Man with a Pan

April 11, 2011
Cartoonist and New Yorker editor Donohue celebrates dads who cook with a delightful compendium of essays, recipes, cartoons, and interviews. Noting that American fathers "now account for nearly a third of the time a family spends cooking," Donohueâhimself a cooking dadâchecks how this trend is working out by soliciting a variety of personal perspectives. Among them are such professional voices as Mario Batali and cookbook author Mark Bittman. Not surprisingly, many of the contributors are writers, such as Stephen King, Jim Harrison, Mohammed Naseehu Ali, and Wesley Stace. Under the heading, "In the Trenches," Donohue explores the routines of other average guys: a Brooklyn fireman, a software engineer, and a father of two in New Orleans. And while few are clueless in the kitchen, it is their wit, devotion, and candor that inspire. For example, in "Who the Man?" Jesse Green writes about being the noncook in a two-dad household suddenly faced with kitchen duty; and Matt Greenberg creates a screenplay explaining how to grill. Less a production but equally intriguing is what men cook: gumbo, fish tacos, roast chicken.

May 15, 2011

Inspirational, heartwarming tales of fathers in the kitchen.

Society may still dwell on gender and assign male or female roles to family tasks, but gender roles are changing, and this compilation of stories reflects that metamorphosis. Donohue, a cartoonist and editor at the New Yorker, asked 21 other fathers of varying backgrounds to share their cooking adventures, go-to cookbooks and favorite recipes, ranging from Grilled Burgers with Herb Butter to Afrikaner staple Vegetarian Bobotie. Like most collections, the quality of the writing varies. Readers may tire of tale after tale of kitchen mishaps, but the best pieces are surprising and enlightening. Highlights include Jim Harrison's "Chef English Major," a fantastic riff on food and cooking in America, which takes chefs to task for overuse of rosemary, and Stephen King's "On Cooking," an essay on how he learned the ins and outs of the kitchen after his wife lost her sense of taste and smell. There's romance here, too. Ghanaian writer and musician Mohammed Naseehu Ali tells of how cooking helped to heal his father's heart in "The Way to a Man's Heart." Matt Greenberg's "The Ribbing," written in screenplay style, is a welcome piece in which a grill adopts anthropomorphic qualities. New Yorker–style cartoons garnish the pages, and the overall style of the book has that same urban feel.

Despite a few lulls, an engaging collection that should inspire comfort for the man who cooks while his baby bangs on the pots and pans.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2011

It has long been quietly suspected among men that most books (and TV shows and movies) purportedly "by men, for men" are actually for women. Against this grain, Donohue, a cartoonist and an editor at The New Yorker, has collected some 30 narratives crafted by men (for men) to uncover not the generalized conventions de rigueur (forced guy talk, "what makes them tick" dissection, or dreadful "bromantic" "MALEapropisms"), but insightful and funny histories of cooking (and life) lessons learned. Stephen King, Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, and Wesley Stace join other writers and chefs (as well as firemen, lawyers, financial experts, and stay-at-home dads) in pieces that are free of cliche, poetic when appropriate, and unapologetically direct about serious matters (e.g., in instructions for a quick tomato sauce, don't use "shitty tomatoes"). Each essay is followed with author-penned recipes and a reader's advisory-like "On the Shelf" listing of cookbook recommendations. VERDICT This well-organized compilation breaks free from its tidy package with adaptable, exciting recipes like Beer-Can Chicken, Peanut Butter Soup, Carbonara de Zucchine, and Mexican Chocolate Pie. It trades stereotypes for truisms and is all the more authentic for it. Highly recommended.--Ben Malczewski, Ypsilanti District Lib., MI

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
Donohue piles his plate high with writers, chefs, artists, and businessmen to serve up this multiauthor work devoted to modern fathers everywhere. The contributorsJack Hitt, Mario Batali, Stephen King, Mark Bittman, to name a fewlet readers into their kitchens and their lives to show how food has changed their views on parenthood and even their family landscapes at a time when the dining room table is frequently replaced by the seats of a car. The writers, of differing career and culinary backgrounds, share an interest in making it home before dinner to concoct healthy and gourmet meals, a practice they say has satisfied their sanity and introduced a whole new world of culinary technique born of necessity. Readers wont have any trouble recognizing which pieces came from professional writers and which from stock-exchange gents, but they will hungrily anticipate each man-with-a-pans signature dish, placed at the end of his chapter, along with a recipe and a list of some of his favorite cookery books.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)