An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David -- BOOK BEGINNIGNS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

In thirty five years of writing about food and cookery I have contributed articles to a very various collection of publications.

-- from An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David. I admit that opening sentence doesn’t grab me!

I love food writing. My favorites are the classic American food writers, like M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and Ruth Reichl. Elizabeth David is the English version of these favorite authors, but I’ve never read any of her books. I have her famous books, including A Book of Mediterranean Food and French Provincial Cooking, on my TBR shelf. But I’ve never tried any of her books.

I decided to start with this one, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. It is a collection of her newspaper columns and other articles. I love the cover on my American edition.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. Please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings if you share on social media.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from An Omelette and a Glass of Wine:

All this seems to be typical of the uneasy phase which English cooking is going through. As soon as any dish with a vaguely romantic sounding name (you may well ask why anyone should associate Vichy with romance) becomes known you find it’s got befogged by the solemn mystique which can elevate a routine leak and potato soup into what the heroine of a recent upper-class-larks novel refers to as “my perfected Vichyssoise.”

This is from a November 5, 1961, article in Punch. Elizabeth David wrote during the bad old days of British cooking, when post-war rationing was still in place or cooks were still acting like it was. She writes often, and with scorn, about canned (“tinned”) food, skimpy supplies, and generally bad cooking.