published by Dear Damsels
What She's Having is the latest release by independent publishing platform and writing community, Dear Damsels. They run a blog, a podcast and release themed collections featuring female writing across different genres. Through fiction, poetry and non-fiction, What She's Having explores the relationship women have to food. I guarantee this collection will satisfy you, no matter what you're craving. Food has always been imbued with meaning - what we eat, cook and desire carries personal, cultural and emotional significance and this idea twists through every piece. Meals and flavours guide the collection through grief, nostalgia, even shameless joy. Every bite of this book promises something different, one moment a careful, heart-wrenching essay, the next, a celebratory poem. It is this blend of genres that really sets What She's Having apart. There are tales of food as a cultural connection, a quiet moment alone, the bridge connecting a disintegrating friendship, carnal, bloody desire and the stained tupperwares of grief. I haven't enjoyed a collection as much as this in a while, perfectly balanced, with delicious writing, all wrapped up within a beautiful cover.
In The Kitchen - Various authors, published by Daunt Books
My final recommendation, In The Kitchen, is a collection of essays on food and everything that comes with it - ovens and buffets and cookbooks. It highlights how the space of the kitchen is so often the heart of our homes, and food such a core part of relationships, identities and communities. It features some of my favourite authors: Nina Mingya Powles' Tiny Moons is responsible for first getting me hooked on food writing, so I really enjoyed reading more of her work. I loved Ruby Tandoh's retrospective on her relationship, explored through her Filipino partner's tastebuds but I particularly adored Ella Risdbridger's essay on kitchen intimacy. She details how she has always fallen in love in kitchens, and that there is no greater way of saying I love you than a cup of tea, made without question, in your favourite mug. This is a wide-reaching and thoroughly enjoyable essay collection by a host of truly talented writers.
All of these books look at the ways in which food is so much more than what's on the plate. and demonstrate how it connects us to things outside of ourselves. This is why I love food writing as an alternative way to consume, to enjoy food even when you can't find a free hob in the kitchen.