Book: Talking with My Mouth Full by Gail Simmons

Gail is host of Top Chef: Just Desserts but I don't get the TV channel that carries that program so haven't seen her (or heard of her, for that matter). She is also Special Projects Director at Food and Wine magazine, and this is a "foodie" book. She grew up in Toronto, went to McGill, and couldn't figure out what she wanted to do with her life when she graduated until a helpful friend asked her what she most liked to do. Gail writes on a piece of paper: "Eat. Write. Travel. Cook." There it was--her future--and so that is what she did.

If you like restaurants and food and reading about food and food shows on TV, you'll like this book.

"My absolute favorite South African food is biltong: air-dried, salted meat, cut or shaved into bite-sized pieces or sold in large strips that can be sliced up as you desire. It has a very specific savoriness and is not sweet the way American beef jerky is....Ostrich is also outstanding. The flavor is halfway between steak and chicken..."

"Our choice wasn't easy. Marcel worked hard at creating an experience we would never forget. He made sea urchin and Meyer lemon gelee with fennel cream, caviar, and kalamata oil; cucumber and radish salad with ouzo vinaigrette; hearts of palm and maitake mushrooms with sea beans and kaffir lime sauce; strip-line steak with garlic puree; blini with Kona coffee "caviar"....Ilan's meal was Spanish-inspired, starting with angula (baby eels) and pan con tomate, but he did a great job including local Hawaiian ingredients too--a gazpacho of native macadamia nuts and a fruits soup with Surinam cherries...His seared squab with foie gras, shrimp, and lobster was simple and flavorful. The Romesco sauce on is beef course was the best I'd tasted---coarse and garlicky with just the right amount of smoky paprika."

Gail worked in some high-end restaurant kitchens, Le Cirque for instance, learning about ingredients, signature dishes, food preparation, chefs, the rest of the staff and those who come to a restaurant and pay several hundred dollars for a meal. She gets married to a man named Jeremy who looks very much like Jerry Seinfeld and describes her wedding menu: three chilled soups, seven fresh summer salads and a fish course, "grilled striped bass with red wine, roasted figs, young turnips, braised romaine and polenta."  Their dessert was not a traditional wedding cake but rather "small bites of sweets that were easy to pick up and eat while dancing, even with a drink in the other hand...mini fruit tarts (peach, strawberry and raspberry), French macaroons in vanilla and coffee, bite-sized banana marshmallows on sticks, strawberry sorbet bars dipped in dark chocolate..." and City Bakery's chocolate chip cookies.

Gail tells of trips (eating cod sperm in Japan), of her parents and brothers, of her childhood, of the annual Food and Wine Classic in Aspen each summer, all entertaining vignettes and glimpses into her world, basically, the world of food.

I had also read that book about oysters not so long ago. I did then and still do have niggles while reading of food, which people spend an inordinate time securing, preparing, praising, obsessing over and then serving in meals that cost hundreds of dollars. Although Gail does devote a paragraph or two to her charitable work, I thought that inclusion was token. Maybe if I hadn't just finished Behind the Beautiful Forevers I might not have been thinking so much about the monstrous disparity between the two worlds represented in this book.

Whatever anyone thinks of it though, the foodie world is thriving and Talking with My Mouth Half Full is a feast of words on that subject.