With Bold Knife and Fork

by M.F.K. Fisher

The author shares her kitchen philosophy and offers advice on preparing appetizers, soups, casseroles, and other dishes.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Cooking, Cookbooks, Memoir, Food Writing, Essays

318 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a prolific and well-respected writer, writing more than 20 books during her lifetime and also publishing two volumes of journals and correspondence shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books deal primarily with food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy. Fisher believed that eating well was just one of the "arts of life" and explored the art of living as a secondary theme in her writing. Her style and pacing are noted elements of her short stories and essays.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a memoir containing recipes; each chapter focuses on a different item (fish, salad, bread, etc.). It is a strange book. M.F.K. Fisher is weird. Sometimes the vocabulary is archaic – “housekeepers of my beldam’s vintage” – a beldam (I had to look it up) is an old woman. Presumably she is referring to her grandmother. Something was “purchased by my beldam in Iowa.” Sometimes she shortens it to “my dam.” There’s a reference to “dago red” – Italian red wine. Pasta is always italicized as a foreign word. She writes, “I am told that Chocolate Brownies are ‘a universal favorite,’ although I would hesitate to serve one to a Jordanian or even a Marseillais.” Whatever! On p. 160 she informs us – just in passing - that “two of my close acquaintances have died of starvation lately, diagnosed as deliberate malnourishment in one case…”

She recalls the nasturtium-leaf sandwiches of her childhood. Apparently the family had quite a bit of money, because there were always cooks. One of them, Ora by name, “was the maddest of all our crew, and on one Sunday-off she cut her mother and then herself into neat ribbons with her treasured ‘French’ knife.” At boarding school, “Harry, the butler for countless decades, killed two assistants and committed hara-kiri…”

Some of the ingredients are horrifying: canned celery, sliced onions soaked in milk. Dozens of the recipes call for canned pimientos, or a “scant cup” of something. The scant cup has always annoyed me. Does it really matter whether you put in one teaspoon less?

A recipe called “Private Method Zucchini” involves boiling zucchini, yellow squash, celery, and onions until tender, then draining, mashing to a “soothing pap,” then seasoning. “Shake briskly.” After eating this goo “sometimes it is nice afterward to pour a mugful of cold milk with a tot of rum in it, and put it beside the bed, and read an old Simenon while one sips and perhaps dozes…” Absolutely not.

Along the same lines is “Steamed Crackers,” one of her grandmother’s specialties. Take 6 Boston crackers, layer in a bowl with 2 tablespoons sugar and a pinch of salt. Cover with boiling water and a lid, let sit for an hour until jellylike. “Caraway Soup” is made of hot water, 2 tablespoons flour, ¼ cup butter, and 1 tablespoon caraway seeds. Simmer 10 minutes and serve with toast. “Grandmother’s Boiled Dressing” is 1 cup cider vinegar, enough flour to make a thin paste, and salt. “Boil slowly 15 minutes or until done, and serve with wet shredded lettuce.” However, “this one has never been tested and never shall be, nor is it recommended for anything but passing thought.”

The Railroad Sandwich involves a long French bread loaf, half a pound of sweet butter, sliced boiled ham, and Dijon mustard. Wrap in plastic or paper and get a fat person to sit on the sandwich for at least 20 minutes. Your friend’s fat ass melts the butter and melds the ingredients together, like a panini press.

There are only two recipes I would make: Green Rice (with parsley, grated cheese, eggs and milk), and eggs with rice, chopped olives, and garlic.

[^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable; this is a book which I willingly pick up when (for example) I’m blind-baking a pastry case. So I'm not sure exactly how many times I've read this book, or indeed whether I've actually yet read it all. This is a book of unexpected gems, not just of prose, but also of valuable ideas.

For example some years ago I stocked up on tinned pumpkin, because I had an excellent pumpkin cake recipe (from ‘Bon Appetite’ magazine) … before my husband decided in a Tigger-ish moment, that he didn’t like that particular cake any more. What then to do with six cans of tinned pumpkin? On pg 191 MFK made a worthwhile suggestion: pumpkin dumplings (bless her for advising that ‘canned [pumpkin] will do’). If anyone can suggest a solution for the other three tins, I should be most grateful.

I love her dry humour. For example: QUOTE (p.270):
“And further along in the section Queen Vic[toria’s] cook called Ornamental Entremets there is an almost equally discouraging recipe, unfortunately without an illustration, for making a ‘Savoy cake in the form of a glazed ham.’ This must have roused many a merry moment at court, compared with some others of those interminable dinners. I know ways to make people laugh that are easier...”

A quick look at the Index ought be enough to sell this book to anyone interested in food and cooking. Is our curiosity roused as mine was by entries such as, “‘Mountain oysters” of lambs testicles (129,130)“, “Lobster claws (65)”, “Questionable Crumpets (233)”, “nasturtium-leaf sandwiches, (235). This really is a book on social history as much as on cooking. I’ve eaten nasturtium flowers before, but using the young leaves in sandwiches (thinly cut home-made white bread, buttered) was new to me.

