Description

‘The most beautifully written description of what cooking is all about, and what it actually is, with recipes’ Nigella Lawson

Through the insightful essays in An Everlasting Meal, Tamar Adler issues a rallying cry to home cooks.

In chapters about boiling water, cooking eggs and beans, and summoning respectable meals from empty cupboards, Tamar weaves philosophy and instruction into approachable lessons on instinctive cooking. Tamar shows how to make the most of everything you buy, demonstrating what the world’s great chefs know: that great meals rely on the bones and peels and ends of meals before them.

She explains how to smarten up simple food and gives advice for fixing dishes gone awry. She recommends turning to neglected onions, celery and potatoes for inexpensive meals that taste full of fresh vegetables, and cooking meat and fish resourcefully.

By wresting cooking from doctrine and doldrums, Tamar encourages readers to begin from wherever they are, with whatever they have. An Everlasting Meal is elegant testimony to the value of cooking and an empowering, indispensable tool for eaters today.

The Times/Sunday Times Food Book of the Year 2022

Publisher Review

'Wonderful book ... I regard it as a sacred text! I can best describe it as the most beautifully written description of what cooking is all about, and what it actually is, with recipes. It has such wisdom and calmness and, yes, grace' - Nigella Lawson 'Like Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, it's a book to gorge on for its quiet, gentle and uplifting wisdom' - Best Food Books of 2022, The Times 'Tamar Adler has brought calm to many kitchens ... A lady to know in these times of economic distress' - Victoria Prever, Jewish Chronicle 'This apt book about "eating affordably, responsibly and well" isn't a conventional cookbook - though there are plenty of recipes in it - but a thought-provoking reflection on the meaning of cooking and eating. It takes us back to basics, such as how to avoid mushy rice, putting stale bread to good use and knowing when veg is cooked' - Charlotte Heathcote, Sunday Express 'The beauty of the book is in Adler's prose. This will make a lovely gift for a foodie friend who loves to think more deeply about sourcing, cooking and producing meals. There is a lot to get one's teeth into in this intelligent and reflective book. It is one of those volumes that once read, one will return to again and again as the style of writing draws one back into its pages' - Madeleine Morrow, London Unattached 'Tamar Adler has written the best book on 'cooking with economy and grace' that I have read since MFK Fisher' Michael Pollan 'Tamar Adler is more than a wonderful food writer-she is a wonderful writer ... A profound book' Sheila Heti 'Reads less like a cookbook than like a recipe for a delicious life' New York Magazine 'An Everlasting Meal is beautifully intimate, approaching cooking as a narrative that begins not with a list of ingredients or a tutorial on cutting an onion, but with a way of thinking ... Tamar is one of the great writers I know - her prose is exquisitely crafted, beautiful and clear-eyed and open, in the thoughtful spirit of M.F.K. Fisher. This is a book to sink into and read deeply' Alice Waters, chef and owner of Chez Panisse 'Lessons so right and so eloquent that I think of them as homilies' New York Times Book Review