Pat Conroy: The Pat Conroy Cookbook

The kitchen is not a place of labor, but a field of fantasy and play. 

If you can read and follow directions, you can cook. 

Escoffier’s cookbook is legendary. 

If you feed people well, they will love you for it and sing your praises to friends and neighbors. 

Love of cooking is a portable, moving pleasure that you can take with you to every house or country you enter. 

“I felt like a chemist, a magician, some sorcerer’s apprentice made hauntingly alive by the luscious smells coming out of my kitchen.”

“There are meals that I ate in Rome while writing The Prince of Tides that ache in my memory.”

The first rule is this: use good stock. 

Like most good cooks, she is absolutely fearless, taking on each task with gusto. 

Cooking and storytelling make the most delightful coconspirators. 

Either is good alone, but in communion with each other, they could rise to the level of ecstasy. 

“Cooking is an insidious addiction and it was many years before I realized I needed to enroll in a twelve-step program to control my passion for the ownership of cookbooks.”

Cookbooks are accurate reflections, authentic as fingerprints, and also compendiums of acquired wisdom which offer shortcuts you could not learn in a lifetime. 

Very useful tips that experienced cooks share with one another:

1. Use as little water as possible when cooking vegetables. Avoid violent boiling of most vegetables. 
2. Always add hot water, not cold, to vegetables when cooking to keep the vegetables from being tough. 

1. A dampened paper towel brushed downward on a cob of corn will remove every strand of corn silk. 
2. Ketchup will flow out of the bottle evenly if you first insert a drinking straw, push it to the bottom of the bottle, then remove. 

Mrs. Bowditch’s From the Kitchen at Hornsby House in Yorktown, Virginia

1. Put an oyster shell in the teakettle to prevent its becoming encrusted with lime. 
2. Store mushrooms and string beans in a brown paper bag in the refrigerator, not in plastic. 

Pg. 68 Roasted Beets with Blue Cheese and Sherry Vinaigrette 

P70 Asparagus and Poached Egg Salad With Bacon

Baking is a high branch of chemistry and woe to the home cook who does not follow the homemaker’s recipe with absolute precision. 

But recipes like shrimp and grits invite experimentation. 

P93-94 Roquefort Dressing

“It was the first time I realized that something as simple as lettuce could be raised to sacramental levels by something as simple as sauce.”

“I’ve lead a life chock-full of stories, and I know now that you have to be shifty and vigilant and ready to receive their incoming fire. 

Sometimes it takes the passage of years to reveal their actual meaning or import. 

They disguise themselves with masks, disfigurements, chimeras, and Trojan horses.”

Alertness is a requirement of the writing life, staying nimble on your feet, open to stories that will rise up and flower around you while you are walking your dog on the beach or taking the kids to soccer practice.

The gift of the writer is recognition—the awareness when the story has introduced itself to you. 

A recipe is just a story that ends in a good meal. 

P117 sugared blood oranges. 

Our lives are longer but as fragile as roses. 

There are always three or four words in our lives we can never articulate. 

P125 Pizza Bianca

That is the singular gift of travel: it changes you because it gives you more to celebrate, to cherish, and to remember. 

The reason you travel is to find out who you really are and what you really believe. 

“If you are a beginning cook, Saltimbocca alla Romana is a dish you should incorporate into your repertoire immediately. It is simple, easy to prepare, and magnificent.”

Recipe p142-143

P144-145 most magnificent verbal depiction of a salad. 

Freshly ground pepper has volatile, tempestuous oils which only last about an hour after grinding. 

This oil is an aid to digestion. It also cleans the blood, like garlic or cognac. 

Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall: Rare and Unusual Recipes

• one of pat’s favorite cookbooks. 

P156-157 peppered peaches

Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” - “It is one of the greatest books ever written about a writer’s life and art.”

P172-173 Hot Potato Salad With Vinegar

P175-176 Crème brûlée

P197 cheddar cheese coins

That first roasted oyster ranks high on my list of spectacular moments I have experienced while meandering through the markets and restaurants of the world—my first taste of lobster truffle, beluga caviar, escargot, and South Carolina’z mustard-based barbecue. 

211-212 Cornbread

213-214 Apple Cobbler

If you’re going to do something, learn to do it right. If not, let someone else do it. 

223-224 Candied Bacon

251 Grilled Figs with Prosciutto, Walnuts, and Lemon-Mint Cream