Before Julie and Julia, there was Laurie Colwin, whose lovely prose and gentle advice in Home Cooking (1988) and More Home Cooking (1993) were an encouragement to even the most nervous cook.
Sitting down with Laurie’s books feels like sitting in a warm kitchen nook with a friend. Over a cup of coffee or tea, she shares a little wisdom, a little laughter, and lots of sensible thoughts on creating delicious meals that are easy and fast. A writer by calling and a passionate lover of food, Laurie Colwin was the author of 5 novels, 3 story collections, and 2 collections of essays about home cooking.
Laurie Colwin as a writer and a friend
Readers feel invited to Laurie’s table, a table which she so lovingly describes as “a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction.” Jonathan Yardley’s tribute in the Washington Post, written years after her sudden death in October 1992 at age 48, describes the “irresistible gusto” of her home-cooking books and notes that even now all of her books are still in print, spread by “an ardent following” who “recruits new devotees by word of mouth.”
Linda Larson calls Home Cooking the “most comforting read ever” while Clothilde Dusoulier of Chocolate & Zucchini tells of devouring the essays in a couple of days and feeling by the end “so full of fondness for the author that I suddenly had tears well up in my eyes.” Michelle Auerbach Brode of The New Homemaker describes Laurie Colwin as “one of the best friends I have ever met in a book. She makes life feel appealing, warm, intimate, real and brave. And that is just her food writing, not even her novels.“
Discovering Home Cooking
I first discovered Laurie in Gourmet magazine when I still held out hope that in the jumble of life with a 3-year-old, a husband, a house restoration, and a career that I would some day, some way find time to cook something fancy again. She had written a charming essay about how to create a festive meal with a minimum of work. Her heartfelt recommendation to adopt “la cuisine de la ‘slobbe’ raffinée, or ‘the cooking of the refined slob’ ” felt like permission to breathe again.
Almost 20 years later, with the 3-year-old off at university and the husband long gone his own way, I had moved alone to a strange city and was trolling my bookshelves for company. My copy of More Home Cooking came to hand and fell open to the very essay through which I first met Laurie Colwin. There it was. That festive meal to which one could reply “with some truth” to compliments: “It was nothing.”
- Roast chicken, stuffed with ½ lemon and sprinkled with paprika (guaranteed to take under 8 seconds to prepare);
- Scalloped potatoes that practically cooked themselves;
- Garlic vinegar for a green salad (a job perfect for children to handle); and
- Katharine Hepburn’s brownie recipe (to which Laurie noted: “If there were no other reason to admire Katharine Hepburn, this pan of brownies would be enough to make you worship her”).
I felt as though a dear friend has walked back into my life.
Delight in eating and in sharing a meal
Laurie Colwin loved food and the role of a shared meal in nurturing relationships. She composed odes to nursery food, to American corn, to poached pears for a travel-weary friend, to the taste of a ripe raspberry eaten while standing in a bramble. There are essays devoted to black beans (“it is hard not to dote on black beans”), disguising vegetables in yummy fritters and puddings, and shepherd’s pie for “feeding the multitudes” at a soup kitchen or school fair. Her advice for “starting out” and for outfitting a kitchen is creative and down-to-earth.
Comfort in simplicity and shared disasters
It is hard to feel intimidated by a cook who offers dishes that are “ridiculously simple” (especially when it turns out to be true!) and who admits to eating leftover succotash straight from the fridge. By the time she confesses to almost crying with happiness over a friend’s pickled peaches, we are under her spell.
Disasters are described as well. “Kitchen horrors” and a memoir of “repulsive dinners” (hers and others) are reminders that even the best cooks have disasters. She comforts us and restores perspective, reminding us that Plan B is an acceptable, even honorable tradition: pitch the disaster and order pizza. Laurie gives us the freedom to experiment (although she suggests, perhaps not with company coming), knowing that failure may be the quickest way to later success.
Cookbooks to be read and treasured
Laurie Colwin left us far too soon, but she left us her warm presence in her books. Her recipes are served up with wit and humor for novices in the kitchen as well as for seasoned cooks needing a gentle reminder of the pleasures of home cooking. Her books are the sort to be read, reread, treasured, and shared. Never mind those smears of cake batter or droplets from the lentil soup that get on the pages. They just remind us of Laurie roaming her garden, dripping juice all over her “nice white shirt” because the ripe tomatoes were just too hard to resist—just like her.
Details for Finding These Cookbooks
Home Cooking and More Home Cooking make lovely presents for Christmas, weddings, and housewarmings.
- Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen. HARDCOVER: Originally published, 1988, Knopf; reissue in press, Vintage/Random House, .2010 release; ISBN 978-0-307-47441-4; 208 pages; $14.
- Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen. SOFTCOVER: Originally published, 1993, Harper Perennial; reissue, 2000, Harper Perennial, 208 pages. ISBN 978-0-0609-5530-4; ISBN10 0-0609-5530-9. $12.
- More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen. SOFTCOVER: Originally published, 1993, HarperCollins. Reissue, 2000, Harper Perennial, 240 pages. ISBN 978-0-0609-5531-1; ISBN10 0-0609-5531-7. $12.99.
