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Sunday, August 24, 2008

Summer Reading


What a long week. As the blog days of summer come to an end and I get back to work, Erik works what seems like 30 doubles in a row, covering for his sous chef. Where did the summer go? Is anyone else feeling like they're trying to squeeze in a whole summer within the last couple weeks of August?

I am grateful for my extended weekends during the summer because I've been able to do a lot of reading. I just got my hands on a great book, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn. Complete with recipes, this non-fiction tells of an American attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.
THE SHARPER YOUR KNIFE, THE LESS YOU CRY is the touching and humorous story of Flinn’s transformation as she makes her way through the school’s arduous
curriculum and finds her soulmate along the way. It follows the good (falling in love in the most romantic city in the world while learning to cook like Julia Child) and the bad (with only a very basic understanding of the French language, learning to gut fish and cut the heads off rabbits under the strict tutelage of ill-tempered chefs). “The sharper your knife, the less you cry,” Le Cordon Bleu’s Chef Savard told the class, referring to onions, but Kathleen came to understand his words as so much more.

I enjoy reading food related books, and this one was no exception. I felt like I learned so much about French cooking, and the history of one of the most famous cooking schools in the world. It seems very different than what I imagined. After reading, I almost wanted to enter culinary school and I certainly want to make another visit to Paris. I would recommend this book, especially those interested in the culinary industry from the educational route.It's also very interesting to hear this story from a woman, the clear minority in the culinary world. I was hooked by page one with this quote by Harriet Van Horne:

"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon, or not at all."

You said it, sister! Chefs enter into this world leaving everything behind. Cooks give up so much, but not only the ones who choose to cook, the ones who love them sacrifice too.

DCW_NYC

-Hilary-




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll have to check it out. I just finished Eat, Pray, Love and really enjoyed it. I like memoirs and this one should be interesting to read as a chef's wife.

Good luck on the new school year! Hope you get a good class!

-Erin

Anonymous said...

I love that quote, too, and I have it up on my web site along with some others at the bottom of each page. Sounds like a great book!