Customer Reviews

White Truffles in Winter: A Novel

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

You have to love this man with all his strengths and weaknesses. Such an imaginative book based on facts. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and all the rich, vivid details of place and food. Escoffier is an important historical figure. The main points are facts: where he lived and worked, his wife, his mistress, and more. The author deftly filled in what his life could have been based on known facts she researched. It's a fascinating story about an unusual man.

For those with culinary interests, there are intriguing food tidbits, but the story can be enjoyed by anyone. Culinary students learn about Escoffier's important contributions to the way we eat today but may know little about his personal life.

Escoffier's housekeeper in late life and many famous people of the time are prominent in the book. Culinary folk will recognize the name of Brillat-Savarin, another brilliant chef. Both of them used truffles, caviar, and fois gras liberally in their creations, as well as wines -- the wines sometimes used to drug crayfish and lobsters before cooking. Many such charming details pepper the story.

Escoffier and his wife, Delphine Daffis, a poet, lived in Monte Carlo. Escoffier worked in Paris and England and was often away from home for months or years at a time; Delphine refused to move away from Monte Carlo.

A couple of lovely romantic seduction scenes involve food and are all the more sensuous and unusual for that. There are bits of other history and war history and the Titanic plays into the story as well.

I loved this book and those who like historical fiction should enjoy it. Culinary enthusiasts will relish the richness of details. Although we will never know who Escoffier really was, this book is a beautiful and realistic tapestry of who he might have been. The writing is a joy to read. It helps to know a little French but isn't necessary.

The first thing to remember when reading WHITE TRUFFLES IN WINTER by N.M. Kelby is that while the three central characters are "real" the story itself is the work of the author's rather vivid imagination. In it she conjures up a tale of food, love, and the love of food. Her imaginative journey into the life of food-obsessed chef, Auguste Escoffier, his unconventionally liberated wife, poet Delphine Daffis, and the "other woman" in his life - the bold, free-spirited Sarah Bernhardt is as delectable to one's reading palate as the dishes created by this amazing chef who pioneered French cuisine.

Being neither a gourmet cook nor an expert in fine dining, I was not personally familiar with the name Auguste Escoffier but discovered that I was, however, familiar with some of the dishes he created like Peach Melba and Cherries Jubilee (created for Queen Victoria) as well as some of the famous places where he plied his talent like The Ritz, The Carlton and The Savoy hotels.

The tale is basically told in retrospect by an aged Escoffier and combines the story of his unconventional love life with unusual recipes, related in a most uncommon manner. At times the recipes almost overwhelm the story as Kelby chooses to demonstrate Escoffier's compulsion for creating the new and unusual in an effusive and highly romanticized fashion. For this reader at least, some of this descriptive writing was a little "over the top" and flowery, however, it did convey the message that Escoffier could never really be as loving and devoted to any woman as he was to his first true love, food for which he abandoned family, friends and homeland.

Author Kelby presents an interesting take on the life of Escoffier and his many contributions to the art of cooking. Possibly his most important contribution can be appreciated by folks such as Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, Gordon Ramsey, and their ilk since it was Escoffier who raised the bar, so to speak, in elevating the "cook" from the status of lowly servant to "chef", a respected and financially rewarding profession in addition to introducing the organized discipline necessary to successful restaurant kitchen management. Overall, this is a book that makes every reader consider their own relationship with food and whether it could every reach the level of obsession experienced by Escoffier.

One last question: Is the title of the book and it's placement in the novel a metaphor for the initial beauty and excitement of youth which we try in vain to preserve from the inevitable passing of time and of the ultimate decay and death which awaits us all?- 3 ½ stars

N.M. Kelby is a genius at"cooking up" yarns. If you need a holiday gift this book is the perfect choice for one who loves to cook,a foodie, a Francophile, a historian, a lover, in fact everybody on your list over the age of 16.

"Truffles" had me salvating. It should come with a government warning: Caution is advised, especially to dieters, in the consumption of this work. The satire had me laughing. It also moved me to tears.

