Delicious! SaltFatAcidHeat by Samin Nosrat

Absolutely delightful reading, and a joy to look at too. Whether you are already a reasonably good cook, or a beginner, this book will give you, pardon the expression, a lot to chew on.

Samin Nosrat is a veteran chef who first learned to cook at home with her Persian mother, and then went on to master professional techniques and food knowledge under the tutelage of Alice Waters at the famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.

She divides the cooking process into a discussion of four key elements, as indicated by the book's title: salt, fat, acid and heat. When the first three are administered appropriately, and then the right kind and amount of heat is applied, good food results.

Nosrat makes cooking a kind of joyous expedition, from selecting the right raw foods, learning how to combine and season them, and then how to prepare them. This is not a conventional compilation of recipes, though there are many included along with down-to-earth and often amusing instructions for acquiring and mastering cooking techniques.

The other wonderful thing about Nosrat's book is the wealth of colorful illustrations and charts by Wendy MacNaughton. There are a number of fold out charts: for example The World of Flavor simply and clearly shows the continents, the countries, and the seasoning combinations which Nosrat has explained are representative of their cuisines. Looking at Uruguay and Argentina, the seasonings listed are parsley, oregano, chilies and paprika. Sure enough, just the other day I made a batch of Argentinean chicken empañadas using a Bon Appétit recipe which called for parsley, a generous quantity of oregano and a copious amount of paprika (along with lots of multi-colored peppers and onions).

Nosrat and McNaughton, working together, have produced a non-intimidating, totally unstuffy approach to cooking – and eating – well. Just about anyone who can read can learn to cook from this book, and enjoy it!

Just a quick mention: Netflix has produced a four-part series on Nosrat's book that takes her to Italy, Japan, Mexico and California on culinary adventures. It is high on my list of things to watch. Meanwhile, the UK's Guardian newspaper has a great interview with her: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019... .

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Gang of Four – March Sisters: On Life, Death and Little Women by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley

Four sisters, four writers – with the segments going in age order from Meg on down to Amy. The corresponding authors are Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley. Each essay is as different as were the four March sisters, and each is satisfying to some degree, or not.

Kate Bolick, author of Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own, and an accomplished journalist, writes about the episode in which Meg goes off for a visit with prosperous friends, but feels insecure and self-conscious about her modest circumstances. Having no suitable clothes of her own and craving the beauty and glamour the right gown will give her, she is lent a dress, shoes, and attends a dance looking quite unlike herself. Laurie sees her in her finery and clearly disapproves. Meg is quite stung and embarrassed by the criticism but gets through the evening champagne in hand.

Bolick relates a similar event early in her working life in which she too is lent a glamorous dress for a special event. She is accompanied by a critical male colleague who makes her feel even more uncomfortable, and the evening changes the balance in their relationship. Years later she looks back and makes peace with her younger self. How we see ourselves, and our unease with how we fit in is a source of great anxiety for many women, and it is often played out in our obsession with having the right clothes.  It's a good essay, and the analogy is solid. 

Zhang, a prize-winning poet and essayist, tackles Jo. Zhang immigrated to the United States as a young child. She aspired to be a writer who is a bold, brave girl, as opposed to a woman, because she perceived the role of women as dutiful, subservient and lacking independence. Zhang's parents wanted her to pursue a profession that would make her successful, but in a safe way – not as a writer. Zhang resisted reading Little Women, because she imagined the March girls as delicate flowers, but when she finally read the book later on as a pre-teen with ideas about romance and femininity, she was offended by Jo's behavior. Zhang was critical of Jo's non-traditional behavior much like the way Zhang's mother criticized her for wanting to pursue writing career.

We all know the passage in which Jo seeks help from her mother, Marmee, in controlling her temper when Marmee confides her own anger. Zhang had also observed her own mother's hidden anger over her thwarted ambitions – in public settings, her mother was a model of generosity, solicitousness and kindness, but in the privacy of home she lashed out at her husband and daughter.

Zhang examines Jo's character throughout the book and has researched the Alcott family. There are many known parallels between them and the Marches of Little Women, and she reveals some further information about the Alcotts and draws some of her own conclusions about them. She also shares more about her own family relationships now that she is a grown woman, but she concludes that she is uncertain of them, as well as her view of Jo and about Little Women. Perhaps in time, with age, she will look upon it all with the greater clarity of distance and maturity. 

Carmen Maria Machado is an acclaimed essayist and critic who writes about Beth's illness and decline, but also about her own illnesses in childhood and forward. In fact, much of her essay is more about her own life discoveries, but against the background of Little Women and the Alcott family.

