Comfort Me with Apples

In Ruth Reichl’s latest book — one that will delight her fans and convert those as yet uninitiated to her charming tales — the author brings to life her adventures in pursuit of good meals and good company.

New York Times - Jenny Lyn Bader

Anyone who thinks that sometimes a dacquoise is just a dacquoise hasn't experienced the rapture of reading this book. Comfort Me With Apples shows us that even at life's most painful moments, eating and cooking can offer redemption. A great meal has the power to summon memory, to invoke romance, to mend a broken heart. When her personal life falls apart, Ms. Reichl invents a dish called "Swiss pumpkin" to make herself feel better, and it somehow helps. Not only inventing foods but inventing the words describing foods helps her through difficult times.

Take equal parts family history and food history, simmer with humor, and you get Ruth Reichl s irresistible, self-styled genre: the culinary confessional (recipes included). In her two bestselling memoirs, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples, renowned restaurant critic turned editor-in-chief at Gourmet magazine Ruth Reichl proves she understands herself -- and human nature -- as well as she does food.