All Madame Escoffier wants in her dying days, a recipe created for her that would express Escoffier's love for her. He had named dishes for Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and who hasn't heard of Peach Melba? Named for an opera singer who would be forgotten if not for Escoffier.

A master of preparing food, what does one do during war time, when food-stuff is impossible to come by? Use what's available, the recipe for roasted rat sounds delicious!

"Old man. you are such trouble."

You are unbearably difficult to love: a trial that would tempt Job."

And then Escoffier kissed his wife as a young man would, all passion and promise.

"And you, the great Escoffier, cannot put that on a plate?"

"This is the core of the issue." ....And so he kissed her again.

This boook should be savored, the temptation is to devour it. Bon app!

All Kelby's works deserve your attention, Amazon has all of them.

Escoffier had a staff of over 60 people working in his kitchen at a hotel and directed the operation of large dining room crews, such as those for the multiple restaurants on the Titanic. At the end of his life, he had only one young,untrained French woman-Sabine-who worked as the cook in his wife's household. Auguste once commanded well-stocked restaurants where his directions were respected, but now his home's larder is almost empty and Sabine does not obey him.

The novel portrays the old chef as a man who has carried the burdens of supporting a large, extended family. He has worked hard creating hotel restaurants' menus, designing the kitchens, and he attempted to earn enough by writing many books, then revising them in more editions. His children do not know him because they grew up when he was absent and now seem to have no concern for him, but he always provided for his family and their home.

I liked the way that the author resolves the problem of Auguste's dedicating a recipe to his wife. Using the fictional "memoir," Kelby provides a look at the chef's own theories about naming recipes for people.

For anyone interested in France, its food culture, and Escoffier, this is a book for you. It takes you on a wonderful journey, although fiction, its character portraits are charming.

In this book you are transported into a world that is so real and seeing that three of the main characters were, you have to sometimes remind yourself that this is in fact a book that is a work of fiction. In reading this book I was happy to find that the author did a remarkable job at capturing the era in which she was writing. She took bit of real life and embellished it into a world and a story in which you can't help to keep reading.

After reading this book I decided to do a bit more in depth research myself on the French chef Auguste Escoffier and was surprised to see some names of food dishes that he invented that are still around today.

All-in-all this was a great book that I would highly recommend for a book that will truly transport you and allow you to forget yourself for a while!

As N.M. Kelby writes in her afterword to WHITE TRUFFLES IN WINTER, her novel is "based on the bones of facts." Although the main characters are actual historical figures, only the broadest outlines of famed chef August Escoffier's life are known. But perhaps that makes her job as a novelist that much more fun, as she uses her own imagination to fill in the numerous gaps in his official biography.

Escoffier (1846-1935) was responsible for a number of innovations and ideas that seem commonplace in our current foodie culture. His reconfiguration of the restaurant kitchen --- with a number of cooks each responsible for an element on the plate, overseen by a head chef --- is still largely used in restaurant kitchens today. In Kelby's novel, Escoffier is credited with sagely developing the "prix fixe menu" so that his customers at the Savoy Hotel in London wouldn't feel intimidated by having to order complicated dishes with French names a la carte. Escoffier's inventiveness and charisma was responsible, in large part, for the elevation of a restaurant cook to a chef, with greater responsibilities and the opportunity --- in the right time and place --- for genuine fame. In the broadest terms, Escoffier could be considered the forerunner of today's celebrity chefs, like Bobby Flay, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.

Although these facets of Escoffier's career will be of interest to any amateur chef or food historian, Kelby's primary focus is on the man's private life, specifically his long marriage to the surprisingly independent poet Delphine Daffis and his lifelong love affair with actress and artist Sarah Bernhardt. As the novel opens, Delphine --- who, like Escoffier himself, is aging and quite ill --- is desperate to have her husband finally name a dish for her. He has already named dishes for "kings, queens, emperors, dukes, duchesses, opera singers, cardinals, diplomats, clowns...actresses (including so many for that Sarah Bernhardt that Delphine had lost count)," but none for his long-suffering wife. She implores their new cook, Sabine (who bears a striking resemblance to Bernhardt and whose humble French peasant cooking is at odds with Escoffier's more elevated tastes), to encourage Escoffier in this direction, but Escoffier's mind is focused on episodes from his past, particularly those involving Bernhardt herself.