Lizzie was the real-life Alcott sister who died young, passing away at twenty-two after several years of illness. There was great grief in the family, as would have been expected. Having not had the opportunity to create accomplishments like her sisters Louisa or May (the model for Amy), perhaps there was not so much to say about her, other than that she was kind and gentle, "a dear". Her counterpart, Beth, is much the same, though in Little Women, her music is strongly presented as her gift. She is perhaps the most difficult to portray as she is the most enigmatic. But, there is too much emphasis on the essay's author, rather than on the character of Beth.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley wraps it up with her essay about Amy. Through the decades, she was often looked upon as the least appealing of the sisters, the spoiled youngest daughter who burns Jo's novel, and ultimately captures the heart of Laurie. Most readers idolized Jo, the center of the book, and who is the most like Louisa May Alcott herself.

Smiley tells us that she grew to like Amy the best, and I have to agree. Amy has a talent for art and the ambition to pursue it. Unlike Jo, she is pragmatic, and practical in going about getting what she wants. She finds a balance. She becomes the companion to rich Aunt March, and accompanies her to Europe, where she can also get the art training she craves and absorbs the lessons of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Amy also recognizes that she lives in the man's world of her day, and that her options for independence are limited. Happily, she and Laurie fall in love, and she also continues to pursue her art.

Perhaps it is Smiley's more removed view of the book (she is by far the oldest of the four essayists), and that she is focused on Amy's character rather than on her own, or it could be the fluidity of her writing, but I found her section to be both the most interesting and illuminating. It is by far the most satisfying of the essays.

Immigrant Family Saga: Odessa, Odessa by Barbara Artson

First impressions should not be discounted: a familiar image appears in this book, facing the copyright page. The caption reads "Immigrants Arriving in New York City, 1987 Engraving". That immediately gave me pause because it obviously should have read 1887. I looked it up and found the image for sale: http://www.eonimages.com/media/dcea0dac-3eae-11e0-b7ed-db06f6888e9e-immigrants-eye-statue-of-liberty-on-way-into-new-york-harbor. It is probably available on other sites too for those who may be interested. Such an obvious error should have been caught by the editors or the author and was a clue to the rest of the editorial organization of this book.

This novel about an immigrant Jewish family has many elements – human interest, history and an overlarge dose of psychology, the last not surprising because the author is a retired psychoanalyst. The neuroses of the major characters are analyzed prominently in the book and that detracts from the impact of its emotional pull and adds too much of a clinical aspect.

The other problem with this book is the lack of editing. It doesn't flow in a natural way. It's not necessary for a novel to be told in chronological order, but this one jumps around constantly from time to time, from place to place and from character to character. That may be the reason the chapters are named and dated.

Characters tend to appear, then fade, then possibly return. For example, we read early on about Marya, the youngest daughter of the original immigrant generation. She is born nearly deaf and consequently does not learn to speak beyond unintelligible sounds. When she arrives in New York at school age with her mother, Henya, she is kept from registering because of her disability. For the most part, she recedes from the story, then reappears years later as a young woman who is actually able to hear a limited amount of language and also holds down a job. She more or less disappears again, and much later on we read about her death and how all those years, she took care of herself and amassed a substantial (for the time) amount of savings. Wouldn't it have been interesting to have had more of a story about how all that occurred?

Despite all of these shortcomings, I decided to stick with the book because I was interested in a lot of the historical and social details of the time periods it covered. In that respect, the book is very rich and appealing. It's not enough to overcome the issues that caused me to give it just two stars, but at least I learned a few new details about the plight of Jews in Czarist Russia that caused my own ancestors to immigrate.

Mott Street Mystery: China Trade by S.J. Rozan

So much fun to come across a series that is completely new to you and then discover that the author has already written more than ten books. Since I really enjoyed China Trade by S.J. Rozan, I have great expectations for the subsequent titles.

China Trade is set in early '90s Manhattan, mainly in Chinatown, and features Lydia Chin, a young Chinese-American detective and her partner Bill Smith, who is decidedly not Chinese. Some rare antique porcelains have been stolen from a small neighborhood museum and Lydia is called in to investigate. The theft investigation moves quickly from Chinatown to the Upper East Side and Upper West Side and back downtown again. An intricate story with great ethnic atmospheric details quickly draws the reader into the story, which comes to a satisfying conclusion and drops a few hints for what may come in future installments.

The descriptions of Chinatown and the depictions of Lydia's mother, her brother Tim, and her friends are so spot on. Whether Lydia is on Mott Street, in a neighborhood restaurant grabbing a quick bowl of noodles, or taking her shoes off at the door of the apartment where she lives with her mother, you get a persuasive depiction of the culture. It adds so much truth and immediacy to the story (even though this book is twenty-five years old) that you are eager to know more.

