Customer Reviews

The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes From My Life (Random House Large Print Biography)

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Pat Conroy is my favorite author, and it is fitting that he dedicates the same passion for cooking as he does for his writing in his new book, The Pat Conroy Cookbook. The fact that Conroy is so fascinated with food is in itself ironic. Conroy grew up in a house where food was important, but good food was not. In fact, he regrets that his mother "looked upon food as a necessity, not a realm of art." Her idea of seafood every Friday night was fish sticks. This all changed when his wife announced that she was going to law school, and he would have to start preparing the meals for his family (consisting of three young daughters). Conroy is an avid reader and a keen observer, so he began his education in earnest. First, he went to the local bookstore. Instead of recommending something basic and easy (like Betty Crocker), the owner talked Conroy into purchasing a book by the French chef, Escoffier. Soon, he was immersed in the world of making stock, roux and exotic foods. He discovered that cooking could be great fun, and combined the skills of being an artist with those needed to become a mad chemist.

As part of his culinary education, Conroy also became an avid collector. He collected cookbooks, and especially enjoyed those homey books published by churches and civic groups. They not only offered great recipes, but also precious nuggets of knowledge such as "store mushrooms and string beans in a brown paper bag in the refrigerator, not in plastic." Next, he started a collection of culinary friends. Some were cooks, some were chefs, and others just enjoyed good food. Then he started collecting recipes. Many came from friends and family, others he created or recreated. He added foods to his repertoire (things such as white asparagus and escargot). He took a number of cooking classes, and finally, he started traveling. Living in Rome and France for extended periods introduced him to whole new cuisines. While I'm not sure that Conroy has become a master chef, he certainly must be an accomplished one.

But you can bet that Conroy would not be content to just compile recipes for a book. The Pat Conroy Cookbook reads more like a memoir with a generous helping of recipes sprinkled here and there. Each chapter describes a story, saga or anecdote about his life, and is then followed with related recipes. He tells of preparing a bridesmaid's luncheon for his daughter, cooking for his dying father, and foods to make for funerals. He talks about foods from Italy and France, and honeymooning in Umbria. He provides chapters on oyster roasts, pig roasts, Vidalia onions, and grilling. He regales us with the best meals that his has eaten-both in restaurants and out. And he tells us of the relationship between food and his writing.

The recipes themselves are interesting, intriguing and not too intimidating. For those that are more complicated, Conroy takes us through them step by step. He also provides the reader with some of those nuggets of wisdom he so admires in church cookbooks, such as drain fried foods on paper bags and not paper towels. I will definitely try a number of them-especially the low country specialties like shrimp and grits, crab cakes, and pickled shrimp.

So whether you like Pat Conroy or cooking, you will love this cookbook. Not only will it tempt your palate, but it will also provide the reader with a generous dose of "The World According to Pat Conroy." What a tasty treat, indeed.

If you are not sure about buying "Recipes of My Life" here are a few guidelines I would use in recommending the book to anyone:

If you like any of Pat Conroy's writing, buy this book.
If you enjoy food, buy this book.
If you enjoy cooking, buy this book.
If you have no clue who Pat Conroy is, if you have no particular interest in good food, or fine cooking, but you love to hear a good story, buy this book.
If you are in search of outstanding recipes - from down-home Southern cooking to fine Italian cuisine...BUY it.
And for God's sake if you are like me and can't make a good stock, BUY the book!

Above all I find Pat Conroy to be a master story-teller, and for that reason alone I recommend this book to anyone. A delight to read, from front to back. And now I can make a stock to be proud of!

Tres Magnifique, Pat. The introduction to each chapter reads as easily and with as much anticipation as his novels. Once the recipes were introduced, I had to spend the rest of the day in my kitchen preparing stock and sauces for a post script meal. I have just finished this book and as usual I want for more.

This little gem is wonderful in a literal sense - it inspires wonder. First, how terrific to see a great photo of Pat standing tall on the cover with a bucket of low country oysters. It's hard not to look at him and see all the leading characters from his books - the young teacher from Water is Wide, the scared and brave cadet from Lords of Discipline, the brave lost survivor from Prince of Tides, etc.