The scenes with Bernhardt inevitably involve titillating uses of food on naked skin, but the fact of the matter is that Kelby's descriptions of food would be mouthwatering regardless of any erotic subtext: "small briny oysters from Corsica were nestled into a bed of pink rock salt; white asparagus were trimmed and served alongside a smoked duck salad; cream-fed pork was braised with pears and apples, and new potatoes were browned in duck fat and dusted with late summer truffles." It's probably a good idea to read this book on a full stomach.

Kelby's writing is languid and lush throughout (perhaps verging a bit on purple prose, or at least a relentless earnestness that can grow a bit tiresome), but her imaginative approach to this man's life and loves --- not to mention the fantastic meals he created --- makes reading WHITE TRUFFLES IN WINTER as satisfying as a five-course feast.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl

How can you print a review like Erica Philipson's. Please

do your viewers a favor and remove it. Why?

She has Augusteflo (not a typo - she spells it that way twice)

dead in 1949 (wrong it was 1935) and then changes that later in

her review (sic) to 1949 (which would have made Escoffier 111 when

he died). She also spells Escoffier - Escoffierer - close!

She says there was an Iron Chef competition in 1899 and losers

got "thrown out of the castle" (?) while winners got to meet the two

women in his (Escoffier's?)life. Maybe she should write a book -

she has such a vivid imagination. Finally she says that Escoffier

was married to Sarah Bernhardt (what???). Wrong! And that Ms Bernhardt

wouldn't leave Monte Carlo (Invented!!! Did Erica read the book???)

To top it all of she has Escoffier cooking for the clients of the

Monte Carlo casino (What?)

I'm certain that the writer, N. M. Kelby spent many long months or years

writing this fine book and she doesn't deserve a wisecracking "review"

from someone who must have been fogged-out when she wrote what she

did. She might try her hand at sitcoms.

Shame, shame. Please get rid of it. It's not a review in any

sense of the word.

I read this book as the January selection for my book club. I speak a little French, enjoy fine food, have been to Europe, and the book jacket is beautiful -- so I was sure I would enjoy this book. Honestly, I found it boring. The only reason I read it in it's entirety is because I needed to finish it for my book club discussion. I found the prose to be too "flowery" and the recipes on every other page got monotonous real quick. There were a few romantic interludes that were imaginative and enjoyable to read, but a few pages here and there did not distract from my overall disappointment. Granted, when I choose to read a book on my own, I generally gravitate toward mysteries, fantasy, or dramatic fiction. I was open and eager to reading something outside of my norm, but, again, I found this book to come up short. Let's hope next month's selection is more my style.

White Truffles in Winter is a book about the world of a French chef named Augusteflo Escoffierer. He lived a very long life, in fact from 1843 to 1949. He basically created the Savoy and the Ritz.

He was a common man with contradictions like most of us (take me for example... should I have an affair with my tennis coach, should I shoplift that gold chain like Lindsy Lohan).

He was torn between two women. The first was his wife by the name of Sarah Bernhardt the second being Delphine Daffis a poet wouldn't you know it.

Both refused to leave Monte Carlo so Augusteflo spent his time constructing and managing what is now the famous Monte Carlo Casino next to the waterfront. As the book indicates he spent the vast minority of his time in the kitchen inventing new dishes to cater to the customers of the Monte Carlo Casino (not James Bond who did visit the casino in the movie but that was well after Augusteflo's untimely death in 1955 (the year that I was born).

Iron Chef is modeled directly on competitions that were held starting in 1899 to find the best chef's in the world. Losers were kicked out of the castle when they lost. Winners got to meet the two women in his life and have a fun time.

Please buy this book, read it, love it like I did, and post a review to help this outstanding author.

Loving You All Forever,

Erica Phillips (Hawaii is surrounded by water and sharks)