Home Cooking & More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

If Laurie Colwin were living and writing in today's food-obsessed culture, her food essay collections would likely be bestsellers. The woman with the cheerful face and the frizzy hair could write. Oh, how she could write!

In her first collection, Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Colwin made eggplant not only interesting but sound like the tastiest thing aside from chocolate candy.

In these two collections of food essays, Colwin, who died in 1992, offers more than good recipes. She offers a few good recipes, cooking wisdom and large dashes of humor. In the essay "Feeding the Fussy," Colwin waxes wise on entertain fussy eaters, from those with food allergies to finicky eaters and others. "Vegetarians, for example, are enough to drive anyone crazy. Like Protestants, they come in a number of denominations," she writes, as she proceeds to distinguish between lactovegetarians and vegans. "And some people say they are vegetarians when they mean they do not eat red meat, leading you to realize that for some people chicken is a vegetable."

In her second collection, More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, Colwin's subjects range from the glories of tomatoes to the virtues and sins of butter to her obsession with raspberries.

"A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins," she writes.

Colwin also writes that "God created raspberries in large part so that we would preserve them in glowing jars to stack smugly in the cupboard ... But raspberry picking is not invariably about jam making, any m ore than sex is invariably about procreation."

Colwin is the writer who first pointed me to the wonderful literary food writing of Elizabeth David. In the essay, "Why I Love Cookbooks" Colwin concludes, "And for those of you who are suffering from sadness or hangover, or are feeling blue or tired of life, if you're not going to read Persuasion, you may as well read Italian Food by Elizabeth David."

Colwin, by the way, also is the author of a few novels, among them Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object and Goodbye Without Leaving.

South Wind Through the Kitchen: The Best of Elizabeth David Edited by Jill Norman

This hefty book of "best" food-writing selections from Elizabeth David's cookbooks reflects a woman who could not only offer a good recipe but could write ever so appetizingly about it. Unlike most cookbook authors, David, who died in 1992, blended her recipes into her essays. She writes about the simplest and the most popular of Provencal dishes, aioli. She gives the concisest of recipes for such dishes as Piselli Al Prosciutto -- aka green peas and ham. She slso ventures into the likes of Rabbit Cooked in Marsala, Ratatouille Nicoise, Cinnamon Ice Cream and Cornish Saffron Cake. She was ahead of her time in many ways but also of a generation didn't shy from using lard as an ingredient.

The selections are chosen by the likes of Anne Willan, a celebrated cookbook author and teacher herself whom I've been honored to meet and interview; and cookbook author and TV personality Barbara Kafka. Of David, Kafka writes, "When I finally met her, I received another gift, the surprise of her physical beauty. She remained Mrs. David to me, not a friend but a respected and graceful mentor, as she was to much of my generation."

The book is far more than cookbook selections. It's a glimpse at some of David's best writing and food memoirs.

Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant Edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

A John Grisham novel would not have kept me as spellbound as did this wonderful collection of essays about cooking and dining alone. Contributors include the Italian matriarch of good cooking, Marcella Hazan, who writes, "I have thought about the apparent contradiction that someone who has dedicated most of her working life to cooking should be so reluctant, when she eats alone, to cook for herself. The explanation is that I consider cooking an act of love. ... What I love is to cook for someone."

There's an essay by the much younger Amanda Hesser, best known for her food features in the New York Times and her books such as Cooking for Mr. Latte. Hesser shares a recipe for Truffled Egg Toast. It serves one and is easy to prepare as long as white truffle oil and creme fraiche are handy.

The book opens with an essay by the late food writer and novelist Laurie Colwin who advises, "People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon
sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam." The book appropriately ends with an essay by Colwin's daughter, Rosa Jurjevics.

In between are essays by the likes of Nora Ephron, M.F.K. Fisher, Paula Wolfert, Ann Patchett and others. Read this book when you're alone and hungry.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge is not only a glimpse into the writing of a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's also a glimpse into the life of a real woman -- a retired teacher, a wounded mother, a good friend, an opinionated Democrat, a caring but tired and often inattentive wife. Olive's imperfections are what make her depiction absolutely perfect.

Author Elizabeth Strout invites the reader into Olive's life in a series of short stories. In some, Olive is no more than a minor supporting player. In others, she is the leading woman -- the widow falling in love again, to her own dismay, with a wealthy Republican. Even her name is perfect. Olives come in pale green, dark green, purple, even black. Some olives are small, even skinny; others are big, downright plump. But they all have one thing in common: They're an ingredient that rarely goes unnoticed.

In one story, Olive tells two drug-crazed robbers holding her, her complaining husband Henry and a praying nurse hostage that her husband can't help his constant criticism. He's just like his mother, Olive says. Who hasn't heard our own parents or ourselves say that? And like Olive, who hasn't lived to regret saying something in anger, under stress -- the kind of statement that, while perhaps true, is best left unsaid? Olive is flawed but good, and that's what makes her perfectly real. So are the wonderful stories woven together by Strout.