The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry
Written: Apr 01 '08 (Updated Apr 21 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quick read, interesting window on the most famous cooking school in the world.
Cons: Not exactly engrossing reading.
The Bottom Line: A good book for a specific and possibly narrow audience. Ultimately a pretty lightweight book.
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| lyagushka's Full Review: Kathleen Flinn - The Sharper Your Knife, the Less ... |
At thirty-six, Kathleen Flinn was fired from her corporate job in London, which also entailed the loss of the work visa which allowed her to live in the UK. Faced with the "freedom" of having no employment and a need to relocate rather quickly, she chose to impulsive pursue the dream she'd once confided to Julia Child: to study at the Cordon Bleu in Paris. Supporting her decision was a new boyfriend back in Seattle. Challenging it were her practical-minded mother and her lack of proficiency with the French language. She made it through the full course of instruction, and wrote a memoir about it, called The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry. The "love, laughter, and tears" of the subtitle pretty much sums up the book.
Flinn's background as a long-time journalist is obvious in her writing. Her tone is clear, competent and succinct. Though she often writes on personal, even emotional, topics, her book reads like reportage and has little literary flair. While this means that the book is a very quick read, I find it commendable when a non-literary writer sticks to what they can do well.
Reading a first-hand account of the Cordon Bleu cooking school would probably interest a lot of people. But it was especially interesting for me, since I studied at the Culinary Institute of America. While students at both schools apparently take equal abuse from the chef-instructors, I'm glad I didn't attend the Cordon Bleu. Language difficulties aside, the school sounds a little poorly run compared to what I experienced. At the CIA we never had to contend with the chronic shortage of ingredients or non-functioning ovens that Flinn and her fellow students endured. How can a student be expected to plate a dish when the basic components of the recipe are not provided?
Also, the Cordon Bleu (and Flinn's book) naturally focuses exclusively on French cuisine. While French cuisine was certainly the core curriculum at the school I attended, it sounds like I walked away with a broader culinary education. Flinn, on the other hand, finished the Cuisine Supérieure course with a much deeper expertise in what is widely acknowledged to be the most important cuisine in the world of professional cooking. I include these impressions for the prospective culinary students who might be interested in this book.
Maybe I'm jaded about food, or maybe I'm just too accustomed to reading about food, but this book didn't make my mouth water. Perhaps the most vicarious enjoyment comes from her neat skewering of two rude, leeching houseguests from hell, as well as an ultra-competitive, ano-cranial inverted classmate. Makes me wonder if they'll all be reading her book. Who hasn't dreamed of this sort of revenge?
The author flubs a few culinary facts, such as the ingredients for Béchamel sauce. She claims it's made with cream when in fact it contains milk. Escoffier will back me up on this. How do I know this with such certainty and off the top of my head? Because it was one of the oral questions I got wrong during my own exams at culinary school. One's own failures tend to be memorable. I too wrongly claimed that the sauce contained cream. It's a mistake that's easy to understand given the creamy consistency of the sauce. Also, Béchamel is considered pretty basic by professional standards. The sauce would have been covered early in Flinn's program, when students are overwhelmed with trying to master new skills and absorb a lot of recipes. After many more complicated techniques and preparations, those early lessons fade to obscure memories.
Flinn ends each of the 28 chapters of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry with a recipe she encountered during her studies at the Cordon Bleu. Then she throws in a few more at the end. Not all of them come from the school itself, though most are for French food. Some are her own. Others originate with her friends and fellow students, such as a Bolognese recipe from an Israeli classmate. (How unlikely is that?) I didn't prepare any of the recipes though a few looked interesting, such as Veau en Croûte avec Farce de Pommes et Céleri, Sauce Calvados (Veal in pastry stuffed with apples and celery, Calvados sauce). French cuisine isn't on heavy rotation in my own kitchen. In any case, this book falls squarely into memoir rather than the cookbook genre.
I think The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is pretty average for a memoir. It will appeal most to those who are food-focused. I was given my copy of the book by an acquaintance who knew me as a foodie. Anyone with starry-eyed, romantic dreams of attending a culinary school would do well to read this book for an appraisal of the hard realities and rigors of serious culinary training. This isn't a Bourdain style, gritty-but-humorous exposé, but food professionals will probably find this book interesting, albeit briefly. If I hadn't been given a copy for free I certainly would not have purchased this book. I probably wouldn't even have checked it out of the library.
If you're interested in other memoirs, I recommend:
• A Piece of Cake - by Cupcake Brown
• Julie & Julia - by Julie Powell
• What the Stones Remember - by Patrick Lane
• Persepolis - by Marjane Satrapi
• Reading Lolita in Tehran - by Azar Nafisi
• My Part of the River - by Grace Foakes
• Predators, Prey & Other Kinfolk: Growing Up in Polygamy - by Dorothy Allred Solomon
Recommended:
Yes
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