Review: Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love and Food

The food memoir is a common literary recipe, sating appetites for sustenance as well as story, as reliable a pairing as grilled cheese and tomato soup. Enter a new classic in the larder: Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love and Food by the versatile Ann Hood (Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, An Italian Wife, The Book That Matters Most).

Like the writing of M.F.K. Fisher, which Hood cites, Hood's prose packs a wallop in these nearly 30 essays. She chronicles her time as a young girl in a large, loving Italian family; a teen model for a department store; a TWA flight attendant; and a longtime writer, partner, mother, cook and knitter.

Each essay mixes memories with meditations. In the especially fine "Party Like It's 1959," Hood recounts a dinner party for the ages. Though it was served in the 1990s, the meal was identical in menu and attitude to first-class inflight meals she had served years earlier as a flight attendant. She considers the chateaubriand, the company around the table, the fine china and all that led up to being served that meal herself, rather than serving it to others. "How we entertain is a combination of who we are and how we live, of all the dinners we've had and all the dreams we still embrace," she writes.

Woven into the mélange are recipes for what filled Hood's plate over the decades. Some are inspired by dishes made by her mother. Some are dishes she once cooked to impress a boy, or the man she would eventually marry. Some relate to her children. One highlight in that vein is the crunchy, garlicky dish Sam's Potatoes, calling for a "more than reasonable" amount of olive oil. Another, the understated Risi e Bisi (Italian rice and peas), that Hood would cook for her youngest daughter, Anabelle, who in pickier years refused any food "too spicy, too crispy, too mushy, too peppery, too saucy."

One of the sweetest essays details Hood's romance with food writer Michael Ruhlman, who harbored a decades-long crush on Hood before the two finally got together (but who still cannot abide her affinity for American cheese). Even as Hood can make hearts swell with her stories, she can make them thump: "I am in IKEA starting my life over." New fears, new furniture, new futures, then Swedish meatballs.

Hood lost her daughter Grace at the tender age of five (see Comfort: A Journey Through Grief), and it's heartbreaking to read about Grace's Cheesy Potatoes--rich and Gruyere-sprinkled--once happily assembled by Hood's little blonde girl with glasses. Grace, Hood recalls, loved "layering the potatoes in concentric circles and evenly spreading the cheese." So many moments and meals in Kitchen Yarns shine, but perhaps this is the recipe to try first, in honor of Grace and the grace granted by cooking with loved ones. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

Shelf Talker: This food memoir from the prolific Ann Hood should appeal to fans of M.F.K. Fisher, with essays and recipes for readers seeking nourishment both culinary and literary--and a killer Whiskey Sour.

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