Cook Until Desired Tenderness

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Cook Until Desired Tenderness (North Atlantic Books 2005) is a curious and interesting book about food, life and love. The author, Cleo Papanikolas is a painter and the book is filled with her illustrations. Her bio says that she "has earned her living painting pictures, murals, and decorative finishes on almost any surface." The book is described as a fictional journal of a culinary artist and it is written with rich and imaginative prose. The first chapter takes place in a family's summer digs at a commune named Karma Clan Ranch, previously the MacKlaran Ranch, which the kids nickname Karmicland where the main character, Sugar discovers a tin recipe box in the neglected kitchen. Inside are recipe cards, many reproduced on the page along with illustrations of the dishes Sugar reads about straight out of a 1950s American home: Jell-O molds, sugary salads and Baked Alaska, completely opposite to the non-sugary food she is fed: The refrigerator never had a functioning light bulb. Inside its dark interior, only useless food: lecitin, tahini, wheat germ, brewers yeast, opened plastic bags of miso paste, Postum, canning jars of blended things like goat's milk or nut milk (whatever it was, it was once frothy but had separated and formed a skin on top). Sugar longs for the unavailable, processed foods she reads about on the recipe cards. Among the recipe card are collection of letters and cards by Mrs. McKlaran about how she courted her future husband with food. These letters cover the pages with an elaborate script with so many flourishes and smudges that it's not clear the reader is suppose to spend the time deciphering them or not, and yet they are tantalizing. The recipes have aphorisms from the chef printed on the recipe cards like: "Appetizers are the introduction to the meal, and as the name suggests, are intended to tempt the appetite." Sugar mulls over the aphorisms and the long ago ups and downs of Mrs. McKlaren's as she reads the recipes smuggled into bed with her at night. The next chapter is about a boyfriend whose favorite food is Jell-O and lives off of packaged foods stolen from fast food restaurants and convenience foods. "He neatly wrapped the marinated chicken in tinfoil packages with some herbed frozen vegetables and popped them into the oven. The food never touched his hands, dishes or counter, which left him free to work on me like the winning calf-tied in the rodeo." (p. 31) Sugar ends up cooking his family a Thanksgiving dinner in the boyfriend's kitchen, creates a mess, and then flees with the food. The rest of the book continues such adventures. Cook Until Desired Tenderness is lavishly illustrated – spoons hanging from wall and chandelier, drawings of walk-ins and dishes. This is an adult's novel-cum-picturebook. While you could just read the story, you feel compelled to marvel over the illustrations. Still, Cook Until Desired Tenderness is a coming-of-age story for Foodies that revolves around the way we eat and cook. Book details: Publisher Amazon.com Barnes & Noble Previous articles: [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, cookbooks --> back to superchefblog