Afternoon:
8°c
Barnes's tasty new recipe
Nina Caplan, Metro 21 Oct 2003
Julian Barnes's kitchen pedant is as dogmatic and irritating as most pernickety types, whatever their speciality, but anyone who has ever revolted at the smugly capable tone of the average cookbook cannot but warm to this chewy combination of concessions, neuroses, advice and the occasional recipe.
Barnes is, as always, precise, humorous and informative (if narrator and author aren't the same person, they evidently have lots in common) and most amateur cooks will recognise some indignant aside or anecdote of culinary disaster.
Avoiding the literary equivalent of the rules his pedant adheres to so slavishly, Barnes has created a curiously palatable little book.
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