Perhaps a Chinese-American reader might feel differently, but I was certainly convinced that the author must be at least partly of Chinese background since the details were much what one might expect from known Chinese-American writers like Amy Tan or Lisa See. S.J. Rozan is most definitely not of Chinese heritage, and I would love to know what her research for this book entailed. After reviewing her website and reading her Wikipedia entry, that remains a mystery of its own, which just makes her writing all the more intriguing. Rozan's latest book was release in July, 2019, and her most recent blog post was just a few weeks ago, so it is great to know that she is still actively writing. More to look forward to...yay!

Worlds Apart: The Sisters Weiss by Naomi Ragen

Naomi Ragen is an acclaimed American-Israeli author of many novels. According to Wikipedia, she practices Judaism according to the Modern Orthodox perspective and her writing focuses on the issues concerning the treatment and role of women in the Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and Hasidic communities.

For those who are not familiar, and just in the most general of terms, Modern Orthodoxy combines observing traditional Jewish practices with secular learning, arts and humanities, equal opportunity for men and women and being self-supporting. In contrast, the Ultra-Orthodox are strict observers and interpreters of Judaism, and do not accept many aspects of secular life or contemporary social norms. Hasidic groups are part of the Ultra-Orthodox world, but have their own very specific sub-practices, and are generally rooted by the location of their European origins and by the teachings of each group's leader or founder.

There are many interpretations, degrees and types of practice in Judaism, just as there are many Christian denominations and movements.

In this novel, a large Ultra-Orthodox family in Brooklyn includes two young sisters. Rose, the older, is an outlier and eventually breaks away from the family to follow her interest in becoming a professional photographer. Pearl, the younger sister, idealized Rose, but after her departure takes the opposite route, becoming even more pious and traditional. Because of Rose's choice they are separated for decades, meanwhile marrying and becoming parents.

Eventually, conflict and resolution occur when Rivka, Pearl's daughter, runs away and seeks out Rose and her daughter Hannah for help. Ragen tells the story from the points of view of all the major female characters and includes many details of Ultra-Orthodox religious life (many of which were unfamiliar to me). While some of the plot points are not at all surprising, they are beautifully executed.

The book is very satisfying, and a fast-paced read. There is a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew words following the text. As a novel first published in January, 2012, it makes an interesting counterpoint to Unorthodox, a memoir published in February, 2012 by Deborah Feldman, who left the Hasidic world in real life. Unorthodox was recently adapted into a multi-part Netflix series which is running now to great acclaim.

Today, as I write this, is the eve of Passover, when the First Seder would traditionally occur. Considering that we are in the height of a terrible pandemic in which we must observe social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19, coronavirus, many Seders will not occur, or will be held virtually, using modern technology. My hope is that this plague will soon end and next year will be very different.

Doesn't Quite Add Up: Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini

A novel about Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, an interesting, highly intelligent real life heroine, an early female mathematician, who happens to be the daughter of the famous poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, seems like a good idea. An eighteenth-century upper-class life among Dukes, Earls, with a presentation to Queen Victoria, friendships and acquaintanceships with the leading intellectuals of the day, including Charles Dickens, Mary Somerville and Charles Darwin, seems as though it would be fascinating. And with an acclaimed author, the historical novelist Jennifer Chiaverini, writing the tale, it seems as though all the elements are there for a compelling read.

Even with all that going for it, the book somehow falls flat. It starts with a lengthy prologue that describes Ada's mother's ill-fated romance and marriage to Lord Byron. From then on, the story is Ada's, from her earliest childhood to her untimely early death. It takes over four hundred pages to accomplish that. It is extremely slow-moving, and more than a little repetitious, in that the same points are made over and over again.

I generally enjoy a novel with a lot of description, and if there are elements of the setting which with I am familiar (in this case the English Midlands), it adds to the appeal. In this case, though, I got tired of reading all about the decoration of Ada's and her families' homes, her gowns, and the unpleasant exchanges between her and mother. I think the book could have been trimmed down, more quickly paced, and the more dramatic sequences not separated so much by the extensive detail. It was more like reading a very lengthy personal diary, rather than a novel. If that was the intention, it succeeded, but it was hard to stay interested, even though I really wanted to.

I respect what must have been monumental research, and as a result I would like to read more about the work of Ada Lovelace, but in a non-fiction format.

A Separate Peace: Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

One of my absolute favorite books OF ALL TIME! I originally read it back in 2001, around the time of our visit to Arches National Park, which is just outside of Moab, Utah. Abbey's book is about his stint as a park ranger there before the park was "discovered" by hordes of tourists, and it's truly a wonder. If you are not already enchanted by the great parks of the desert Southwest, or haven't had the opportunity to visit them, you will be enthralled by his account. It might just be the perfect antidote to our collective anxiety in this time of pandemic, and the perfect escape to the natural, elemental world.

Abbey, by the way, was a student of the great Wallace Stegner, whose masterpiece, Angle of Repose, is a classic of the American West, and is also a worthy and compelling read for these troubled times.