Yes, Chef: A Memoir: Marcus Samuelsson

"It begins with a simple ritual:  Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner.  The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic.  The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson.  The book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.

"Marcus Samuelsson was only three years old when he, his mother, and his sister--all battling tuberculosis--walked seventy-five miles to a hospital in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Adaba.  Tragically, his mother succumbed to the disease shortly after she arrived, but Marcus and his sister recovered, and one year later they were welcomed into a loving middle-class white family in Goteborg, Sweden.  It was there that Marcus's new grandmother, Helga, sparked in him a lifelong passion for food and cooking with her pan-fried Herring, her freshly baked bread, and her signature roast chicken.  from a very early age, there was little question what Marcus was going to be when he grew up.

"Yes, Chef chronicles Marcus Samuelsson's remarkable journey from Helga's humble kitchen to some of the most demanding and cutthroat restaurants in Switzerland and France, from his grueling stints on cruise ships to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally came together at Aquavit, earning him a coveted New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four.  But Samuelsson's career of 'chasing flavors,' as he calls it, had only just begun--in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs and, most important, the opening of the beloved Red Rooster in Harlem.  At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fulfilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room--a place where presidents and prime ministers rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, bus drivers, and nurses.  It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home.

"With disarming honesty and intimacy, Samuelsson also opens up about his failures--the price of ambition, in human terms--and recounts his emotional journey, as a grown man, to meet the father he never knew.  Yes, Chef is a tale of personal discovery, unshakable determination, and the passionate, playful pursuit of flavors--one man's struggle to find a place for himself in the kitchen, and in the world."

Here's another one we read for my "Topics in Literature:  Food" course this past semester; however, this was one that I really enjoyed.  I cannot say enough about how Marcus Samuelsson's love for food absolutely permeated every letter in this book.  His passion was exciting and his story was supremely interesting.  We spent a few weeks discussing this story and I think I touched on some really good points so -- in lieu of a simple review -- I'd like to share some of my comments with you.

It seems like -- even when he did not realize it when he was younger -- food was at the heart of pretty much everything he did.  Even from very early on one of his favorite places to be was in the kitchen with Mormor, his mother's mother.  He demonstrated a drive and passion for it even when he was a boy.  On a fishing trip with his father, Marcus took great pride in being handed the task of preparing the meal:  "'Marcus, if you don't cook, we don't eat,' my father joked.  It was a joke, of course, because my father knew I needed no prompting to cook, which is probably why he let me take over the meal.  This was my first time cooking on my own, as opposed to helping my grandmother or mother.  Just as I had with the boats, I was eager to show I was a big man, that I didn't need anyone's help" (Samuelsson 33).  This was when Marcus was only twelve-years-old; he was already showing the desire to prove himself that would carry him throughout his career.  A few years after this fishing trip, he enrolled in cooking school.  He grew bored with the classes, but, instead of giving up, he found ways to challenge himself.  "To keep myself sharp," writes Samuelsson, "I turned each exercise into a little contest.  Could I fill the pastry shell faster than any of my classmates?  Could I wash and chop that dill faster than the teacher?  Could I finish each squirt of whipped cream with the exact same curl?" (59).  His whole world turned into this sort of competition revolving around food, which, I feel, is the biggest reason that he has had so much success in his career.  He never gave up, never got discourage, approached every task with everything he had, and did not settle for simply being talented -- he strove to be innovative and unique.

