Summer holidays are traditionally a time of celebration and feasting. So, as our minds turn to food and our stomachs rumble, why not read about it?
These five food titles, ranging from a chef’s memoir to a foodie crime novel, offer a smorgasbord of perspectives on the ways food shapes our culture, our identities, our environment and our selves. All of them will leave you hungry!
A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain
A Cook’s Tour (2001) follows late chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain on a global culinary adventure as he searches for “the perfect meal”. While Bourdain doesn’t find perfection, he does discover the centrality of food in preserving culture and building relationships.
In Portugal, he gets involved in the yearly pig slaughter – visceral and confronting, despite his experience as a chef – and revels in the celebration, conviviality and hospitality that accompanies this centuries-old tradition. In Vietnam, he builds tentative relationships with locals by joining them in drinking “moonshine from a plastic cola bottle” on the banks of the Mekong.
The book is engaging, witty and sharp, but also poignant. It encourages us to not only think about where our food comes from, but about the meanings we ascribe to it and the communities we build around it.
My Life in France by Julia Child (with Alex Prud’homme)
Julia Child was an unlikely culinary icon. She didn’t really learn to cook until she moved from the United States to France with her husband, Paul, in 1948. On her return, she introduced not just her home country but the English-speaking world to the art of French cooking.
My Life in France (2005), co-written with journalist Alex Prud’homme, tells the story of “a crucial period of transformation” in which she found her “true calling” and started writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.
My Life in France is bursting at the seams with Child’s signature joie de vivre: she certainly doesn’t take herself seriously. It is also a snapshot of postwar French cuisine, as experienced by someone encountering something completely transformative – and deciding to share her experience with the world, despite the obstacles.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
Judging by the subtitle, Mastering the Art of Good Cooking, Samin Nosrat’s 2016 book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, took some inspiration from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. However, it is eminently more beginner friendly. While the book has recipes (good ones), it is not a recipe book per se. Rather, it is a set of instructions on how to cook: or, if you already have the basics down, how to cook better. Yet, unlike other cooking reference books, it tells a story.
Iranian–American Nosrat, who trained at the acclaimed restaurant Chez Panisse, introduces her readers to her four elements of good cooking, one at a time. She introduces culinary theory, scientific principles and tips and tricks, in an accessible and engaging way.
This information is interspersed with vignettes from Nosrat’s culinary life and supported by excellent illustrations. It is not only a good read, but a cookbook you will reach for time and again.
Death in the Dordogne by Martin Walker
It may be strange to see a mystery novel on this list, but sometimes we want a palate cleanser, a sweet treat to end a meal. Martin Walker’s Death in the Dordogne (2009) is just the thing.
Bruno Courrèges is chief of police in the small town of St. Denis in the Dordogne, in south-west France. While there is a murder to be solved (the death of an elderly war veteran), Bruno’s other major obsession is the food and wine of the Périgord region, which Walker describes in delicious detail.
As Bruno travels around the countryside solving the mystery, he eats: omelettes scented with black truffle, ripe red strawberries, flaky croissants, and fresh trout cooked in the open air. Alongside this feast, the book also probes the complexities of a changing, modern France – including the impact of immigration and the rise of right-wing politics. The perfect Boxing Day read.
Cod by Mark Kurlansky
Cod: a Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1997) is a book about the voracious appetite of the human race and the effects of appetite.
The story Kurlansky tells is not just the millennia-long saga of the low-fat, white-fleshed fish that was indispensable to cuisines across Europe. It is that, of course – but it’s also a story about the rise of colonialism and capitalism, international conflict, the slave trade, the insatiable search for commodities, and the environmental legacy of new technologies.
Cod was first published almost 30 years ago, soon after the North Atlantic cod fishing industry had reached a point of collapse due to overfishing. In 2024, for the first time since the early 1990s, the Canadian government lifted its moratorium on commercial cod fishing off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, in light of improved cod stocks.
Kurlansky’s writing is evocative – you can feel the chill and the fog of the cod banks. Intrepid cooks may even attempt some of the recipes.