This book is for anyone who loves Pat's books. It's truly a story of his life, but amazingly, threaded together by the food and meals he's experienced, and friends who've shared those meals with him. Many of the real-life characters from Pat's fiction weave in and out of these meals - his beloved fish-hating mother, his feared but irreplaceable fighter-pilot father, his 'paisan' roommates from The Citadel, his Roman neighbors from Beach Music, etc.

The most pleasant surprise for me from this book, is Pat's stories breathe rich life into his recipes, making them more full and sensual than recipes on the flat page of most other cookbooks. For example, his recipe for pickled shrimp is fairly straightforward in ingredient and preparation, but for Pat, this is a signature dish he brings to memorials when a friend dies. His story lets us see and feel the food hungrily devoured by the friends and loved ones of the deceased, as Pat feels the pride of feeding them in their time of grief. I began the book thinking the recipes would be throwaways, and ended with a dozen or so recipes I plan to try.

Bravo Pat! Someday I hope to read The Boo - your one story I have yet to track down. As long as you write and I read, I will be reading the terrific stories you tell.

One of my friends once aptly described Pat Conroy as a cross between Thomas Wolfe and Alan Alda. She was absolutely right--no noun is ever left unmodified and most of the time there's a darn good punchline.

This cookbook is a random selection of stories--many funny, some sad, interspersed with recipies. As a Conroy fan and as someone who reads cookbooks for fun, I loved it.

Warning. If you make the recipie for the incredibly rich pound cake in the book, double the amount of vanilla the recipie calls for. When I make it again, I'll add lemon zest and soak it in lemon-sugar syrup.

This has now moved into my all time favorite Pat Conroy book, and I'm a big Conroy fan. It's not so much a book of recipes, though that is definitely a part of it, as short vignettes of life in Mr Conroy's world. And since our world overlaps, and we know some of the same individuals, it was even more delightful. Mr czuk took one look at the picture on the front and said "You'd read a book about food by a man who looks like that?" Well, yes. And better him than some anorexic yuppy chic in a glam kitchen. Bring on the hush puppies, baby!

The New York Times ad piqued my interest in Mr. Conroy's memoirs since I'm a born and bred Atlantan and spent some wonderful, halcyon early years in South Carlolina, and now work as a chef and culinary arts instrutor. The recipes are clear, accurate and sumptitious! I took the spiced shrimp into the classroom for this quarter's "Front of the House" class for the students to sample while they took the exam and all agreed it definitely eased the pain! Bravo, Mr. Conroy!

All of Pat Conroy's books reside proudly on my bookshelf. I started collecting with "The Water is Wide" and "The Boo". I have followed his career with joy for his well deserved success in literature. In "The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life" he treats us to a witty and emotional memoir interspersed with his culinary expertise garnered in France, Italy, The South, including Atlanta, New Orleans, Mobile and the low country of South Carolina. It's another "can't put it down" Conroy book, only there are many wonderful recipes to please the discerning palate -don't miss this one!

I haven't tried any of the recipes, but absolutely LOVED the essays in this book. Most of them are hysterically funny. I've never read any of Mr. Conroy's novels (though I've seen the films) -- but I certainly plan to read them now. The book also makes me want to visit the Carolinas.

`The Pat Conroy Cookbook' is something of a literary / culinary scrapbook by widely read and filmed Southern novelist, Pat Conroy, who moonlights as a culinary columnist in journals such as `Gourmet', `House Beautiful', and `Southern Living'. I have seen his `Gourmet' essays in passing and first became aware of his active interest in food when I read his Preface to Ms. Sally Ann Robinson's charming little book, `Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way', although I probably misread the signs, as it was much more likely to me that the honor of the Conroy contribution was due more to Ms. Robinson's once having been a student of Mr. Conroy when he as teaching school near Daufuskie Island. Mr. Conroy mentions Ms. Robinson's book but oddly, neither `Robinson' nor `Daufuskie' appear in the index of this book, even though there is a recipe entitled `Baked Fish Daufuskie'.

