Fasting and Feasting

July 15, 2017
A journalist examines the life of an important but neglected British-born cookbook author.Federman tells the story of Patience Gray (1917-2005), who became a world expert on the cuisine of the Salento region of southern Italy. Gray was born into an upper-middle-class family that she later remembered for its Edwardian rigidity and hypocrisy. While a student at the London School of Economics, she began frequenting leftist and artistic circles. She had two children out of wedlock, lived in a small cottage with no electricity or running water, and scratched out a living as a freelance designer and editor. It was during this period that Gray developed an interest in foraging, which she did to supplement a restricted wartime diet. Her first cookbook, Plats du Jour, appeared in 1957. With its emphasis on simple cooking that took its cue from Continental--especially French, Italian, Spanish, and Hungarian--cuisine, it became a "standard reference" for "the average home cook." At the same time, Gray began questioning the new British love affair with consumerism. Along with her partner, Belgian sculpture Norman Mommens, she traveled across Europe in search of a place where she could lead a simpler, more authentic life. The journey took them first to the Greek island of Naxos and then to the extreme south of Italy, where they settled in an old farmhouse called Spigolizzi. Embracing a radically simple lifestyle, they lived off the land, ate according to the seasons, and created art. Federman's book is meticulously researched, but the amount of detail may prove dry for general readers. Still, the author's portrait of the complex, fiercely independent woman who reshaped ideas about cooking and food and about what constitutes a life well-lived in a world defined by the "numbing effects" of modernity is intriguing and well-rendered. A highly detailed traditional biography of an unconventional woman.

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Starred review from September 15, 2017
Patience Gray is one of the most important food writers you've never heard of. Long before she published Honey from a Weed (1986), her most enduring work, Gray endured hunger in the margins of society in London, during the lean times of both world wars, and consequently, in the kitchen, her methods were simple yet beautifully tied to nature, poetry, and art. She traveled extensively, eventually making a life in the Italian countryside. Three decades were spent in rough, remote Puglia without running water, refrigeration, or other modern niceties. It was in this far-flung place that Gray would write that iconic piece of culinary history. The title was celebrated at the time, but for today's local food fanatics, it's venerated. Gray's work was cookbook poetry, steeped in Mediterranean lore, with recipes hearkening back to Virgil. Even her indexes became legendary. Her life made her as much a maverick as her culinary writing. Investigative environmental- and food-journalist Federman's biography will attract today's farm-to-table enthusiasts, and tells a little-known story of someone who was eons ahead of her time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)