Food writing is some of the most eupeptic writing there is. It’s impossible to feel completely miserable when you’re reading about someone enjoying a really good meal, especially if the writer is generous enough to provide sufficient detail to let you imagine it for yourself. Amy Thielen, however, is the first food writer I’ve ever read who makes me yearn for the hard physical labor of cooking. Whenever I have to prepare a meringue, I give thanks to the genius who invented the KitchenAid mixer, but in her new memoir Give a Girl a Knife, Thielen makes whipping egg whites with a whisk seem like a joyous experience and dinner service at a busy Manhattan restaurant absolutely transcendent. “As the chaos of the nighttime dinner kitchen mounted,” she writes, “I located a weird stillness in myself. As the intensity tightened, the more my inner reverb began to hum.”
Part two, the antithesis of part one, isn’t magical at all. It’s a chronicle of Thielen’s early years in Park Rapids and her and Spangler’s initial adventures in homesteading, and while there are some exciting moments, the story is less about kitchen alchemy than hard work rewarded with love and warmth. (The homesteading parts are slightly reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie, except that Thielen experiences far more self-doubt than Ma Ingalls ever did.) But that’s part of the point. In part three, Thielen learns to synthesize the magic of New York with her Minnesota heritage, to combine her culinary tricks with the instincts she inherited from her mother and grandmother, and, as she puts it, “[take] my place in a long line of fearless Midwestern women cooks who were possessed of sharp knives, sprawling cut-flower gardens, and big opinions about food.”
By Amy Thielen (Clarkson Potter) Reading Sat 6/10, 6:30 PM Read It & Eat 2142 N. Halsted 773-661-6158readitandeatstore.com Free
