Overview
Two years out of college and with a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Victoria Riccardi left a boyfriend, a rent-controlled New York City apartment, and a plum job in advertising to move to Kyoto to study kaiseki, the exquisitely refined form of cooking that accompanies the formal Japanese tea ceremony. She arrived in Kyoto, a city she had dreamed about but never seen, with two bags, an open-ended plane ticket, and the ability to speak only sushi-bar Japanese. She left a year later, having learned the language, the art of kaiseki, and what was truly important to her.
Through special introductions and personal favors, Victoria was able to attend one of Kyoto’s most prestigious tea schools, where this ago-old Japanese art has been preserved for generations and where she was taken under the wing of an American expatriate who became her mentor in the highly choreographed rituals of this extraordinary culinary discipline.
During her year in Kyoto, Victoria explored the mysterious and rarefied world of tea kaiseki, living a life inaccessible to most foreigners. She also discovered the beguiling realm of modern-day Japanese food—the restaurants, specialty shops, and supermarkets. She participated in many fast-disappearing culinary customs, including making mochi (chewy rice cakes) by hand, a beloved family ritual barely surviving in a mechanized age. She celebrated the annual cleansing rites of New Year’s, donning an elaborate kimono and obi for a thirty-four-course extravaganza. She includes twenty-five recipes for favorite dishes she encountered, such as Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl, Japanese Beef and Vegetable Hotpot, and Green-TeaCooked Salmon Over Rice.
Untangling My Chopsticks is a sumptuous journey into the tastes, traditions, and exotic undercurrents of Japan. It is also a coming-of-age tale steeped in history and ancient customs, a thoughtful meditation on life, love, and learning in another land.
Synopsis
Two years out of college and with a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Victoria Riccardi left a boyfriend, a rent-controlled New York City apartment, and a plum job in advertising to move to Kyoto to study "kaiseki, the exquisitely refined form of cooking that accompanies the formal Japanese tea ceremony. She arrived in Kyoto, a city she had dreamed about but never seen, with two bags, an open-ended plane ticket, and the ability to speak only sushi-bar Japanese. She left a year later, having learned the language, the art of kaiseki, and what was truly important to her.Like flower arranging or calligraphy, kaiseki is an age-old Japanese art form. It began as a modest vegetarian meal that Buddhist monks ate in Kyoto's Zen temples and then developed into a highly symbolic Japanese ritual. Through special introductions and personal favors, Victoria was able to attend one of Kyoto's most prestigious tea schools, where this art has been preserved for generations and where she was taken under the wing of an American expatriate who became her kaiseki mentor. As a first-hand participant in kaiseki meals and tea ceremonies, she observed the highly choreographed rituals of this extraordinary culinary discipline, absorbing the beauty and subtlety of its myriad details and symbolic gestures.
During her year in Kyoto, Victoria explored the mysterious and rarefied world of tea kaiseki, living a life inaccessible to most foreigners. She befriended a Japanese couple, teaching English at their home-based language school and eventually moving in with them. She spent countless hours with her kaiseki mentor and his partner cooking in their historic Japanese house. Eventually, she even struckup a friendship with a monk when she spent several nights at a secluded Buddhist temple.
She also discovered the beguiling realm of modern-day Japanese food--the restaurants, specialty shops, and supermarkets. She participated in many fast-disappearing culinary customs, including making "mochi (chewy rice cakes) by hand, a beloved family ritual barely surviving in a mechanized age. She celebrated the annual cleansing rites of New Year's, donning an elaborate kimono and obi for a thirty-four-course extravaganza. In her book, she includes twenty-five recipes for favorite dishes she encountered, such as Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl, Japanese Beef and Vegetable Hotpot, and Green-Tea Cooked Salmon Over Rice.
"Untangling My Chopsticks is a sumptuous journey into the tastes, traditions, and exotic undercurrents of Japan. It is also a coming-of-age tale steeped in history and ancient customs, a thoughtful meditation on life, love, and learning in another land.
Editorials
The New Yorker
It's hard to understand how something that tastes sweet in one person's mouth, in another person's mouth can taste so bitter," a friend tells Abe Opincar, whose memoir, Fried Butter, explores the ways in which memory dictates gustatory preference. For others, it's a matter of social class. In Rosemary and Bitter Oranges, Patrizia Chen's grandfather banned onions and garlic for their rusticity; years later, Chen served him a dish laced with the forbidden seasonings. He praised her culinary genius. "But Nonno never found out about my Machiavellian deviousness," she writes. "I loved him too much to show him, at the end of his life, how his inflexibility had deprived him of one of life's great pleasures.In South India, as Shoba Narayan relates in her memoir Monsoon Diary, food is enriched by ritual importance, from the choru-unnal (the first meal of an infant) to the elaborate feast that commemorates a marriage. When she left Madras to attend school in the United States, Narayan craved bowls of yogurt and rice to ease her homesickness: "While the foreign flavors teased my palate, I needed Indian food to ground me."
Rather than seeking refuge in food from home, Victoria Abbott Riccardi, a New Yorker, learned to refine her taste buds during a year in Kyoto. In Untangling My Chopsticks, Riccardi recalls her exploration of chakaiseki, a ceremonial meal of simple, seasonal courses that reflect the ritual's monastic origins. "Like a junkie, I initially craved my stimulants," she writes. "But then, ever so slowly, I started tasting -- really tasting -- the ingredients. It was like entering a dark room on a sunny day."
(Andrea Thompson)