TAKE TWO MEDIUM ONIONS (The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes)

Member Name: stuleg

Product:	The Pedant in the Kitchen - Julian Barnes
Date:	05/07/04 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully witty

Disadvantages: Too darn short

I have always enjoyed reading Julian Barnes` many and varied books; my favourite was ?England, England? in which an entrepreneur takes the best bits of England and places them in a giant theme park on the Isle of White. I say that was my favourite Barnes book until I won a signed copy of ?The Pedant in the Kitchen? which I read in one sitting on a glorious summer afternoon.

?Help!? Began the email. ?What?s a twenty-gram egg-yolk? How do I weigh it? If it?s too heavy, do I cut it in half?? Just one of the troubling questions faced by the Pedant in the kitchen aka Julian Barnes. A self confessed late-onset cook who was unaware of the fourth secret place in life after the voting booth, the marital bed and the pew ? the kitchen. When he was growing up the kitchen was not a place for boys but merely the place that meals and his mother emerged from. It wasn?t until the Pedant got to his early thirties that he saw the kitchen transform from a place of resented necessity to a haven of tense pleasure. But the Pedant is quickly finding out that the kitchen can be a dangerous place, both in a physical and mental way, and the cookbook seems to be at the centre of most culinary catastrophes. For instance, Onions hold a plethora of problems, how big is a medium onion? Onions are available from the size of a shallot to that of a small child, so must it be medium to the onions at your disposal or medium to every onion in the world. And how big is a lump? What exactly is meant by a ?slug? or ?gout?? When does a drizzle become a shower? And is a ?cup? a rough and ready generic term or a precise American measure? A recipe for jam from Richard Olney caused the Pedant no end of trouble, the instruction was to ?throw in as many strawberries as you can hold in your joined hands?, the Pedant thought seriously about contacting the late Mr Olney?s estate to enquire just how big his hands were, or what would happen if children or circus giants wanted to make this jam? And the Pedant
was discovering that the actual cooking is only half of the problem with the obtaining of the ingredients also a major hurdle, and the procurement of ?Bluefish? for the recipe of baked Bluefish fillets with potatoes, garlic and olive oil causes no end of trouble with a couple of fishmongers cum comedians explaining that they have white fish, pink fish and yellow fish but no Bluefish. The Pedants aims are simple; he really only wants to cook nutritious and tasty food while not poisoning his friends, but it seems the cooking world, and recipe book writers in particular, are conspiring against him.

As a Chef, the Pedant in the Kitchen was always going to appeal to me, I lost count of the number of times I nodded knowingly or chuckled conspiratorially at Julian Barnes constant struggles in the culinary world. You see, he is not afraid to ask the questions or indeed question the validity of the instructions contained in recipe books. How many of us follow the instructions in these books blindly and are disappointed when the finished product looks nothing at all like the glossy picture accompanying the recipe? Julian Barnes seems unable to accept that his version of ?The Chocolate Nemesis? taken from the River Café Cook Book looks more like a cowpat than the delicious desert he had enjoyed on numerous occasions at the restaurant of the same name. Indeed he even made a couple of stand by deserts because he knew deep down that his attempt at the chocolate nemesis would end in failure. And cooking should not be about being led down an unknown alley on blind faith alone but being able to ask what if? Or how come? Or why do I need Spanish tomatoes when I?m surrounded by English ones? Mostly though I recognised my first clumsy steps into the world of catering which was often a slap-dash, hit and miss experience when I would be constantly bemused by recipe books and the seemingly impossible and unobtainable ingredients needed to produce a half decent meal. I guess more
than anything else though I was able to enjoy the Pedant in the Kitchen as one of the conspirators of the culinary arts having come through those first clumsy catering steps, I emerged from the other side and that gives me the right to laugh at those who do not. I believe that the cookbook authors that so upset the Pedant are necessarily vague and the dishes contained within unobtainable so as not to unearth the real truth of the matter which is that being a chef or cook really isn?t that difficult, thus pretending that it is can be the only way to obtain a modicum of mystery or skill in the job.

I will give The Pedant in the Kitchen four out of five stars. It is an enthralling and entertaining read in which Julian Barnes captures the essence of cooking from recipe books and the frustrations that often ensue. I have left the final star off because it is a painfully short book, just 133 pages of which at least a dozen are taken up by diagrams. That said, the humour used is dry and beautifully observed, with the Pedant seemingly accepting that the rest of his cooking life will be punctuated with a battle of wits between himself and chefs who feel they can write a recipe book that is straight forward and easy to follow, but which more often than not is anything but. As the Pedant himself states, ?Being a great cook is one thing, being a decent cookery writer is quite another ? Contrary to popular belief, most people do not have a novel inside them; nor do most chefs have a cookbook.?

The Pedant in the Kitchen is available for £6.99 at Amazon and is published by Guardian books, the ISBN number is: - 1843542390.

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