I feel like Marcus would not have made it to where he is today without such dedication to the kitchen.  It seems that most of the good things (outside of his family) happen to him in relation to the kitchen or food.  The kitchen is and always has been his realm.  Even when he thought soccer would be his life, he had been there in the kitchen with his grandmother, learning from her and carrying that gift with him always.  The women in his life vary quite a bit in their roles in his life, but each, in her own way, helps support his determination and goals.  His mother never told him he could not do something.  His sisters, Anna and Linda, got him something very special for his seventeenth birthday.  "It was a brand-new cook's knife with an eight-inch-long carbon steel blade.  This was the multipurpose knife every chef needs, with a blade thin enough to chop herbs, but a wide flat surface for crushing or picking up food.  Better still, it was the Rolls-Royce of knives, brand-wise, made by the French company Sabatier" (64).  ***Slight spoiler alert***  Even Brigitta, the woman Marcus sleeps with while on an outting with friends, helps him by telling him she expected nothing even though she was pregnant with his child.  Marcus, under the guidance of his parents, ended up sending money to Brigitta and their child, but she never pressured him into marriage or claiming the child as his own, thus allowing him to pursue his career.  ***End spoiler***

The women in his life played a huge role on his path to becoming a master chef.  They each provided him with unwaivering support in their own ways.  I believe the person who did this the most was his grandmother.  This is clearly evidenced in chapter three, titled "Swedish Fish."  Samuelsson writes, "My love for food did not come from my mother," which begs the question of where, exactly, he got his passion (15).  Shortly after this, Samuelsson describes Saturday dinners at his grandmother's home, and the answer is clear.  "I loved Saturdays as a kid...Saturdays meant the best meal we would have all week because dinner was almost always at my grandparents' house...[Grandmother] would pull out a stool and set me to string rhubarb or shell peas or pluck a chicken.  I'm not sure why mu sisters never joined us in our Saturday cooking sessions; and, at the time, I didn't care.  I was only too happy to have Mormor to myself" (23).  This close bond was what helped spark and nurture the love for food and cooking that brought Marcus his later success.  Who knows how different his career might have been -- where he might have ended up -- if Mormor had not been there to do so.

In addition, how actively Samuelsson sought out inspiration was a pleasant surprise.  He made sure to go ashore every chance he got during his stint on the cruise ship.  He writes, "New flavors were what I was after, and in almost every port of call, I smelled or tasted something I'd never tasted before.  I'd have four hours to go ashore, and I'd go by myself unless Paul or Susan wanted to taf along...Under the protective layer of my skin, I went unnoticed, which allowed me to observe and relish the most beautiful aspect of port culture:  the street food" (158). 

There was a very interesting correlation between the military and a kitchen in my reading of this book and my experiences with "chef shows" that have become so popular, but I was still struck by the hierarchy of the kitchens in which Marcus Samuelsson worked in throughout Yes, Chef.  The strict schedule, precision, and respect for superiors was remarkable.  To me, it was also like life on a ship, with the head chef as the captain and various tiers below him each doing his own assigned task.  The common thread is the enforcement of a strict hierarchy in one way or another.  Another extreme in the kitchen is the passion.  Samuelsson never waivers in his dedication to his cooking.  He is always trying to experiment and better himself through his cooking.  He devotes his life to it.  "I was interested in chasing flavors," writes Samuelsson, "I wanted to shake things up and see what happened.  What if I took this piece of turbot, put Parmesan on top, put it in the salamander to speed-melt the cheese, then finished it with an orange chutney?  I didn't know if mixing French fish, Italian cheese, and Indian Caribbean flavors would be food, but I wanted to try it" (157).  And try he did.  These were the experiments he kept in his journal and helped him to become the chef he did.  It was all about his passion to try new things, and his dedication to the craft.

Hopefully that didn't come off too wordy (or disjointed, since I mashed together several of my responses here).  Overall, the story was wonderful and it really made me appreciate the life of a chef and admire Samuelsson for his own, individual struggles.  His life is certainly unique and interesting!

