The School of Essential Ingredients (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: prep table, The School of Essential Ingredients, Erica Bauermeister, Valentine's Day

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this remarkable debut, Bauermeister creates a captivating world where the pleasures and particulars of sophisticated food come to mean much more than simple epicurean indulgence. Respected chef and restaurateur Lillian has spent much of her 30-something years in the kitchen, looking for meaning and satisfaction in evocative, delicious combinations of ingredients. Endeavoring to instill that love and know-how in others, Lillian holds a season of Monday evening cooking classes in her restaurant. The novel takes up the story of each of her students, navigating readers through the personal dramas, memories and musings stirred up as the characters handle, slice, chop, blend, smell and taste. Each student's affecting story—painful transitions, difficult choices—is rendered in vivid prose and woven together with confidence. Delivering memorable story lines and characters while seducing the senses, Bauermeister's tale of food and hope is certain to satisfy. (Jan.)
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Product Description

Reminiscent of Chocolat and Like Water for Chocolate, a gorgeously written novel about life, love, and the magic of food.

The School of Essential Ingredients follows the lives of eight students who gather in Lillian’s Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. Students include Claire, a young mother struggling with the demands of her family; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer learning to adapt to life in America; and Tom, a widower mourning the loss of his wife to breast cancer. Chef Lillian, a woman whose connection with food is both soulful and exacting, helps them to create dishes whose flavor and techniques expand beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of her students’ lives. One by one the students are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of Lillian’s food, including a white-on-white cake that prompts wistful reflections on the sweet fragility of love and a peppery heirloom tomato sauce that seems to spark one romance but end another. Brought together by the power of food and companionship, the lives of the characters mingle and intertwine, united by the revealing nature of what can be created in the kitchen.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1 edition (January 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399155430
• ISBN-13: 978-0399155437
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,668 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, January 22, 2009

By	litaddiction (Chicago) - See all my reviews

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Lillian's father deserts his wife and young daughter literally, and then her mother deserts her figuratively -- disappearing deeply into the solace of books as a coping mechanism. As Lillian takes on the management of the household, she discovers an intuition for cooking and uses food alchemy to try to reach her mother. Later, when grown, Lillian applies this intuition to operating a first-class restaurant and conducting an annual series of cooking classes called the School of Essential Ingredients.

Through themes associated with a particular food or meal, each chapter explores one class and the life of one of the students: a mother lost in the needs of young children; a long-married couple; a kitchen designer; a young widower; a misfit teenager; a software engineer; and a woman moving into the middle stages of dementia.

The writing is sensual and lush, the stories tender and hopeful, with a magical realism evocative of Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. Since I finished the book, I've wanted nothing more than to read the stories of the next year's class. Highly recommended.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intense, emotional descriptions of food deepen and enrich the gems of character studies that comprise the novel, January 26, 2009

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

When she was a little girl, Lillian discovered the power of food to bring people back to themselves. After Lillian's father left the family, Lillian's mother retreated into a fictional world, her face always hidden behind the pages of a book. Only when Lillian, desperate to reconnect with her mother, enlisted the help of an "Abuelita" from the neighborhood grocery store, did she discover that a perfectly prepared dish, a few "essential ingredients," had the ability to bring her mother back to reality --- and to her daughter.

This ability of food, and cooking, to connect people with themselves, their past and each other is the common theme of Erica Bauermeister's THE SCHOOL OF ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS. The novel gets its title from the cooking school that Lillian, now an adult, runs on evenings when her popular, high-end restaurant is closed. On the first Monday of each month, Lillian's restaurant kitchen is filled with a colorful assortment of amateur cooks, some eager to deepen their own culinary connections, some unsure what brought them to this place.

There's Claire, who's been so smothered by the constant physical and emotional demands of being a young wife and mother that she's forgotten what it means to make time and space for her own interests. There's Carl and Helen, an older couple whose seemingly perfect marriage hides a history of betrayal, redemption and hard work. There's Tom, whose passion for food was ignited by the love of his life. And there's Isabelle, whose short-term memory is failing her in her old age, but whose rich, long life rushes back to the present when she indulges in the nourishing, delicious food Lillian's restaurant prepares.

THE SCHOOL OF ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS will likely appeal to fans of THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB, THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB and other novels where a group encounter serves as the foil for exploring individuals' stories. Unlike those books, however, Bauermeister's is best read not as an overarching story but as a series of linked character studies, as exquisitely prepared and satisfying as the dishes Lillian prepares in her restaurant. Although two of the characters do begin a tentative romance and one fulfills a career aspiration, the focus here is less on where they're going, plot-wise, and more on where they've been and who they are.

And then there's the food. Bauermeister has a gift for writing about food in sensual, evocative terms, connecting the dish's rich flavors not only to her characters' rich histories but also to the reader's inner palate. "She took a piece of melon in her fingers, wrapped it with a translucent slice of pink meat, and motioned for him to open his mouth. The meat was a whisper of salt against the dense, sweet fruit. It felt like summer in a hot land, the smooth skin in the curve between Charlie's strong thumb and index finger. The wine afterward was crisp, like coming up to the surface of water to breathe." Such intense, emotional descriptions of food deepen and enrich the gems of character studies that comprise the novel. They're also likely to send hungry readers to their own kitchens, where they might find themselves reconnecting to the pleasures of food --- and to their own intriguing life stories.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended Read!, January 22, 2009

By	LWB (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

In "The School of Essential Ingredients" Erica Bauermeister mixes the deep personal stories of Lillian & her students, simple but sophisticated foods, and Monday night lessons that go beyond the kitchen to create a rich, flavorful book that will make you crave your favorite restaurant or favorite food. Put something delicious in the oven, pour yourself a glass of wine and take in this wonderful first novel. You will feel satisfied, yet hungry for a 2nd novel. Enjoy!