suzy meets amanda

i really, really, really wanted to like Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte. i got it on the recommendation of adam (the amazing amateur gourmet), i liked the cover, i really liked the fact that there were illustrations before every chapter (i'm going to start the More Books Should Be Illustrated movement one of these days), and i loved the fact that there was an index at the end that encompassed recipes and ingredients.

as far as the recipes go, i must admit that i only tried one--the macaroni and cheese recipe. the white sauce was more white chunks of butter-clotted flour than sauce, and even though i followed the recipe verbatim it just didn't seem like there was enough cheese in it. but that's not amanda's fault, and for the most part i liked what i saw of the recipes. her insistence on ground pepper and grains of paradise (whatever the hell those are) is a little annoying, but that i can forgive.

what i can't forgive, however, is how flat the chapters are. i was expecting some lively dialogue, some interesting insights, and hopefully some entertaining stories about food and relationships. what i got instead were essays that are hardly cohesive, with random anecdotes barely woven together with random descriptions of whatever food she happened to be eating. even the anecdotes specifically about eating in restaurants with famous foodies are interspersed with amanda's distracting and lackluster internal monologue. the last chapter was the most frustrating--she attempts to sum up the trials, tribulations, and successes of dating mr. latte, but because it wasn't backed up in the previous chapters, it felt artificial.

overwhelmingly flat, is all i can really think of to describe her writing. of course, i haven't read her columns, and maybe this isn't the best introduction to her style. i live in that hope. in any case, i'll certainly be trying some of the recipes, and will stick to the illustrations from now on.