French Provincial Cooking
My first cookbook, bought when I hadn't a good knife to my name. Got said knife at her cookshop from her own hand. This is the cookbook that took me out of Minnesota.
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Merry White
Food anthropologist
https://www.bu.edu/anthrop/people/faculty/m-white/Merry White is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University, specializing in Japanese studies. Her research interests have included Japanese education, Japanese families and social policy, urban life in Japan, and food culture in Japan. Books she has written include The Japanese Educational Challenge, Japanese Overseas, The Material Child, Perfectly Japanese and most recently, Coffee Life in Japan. This recent book treats coffee and cafes in Japanese social history, emphasizing the functions, ubiquity and character of these important “third spaces” in people’s lives. She is a food anthropologist whose career includes professional catering and cookbook writing. Her first cookbook, Cooking for Crowds, was recently republished as a 40th Anniversary edition by Princeton University Press.
Merry White’s current research project concerns food work in Japan, including all aspects of the production and provision of food. She has visited farms and large-scale factories, artisanal food workshops, home kitchens, restaurants and yatai, cooking schools, and training programs for chefs. At this time, she will focus on the tools of cooking, including knife-making and other significant utensils for the production of food.
Merry White received the Imperial honor from the Government of Japan, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays and Neck Ribbon.
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Merry's favorite cookbooks
The Joy of Cooking
I seem to have several JCs: Julia Child, Joyce Chen and J of C. They are equally tattered and this one held together by duct tape. My only brownie recipe is covered in chocolate: you can lick the page.
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
As a young caterer, I relied heavily on her - and she came to my rescue often, knowing it was me when I called as I was always in tears. The Charlotte Malakov au chocolat was a crowd pleaser. She was the real deal.
Jerusalem
Non-stop wonderful. I have cooked my way through it with kudos at every recipe: flavor first, no matter how many substitutions I have to make.
The Good Food of Szechwan
The best Chinese cookbook, period. You don't have to love hot chilis to love this book.
In Nonna's Kitchen
Every Italian grandmother in this book is a star and the torta della nonna is fabulous.
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art
Only slightly disingenuous. It helped me channel my mid 1970s year of cooking school in Japan into practical uses today.
Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen
Superlative and comes with the sense you are in her kitchen. Eminently trustworthy and exceedingly savory.
Cooking in a Bedsitter
Yes, I know, not really way up there but I loved it living in same in the UK and she had such a sense of humor.
My Paris Kitchen
Lebovitz, like all good writers, brings you along with him and I enjoy his wonder at the good things available only in his adopted home in Paris.
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