The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
by Judith Jones
List Price:
Our Price: $1.00
You Save: $23.95 (96%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Judith JonesEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2007-10-23
ISBN: 0307264955
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
Book Review: It's not bragging if you can do. Judith Jones did it. Very quietly.
Summary: 4 Stars
Her mother, "well into her nineties", had an urgent question: "Tell me, Judith, do you really like garlic?"
Sadly, Judith Jones did. And she also loved the foods of her youth that her mother's cook had lovingly produced:
I still feel nostalgic for the warm chocolate steamed pudding with foamy sauce, the bread pudding with its crusty top and raisins bursting inside, the apple brown Betty made with good tart country apples, the floating island with its peaks of egg white swimming in a sea of yellow custard. Then, when summer came, there were the summer puddings, a bread-lined mold steeped in just-cooked blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries as each came in season, pressed, chilled, and unmolded, with thick unpasteurized cream poured over each serving. Edie had some specialties of her own, such as individual warm nut-and-date cakes, and meringues (which we called kisses) topped with bananas and slathered in hand-beaten whipped cream.
When I was asked during my middle-school years what I would like for lunch on Fridays --- the day when we had to stay in school until only one o'clock --- I knew exactly what I wanted: a whole artichoke, spaghetti and cheese, and fresh fruit or applesauce for dessert. The spaghetti and cheese that Edie made was more sauce than pasta (a term we didn't even know then --- it was either spaghetti or macaroni), enriched with massive gratings of good Vermont Cheddar cheese, then baked in a casserole with buttered crumbs and more cheese on top. I made a ritual of slurping down those hot creamy strands of spaghetti and alternately picking off artichoke leaves, one by one, dipping them in lemony butter or hollandaise, and scraping off the flesh with my teeth. I did it slowly, often turning the pages of a book. Then, when I got to the heart, I would carefully pull off all the thistles and revel in that concentrated, slightly grassy-tasting artichoke flesh.
This is writing of a fairly high order, and if it is about food --- one of the universal equalizers --- even better.
So who is this Judith Jones?
One of the most important people in publishing --- and, to what must be her pleasure, almost unknown outside it.
Judith Jones, now in her 80s, is the queen of cookbooks at Knopf, our most prestigious publisher. Julia Child? Her landmark first book was languishing at another publisher; Jones took it over and was Child's editor ever after. Marcella Hazan, Claudia Roden, Edna Lewis and Marion Cunningham --- she found or edited them all. Oh, and on the side, she edited literary fiction. Like...John Updike.
But now she's written a memoir, and while no great secrets are revealed, many great stories are told --- all of them proof that if you're gifted and determined and attractive, you might also get lucky. So....
In 1948, after a privileged New York childhood, she rushes off to Paris, and has exactly the kind of problem that A.J. Liebling encountered two decades earlier --- not enough money to eat three good meals a day. LIFE Magazine does a feature on "Young Americans in France" and she gets to enjoy, at the magazine's expense, a Mere Poularde omelette at Mont-Saint-Michel. Back in Paris, she runs into a friend who just happens to living in the apartment of his aunt, an Italian countess. (Their other roommate: the painter Balthus.) To make ends meet, they turn it into a restaurant. And all's well until....
In order to stay in Paris, she moves on to odd jobs with occasionally unsavory characters (a "must" on the resumé of any proper young woman), meets the married man of her dreams, waits out his divorce, gets the ring, and, along the way, discovers a book by a murdered young Jewess named Anne Frank and arranges to have it published in America.
And so it goes. You could say there's a lot of name-dropping here, but that's to miss the point --- Judith Jones was there, she did these things, cooked these meals, "created" these people. But she is crusty and matter-of-fact about all of it ("Then I underwent a mastectomy"). Practical to the end: The recipes at the back of the book include a section called Cooking for One. Still looking forward: With her cousin, a farmer in northern Vermont, she's invested in Angus beef cattle who will "be raised on local grass with tender loving care." And still tart: "I get so sick of the Food Network thing --- `We're more than just about food.' Who wants it to be about more than just food? Food is a wonderful subject, endless."
