Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days

FROM THE DUST JACKET:

"The meal is the emblem of civilization," the Salters observe. "What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?"

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

Publishers Weekly: The author of A Sport and a Pastime: A Novel teams with his wife, his 30-year cooking companion, to produce a "dinner book," a quirky cornucopia of recipes, historical notes, household hints, brief surveys of foodstuffs (eggs, salt, avocados, doughnuts, cheeses, olives, martinis, etc.) and utensils (forks, knives, or toothpicks, say), appreciation of friends met both in life (including Alice Waters and Julia Child) and through books (Lord Byron, Anna Karenina), random observations (what makes a good waiter), and advice of all kinds. For example, six "days" in January are dedicated to the useful art of giving a dinner party, but in fact, tips on or accounts of picnics and parties (clearly a delight for both Salters) are everywhere. Their recipes are simple and good (Polpettone alla Toscana; Chicken Marengo; Fraises a la Cussy; Gazpacho) and can usually be made in advance, leaving the cooks free to socialize. But this volume is not chiefly one of recipes or hints (though both may prove practical). The Salters call it a "bedside book" and, with its attractive packaging and charming illustrations by Fabrice Moireau, it should make the perfect hostess gift, not always an easy thing to choose, say the authors.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

James Salter is the author of nine previous books, including the novel A Sport and a Pastime: A Novel; the collection Dusk and Other Stories, which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award; and Burning the Days: Recollection. Kay Salter, a journalist and playwright, has written for the New York Times and Food & Wine , among other publications. The Salters live in Colorado and on Long Island.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS:

I phoned James and Kay Salter at their home in Bridgehampton, New York, on the day after Veterans Day, eager to learn how the idea for their Food Lover's Book of Days was born. Mr. Salter opened by speaking about the early days of their marriage. "We lived in a small old house that just happened to have a very small, congenial kitchen where we cooked and ate together. Ours weren't like Winston Churchill's and his wife's breakfasts. Churchill once said he and his wife had tried, during their 40 years of marriage, several times, to have breakfast together, but they found it was so disagreeable that they gave up the idea. "Our experience was that we talked a lot over breakfast, and often about food. We gave many dinner parties, and in the course of all this cooking in all these years we had read a lot about food and about entertaining and references to it in books.

"The book was also partly inspired by one of those Oxford books in which they had an entry for each day of the year -- usually the birth of some writer or the publication of some book or a meeting between writers or an anecdote. I proposed the idea to Nicholas Callaway, who is a publisher we like a lot. He said he liked the idea, and so we undertook it."

I confess to Mr. Salter that when I began reading Life Is Meals I started dog-earing pages containing information I wanted to remember. After a few weeks' worth of entries, I realized I'd marked every other page.

"I don't think people are going to do this because the book turned out to be more handsome than we'd thought. I guess you'd hate to mar the pages, but the original idea was that you would write in the book yourself on the flyleaf or on the first page so that you could keep track of favorite parts. Of course, there's an index, if you really want to go back."

I ask Mr. Salter where they found all of the food facts they share. "Did you have to do a lot of research or had you already collected the information throughout your years of cooking together?"

"I would say the first 20 entries were easy, but then we began to think a little more carefully about where we were and what we wanted to include. We eventually had an eight-by-three-foot board on the wall, divided into a big, open calendar. We would pin up possible entries. They were color-coded, because we didn't want four French references to come together, or something like that. We tried to alternate recipes, historical entries, things about food, entertaining, and personal reflections from our own dining book.

"We did research at the Culinary Institute of America on the Hudson, near where Roosevelt's house is. They have an extensive library, and we spent days up there. I hesitate to say that Life Is Meals can be taken as authoritative without even the slight raising of an eyebrow, but, generally speaking, it's pretty solid."

"Whom do you most enjoy reading on food and cooking?"

Mr. Salter responds by lauding the work of M.F.K. Fisher. "Naturally, styles change -- people change -- you just don't find writers like her anymore. She wrote straightforward nonfiction about cooking and eating. But, she also wrote nonfiction pieces that were so beautiful you might mistake them for short stories in The Gastronomic Me ."

Kay Salter concurs. "I was introduced to Fisher by Alice Waters, who knew her and loved her, and by a great friend of ours named Anne Isaak, who worked at Chez Panisse when she was beginning in the restaurant business. I have to say, however, that I'm more interested in descriptions of meals in literature. I don't sit down, usually, and read food writers. I don't dislike them; they're just not something I pick up normally."

