Alice B. Toklas – författare

A beautiful new edition of the classic culinary memoir from the famous American ex-pat with a new introduction by chef & food writer Ruth Reichl.At their home in Paris, Alice B. Toklas and her romantic partner, Gertrude Stein, entertained a circle of friends who would become the twentieth century’s most revered cultural luminaries—writers, artists, and expats, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. When the legendary Alice was asked to write a memoir, she initially refused. Instead, she wrote The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, a celebration of a lifetime in pursuit of culinary delights.This sharply written, deliciously rich compendium combines recipes for traditional French dishes such as coq au vin, bouillabaisse, and boeuf bourguignon with amusing tales from Alice’s life and travels to rural France, Spain, and America. In “Murder in the Kitchen,” Alice describes the first carp she killed, after which she immediately lit up a cigarette and waited for the police to come and haul her away. “Dishes for Artists” describes her hunt for the perfect recipe to fit Picasso’s peculiar diet. “Recipes from Friends” highlights her infamous “Haschich Fudge,” which she notes may often be accompanied by “ecstatic reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes.”With delightful line drawings, a foreword by M. F. K. Fisher, and a new introduction by culinary doyenne Ruth Reichl, The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book brilliantly captures the spirit of a unique woman and the remarkable time in which she lived.

In this memoir-turned-cookbook, Alice B. Toklas describes her life with partner Gertrude Stein and their famed Paris salon, which entertained the great avant-garde and literary figures of their day. With dry wit and characteristic understatement Toklas ponders the ethics of killing a carp in her kitchen before stuffing it with chestnuts; decorating a fish to amuse Picasso at lunch; and travelling across France during the First World War in an old delivery truck, gathering local recipes along the way. She includes a friend's playful recipe for 'Haschiche Fudge', which promises 'brilliant storms of laughter and ecstatic reveries', much like her book.

On tissue-thin paper in a tiny, often undecipherable hand, Alice Toklas described her daily life in Paris in absorbing detail, like a latter-day Madame de Sévigné. Here are shrewd, witty observations on some of the most interesting artists, musicians, and writers of the twentieth century: Thornton Wilder, Carl Van Vechten, Edith Sitwell, Anita Loos, Cecil Beaton, Janet Flanner, Bennett Cerf, among others. There are stories about Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Juan Gris, Cocteau, and Sartre--all revealing a sharp eye that was as much a part of Alice as her devotion to Gertrude and her passion for recipes and gardening.In preparing this collection, the editor has chosen letters of biographical, literary, and artistic significance to an understanding of Gertrude Stein and her circle, letters illustrating the catholicity of Alice Toklas's friendships and the quality of her gifts, and letters that simply delight for their gossip.