Ruth Reichl: Comfort me with apples

By GILBERT WONG

Where Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential left readers with a rational fear of hollandaise sauce and confirmed that waitpersons live in a chemically altered state, Reichl's book brings food back to what it should be, a comfort and sensual delight.

When it comes to cuisine writing, Reichl is at the top of the game. She is chief editor of Gourmet magazine in New York and a former restaurant critic for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, a trio of publications that can make or break restaurants and cuisine trends.

As a beginner chef in the 1970s, she undertook the odd freelance gig for New West, later to become California magazine. Based in San Francisco, Reichl found to her good fortune that a culinary revolution was under way. For years the toniest American restaurants had slavishly imitated their French peers with heavy cream sauces, absurd formality and a cuisine evolved for a different climate and social milieu.

Reichl was one of the first to write about Californian chefs such as Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Wolfgang Puck of Spago, who were among those to create a cuisine that, whatever the tag - Californian, Pacific rim - relied on the fresh and fine produce grown and harvested locally, with a nod to techniques that owed little to continental Europe.

At its worst think gourmet pizza; at its simplest see grilled California goats' cheese on toast or fresh steamed asparagus dipped in balsamic vinegar.

Effortlessly intertwined in her adventures in food are Reichl's misadventures in love. Although married she embarks, apparently without regret, on a series of affairs, some tortured, others dalliances, until she meets Michael the journalist. This becomes the relationship that lasts, and the one in which she tries to adopt a baby, Gavi.

This story adds tragedy to what for the most part is a lightly amusing book, full of sharp portraits of chefs and their egos. Plus, the recipes belong to culinary history. You too can cook like Wolfgang Puck.

* Gilbert Wong is an Auckland journalist.

Allen and Unwin

$27.95