The recipe is such a complex thing. Like, where is the recipe, and what is the recipe? Because the recipe isn’t always text. We now most commonly encounter recipes as texts in books, but it’s an annotation of a gestural process of the body. Even if you’re trying to follow a recipe exactly, and maybe even if you think you have no culinary skills whatsoever, the body finds ways of interjecting anyway, about at what point you stop cooking and whether you like the amount of salt or sugar. Laurel (because I know you're reading this!)--there is so much about the Odessy (and specifically Emily Willson's translation of it!) in this (she studied it in school), you would love this!!! Small Fires membahas salah satu pekerjaan rumah tangga yang seringkali disepelekan: memasak. Misalnya, 1) perempuan yang memasak terlihat bahagia, 2) memasak adalah tanda cinta, 3) dan yang paling sering kita dengar, love is the secret ingredients. Namun, penulis kurang setuju dengan stereotipe ini. Menurut penulis, cooking is thinking (dan aku SANGAT setuju, cooking is also science). Memasak sama sulitnya dengan pekerjaan lain yang membutuhkan keahlian spesifik. Ya kita bisa memasak dengan cinta, namun bukan berarti kita dapat menyepelekan proses memasak itu sendiri.

Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen Paperback Tour Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen Paperback Tour

Where I had trouble with the book is the philosophy/poetry. Those two subjects have never been my favored reading; too flowery and roundabout for my taste. It's not to say it's not well written; it is, I just have a harder time immersing myself in. However, it did lend itself to describing the food well, and I can appreciate how those that do like the genre would be completely happy with it. I'll also not describe the act of the author writing the food as 'lovely' (not that I would anyway, maybe it's a regional/cultural thing, but that's not a word that comes to mind when I think of food writing). I will describe it as engaging, descriptive, and balanced. I liked that the author spoke to various themes that underly cooking and how for granted we take recipes and the act of cooking. It’s a book about a particular recipe, or really an ur-recipe, and the ways in which the recipe, as a performance text, has been performed over time. And it’s very specifically not *just* a book about a recipe, but The Odyssey as well. A pairing that maybe does not naturally suggest itself feels essential, long before the end of the book. Tell me about how you envisioned and sold Small Fires , especially because it is so experimental and form-breaking. We work with the writers a lot. Maybe in the second or the third edit, they’ll suddenly find, This is the focus. Sometimes we’re working with people who are writing for the first time or haven’t done professional writing; we want the writer to really find the best piece that they can within the piece. It’s also allowing people’s different styles to exist. Small Fires reinvents cooking – that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, splattering red hot sauce on our books – as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe; the power of small fires burning everywhere.

This joyful, revelatory work of memory and meditation both complicates and electrifies life in the kitchen. It’s proven that not only can you just do that stuff, but people are willing to pay for it. The subscription model is nice in that sense. Publishers always underestimate readers: “Oh, readers aren’t gonna want to read experimental nonfiction about cooking.” Readers are going to read a 3,000-word piece about, you know, Aaron’s family traditions and their songs. A bracingly original, revelatory debut that explores cooking and the kitchen as sources of pleasure, constraint and revolution, by a rising star in food writing Radical, liberating, challenging -and at times emotional, this book really does help awaken (and rekindle), the little fires burning within all of us foodie feminists! I’ve also had that feeling that the recipe is impinging on my voice or my sensitivity in the kitchen. It’s kind of the fear of our agency being overruled. But really, it’s a turning away from the underlying knowledge that we’re always engaging with the knowledge and labor of others.

Small Fires, An Epic in the Kitchen by Rebecca May Johnson Small Fires, An Epic in the Kitchen by Rebecca May Johnson

Stuff doesn’t get published with the conservative expectations of what food writing is and isn’t. It’s really cool to work somewhere where there’s latitude to push beyond those expectations and to bring my own interests as a reader to commissioning and to pay people a dignified amount of money to do that work. This book will make you hungry! The food writing is extremely evocative, Rebecca May Johnson is very gifted in this department and reading it not only made me very hungry, but made me specifically crave what she was writing about. The chapter detailing the many times she has made a certain recipe throughout her life was an absolute joy to read and I will no doubt be attempting the same recipe since I can't get it out of my head! One of the most original food books I’ve ever read, at once intelligent and sensuous, witty, provoking and truly delicious’ Olivia Laing An intense thought-provoking enquiry into the very nature of cooking, which stayed with me long after I finished reading it’ NIGELLA LAWSONrebecca may johnson's somewhat jilted prose took me some time to appreciate, eventually evolving into a methodical rhythm much like cook book recipes. smalls fires was truly a perfect blend of johnson cooking her favourite dishes, weaving in feminist theory and relating her life experiences to the food we cook for others and the idea of food being a vehicle for a gendered 'labour' of love (all physically, socially and emotionally). food truly took the front seat of this memoir and it felt, throughout, like a guide to loving both, food, and the work you do for others, and yourself.

Kitchen Is a Place In Rebecca May Johnson’s First Book, the Kitchen Is a Place

When it gets to the point of being written down, it’s a form of knowledge that is trying to empower many people to do something. It’s not a text that is jealously guarded; you write it down because you want to spread knowledge. You want to empower many hands to come to a realization of how they can transform matter in their everyday lives and give themselves pleasure and give other people pleasure — I think that’s amazing. You’re an editor at Vittles , the publication Jonathan Nunn started during the pandemic . How does that work fit into this and the type of food writing you’d like to see more of? I loved a recent mixed-media piece by Aaron Vallance about his family’s songs at Shabbat lunch , for example.very enjoyable and thought-provoking, especially the parts where cooking is not being compared too heavily to rilke poems or the odyssey (we get it, you have a phd, but you don't see me comparing the cooking of pasta to poetic dialogue in the work of pernette du guillet!) In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking – that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books – as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking isthinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control. I don't think I've ever read a memoir quite like this - a mix of beautiful food writing and musings on greek mythology. It’s interesting stuff! It’s also hard to come up with the sort of insight that’d reel in the big likes (which for me, on goodreads, is anywhere between three and 12) because the book is so refreshingly open and direct about the work it is seeking to do. It treats the recipe as a kind of synecdoche I suppose - a point from which we can look at the way food ties us to certain places, the temporality and atemporality of it all, labour, gender, performance, relationships. It’s a survey, of all the ways RMJ has acted on a recipe and had it act on her in turn. In Small Fires , Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking -- that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books -- as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.