The School Of Essential Ingredients

The School Of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister- 240 pages

The School of Essential Ingredients follows the lives of eight students who gather in Lillian’s Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. Students include Claire, a young mother struggling with the demands of her family; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer learning to adapt to life in America; and Tom, a widower mourning the loss of his wife to breast cancer. Chef Lillian, a woman whose connection with food is both soulful and exacting, helps them to create dishes whose flavor and techniques expand beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of her students’ lives. One by one the students are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of Lillian’s food, including a white-on-white cake that prompts wistful reflections on the sweet fragility of love and a peppery heirloom tomato sauce that seems to spark one romance but end another. Brought together by the power of food and companionship, the lives of the characters mingle and intertwine, united by the revealing nature of what can be created in the kitchen.

This is a good book if you like to cook and appreciate food. Food can be considered a main character in this book as it touches people uniquely and affects their lives. Each of the eight characters were interesting to me but some I wanted to know a little better, a little deeper. This author does a fine job of creating a sense of peace and soulfulness with her words.

-“Each person’s heart breaks in it’s own way. Every cure will be different, but there are some things we all need. Before anything else, we need to feel safe.”