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Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia by: Patience Gray |
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Binding: Paperback EAN: 9780333455043 ISBN: 0333455045 Label: Papermac Manufacturer: Papermac Number Of Pages: 374 Publication Date: October 08, 1987 Publisher: Papermac Studio: Papermac Sales Rank: 716053 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Theodora Fitzgibbon: "It is not like any other book written in the past 50 years and its memory will stay forever." Jane Grigson, Times Literary Supplement December 26 1986: Beyond the many unusual and simple recipes, this book is a summary of the best kinds of Mediterranean experience. Gray's perceptions are of a depth that is beyond the most ardent traveller. Metropolitan Home, December 1987: An elegantly written celebration. Time, November 30 1987: A rich and idiosyncratic ramble through festivals and harvests, it makes perhaps the most enticing book of the year. Book Description: Patience Gray, known for the 1950s classic, Plats du Jour, has written a passionate autobiographical cookery book; Mediterranean through and through, and as compelling as a first-class novel. She has, for the past 30 years, shared the life of a sculptor. It was his appetite for marble and sedimentary rocks which took them to Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades (Naxos) and Apulia. These are places which in turn inspired Honey from a Weed. Everywhere, she has learned from the country people whose way of life she shares, adopting their methods of growing, cooking and conserving the staple foods of the Mediterranean ways. Her present life contrasts with an earlier career in Fleet Street. Now she lives in a dwelling without electricity, telephone, or heating other than an olive wood fire. The deadlines of the past have been replaced by the rhythm of wine-making, of seasonal sowing and gathering. Corinna Sargood's drawings, in another dimension, evoke the underlying spirit of the book, which has to do with landscape, people, art, imagination, as much as with fasting and feasting. John Thorne, who writes the forword, is an American writer who has been described as 'thought-provoking and iconoclastic' in writing about food with a strong dash of philosophy. From the Publisher: Now reprinted in paperback in same format as the original hardback, and on better paper than the previous smaller paperback. Customer Reviews
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 Rating: - `Poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their true significance......' This edition is the updated version with foreword from John Thorne and is interspersed with charming black and white illustrations, from Corinna Sargood. And since Rick Stein mentioned it on his latest TV series, `Mediterranean Escapes', the few copies that were still available have flown out of Amazon and off the shelves of the second-hand bookshops! Now it is getting rather hard to find! `Patience Gray, known for her 1950's classic, `Plats du Jour', has written a passionate autobiographical cookery book, Mediterranean through and through, and as compelling as a first-class novel. Sharing her life with a sculptor it was his appetite for marble and sedimentary rocks which took them to Tuscany, Catalonia, ... Read More: Rating: - Honey from the PenPatience Grey was a wonderful writer who devoted most of her life (it seems) to feeding 'the sculptor' rather than writing. Always in pursuit of the perfect stone for his work they ended up in various far-flung corners of the Midi and Patience crafted exquisite and simple food from weeds with no utensils. And then she crafted the food-writing equivalent of Manna from the experience. Honey from A Weed is a beautiful, beautiful piece of prose, a document of now-vanished mediterranean rusticity and tantalising to the taste buds. A book everyone should find a space for on their shelves - I love it unreservedly. Rating: - No ordinary bookHoney from a weed is no ordinary book. It's not a cookery book, a history book, or a travel book, but something of all three. Gray has lived around the Mediterranean for 40-odd years, and knows several of its cultures - particularly Greece, Catalonia and Italy - deeply. She writes mostly about peasant food, and how it is shaped by the economy and geography of the regions where it develops - religious fasting in the Greek islands, for instance, takes place at a time when historically food was scarce, for instance. She has also gathered extremely useful information on wild plants and herbs and their names in many different languages and dialects. She is a hugely knowledgeable, scholarly but entertaining writer. |
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