Stories from the Kitchen — Diana Secker Tesdell

Stories from the Kitchen is a one-of-a-kind anthology of classic tales showcasing the culinary arts from across the centuries and around the world.

Here is a mouthwatering smorgasbord of stories with food in the starring role, by a range of masters of fiction -- from Dickens and Chekhov to Isaac Bashevis Singer, from Shirley Jackson to Jim Crace and Amy Tan. These richly varied selections offer tastes as decadent as caviar and as humble as cherry pie. They dazzle with the sumptuous extravagance of Isak Dinesen's “Babette's Feast” and console with a prisoner's tender final meal in Günter Grass's The Flounder. Choice tidbits from famous novels make an appearance: the triumphant boeuf en daube served in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Marcel Proust's rhapsodic memories of the family's cook preparing asparagus in Remembrance of Things Past, Émile Zola's outrageously sensual “cheese symphony” scene from The Belly of Paris. Here, too, are over-the-top amuse-bouches by Gerald Durrell, Nora Ephron, and T. C. Boyle; a touching short story about food and love by M. F. K. Fisher; and a delightful account of the perfect meal by eighteenth-century epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”

From a barrel of oysters endowed with powers of seduction to a dish of stewed tripe liberally spiced with vengeance, the fictional confections assembled here will tantalize, entice, and satisfy literary gourmands everywhere.