I knew I'd seen Samuelsson's face somewhere before, but it wasn't until I read the story (and subsequently mentioned his name to my mother) that I realized we'd seen him on Top Chef.  My mother was adamant that Samuelsson was a "know-it-all jerk," but I don't remember having that impression years ago when he'd competed.  I'm kind of glad that I don't have such a vivid memory of his time on the show because I was completely able to enjoy his story without any preconceived notions about who he was as a person.  I will admit that I feel like he gave up some things he should not have for his career, but I am not one to judge--I'm not someone who believes in criticizing when I have no idea what the situation was really like to live through.  A couple of the passages geared toward pretentious, but not to the point where I didn't enjoy the read.  As a huge Gordon Ramsay fan, I had a difficult time stomaching Samuelsson's comments about his fellow chef (though I am not disillusioned enough to think Ramsay is a teddy bear).  Samuelsson tried to claim he wasn't bashing Ramsay, but I felt like it was a weak attempt not to do so (and I say that from the most objective way possible).

Overall, I highly recommend this story for anyone who wants an interesting memoir to read; anyone who loves cooking or wants an insight into life inside a kitchen; or someone who's simply interesting in reading about the background of a celebrity chef.  This book has a bit of something for so many readers out there and I feel like so many people will enjoy it just as I did.

Samuelsson, Marcus. Yes, Chef: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 2012. Print.

Like Water for Chocolate: Laura Esquivel

"To the table or to bed
"You must come when you are bid

"The number-one bestseller in Mexico in 1990, Like Water for Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with bittersweet moments of magic and sensuality.  Evocative of How to Make an American Quilt in structure, Tampopo in its celebration of food, and Heartburn in its irony and wit, it is a lively and funny tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico.

"The narrator's great-aunt Tita is the youngest of three daughters born to Mama Elena, the tyrannical owner of the De la Garza ranch.  While still in her mother's womb, she wept so violently -- as her mother chopped onions -- that she caused Mama Elena to begin early labor; and Tita slipped out in the middle of the kitchen table, amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup.  This early encounter with food soon became a way of life, and Tita grew up to be a master chef.  Each chapter of the novel begins with one of Tita's recipes and her careful instructions for preparation.

"In well-born Mexican families, tradition dictates that the youngest daughter not marry, but remain at home to care for her mother.  Even though Tita has fallen in love, Mama Elena chooses not to make an exception, and instead, arranges for Tita's older sister to marry Tita's young man.

"In order to punish Tita for her willfulness, Mama Elena forces her to bake the wedding cake.  The bitter tears Tita weeps while stirring the batter provoke a remarkable reaction among the guests who eat the cake.  It is then that it first becomes apparent that her culinary talents are unique.

"Laura Esquivel's voice is direct, simple, and compelling.  She has written a fresh and innovative novel, bringing her own inimitable strengths to a classic love story."

I have no explanation for why I started a draft of this review months ago and never posted it.  In fact, I have several reviews that I still need to post and (rather unfortunately) never got around to them...  Now that I only have a few days left of "summer break" before my summer semester starts I've got to find a way to cram them all in and make a valiant effort to do them justice.  Finishing this post seems like as good a place as any to do so!

This book was assigned for my "Topics in Literature:  Food" course.  First, let me say that this was a brilliant course that really opened my eyes to a lot of issues in the way we, as a nation and as individual consumers, view food.  I'm pretty sure I touched on a couple of these in a previous post or two, so I won't rehash them here.  This particular book was one of the few that were intended to expose us to food as a form of self-expression, personal culture, as well as a broader culture.  The premise behind this story was touching--I'm a sucker for unrequited love and anything to do with food--but (and I know I'm going to have some disagreement on this) the way everything was presented was not very appealing to me.  If memory serves, this was a translated text originally written in Spanish, which makes me wonder if some of the beauty of the work was literally lost-in-translation.  My 5 years of Spanish urged me to sit down and try to mentally translate the text back into Spanish to see if it was anymore eloquent, but my efforts proved fruitless in this endeavor:  I didn't care anymore for the writing.  So many parts were too simplistic for a book I know has garnered much popularity and has been touted as a brilliant piece of literature.  Honestly, I think a great deal of my inability to enjoy the story has to do with the fact that some of the situations were just way too "out there" for me.  Chickens creating a whirlwind and Tita's sister stripping naked from a reaction to the emotion Tita had poured into the food were simply too "folktale-esque" for me to really enjoy.  They're not what I expected to encounter in the book and they are not something that, personally, I like to read.

