Starred review from November 11, 2019
In this gorgeously written debut, London chef Eagle reflects on the foods, customs, and histories that come into play in selecting and serving a multi-dish lunch. Twenty-four essays guide readers in meal preparation while offering curious tidbits, cultural insights, and moral arguments on food (he disdains modern poultry farming). Eagle challenges the notion of recipes as “scientific sets of instructions,” instead proposing “they are more like short stories... told in a curious imperative.” While the chapter titles sound instructive—“On curing with salt,” “On almost frying”—he educates while contemplating such topics as Italy’s tolerance for bitter flavors, as well as meringues made out of sugar and blood (a little-known thickening agent) whipped “into a pinkly clouded mass.” He explains how brining “alters the structure of muscle cells” so they retain moisture, but he also waxes rhapsodically while preparing soup stock: “It is easy to believe that bones, lying as they do in the depths of ourselves, are the repository of the soul, or at least of special, vitally animal instincts: we know things, as they say, in our bones.” The recipes themselves are rewarding, including one featuring a wild-caught rabbit (which Eagle suggests one first blanch to get rid of the “grass excrement, of musk”) that becomes the centerpiece of a ragù. This wonderfully indulgent, pleasurable compilation of culinary meditations will thrill food lovers.
December 1, 2019
London-based chef Eagle, a contributor to various culinary journals, makes his book debut with a thoughtful meditation on the craft, chemistry, and cultural history of cooking and the "inexorable currents of history and economics" that influence taste. Winner of the Debut Food Book at the Fortnum & Mason's Awards, the author's unusual cooking manual lacks specific recipes, although he does devote several chapters to the process of making a rabbit stew. He dismisses the idea that recipes are "more-or-less scientific sets of instructions," seeing them "more like short stories--about history, about politics, and about love." Instead of emulating other cookbooks by presenting an "inaccurate account of the various things that have been done before," Eagle offers reflections on techniques--such as curing, boiling, pickling, slicing and dicing (including specific directions for onions)--that can be applied to a variety of cooking situations. "A recipe," he maintains, "is a work in progress, one outcome of a long, silent conversation between cook and cooked, which started before anyone alive today thought to pick up a knife." Once a cook knows how to make a stew, for example, complex recipes "from across the globe and the ages" are not necessary; instead, the cook would benefit more from "terse suggestions" that can be adapted to ingredients at hand. Eagle emphasizes the importance of salt, which should be added "sometimes with abandon, sometimes judiciously" at the beginning, middle, and end of cooking. Besides bringing out flavors, salt is integral to the movement of water. "The elemental act of cooking," he writes, "is chiefly the act of moving water from one place to another." In curing meat or fish, we draw water out; in boiling pasta, rice, polenta, gruel, or grain, we rehydrate. Although Eagle does not extol cooking as an art but rather a craft, he celebrates the ephemeral pleasure of eating, "where a forkful comes together with a sip and a word to produce something beautiful." A graceful, enlightening contribution to food writing.
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March 1, 2020
Where does cooking begin? In the kitchen? At the market? In the imagination? Or further back, when the meat and vegetables of the eventual meal were growing? Eagle is a chef, pickler, and blogger, and his debut book is an assured, thoughtful, and entertaining meditation on the nature of cooking and how it touches on so many aspects of existence, not the least of which is death. Through the spring meal of the title (pickles, mackerel, potatoes, celery, and rabbit), Eagle explores the centrality of salt and water, the use of pickling and fermentation to preserve and enliven food, the "otherness" of fish, and the neglect of vegetables. He doesn't shy away from the harder parts of cookery, including slaughter and butchery, and the recipes are not really the point; instead, one trenchant idea is how food creates a web of interconnection. VERDICT Eagle enjoys thinking about food in all its ephemerality and here succeeds in sharing that experience. A solid pick for fans of food writers Nigel Slater, John Thorne, or Laurie Colwin.--Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2019
Like many contemporary chefs, Eagle likes to philosophize about ingredients. He looks at the most mundane, taken-for-granted elements of cooking and finds in them science, culture, and wisdom. For him, salt is key. He notes that for much of history, salt was much more than a flavor enhancer. It, along with smoking and drying techniques, kept people fed by allowing transport and preservation when winter weather meant little fresh meat or produce. Much of East Asian cuisine depends on fermentation of vegetables for its attractive, distinctive flavors. Ubiquitous Worcestershire sauce derives from fermented anchovies, which also made ancient Roman food tasty. Onions and celery account for many desirable flavors. And meat comes in many guises from huge cattle to tiny rabbits. Habit governs a lot of eating. For example, Friday fish, once a mark of abstinence, has become a treat with luxurious lobster with drawn butter scarcely a symbol of suffering. Eagle's ruminative prose offers as much for the mind as for the stomach.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)