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Rating: 
Summary: a must-read for all food lovers
Review: Elizabeth David is the woman who has restored good eating to England. For many decades the British were known for what might tactfully be called "plain cooking"---overdone roasts, vegetables boiled beyond recognition, oversweet, gooey desserts. In her eight books and in her columns, David enthusiastically re-introduced the British to fresh vegetables, delicate sauces, simple desserts, and flavorful, whole-grain bread. At the age of 16, this daughter of the landed gentry was sent to France for a cultural education and came home with a lifelong passion for good cooking. "Is There a Nutmeg in the House" is a complilation of her writings from forty years, some of which has not been published before. David's writing style is recognizably British, opinionated, chatty, not excessively organized, and a bit "fussy", for want of a better term. This only added to the pleasure of reading her, for this reviewer; although a person used to the standard American format for providing recipes, with the ingredients listed in the order of combination, and step by step instruction, will not find that in David. Elizabeth David was a national treasure for England, and her lifelong passion for "cookery" earns her a place on the bookshelf of many American kitchens as well.
Rating:
Summary: a must-read for all food lovers
Review: Elizabeth David is the woman who has restored good eating to England. For many decades the British were known for what might tactfully be called "plain cooking"---overdone roasts, vegetables boiled beyond recognition, oversweet, gooey desserts. In her eight books and in her columns, David enthusiastically re-introduced the British to fresh vegetables, delicate sauces, simple desserts, and flavorful, whole-grain bread. At the age of 16, this daughter of the landed gentry was sent to France for a cultural education and came home with a lifelong passion for good cooking. "Is There a Nutmeg in the House" is a complilation of her writings from forty years, some of which has not been published before. David's writing style is recognizably British, opinionated, chatty, not excessively organized, and a bit "fussy", for want of a better term. This only added to the pleasure of reading her, for this reviewer; although a person used to the standard American format for providing recipes, with the ingredients listed in the order of combination, and step by step instruction, will not find that in David. Elizabeth David was a national treasure for England, and her lifelong passion for "cookery" earns her a place on the bookshelf of many American kitchens as well.
Rating:
Summary: Culinary Essays by a Master. Leftovers, but still Tasty
Review: Elizabeth David was a leading practitioner of a rare breed, the culinary essayist. The culinary species of this genus is rare because essays in general seem to be a dying breed. The most prominent modern American culinary essayist is John Thorne. While Thorne's primary influence was Richard Olney, Olney and David were of a single mind in style and in many opinions about food. Olney and David together were the patron saints of the invention of the distinctively California cuisine, both being cited by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, Jeremiah Tower of Chez Panisse and Stars, and Judy Rodgers of the Zuni Grill as their primary inspirations.
David seems to have had an even bigger effect on English eating. In fact, her effect on English home cooking seems to have been strongly parallel to that of the recently departed Julia Child on American home kitchens in the writers' influence on how supermarkets stock their produce aisles with more unusual fruits and vegetables. The parallel goes even further, as both were relatively tall, both were born to well to do families with little interest in culinary quality, and both served in unusual and important posts overseas during World War II. While Child was an OSS clerk in Southeast Asia, David was a librarian to the Foreign Service in Egypt. At this point, their culinary careers follow different paths. Child becomes the consummate interpreter and teacher of French cuisine while David becomes the critic and interpreter of French and Mediterranean cuisine to her English audience. Both held very strong opinions. Child tended to keep hers out of her writing, but David felt free to offer reasoned opinions on just about anything which crossed her path.
This volume should be a warning to journeyman writers everywhere that it is not wise to comment on the work of important writers, especially important writers whose work promises to be reprinted long after their death. Early in the book, David comments on some inaccuracies in writings on her work and career, and, I suspect, her criticisms of these mistakes will be read long after the original authors are forgotten, or, worse, remembered only for their misstatements about Ms. David.