I did, however, like the structure of the story (for the most part).  Breaking everything down by recipe was a clever way to bring readers back to the common undercurrent of food as a constant vessel through which the poor, oppressed Tita is able to communicate her emotions.  I understand the metaphor if coupling the chapters of the story with periods in Tita's life, but their typically-accepted parallels did not quite match up with the stages of Tita's growth--something else that bothered me.  I think leaving the recipes as the sole "labels" for the chapters would have been more than unique enough.

While I liked Tita's character (probably more for my sympathy for her than the fact that she had the potential to be a very strong character), I had a difficult time coming to terms with some of her decisions and actions.  For all her purity, Tita made some poor decisions--some too flawed for me to respect her.  I wonder how much of this story was pulled from reality and how much was contrived because there are some things (like Tita's choice in lover/spouse) that were obviously poor (no matter her emotions) and would have been weak authorial choices and could probably have only been explained away as "reality" (i.e. they were decisions influenced by real ones made by the person on whom this story is based--people are flawed, therefore, their decisions are sometimes flawed).

We were supposed to watch the film version of this story for our course, but I never got around to it.  I know--had I enjoyed the story more--I probably would have gone out of my way to procure a copy and carve out time from my busy schedule to watch it.  While a great deal of the descriptions of the food (the actual dishes, not the descriptions or instructions, because I felt like those sometimes disrupted the flow of the story) were wonderfully vivid and enticing, I had a hard time losing myself in the story because of the level of writing and some of the unbelievably fantastical elements of the tale.  I realize this story has some very passionate fans, but it was not my cup of tea.  I recommend it as a good example of how food can be such an incredibly emotional aspect of our lives and culture, but I have a hard time recommending it on literary merits.  It was a fairly quick read though and I am sure there are those out there who would love such a story.

Stealing Buddah's Dinner: Bich Minh Nguyen

"Beginning with her family's harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddah's Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest.  Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen's desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food--Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies.  More exotic-seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialities, the campy, preservative-filled 'delacacies' of mainstream American become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to become a 'real' American.  Stealing Buddah's Dinner is also a portrayal of a diverse family:  Nguyen's hardworking, hard-partying father; pretty sister' wise and nurturing grandmother; and Rosa, her Latina stepmother.  And there is the mystery of Nguyen's birth mother, unveiled movingly over the course of the book.  Nostalgic and candid, Stealing Buddah's Dinner is a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for."

This was another book that was assigned for my Story of Food course.  It's a thin little book that I was not especially enthusiastic about starting; but once I did, I couldn't put it down.  Perhaps it's because I come from a family where our immigrant roots are still very powerful (my mother is only first-generation American) or a personal struggle with food that I can relate to.  Either way, this book was extremely poignant and powerful.

Bich's, along with her older sister, father, grandmother, and uncles flee Vietnam at the end of the war -- managing to escape on one of the last boats available.  Once arriving in the United States, they are relegated to a refugee camp, where they can do nothing but hope, wait, and eat the unattractive food until they gain a sponsor and move to Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Her first taste of "outside" life in the U.S. is spent in an unsafe neighborhood, but it filled with American candy, treats, and snacks brought home by her father.  Their Vietnamese roots were kept alive (throughout the entire story) by her grandmother, Noi.  She would prepare classic Vietnamese dishes, meditate, and leave food for Buddah and their ancestors.  Noi, Bich, and Bich's older sister, Anh, would practice their daily routine of leaving food for Boddah on the altar where the girls would have to wait to enjoy the treat.  Only when Noi determined it was ready would she divide the fruit between her granddaughters and the girls would savor each morsel.  The simplicity of these days is changed when Bich's father meets a Latina woman named Rosa, marries her (when she is well along in her pregnancy with their son, Vinh), and she and her daughter from a previous marriage, Crissy, come to love with Bich's family in their already full little home.  The blend of another culture (Rosa's Latin heritage) seems to only further Bich's confusion, and makes her struggle to fit in with the Americans even more complex.

