Customer Reviews

Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I enjoyed this book very much. I actually think it's better than The Cook and the Gardener for non-recipe content. Contrary to the "official" review, I did not think that the content was cutesy at all. Rather, I was glad to see Ms. Hesser admit to her faults, romantic, gourmet, and otherwise. I read the chapter about the Indian visitor entirely differently-- to me, Ms. Hesser nicely conveyed the embarrassment accompanying the gaffes and assumptions that well-meaning but realtively affluent people can sometimes make. I enjoyed Ms. Hesser's willingness to discuss how her recipes don't always come out, and thought she did a nice job discussing the ins and outs of relationships, including learning how to compromise, and learning to not be such a snob about one's personal preferences. (See the chapter on artificial sweeteners. . .) And I enjoyed her approach to cooking, since it mirrors my own "freestyle" approach.

The recipes are great, especially the "white" bolognese from the chapter about her visit to Rome. I made this recipe when it first appeared in the NYT for a dinner party, and got raves-- and promptly lost the recipe. Imagine my joy to find it here-- it made the price of the book well worth paying, even without the rest of the good recipes and enjoyable writing.

Now if she would only publish her winter fruit salad with Vanilla Syrup recipe!

The hot-pink title should be a tip-off: What might we deduce about the taste level of someone who would name a fluffy cookbook/memoir in reference to an earlier book ("Looking for Mr. Goodbar") about the murder of a lonely crippled woman?
Nonetheless, this is a physically attractive, if precious little book, with its chick-lit cover, rosy endpapers and the '50s-style line drawings that make everyone look impossibly pretty, thin, rich and happy. Like the '50s women's-magazine ads they evoke, the drawings seem to have created an alternate reality -- not quite the right tone for something that purports to be autobiography, interrupted with recipes.
I can't help comparing this book with the late Laurie Colwin's two memoir/cookbooks. Like Colwin's books, this one gives personal tips on how to cook dishes that have worked for the author, setting them in a context of entertaining family and friends through various life passages. The reason novelist Colwin's food-focused books worked for me and this one didn't, though, are the ingredients Hesser leaves out, as much as those she puts in. There's a little too much about her personal life not to have put in a little more. For instance, she hints at a class gap between her family of origins and her husband's (struggling single mom vs. college president and his hostess wife), but she won't quite go the distance and tell us how she feels about that.
There's a lot about her food-snob criticisms of her husband-to-be's eating habits, but one wonders if she ever felt any insecurity about the background gap. How she jumped the class fences would be intriguing, but she doesn't tell us how she got to train as a cook in France, nor how she got to write for the NYT while still in her 20. Either would be more interesting than her vacillations between a wedding dress from Valentino vs. one by Prada.
More fascinating are the occasional glimpses into her rather steely careerist side, and it's hard to tell if she's conscious of a rather nasty habit of biting the hand that fed her. As a young factotum for a French restaurateur, she once picked up Julia Child at Orly airport. During a drive and a lunch, she doesn't seem to have had any shop talk with one of the first American women to popularize the art of fine cooking, but shows Child as the loopy, "Saturday Night Live" caricature of herself, smiling dimwittedly at hostile French teens as the only elderly person eating at their hangout. Other food critics are kicked in the teeth for their pretensions, though it's not made clear why they are less palatable than the author's own.
There's a partial exposure of Hesser's family that reminds me of Martha Stewart's soft-focus presentation of her Polish-American family. You get the family recipes, but no sense of how these people feel, think or live their daily lives. In a particularly mean scene,"Mr. Latte" mocks the author's grandmother's npn-standard pronunciation of the word "terrible" to Hesser's apparent amusement.
I put this book down twice, but sucked up the smarminess to keep browsing through the recipes, some of which at least sound good. (Others, influenced by the gimmicky restaurants she covers, sound like a clash of too many random flavors.)I wish, though, that she had told a story worthy of her rather tough, direct style. This book -- pictures, pink and all -- is just too cute for words.