Mr. Salter adds Julia Child to his list of favorites. "I've heard Jason Epstein say more than once that, 'if there were one politician, just one, who had the intelligence, honesty, and charisma of Julia Child, we'd be all right.'"

"What were the challenges of collaborating on this book with your spouse?"

Mr. Salter gives a low chuckle. "You mean personal challenges? We didn't have any. Our system was such that it prevented that. We worked a hundred miles apart. We would agree on the assignment, then Kay and I would each write three or four entries and then we would sit down together and edit those to our mutual satisfaction."

"We are each other's first and best readers," Ms. Salter adds. "We know how to be candid without being brutal with our comments. There were definitely things that were tossed out or that we disagreed on, but it was a very easy collaboration. It was a lot simpler than our relationship with the contractor when we put an addition on the house."

"If you were a very close reader," Mr. Salter continues, "and happened to know both of our styles, you might be able to distinguish, occasionally, who wrote which. But, in general, we made an effort to have that not be evident. There are a few entries that are specifically written by one person. Those often have the initials after the entry." (A notable case in point is the entries for the second and third of May, where each author delivers a short meditation on eating alone.)

We turn to the subject of holiday cooking, and I ask Mr. Salter which meal inspires the most angst for the casual chef. "Well, we don't have angst. We don't have a really lofty reputation to uphold. But, the most important meal, from a point of view of food, and also the most interesting holiday, is Thanksgiving. It's really dedicated to the warmth of food and the people you're with."

"Do you generally prepare the same foods for Thanksgiving, or do you change the menu from year to year?"

"We try to change a few things, but the central foods remain constant." Mr. Salter responds. "We've made turkey in a number of ways. Most recently, we've been brining it for 24 hours before roasting. It turns out spectacularly. You get a very moist and particularly flavorful turkey."

The entry for November 23 recalls a time, several centuries ago, when turkeys were driven, on foot, from the English countryside to market in London. In order to withstand the week-long walk, the turkeys' feet were shod in sacking or leather boots.

As we chuckle about this, Ms. Salter quips, "If they could just get that into a movie -- 'Cue the turkeys!'"

"What do you do with all of the leftovers in the week after Thanksgiving?"

Mr. Salter extols the virtues of the turkey sandwich. "Sandwiches made from an actual turkey rather than that pressed turkey meat you get in stores are an entirely different thing. In London we used to stay at a hotel, and down on the corner was a big pub. They always had a great roast turkey and a great roast beef on the shelf behind the bar. If you ordered a sandwich, the barman sliced big pieces of turkey breast for you right there. That tastes like nothing else. It's not the kind of thing you get at Subway; it's the real thing."

Kay Salter walks me through the making of another of their favorites -- turkey hash. "We boil potatoes, but not until they are completely cooked, then dice them rather fine. Usually we add some green pepper and some herbs and the bits of chopped-up leftover turkey. It's sort of like a stir fry, but not cooked at that extreme high temperature. Then, we stir it all together with a little bit of butter or a bit of liquid to help it meld. Often we fry an egg and put it on top. It's good for any meal of the day, starting with breakfast."

Our conversation moves from holiday to holiday.

"Christmas is somewhat different," Mr. Salter offers. "Talk about angst! There's the question of presents. Do you have Christmas partly on Christmas Eve and partly on Christmas Day? Our practice for a long time has been to have a lot of it on Christmas Eve. But, of course, that's hard to do if you have little kids, since the general feeling in America is that you do it on Christmas morning after Santa has been there."

Asked if they have begun writing the menu for Christmas dinner, Mr. Salter replies, "We haven't given it a thought. We usually do these things somewhat impromptu -- a couple of days before. Really good cooks usually go to the market and make the menu from what's available. Of course, unless you happen to be living in an area with well-supplied fresh produce, you're not in that position. Supermarkets all have the very same things: grapes from Chile, lettuces from California, grapefruits from Florida, and tomatoes with the taste of tennis balls, mechanically picked. Although there's an abundance of food, a lot of it is not particularly good to eat. We think we're living in paradise, but there are a couple of countries living above us."

Knopf, 2006, 464 pages, $27.50