Mouth Wide Open
I have a reputation for being a tough critic — I prefer “thoughtful critic” — when it comes to book reviews. But I’m actually easy to please: do your research, think about what you’re writing, and communicate your ideas clearly. You get bonus points for good imagery and rhythm, but they’re not necessary.
In the swamp of modern food writing, however, few authors poke above the miasma of mediocrity and deliver on my lean requirements. One of them is John Thorne.
I imagine many of you already know Thorne’s writing. His attitudes and beliefs are among those that form the substrata of my own. If you like this blog, you probably like him, and you won’t need my encouragement to buy Mouth Wide Open, the latest collection of excerpts from his magazine Simple Cooking.
If you haven’t yet found him, Mouth Wide Open is a great place to start.
Thorne is at his best when he writes long pieces about single dishes. He meditates on them, researches them, and cooks them. These are not Cook's Illustrated-esque diaries of adjusting a recipe by 1 tablespoon of this and 1 tablespoon of that until he arrives at some “perfect” rendition. These are thought-provoking and in-depth essays that reel in history and personal experience.
Consider his piece on the Piemontese dish bagna cauda, which I challenge anyone to read without experiencing a gripping need to make the dish as soon as humanly possible: “To get at the essence of bagna caôda, then, you must imagine yourself tired, famished, sitting in a field somewhere surrounded with comrades, a raw scallion in one hand and a tumbler of equally raw red wine in the other … your body glows in the warmth that comes from ingesting an overload of butter and oil. Life, for the moment, is nothing but unalloyed delight …” Discussing the role of anchovies in the dish, he writes, “These anchovies also satisfied something that reaches so far into the past that it predates humankind itself: the craving for salt.” How did the anchovies become so integral to a dish from a landlocked region? Thorne’s research points to the Jews who were booted from Spain in 1492. And as he outlines recipes from several decades of cookbooks, he notes how the ingredients have changed in recipes for this “traditional” dish — more garlic and less butter — and how it has moved from main course to appetizer. (He writes of bagna cauda’s evolution: “Which only goes to show that authenticity, slippery as an eel, can never be grasped for long … unless you’re willing to slam its head against the side of a table.”)
His long pieces on marmalade and on cod and potatoes will impel you with equal force into the kitchen. But even his short meditations will inspire you. In “The Cook Concocts His Midnight Snack,” Thorne writes about sweet corn and milk: “I blended the kernels and the pulp together, mixed in a cup of milk, a pinch of salt, and a dash of Jamaican hot sauce. Then I gently heated it up in a saucepan, just enough to have to blow on the first few spoonfuls to cool them, and served it up.” What a pity that corn season has ended.
Thorne invites comparison with Edward Behr, another of the food world’s greats, and indeed the two men are friends. (And one of the pieces in Mouth Wide Open first appeared in The Art of Eating.) But the two magazines have their own identities. Behr’s research combines travel and interviews with books and history, whereas Thorne’s focuses on books and the Internet. This is not to diminish Thorne’s work — you’ll find few publications with more thought behind them — but to say that his publication is, as Behr himself describes it, “close to home and kitchen.” As a happy side effect of this close-to-the-hearth position, the techniques and ingredients that Thorne describes are within anyone’s reach.
Gift-giving holidays are upon us, and bookstore shelves are about to groan with the weight of fluffy books rushed out for the season. Instead of some bland and middling food book, give your friends and loved ones a book that will open their eyes — and their mouths — to a universe of passionate writing and deep thought. Give them Mouth Wide Open.
This book was sent to me as a review copy.
P.S. For those of you who care about such things, I have reversed a long-standing style choice on OWF. Though most of my clients choose to drop the serial comma, the comma that appears before the last item in a list, I have decided to keep it in these posts. Since the only rule with style-guide decisions is that you apply them consistently, I thought it worth flagging this change to OWF’s style guide.
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