Melissa Senate

I am no Julia Child. Not even close. So not close that I've never cooked much at all, except for the very basic kid-friendly foods that my seven-year-old son will actually eat. (And yes, there really is a cooking course called How To Boil Water, and yes, I did take it several years ago!).

Yet, yet, yet, cooking is at the center of the novel I'm now writing (tentatively titled The Love Goddess's Cooking School). My main character is both teacher and student (Italian cooking), so we're learning together. This is the first time (and this book will be my tenth!) that I'm writing about "what I don't know." (Yet, it's very interesting how the very essence of the book, what it's really about, is what I know very, very well.) The desire to write about a woman who learns how to cook–and finds herself through the process–was so powerful.

I am loving the learning adventure involved. Through my research, which has me studying Italian cookbooks, cooking (and not fretting), reading food memoirs, visiting interesting markets and Italian restaurants to learn about ingredients, and reading up on Italy and Italian culture, I'm right there along with my main character, going through what she's going through in Camilla's Cucinotta, her late grandmother's little Italian cooking school and tiny storefront shop. It's amazing to me how this manuscript seems to be writing itself, very much the way my first novel did for me. I think because the core of it holds some deeply important truth that I want to uncover for myself, just like See Jane Date did. (Most people think See Jane Date was about dating, but it really wasn't. Just like The Love Goddess's Cooking School isn't really about the cooking. Even though it is. Isn't. Is.)

Anyway: I went to the bookstore and of course came home with Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, Heat by Bill Buford, and Amarcord: Marcella Remembers by Marcella Hazan (whose Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is teaching me so much about the fundamentals). On order is Julia's My Life in France. And I just finished the marvelous Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking. 

Interestingly, though I like watching The Food Network on occasion, I haven't found "my show," someone who really draws me in (Nigella is my favorite). Someone sent me a link today to a wonderful YouTube sensation video series called "Feed Me  Bubbe," about an adorable and earnest Jewish grandmother (who sounds exactly like my late Jewish grandmother) teaching how to a cook something simple and wonderful, like marble mandle bread. I'd like to find the Italian version of that on the Food Network, an Italian grandmother, a stove and her secrets. That I'd watch every day. 

Any recommendations for books or shows or recipes, please, please, please email them to me at melissasenate at yahoo.com. (All one word, using at symbol.) Off to read more Marcella.