This volume was published posthumously but with the selection of material done largely by the author shortly before her death, as a sequel to the volume `An Omelette and a Glass of Wine'. Most pieces are magazine articles comprised of an essay on some ingredient, followed by recipes on the same ingredient or subject. Like David's cookbooks, I read her articles on ingredients and recipes less to actually make the specific dishes and more to educate my thinking about food. One fine example is her essay on rosemary in which she complains about the overuse of this herb in many dishes and by many cuisines such as the Greek use with lamb. The following essay is a liberating discussion of dried herbs, pointing out that fresh herbs are simply not always better. Many herbs attain their best effect when dried.
I like to believe that John Thorne's fussiness with culinary nomenclature comes from, or at least is reinforced by Elizabeth David's insistence that you maintain some semblance of fidelity to the meaning of words, as when she exhorts us to limit the name Quiche Lorraine to a preparation with pastry shell, eggs, cream, and bacon. Cheese is simply not part of the paradigm. She adds to a warmly cordial reference to Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' part of the blame for this linguistic larceny, as Child says the dish is very easy and gives license to improvise.
The variety of subjects is great and engaging, ranging from egg dishes to encounters with publishers, a rather arcane subject which I always find interesting, going back as far as my reading of H.L. Menchen's cordial connection to Alfred A. Knopf. David's relations with publishers was not as cordial. While the evidence that this book is collected from leftovers, they are almost universally leftovers which were originally of a very high quality and which have improved with age, as there are few culinary writers who can match David's turn of phrase and highly balanced sensibilities about ingredients and their use.
I would rank this volume high in value as a part of a culinary library.
Rating:
Summary: A fine and quirky food mind on show
Review: Elizabeth David wrote cookbooks and food essays; many of the more personal ones were already collected in the amazing and wonderous An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. But this book has plenty of gems, too. I don't agree with everything she says, but I certainly want to listen to her saying it. Get An Omelette and a Glass of Wine first, then this one if you want more.
Rating:
Summary: A fine and quirky food mind on show
Review: Elizabeth David wrote cookbooks and food essays; many of the more personal ones were already collected in the amazing and wonderous An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. But this book has plenty of gems, too. I don't agree with everything she says, but I certainly want to listen to her saying it. Get An Omelette and a Glass of Wine first, then this one if you want more.
Rating: 
Summary: Dregs from the files of an Anglocentric food critic
Review: I bought this book based on a review in the New York Times Review of Books, as I recall, which painted it as being a great posthumous oeuvre of one of the top food writers of all time. What I found instead is that Elizabeth David is highly biased against entirely random things, and I am not sure why I should be interested in sharing, or even hearing about these biases; she has extremely arcane interests ranging from cookbooks of 400 years ago to the cuisine of some tiny region of Italy or wherever, to some obsure ingredient; and her writing itself is not particularly stimulating or enlightening. Furthermore, the entire book has a highly Anglocentric aspect which to me, at least, is irrelevant and uninteresting.
Rating: 
Summary: Anglocentric? Not hardly
Review: I find it odd that the previous reviewer considered Elizabeth David "Anglocentric," as she spent most of her life irritating her fellow Englishmen and -women by attempting to awaken them to cuisines other than their own. In my opinion, David is possibly the finest food writer ever. Though not quite as good as AN OMELETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE, this book hardly constitutes her "dregs."
Rating: 
Summary: Do you have Nutmeg in your house?
