Product Description

"Food is not merely about calories and minimum daily requirements and metabolic pathways. At its very heart, food is about people."
--from Pass the Polenta

Likewise, people are at the heart of this warm, personal collection of food- and family-inspired essays by former professional chef and food historian Teresa Lust. An Italian immigrant grandmother who plucked chickens in the backyard; an introverted mushroom forager who collected chanterelles in the woods; a German auntie who learned to knead bread in a wooden bucket; an unassuming wine shop owner who, after closing, offers a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and a delightfully unpretentious way to value a wine--all are key ingredients in the zesty culinary heritage that Teresa Lust lovingly serves up. Like the creamy, sweet polenta that wooed her father into her mother's robust Italian family, this book is filled with a myriad of rich flavors, history, kitchen tips, and recipes. Lessons in life learned at the stoves of the many seasoned cooks in Lust's world, these wonderful true stories are an expression of art and love, family and self, soil and the seasons.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1391782 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-31
• Released on: 1999-08-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Amazon.com
Pass the Polenta is a collection of essays about home cooking, which is to say it's a book about home and family and tradition and the unspoken connectedness that comes of people pushing their knees under a table and passing plates of food back and forth.

Pass the Polenta is a book about taking forward from the past all that is relevant, and savoring as memory those elements that serve better as the fodder for stories. For Lust, unlike too many food writers, doesn't simply like the idea of food as something to carry on about, she likes to eat and to cook, to dine with friends and family, and she draws this passion into her writing. When she's cooking at her keyboard, you can taste her best work on the page. And then there is the handful of recipes at the back of the book: stew and polenta, roast chicken, her grandmother's pie, sauerkraut, and potato and leek soup, among others. Connections.

Teresa Lust hails from central Washington State, where agriculture is king. She's Italian on her mother's side of the family--hence the polenta of the title. Somehow a biology degree pushed her into commercial cooking, and commercial cooking got her moving from Washington to California, then from California to New England, where she turned her attention to writing as well as cooking, and earned an M.F.A. It's a happy marriage for Lust, this sense that what's on the plate is more than food, this sense that words on a page can be more than information. It's all to the reader's benefit. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
These essays on the pleasures of simple food are uniformly charming, but it is that very uniformity that sabotages the collection. Over and over again, Lust, a former restaurant chef, uses folksy character sketches to prove that old ways and peasant food outdo fussy techniques and nouvelle cuisine. In "Easy as Pie" it's Lust's grandmother who instructs her on making a pie crust that beats out the pate brisee of French-trained pastry chefs. In "The Same Old Stuffing," she berates food magazine editors who promote "the smoked quail, the spicy black bean stuffing, and the sun-dried tomato and arugula gratin" for Thanksgiving and waxes nostalgic about the two types of stuffing (one with sage and onion and another with sausage, spinach, raisins, and nuts) served on her family's holiday table. "Daily Grind" compares the coffee that emerges from the ancient stovetop coffeemaker of Lust's Italian aunt to the sad brews sold under Italian jargon in American coffee bars. While these observations are undoubtedly true, they are repetitious and often verge on cliche. Recipes for homey dishes (sauerkraut, scones) are explained in their essays, and then written out more formally at the end of the book. Like the essays, these dishes are familiar yet satisfying.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Lust, a professional chef, thought about writing a cookbook but instead came up with a collection of culinary essays after discovering that each of her favorite dishes had its own story to tell. The topics covered in this charming book range from the secrets of a good pie dough to musings on forgotten varieties of apples. In one chapter Lust manages to work in a short culinary history of leeks and potatoes while relating how she cooked up a batch of potato-leek soup for a restaurant she was working in. Written with wit and grace, seasoned with a pinch of her own family's history, and flavored with snippets of culinary lore, each essay is an absolute delight to read. As a special treat, she includes recipes for some of the dishes that play starring roles in the book. The perfect choice for readers who enjoy culinary writings by authors such as Laurie Colwin or Elizabeth David; highly recommended!?John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Far more than just recipes!
If you love food and cooking, you will adore this well-written and fascinting book. It has some wonderful recipes (try her way of "assembling" polenta and gorgonzola and you'll never eat it any other way!) but it's her essays that make this book so special.

She writes lovingly about food, and shares great insights into the world of cooking and 'gourmet' restaurants (for example: "It is a long-standing sentiment among professional chefs that American recipes, while quaint and cozy, really do need to be sent off to finishing school abroad before they can appear in public. I suppose they aren't elegant enough for your average gourmand. Yet what is a French meringue but a mess of egg whites? Or creme brulee but a bowl of pudding?") Ain't it the truth!

This is one "cookbook" that belongs on the literature shelf -- yet it also has some of the best recipes I've found.

Buy it ... read it ... use it.

I read it straight through
Teresa Lust is a talented writer and a charming person. Her stories warm you up and the food that she writes about is unpretentious but delicious. She gently proclaims her working class heritage throughout the book and I find that refreshing. She clearly loves what she does so her enthusiasm just runs all over you in a delightful way when you read this book. I read the book straight through! I really hope that Lust writes more books.

Technically speaking, her essays were well researched and the bibliography that she compiled reflects that. The selection of essays is balanced and the editing is good. I counted three typos--not bad for a modern book.

If Pass The Polenta was a Wine, it would be a Five.
Lust has intoxicated me with her writing where words strung together become magnificent aromas, memories of familial kitchen ethnic cooking, raising chickens, Pop's garden, and life growing up in the kitchen where everything was prepared fresh, from scratch, and with favorite family recipes. She has brought to my mind a memorable collection of essays on culinary subjects that everyone who loves to eat would love to read about, and especially in the way that she writes. She alivens the soul to once again slow down and experience preparing hearty food with love and care. "...Polenta" is definately a 5. Thank you Teresa for writing such an inspirational and touching book... and so young you are! Please write more!