In many ways, this book is less than the sum of its parts, which are an equal serving of memoir essays followed by a selection of recipes, most of which are offered as Mr. Conroy's invention or adaptation and some of which are attributed to professional chefs such as Frank Stitt and Emeril Lagasse. As a person who is interested in both food and writing, I found much to like in this book, but it just does not hang together as well as similar works, most especially the light diary `Cooking for Mr. Latte' by Amanda Hesser. Neither the essays nor the recipes fill out a coherent picture. Six out of the twenty-two essays are reprinted from another publication, by my count, thirteen (13) of the essays are on culinary topics. The remaining nine (9) are biographical, primarily a part of Mr. Conroy's literary biography.

I found the culinary essays, except for the one on Frank Stitt, which I have already read in the preface to Frank Stitt's book, to be very enjoyable, and pretty revealing about a particular grown man's encounters with food and the need to cook. The very first essay explains why Frank Conroy, literary light, had to take up cooking and how this need brought him to a cookbook by Escoffier. It strikes me that on the one hand, starting with Escoffier feels like embarking on the study of Philosophy by reading Emanuel Kant. But, in preparation for writing this review, I did some browsing in Escoffier and I am convinced that Mr. Conroy was extremely lucky to have been directed to the writings that are the fountainhead of Western cuisine for the last century. I found myself in similar circumstances once, and, I believe, share Mr. Conroy's disposition to not try anything unless I can master the task. And, there is simply no better source for mastering modern cooking than the writings of August Escoffier. Oddly enough, I compared Mr. Conroy's recipes for stock with those of Escoffier and found they were substantially different. But, based on my reading of such authorities as Jeremiah Tower and Thomas Keller, I believe Mr. Conroy's stock recipes are right on the money. Vegetables are not cut too finely, scum is skimmed at the right times, and the mix is cooked for just the right time. Mr. Conroy even does most chefs one better in retrieving the meat from the bones while it retains taste, so you have poached chicken for some other application while you continue to cook the bones to strengthen the stock. James Beard would approve.

In many ways, the most revealing essay about the culinary world at large was Mr. Conroy's encounter with a young Emeril Lagasse who had just opened his first New Orleans restaurant. In defense of Emeril in this story, I know he opened `Emeril's' on a shoestring and several maxed out credit cards, so money for the restaurateur was very tight. The non-culinary essays have their moments, but about I found that about a third of the essays lost my interest, as I could not tell immediately where the story was going. This is a failure in the book's cohesiveness. While Ms. Hesser's volume relates entirely to her courtship of Mr. Latte, Mr. Conroy picks and chooses material to fill out a book with a certain page count in mind.

The selection of recipes is similarly all over the map, ranging from pantry staples such as stocks to Carolina tidewater seafood to Italian sausage and broccoli Rabe to sole en papillote. Like Ms. Hesser's book and like most shows on both the Food Network and PBS, I would treat the recipes in this book to be less a reference for recipes than a source of inspiration to new styles of dishes to be cooked. If I want a Carolina barbecue, I will consult with Steve Raichlen. If I want a French roast chicken, I will check out Julia Child. If I want a broccoli Rabe dish, I will open Marcella Hazan or Lydia Bastianich. But then, there are those who do not own books by Raichlen or Child or Bastianich.

For those people, I assure you that Mr. Conroy is not peddling wooden nickels here. The recipes work, there is a very broad range of topics (an advantage in a journalistic approach, a disadvantage as a reference cookbook), and Mr. Conroy's writing about them is engaging. It makes you want to try these dishes to see if you can reproduce his experience.

This is neither the best culinary memoir I have read (Ruth Reichl still holds my heart on that subject) nor does it rank in the same class as Jim Villas for culinary writing in general, but it is A GOOD READ. For those familiar with Jan Karon's Mitford Cookbook, be aware that this book makes no connection between recipes and Mr. Conroy's fiction.

If you like culinary and literary stories, you will enjoy the essays in this book. Mr. Conroy is a very good writer. You will also find a few pleasing new culinary horizons.