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Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery
by Jane Grigson
ISBN-10: 1902304888
ISBN-13: 9781902304885
ISBN-13: 9781902304885
Region: France
Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
Publication Date: May, 2008
Publishers Information
About Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery
Publisher Web Link: http://www.grubstreet.co.uk/
Here is a book which is guaranteed to fascinate both cook and traveller; it provides a wealth of information on the unique history and art of French charcuterie.
Every town in France has at least one charcutier, whose windows are dressed with astonishing displays of good food; pâtés, terrines, galantines, jambon, saucissions sec and boudins. The charcutier will also sell olives, anchovies, condiments as well as various salads of his own creation, making a visit the perfect stop to assemble picnics and impromptu meals. But the real skill of the charcutier lies in his transformation of the pig into an array of delicacies; a trade which goes back at least as far as classical Rome, when Gaul was famed for its hams.
First published in 1969 but unavailable for many years, Jane Grigson’s Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery is a guidebook and a recipe book. Written in her inimitable style, she describes every type of charcuterie available for purchase and how to make them yourself. She describes how to braise, roast, pot-roast and stew all the cuts of pork, how to make terrines, how to cure your own ham and make your own sausages. (http://www.grubstreet.co.uk/)
Author Information
About Jane Grigson
Author Web Link: http://www.janegrigsontrust.org.uk/
Jane Grigson was born in Gloucester in 1928 and brought up in Sunderland where her father George Shipley McIntire was Town Clerk. During the Second World War Jane and her younger sister, Mary, were educated at Casterton School, Westmoreland from where Jane proceeded to Newnham College, Cambridge to read English Literature. Following graduation in 1949 she spent three months in Florence.
After working in art galleries and in publishing, Jane joined the publisher, George Rainbird, in 1953 as a picture researcher for the encyclopedic ‘People,Places, Things and Ideas’ to be published by Thames & Hudson. The editor of the book was the author and poet, Geoffrey Grigson. Thus began a remarkable partnership and a great love affair which lasted until Geoffrey’s death in 1985, aged 80.
Jane then spent ten years as a translator from Italian, sharing with Father Kenelm Foster the John Florio Prize in 1966, for the translation of Beccaria’s ‘Of Crimes and Punishment’. In the early sixties, Jane and Geoffrey with their daughter, Sophie, began to divide their time between a farmhouse in Broad Town in Wiltshire and a ‘cave-cottage’ in Troo in France. It was at this time that Jane’s interest in food and cooking deepened. Her career as a food writer began as a collaboration with a friend, Adey Horton, on a work about French charcuterie. Horton later withdrew from the project and Jane continued her scrupulous research for the magisterial ‘Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery’ published in 1967 to high acclaim.
As a result of the book, in 1968 Elizabeth David recommended Jane to The Observer newspaper as their food columnist. Jane’s long association with the newspaper led to some of her most popular titles: Good Things(1971), Food with the Famous (1979), The Observer Guide to British Cookery (1984) and The Observer Guide to European Cookery (1983). For her Vegetable Book (1978) and her Fruit Book (1982), Jane received both the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award and the Andre Simon Memorial Fund Book Award. Jane’s other works include Fish Cookery (1973), English Food (1974), and The Mushroom Feast (1975).
Jane Grigson died at Broad Town on the eve of her 62nd birthday in 1990. A detailed bibliography of Jane’s work appears in Issue 38 of Petits Propos Culinaires, the journal published by Prospect Books. A copy of Issue 38 is held in the Jane Grigson Trust Library. (http://www.janegrigsontrust.org.uk/)