Review: Whole nutmeg is often kept in European kitchens and it is believed that as long as there is a whole nutmeg seed in the kitchen, the marriage will last. So I keep two whole nutmeg seeds in my kitchen as extra insurance. :> The title of this book actually refers to another situation in which Elizabeth David becomes disappointed with restaurants not keeping a nutmeg grinder for their clients to use when they are served various dishes with cheese or pasta. Some information from my own research about Nutmeg: Nutmeg is actually native to the East Indies and was very popular from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. It is one of the original spices cultivated in Tidore and Ternate, two tiny Spice Islands in Eastern Indonesia. The best nutmeg is now grown on the Island of Grenadain in the West Indies. A yellow peach-like fruit is harvested with a woven wicker basket attached to the end of a long pole. The inner seed is the nutmeg spice and is superior when freshly ground. The red-orange net/aril covering the outer seed is dried and ground to produce mace. Elizabeth David's writing in "Is there a Nutmeg in the House" is much more scholarly than I had expected. These are essays describing the practical, historical and earthy aspects of cooking. She does however often make your mouth water with tales of remembering "cake with orange icing" or gathering fresh mushrooms from fields near her home as a child. This book begins with a brief overview of Elizabeth's life. Most of the memories involve cooking. She even cooked in a kitchen in Egypt. This might explain recipes for "Spiced Lentil Soup." She defiantly likes spicy foods and also has a recipe for Garam Masala. She shows her love and dislike of various dishes, ingredients and recipes. She also describes her dream kitchen and would definitely not approve of my refrigerator being next to the stove. I have to admit the pictures of her kitchen are quaint and the use of a table in the middle of the kitchen made me nostalgic for my grandmother's kitchen. I learned to make my grandmother's apple pie on a small table in her kitchen. Many cooks find a table essential to roll out pastry. I also loved the use of a French armoire, English dressers and wooden plate racks in her kitchen. While the kitchen looked more cluttered in comparison to today's streamlined sterile spaces, it has a sense of beauty and comfort. I at times long for a kitchen with a fireplace, just to warm up the atmosphere. While the modern kitchen is more practical, they can at times feel cold. Unless of course you pack them full of cookbooks. Elizabeth is rather famous for saying: "One certainly cannot learn the technical details of cookery entirely from books; but if the cooks, celebrated and obscure, of the past had believed that written recipes were unnecessary, we should now be in a sad plight indeed." -Elizabeth David, French Provincial Cooking (1960) She had quite a collection of cookbooks and it shows in her writing. She does seem to have a working knowledge of the history of cuisine. Through her own research, she helped to change the way we think about food. The material in this collection has not appeared in previous books. Here she emphasizes authentic recipes and fresh ingredients. The recipes are written out in paragraph style. They are more of a conversation with the cook than a quick formula. In this way you can obtain valuable insight into the methods or reasons for why food is prepared in a specific way. I did not however find out how to extract juice from a pomegranate. I was asked this question and since I never had to deal with the question before am still trying to figure out if everyone else out there uses a sieve and presses out the juice. Seems to work. Elizabeth spends a great deal of time discussing "oxo cubes" and discusses the fear cooks feel when a recipe calls for "stock." I remember such a fear before I discovered stock pastes. Of course these days stock can easily be made in a crock pot while you are at work or you can really just use a stock base/paste. I have to agree with her when she says that it is satisfying to learn how to "cook from scratch." She mentions this in regards to making stocks. A homemade soup made with homemade stock can be incomparable. "The making of broths and stocks and consommés is to me one of the most interesting and satisfactory of all cooking processes." pg. 27 While making stock still remains a valuable skill, I can't imagine wanting to learn how to make yogurt. Like a Frenchwoman not wanting to make her own bread, I prefer to leave yogurt up to the experts. Still, if you wish to know, Elizabeth has included this information. These days many also make their own cheese and bread, so I guess why not yogurt? I make bread myself. Mostly because the homemade taste is superior. Elizabeth explains why she finds dried yeast unsatisfactory. My thought is that it was not as reliable as the yeast we have today. I can keep dried yeast in my refrigerator for a long time and never even take time to "proof" the yeast. We are so terribly spoiled these days and unless we take time to read about the past, we can't fully appreciate packages of "quick-rise yeast." I had to laugh as I read about her dissatisfaction with a garlic press. Could this be similar to the one we use today? I love my garlic press. Please don't make me live without it. It sure saves peeling cloves. I can extract the garlic paste in no time for recipe after recipe. You might be amused by her recollection of her housekeeper in Greece tossing a basket of live seafood on her "eiderdown." What a character. Enjoyable reading and essential for anyone who is interested in culinary history.
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