The little girl sees food as her "in" with the rest of the American children.  Throughout the book, she desperately tries to get her hands on anything and everything she sees her schoolmates eating.  She longs for the same candy and chips; the homemade cookies and lovingly prepared lunches carried to school in fancy tupperware containers; the beef stroganoff and stuffed peppers.  Bich's attempt to be "American" is attacked from the inside-out.  She cannot make her appearance over into the blond hair and blue eyes of her classmates, so her attempts to eat like they do are her way of trying to assimilate.  These attempts, however, are thwarted by Rosa's thriftiness (or cheapness, depending on one's perception) and the strength of her ties to her Vietnamese roots.  Bich is trapped between two worlds and this book provides a powerful account of what it is like to grow up as an immigrant in our country.

This story is beautifully written and, oftentimes, hauntingly sad.  It is the tale of a little girl who feels like an outsider -- an outcast -- because of where she comes from.  Bich Nguyen is an eloquent author with quite the childhood and I completely recommend this book to everyone either interested in the way food shapes culture, an autobiographical account of the childhood of Vietnamese immigrant, or learning acceptance for those who come from a different place than we do.

(Side note:  I'm a huge fan of Vietnamese food (and I'm really sad that I cannot get it anywhere near where I currently live...) and this book presents a beautiful account of what makes this cuisine so unique and wonderful.)

An Edible History of Humanity: Tom Standage

"More than simply sustenance, food historically has been a kind of technology, changing the course of human progress by helping to build empires, promote industrialization, and decide the outcomes of wars.  Tom Standage draws on archaeology, anthropology, and economics to reveal how food has helped shape and transform societies around the world, from the emergence of farming in China by 7500 B.C. to the use of sugar cane and corn to make ethanol today.  An Edible History of Humanity is a fully satisfying account of human history."

This book was assigned for one of the most interesting courses I've ever taken:  The Story of Food.  It's an English class where I get to read about food, and even cook!  I recently did a project on the history of the Cornish Pasty -- which was pretty darn delicious, by the way.  HERE is the recipe I used -- thank you to Susan of Farmgirl Fare for her article, and Jamie Oliver for the yummy recipe!

Standage's book was the first that we were assigned to read.  I was instantly drawn in by the novelty of what Standage had to say.  There is no such thing as food that has not been genetically modified?  Humans and their food evolved and changed one another?  Entire wars and the development of empires hinged on food?  The claims were at once astonishing and entirely plausible.  Standage pulls from a wealth of human history and substantial evidence to support his claims.  There were numerous times where I paused to think, "That makes complete sense!  I wonder why I'd never seen that before."  This, I believe, is the mark of a brilliant author.  Standage kept me fascinated, he kept me thinking, and he enlightened me to a great many things.

The book covers how farming came about from out hunter-gatherer roots, then how civilizations were formed around this new way of life.  Standage explains how some people came into power because of this new system (and how their methods were so different form what we perceive a ruler to be in our modern world), just how much of an influence the food trade had on shaping empires, how food drove expansion and the discovery of new worlds, how it played a surprisingly vital role in industrialization and warfare, defined the "Green Revolution," and detailed some of the issues that we might someday soon encounter, and what steps are being taken to avoid disaster of catastrophic proportions.

I simply cannot say enough about Standage's work.  It was informative and interesting.  Though I realize I have made it sound as if it reads like a dry history of humanity, it is far from it.  I have been recommending this book to everyone who will listen.  It is a remarkable lens through which to view the history of mankind.  I believe it poses one of the most important questions that anyone can asks, "Where does my food come from."  I genuinely feel that this is something everyone should ask.  You might be shocked!