Anna Thomas

This is a book I open at random and find delight -- and then after a while realize that I’ve been reading for an hour. It is transporting. Patience Gray is such a beautiful writer; in the genre of food memoir there is no one better.

And anything else by Julia Child! What a teacher. And such a generous spirit – she really did want us all to know how to get it right, and she approached every single recipe with that purpose: clear, thorough, smart. And though she spawned food TV, she would probably be horrified by what it has become.

I just love reading David Tanis. So knowledgeable, so direct and unpretentious. Everything he writes about, I want to eat! But it’s those other kitchen journeys that are so seductive...

One of my trusted references for the food of the Mediterranean; I love the clarity and specificity of it.

Because you have to have James Beard in the cookbook shelf – for those times when something comes up in the kitchen, and I think, "Let’s see what James Beard has to say about this." But also for those times when I want to feel like I’m in New York, in a great townhouse, having a martini with interesting people, and about to eat.... then I just open one of the Beard books and read.

Julie has also been a teacher to me – this is a tremendous reference book, but it’s more than a great compendium of recipes. Julie’s sense of enjoyment, the joy she finds in the food, is always there.

Because: excellence. Charlie Trotter cooked and wrote about food that is very different from my simple home cooking, but I find his work inspiring and illuminating – to look at, to read about, and to eat. Just because you love the blues, that doesn’t mean you can’t love opera as well.

Judith Jones, my longtime editor at Knopf, gave me this book and told me I’d like it. I love it – though I rarely actually look for a recipe here. But it is a story of a time and a place, a way of life. By simply telling her personal history, Edna Lewis describes the powerful connection between food and community.

I had to include this old book in my list. In one sense I hardly use it now, but in another way it’s always with me: it was one of the first big, serious cookbooks I owned, when I was a poor college student and just teaching myself to cook. I learned so much from Robert Carrier. He was reliable. Years later, after I had written a successful cookbook myself, I was in London with my husband and we happened to go to Carrier’s for dinner (where we had a wonderful meal). It turned out to be the last night that it was open...

This is someone who loves home cooking, knows the place it holds in her world, and is simply a wonderful writer. Long ago, she inspired me with her cooking stories in Gourmet magazine, and I’ve been a fan of all her work – food and fiction -- ever since.