Garlic. It's very good for you --- for Judith Jones, anyway.
Summary of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
From the legendary editor who helped shape modern cookbook publishing?one of the food world?s most admired figures?an evocative and inspiring memoir.Living in Paris after World War II, Judith Jones broke free of the bland American food she had been raised on and reveled in everyday French culinary delights. On returning to the States?hoping to bring some joie de cuisine to America?she published Julia Child?s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The rest is publishing and gastronomic history.
A new world now opened up to Jones: discovering, with her husband, Evan, the delights of American food; working with the tireless Julia; absorbing the wisdom of James Beard; understanding food as memory through the writings of Claudia Roden and Madhur Jaffrey; demystifying the techniques of Chinese cookery with Irene Kuo; absorbing the Italian way through the warmth of Lidia Bastianich; and working with Edna Lewis, Marion Cunningham, Joan Nathan, and other groundbreaking cooks.
Jones considers matters of taste (can it be acquired?). She discusses the vagaries of vegetable gardening in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and the joys of foraging in the woods and meadows. And she writes about M.F.K. Fisher: as mentor, friend, and the source of luminous insight into the arts of eating, living, and aging.
Embellished with fifty recipes?each with its own story and special tips?this is an absolutely charming memoir by a woman who was present at the creation of the American food revolution and played a seminal role in shaping it.
Memoirs Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Memoirs Books
Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Centuryby Hunter S. Thompson
Penguin Books, Limited (UK); Published: 2008-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.11
Price in other shops:
Never Have Your Dog Stuffedby Alan Alda
Arrow Books; Published: 2007-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.59
Price in other shops:
The Hunger: A Story of Food, Desire, and Ambitionby John DeLucie, Graydon Carter
Ecco; Published: 2009-05-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.63
Price in other shops:
Brotherhood of Warriors: Behind Enemy Lines with a Commando in One of the World's Most Elite Counterterrorism Unitsby Aaron Cohen, Douglas Century
Ecco; Published: 2008-04-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.87
Price in other shops:
Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survivalby Carmina Salcido, Steve Jackson
William Morrow; Published: 2009-10-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Unlocked: The Life and Crimes of a Mafia Insiderby Louis Ferrante
Harper Perennial; Published: 2009-02-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacherby William Zinsser
Harper; Published: 2009-05-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.09
Price in other shops:
Got the Life: My Journey of Addiction, Faith, Recovery, and Kornby Fieldy
William Morrow; Published: 2009-03-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops:
The Ride of My Lifeby Mat Hoffman
It Books; Published: 2003-09-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.95
Similar Books and other products
The Man Who Ate Everythingby Jeffrey Steingarten
Vintage; Published: 1998-10-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.82
Price in other shops:
The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - Cityby David Lebovitz
Broadway; Published: 2011-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.32
Price in other shops:
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Random House Reader's Circle)by Ruth Reichl
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2010-05-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.60
Price in other shops:
Ancient Grains for Modern Meals: Mediterranean Whole Grain Recipes for Barley, Farro, Kamut, Polenta, Wheat Berries & Moreby Maria Speck
Ten Speed Press; Published: 2011-04-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.33
Price in other shops:
The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Foodby Adam Gopnik
Knopf; Published: 2011-10-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.80
Price in other shops:
As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVotoHoughton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2010-12-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops:
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Vintage)by Bill Buford
Vintage; Published: 2007-06-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.76
Price in other shops:
Cooking for One: A Seasonal Guide to the Pleasure of Preparing Delicious Meals for Yourselfby The Culinary Institute of America, Mark Erickson, Lisa Erickson
Lebhar-Friedman; Published: 2011-04-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.65
Price in other shops:
Going Solo in the Kitchenby Jane Doerfer
Knopf; Published: 1998-08-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.89
Price in other shops:
The Pleasures of Cooking for Oneby Judith Jones
Knopf; Published: 2009-09-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.91
Price in other shops: