Dec 8, 2024
Minor Disturbances at Grand Life Apartments, by Hema Sukumar
A perfect read if you want a comforting, familiar and light read.
Grand Life Apartments in an unnamed Chennai neighbourhood is not all that grand - it's a modest building that belongs to Mani, whose family has owned it for generations. He lives on the ground floor and has three tenants on the floors above - Kamala, a dentist who is nearing retirement, with a daughter Lakshmi who visits from Oxford only once a year now, and a best friend Sundu (short for Soundaravalli) who keeps her company on most evenings; Revathi or Reva, a smart and independent 32 year old who has a frustrating software job, a boss who won’t recognise her worth, and a more frustrating time answering the “why aren’t you married yet” questions, and navigating the unceasing efforts of her mother to find her a mate; and finally, Jason, a Brit who has moved to Chennai from London on an impulse, to get some distance from a painful breakup, and is now working as a chef in a restaurant in a fancy hotel.
We read about the everyday lives of these gentle folk, the food they eat (lots and lots of descriptions of delicious South Indian food), the gradual way in which they get to know each other better, and eventually find common cause, when some unsavoury elements try to coerce Mani into parting with his property so a high rise can be built in its place. Heartwarming, feel-good novel.
A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, by Massimo Montanari. (Translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti)
Until I picked up this book, I had never actually stopped to think closely about the origins of this dish that has now become ubiquitous even outside Italy, a dish most of us whip up at home when we want a quick meal. In byte sized chapters, Montanari who is a Professor of Medieval History at the University of Bologna, where he also teaches History and Nutrition, walks us through the history of the dish that is today a culinary symbol of Italian identity.
Montanari argues against the idea of fixed culinary origins, showing how spaghetti with tomato sauce is a product of centuries of cultural exchange and culinary innovation. How unleavened bread was flattened and elongated into other shapes in Persia as early as the 3rd or 4th century BCE, how this practice travelled from the Middle East to Europe but still did not form a “genus” of food in the Greco-Roman world, pasta was still an ingredient or a wrap or something on the side; how the practice of drying pasta was spread by the Arabs throughout the regions they occupied, which included Sicily, and so on. It was a slow evolutionary process that led to pasta becoming a "family" of food (the first evidence of this dates to 1338) in its various shapes and forms. Then came the use of cheese - the history of pasta is tied to the history of cheese, especially aged cheese whose dry nature was perfect to offset the wet pasta. Parmigiano was the most recommended. Tomato sauce, the other key element, entered European cookbooks in the 17th century, and this red sauce, as an accompaniment to meat and pasta and other things, was fully welcomed into Italian cooking in the 1700s and 1800s. As for olive oil, dressing pasta or tomato sauce with olive oil became a normal practice only in the second half of the 20th century - until then, through the centuries, lard or butter were much preferred.
The point of this concise history is that when we speak of a dish being our identity, this cannot correspond with its “roots”. Because the dish is a result of countless interactions, exchanges, and influences. Montanari says that searching for our origins in this manner means, in effect, searching for “others”. Enlightening read, though dense at times. But for someone interested in a proper history of the dish or generally ,in food history you can’t find a better researched primer that is a mere 100 pages long.
The Table Comes First, by Adam Gopnik
This is a book about food that Adam Gopnik approaches from many angles - the act of dining both at home and at the restaurant, the art of cooking, or cookery as it was once called, the way cooks and chefs used to think about food, and how they think about it now, taste and how it changes, the use of spices and seasonings, how we think and talk about flavour and so on. A fascinating book, full of ideas and insights, that covers a vast amount of ground.
Gopnik begins in France. He traces the invention of the restaurant and explains how the modern, western idea of the three course meal came to be. He writes about the first cookbooks and how recipe writing evolved. For the longest time there was no such thing as a written recipe or precise measurements for anything. But slowly, people began to write down recipes, and collect them into the first cookbooks which back then were written for the lady of the house to use as a basis to instruct her cook. Until recently, all cookbooks used to read like instruction manuals. Now a good number of them are like memoirs with the authors writing about particular times and places in their lives, and sharing memories and anecdotes in between the recipes.
Gopnik goes into the origins of food writing and restaurant criticism which also have their roots in France and became popular in the wake of the restaurant. He goes on to explain the Michelin guide and how that came be. It's a curious thing that a company whose primary business it is to manufacture tyres went into the business of rating restaurants that somehow became the standard for restaurant ratings in much of the western world.
He writes about the various food movements that have come and gone, and goes into some detail about the question of vegetarianism vs meat eating. He introduces us to British chef, Fergus Henderson who's famous for his dedication to nose to tail cooking and he contrasts his approach with French Chef Alain Passard who decided, at the height of his fame, that he did not want to cook meat any more. All his dishes are now built around vegetables. He does not cook vegan food or health food. He loves his dairy and he refuses to let his customers count calories, and eat for anything other than pleasure. But he champions vegetables and believes that we've barely begun to explore all the wonderful things that can be done with them.
One of the most interesting sections of the book is about eating food that is sourced locally. Gopnik sees the merits of this approach, but he also sees the absurd extremes to which some people can take their devotion, to what is at the end of the day, an idea. He decides to cook a meal using only the ingredients that he can get in and around the city of New York where he lives. He sources honey from rooftop hives in the city, goes foraging in Central Park and goes upstate to buy chicken after trying and failing to get one raised in the city. Hens are raised in New York City, but they are apparently only kept for their eggs.
The book is full of interesting details like this. It can occasionally feel like too much detail, and the writing though very good, is dense in parts, but that is a minor quibble.
Gopnik features several people in this book who are famous in the world of food. He writes about his experiences eating at a variety of restaurants in Paris, New York, London, Barcelona, provincial France, and rural Spain. He brings many perspectives to this narrative, but the primary one is his own - and what he is, is a home cook, a husband and a dad who loves to cook for his family. He enjoys all the rituals around food and dining, and he just plain loves food. That, in the end, is what makes this book so enjoyable.