I read Amanda Hesser's COOKING FOR MR. LATTE while recovering from surgery. What a delight! I could hardly wait to get into the kitchen and try her recipes.

The recipes are written in a casual, conversational style, probably much like those family recipes scribbled on the old 3x5 cards you probably still have in your kitchen along with your online digests and fancy cookbooks. Her recipes are like those on the cards, delicious, reliable and homey -- the ones you return to when you want comfort in the kitchen, not a "project". (Try the Meyer Lemon Linguine w/Creme Fraiche, the chocolate 'Dump-It Cake', Oven Fried Chicken, and the Beets, Apples and Ginger with Clementine Vinaigrette.)

Amanda Hesser shares with us her friendly, foodie persona and delivers recipes that transport us into her Grandmother's kitchen on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay, a friend's place in Boston, and back to her apartment in NYC. Amanda Hesser highlights the joys of sharing good food with good company, even when that company is yourself (e.g. "single girl salmon").

I applaud Amanda Hesser for following her passion and making a career out of her love and interest in food. Rather than seeing her as pretentious, I see her as an inspiration.

I'll be blunt: if you're interested in reading this book independent of the extraordinary recipes that punctuate each brief, anecdotal chapter, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Hesser's recipes indicate a serious talent in the kitchen, but as any sort of writer, she's consistently been sorely lacking. In essence, if what you want to find in this book is anything along the lines of chick lit, romance, humor, or the sensual, nuance-oriented genre "food writing," you're not going to find a satisfactory example of it here. Hesser's anecdotes revolve entirely around her, her glamorous life, her pet peeves and various dislikes and annoyances, and, as she has no gift for capturing the feel of a moment or drawing a character--all of the supporting characters in her book are thinly-etched portraits of her real-life friends and acquaintances--you're going to be sick and tired of her by the end of the book.

If, however, you're after a carefully selected, varied, and compelling collection of recipes that are, all things considered, fairly easily executed, this is your book. I've tried many of the recipes in it, and all have turned out well. Many of her recipes have high butter and/or olive oil requirements, but I've found that they work just as well with half or even a third of the required amounts--basically, anything she wants you to saute, you can do with FAR less grease, and you're better off, taste-and-health-wise, doing so. Stunners in this cookbook include the veal chops with sage (which are actually just as good made with much-cheaper lamb shoulder), the pork braised in milk and cream (quite an indulgence, so save for a rainy day), roasted guinea hen (just use a chicken, for the love of God), and the chocolate dump-it cake (follow this to the LETTER, or it will be a mess, but do it right, and it's perfect.)

Hesser's pretensions, unfortunately, have prevented her from writing a cookbook that is, both in terms of health and ingredients, usable for everyone. Trust me, though, no one will notice if you substitute regular table salt, ordinary olive oil, and plain old lemons.

This book starts out promising--a love story of mismatched opposites. After the first 2 chapters, however, it turns into the diary of a snobby New York elitist. The amount of detail she would like the readers to care about concerning the most mundane experiences in her life is intolerable. She simultaneously derides American cuisine while saying that her family's "lobster shaped meatloaf" is the best. Her future in-laws seem to be the best cooks on the planet, which seems like pure pandering. Her absolute fascination with "Europe" (by which she means France and Italy) and her frustrations with taking her maladroit family members there is a tired cliche. The fact that she is so embarrassed at their behavior shows her to be spoiled. The recipes are mostly, if not all, culled from other sources. Thankfully, it is a light read, and the impressions it gives will not linger upon you.

Having cooked often from THE COOK AND THE GARDNER and enjoyed Ms. Hesser's NYT column, I was very happy to see this book. Most of the recipes sound delicious (especially the vanilla loaves and the Airplane Salad) but what I loved most is Ms. Hesser's willingness to show that she is not perfect. We see her temper tantrums when people invade her small space in the kitchen (I'm sure we can all identify) or her frustration at learning to live in shared quarters with Tad, and learning to adapt some of her habits to his. I particularly disagree with the above comment about Ms. Hesser's "gaffe" re: the price of a meal at Jean-Georges. Why not see it as a "foodie" saying what she would say to any friend or tourist who was curious about the place? A so-called "gaffe" like that could happen to anyone. Overall, this is a wonderful, charming, witty collection with some great recipes. I look forward to more from this writer!