Forget present-day ‘me-too’ celebrity cooks. Go for the classics instead, proven over the course of the years.

[Kristi Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a delightful, funny, deeply evocative read. Fisher connects meals and memories throughout this little gem, binding them together with the thread of her triumphant, sassy prose. I enjoyed this book immensely.

[Glen Retief · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, intelligent, and often touching, this is both a memoir and a cookbook, or, as the author describes it, an "odd noncookbook." Persimmon and molasses cookies? A bread loaf including (washed) lawn clippings? I look forward to trying many of this volume's fine and strange-sounding treats.

[Jericha]

While some of the stories in these essays will be familiar to readers of her older books, in the end it simply doesn't matter, any more than eating a delicious meal is marred by having eaten it before. The way MFK Fisher writes about her pleasure in food is exactly synonymous with my pleasure in reading her writing, and savoring this book slowly with a few glasses of really good Old Vine Zinfandel was an acutely physical and spiritual delight - I would even go so far as to say nourishment - as, indeed, her other books have been and continue to be. I suspect she would be glad.

[Karen Tripson · Rating 5 out of 5]

MFKF is still one of the best writers about food, wine and life.

[Calico · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really get on with MKF's voice tbh. weird period of recuperation where all I could read was books about food or cooking: other books around this period will show...

[Nayiri Krikorian · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve not read anything by M.F.K. Fisher, With Bold Knife and Fork is an utterly perfect place to start. Run to the bookstore, click over to Amazon, get thee to a library — I don’t care which method you prefer* as long as readership of this book increases by a significant amount.

Part cookbook and part memoir, With Bold Knife and Fork is almost novelesque in its structure, starting with Ms. Fisher’s research of turn-of-the-century recipes and their communal lack of specificity, advancing on to her own youth under her puritanical grandmother’s roof and continuing with her daughters’ culinary endeavors. Interspersed throughout the anecdotes and observations are recipes relating to the topic at hand; some are Ms. Fisher’s, and others are credited to friends, family and her mother’s cook.

Here’s my favorite quote, which sums up precisely how I feel about inventing my own recipes, something I do with great infrequency:

Perhaps I should feel more actively ashamed, that I am so torpid. Why do I sit back and let other people sweat to do all my figuring and inventing? I am a clod.

Honestly, this is a woman after my own heart. With grace and wit and candor, she just gets me. And I love that.

This is an edited version of a review originally posted at my blog 1othirty.

[Jlnpeacock Peacock · Rating 5 out of 5]

M. F. K. Fisher writes beautifully in this most unusual cookbook. It is a work of art and convinces me, as she describes various foods, that I would truly enjoy eating things I'd never considered before (Raw fish? Hum, that sounds wonderful since it really isn't raw because the lime juice actually cooks it. Yes, I would love to try some.). The recipes are untypical of any cookbook, but as she writes of life surrounding the given recipe and provides culinary instruction in her storytelling, one feels it is possible to duplicate the marvels she is describing. Her books should be consistently on best seller lists. They not only provide domestic instruction, but history lessons as well as a beautifully crafted work of literature. I was told Julia Child said Fisher's cookbooks were the only ones she ever owned.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this about a year ago and didn't really care for it; its similarities to "How to Cook a Wolf" were obvious. But in Berkeley I picked up a copy, reread it, and really enjoyed it; I think that my hiatus from all things Fisher enabled me to reread it for its own merits. Many of the sections were similar to "Wolf," but with new recipes, and written with the experience and tastes developed in the 15-odd years intervening between the two books. So while I wouldn't read the two back-to-back, I would now be happy to pick this up for dinnertime reading the way I do "Wolf."

[Chadwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even in something as prosaic as a chapter on various rice dishes, MFK Fisher can't help but confront romance, sex, death, memories of childhood, and just about the whole of human history. She wrote with an effortless erudition and a staggering understanding of the magic of the kitchen, in an elegant, simple, and charming style. There really has ever only been one of her.

[Laura]

I'm only two chapters in but this is wonderful. Yes, it was written a long time ago but the style is delicious and I imagine the recipes will be, too.
It's a good read but I have to return it to the library...I hope to pick it up again..

[Lisa Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part cook book, part meditation on food. One of the more diverting facets of the book is being reminded of the days when there weren’t 10 types of greens in the market and canned shrimp was a thing. I suppose it might still be, God forfend.

[Rick Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love reading M.F.K. Fisher. She's a wonderful storyteller, and her books are a simple read. Her descriptions of things are so great that it's easy to envision exactly what she's describing.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

a classic.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I think I reviewed 'The Art of Eating' by MFK. This is just as good).

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I DEVOUR MFK. She, Joanna Macy, and Meg Wheatley are my new favorite women.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the great food writers, every page a pleasure.