I had high hopes when I picked up this book - catchy title, recipes intertwined in the story line - these things seemed to bode well. I like to eat and was looking forward to reading about food and maybe picking up a few recipes. Unfortunately, I am not a gourmet and I live in "fly-over" land. The restaurant name-dropping means nothing to me and I do not walk to the grocery store to buy Meyer lemons and sea salt. The more I read of this book, the less I cared. Out of the whole book, there was only one recipe I wanted to try and that was for the meatloaf, but even then I don't seriously think that I will try to shape it into a lobster... I am positive that there are people out there who will enjoy this book, but unfortunately, I am not one of them. Thank goodness I can return it to the library.

Amanda Hesser's column was a favorite Sunday addiction of mine when it ran in the New York Times Magazine. Her carefully constructed account of a romance gone right worked as well as
a penny-weekly serialization of Dickens, albeit with much
more appetizing food. So, despite the insipid title and
Barbie-hued dustjacket, I was looking forward to having "Cooking for Mr. Latte" in hand.

It is as deliciously easy to get caught up in her privileged world as it is to devour a plate of brownies, and I made the mistake of reading the whole thing in one gluttonous go. As with any overindulgence, I was somewhat sickened by the time I reached the end.

Reading Hesser's columns in omnibus form gives the reader a much clearer sense of the less palatable aspects of her character.
Her devotion to prim perfection in the kitchen, her appearance and her private life no longer seems admirable, but annoying. Who wants a friend to come over
and cook a great meal if you know she is taking mental note
of where the "freshest oils" are kept and which pans are
too crappy for Her Highness to cook with? She even sniffs about her future in-laws leaving dirty dishes in the sink and mayonnaise smears on the counter in the kitchen of their own country house.

While Hesser's youth, spunk and obvious gift for
writing balance out many of her
narrow-minded hang-ups, I see a danger that she might one day tip over into the Martha Stewart camp of mindless worship of domestic

flawlessness in all its most trivial forms - and forget the reason she, and all of us, cook: for communion and pleasure.

Let us hope that Mr. Latte can save the day.

I could hardly put the book down long enough to have the Union Square book rep ring me up. Amanda Hesser is a woman after my own heart when it comes to food and how it celebrates life. This book is intriguing and inspirational as it brings back memories of dinner parties past and helps to project toward the ones yet to happen. You happily become lost in a year in the life of Amanda and Mr. Latte - especially if you're in NYC and know the restaurants, chefs, and neighborhoods she talks about.

If you love to cook for people, enjoy the full experience of eating out, and take pleasure in thinking up fun dinner menu's for friends this book is totally for you. It really brings out the interconnectedness of what this potent trifecta does to bring people together.

The recipes sprinkled through the book are awesome - i've tried the salt crusted shrimp, ginger duck with rice, almond cake, and creme fraiche whipped cream which all came out superbly.

If this quote means anything to you, this book is a must have: "The first meal you cook for someone is intimate. Not just if it's for a date. And not just because no one cooks anymore - it really has nothing to do with whether you are a good cook or not. It's entry into the way you think, what you've seen and know, the way you treat others, how you perceive pleasure. Dinner guests can see by how you compose a meal if you are ungenerous hothead or a nurturer, stingy or cleaver, fussy or stylish".

Have fun!

This is a light read that didn't leave me with much aside from a couple of recipes I'd definitely like to try sometime. Amanda Hesser is clearly passionate about food, and that is very engaging. She is also clearly the most irritating person on the planet. Her snobbish rants about properly washed dishes and post-dinner lattes (egads, no!), and her overall pandering and name-dropping all get tiresome around page 40. Her writing, though at times quite charming, is also not anything that will bring one to his/her knees, to put it lightly. All in all, not bad train reading, but I kinda wish I'd saved my fifteen bucks and got the latest issue of Gourmet.