Apron Strings: Navigating Food anad Family in France, Italy, and China

Shortlisted, 2018 Taste Canada Awards and 2018 Writers' Federation of New Brunswick Book Award for Non-Fiction
Longlisted, 2018 RBC Taylor Prize

Jan Wong knows food is better when shared, so when she set out to write a book about home cooking in France, Italy, and China, she asked her 22-year-old son, Sam, to join her. While he wasn't keen on spending excessive time with his mom, he dreamed of becoming a chef. Ultimately, it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.

On their journey, Jan and Sam live and cook with locals, seeing first-hand how globalization is changing food, families, and cultures. In southeast France, they move in with a family sheltering undocumented migrants. From Bernadette, the housekeeper, they learn classic French family fare such as blanquette de veau. In a hamlet in the heart of Italy's Slow Food country, the villagers teach them without fuss or fanfare how to make authentic spaghetti alle vongole and a proper risotto with leeks. In Shanghai, they home-cook firecracker chicken and scallion pancakes with the nouveaux riches and their migrant maids, who comprise one of the biggest demographic shift in world history. Along the way, mother and son explore their sometimes-fraught relationship, uniting — and occasionally clashing — over their mutual love of cooking.

A memoir about family, an exploration of the globalization of food cultures, and a meditation on the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, Apron Strings is complex, unpredictable, and unexpectedly hilarious.

1126181849
Apron Strings: Navigating Food anad Family in France, Italy, and China

Shortlisted, 2018 Taste Canada Awards and 2018 Writers' Federation of New Brunswick Book Award for Non-Fiction
Longlisted, 2018 RBC Taylor Prize

Jan Wong knows food is better when shared, so when she set out to write a book about home cooking in France, Italy, and China, she asked her 22-year-old son, Sam, to join her. While he wasn't keen on spending excessive time with his mom, he dreamed of becoming a chef. Ultimately, it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.

On their journey, Jan and Sam live and cook with locals, seeing first-hand how globalization is changing food, families, and cultures. In southeast France, they move in with a family sheltering undocumented migrants. From Bernadette, the housekeeper, they learn classic French family fare such as blanquette de veau. In a hamlet in the heart of Italy's Slow Food country, the villagers teach them without fuss or fanfare how to make authentic spaghetti alle vongole and a proper risotto with leeks. In Shanghai, they home-cook firecracker chicken and scallion pancakes with the nouveaux riches and their migrant maids, who comprise one of the biggest demographic shift in world history. Along the way, mother and son explore their sometimes-fraught relationship, uniting — and occasionally clashing — over their mutual love of cooking.

A memoir about family, an exploration of the globalization of food cultures, and a meditation on the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, Apron Strings is complex, unpredictable, and unexpectedly hilarious.

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Apron Strings: Navigating Food anad Family in France, Italy, and China

Apron Strings: Navigating Food anad Family in France, Italy, and China

by Jan Wong
Apron Strings: Navigating Food anad Family in France, Italy, and China

Apron Strings: Navigating Food anad Family in France, Italy, and China

by Jan Wong

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Overview

Shortlisted, 2018 Taste Canada Awards and 2018 Writers' Federation of New Brunswick Book Award for Non-Fiction
Longlisted, 2018 RBC Taylor Prize

Jan Wong knows food is better when shared, so when she set out to write a book about home cooking in France, Italy, and China, she asked her 22-year-old son, Sam, to join her. While he wasn't keen on spending excessive time with his mom, he dreamed of becoming a chef. Ultimately, it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.

On their journey, Jan and Sam live and cook with locals, seeing first-hand how globalization is changing food, families, and cultures. In southeast France, they move in with a family sheltering undocumented migrants. From Bernadette, the housekeeper, they learn classic French family fare such as blanquette de veau. In a hamlet in the heart of Italy's Slow Food country, the villagers teach them without fuss or fanfare how to make authentic spaghetti alle vongole and a proper risotto with leeks. In Shanghai, they home-cook firecracker chicken and scallion pancakes with the nouveaux riches and their migrant maids, who comprise one of the biggest demographic shift in world history. Along the way, mother and son explore their sometimes-fraught relationship, uniting — and occasionally clashing — over their mutual love of cooking.

A memoir about family, an exploration of the globalization of food cultures, and a meditation on the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, Apron Strings is complex, unpredictable, and unexpectedly hilarious.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780864929501
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Publication date: 09/12/2017
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 384
File size: 913 KB

About the Author

Jan Wong is the author of five non-fiction bestsellers, including Out of the Blue and Red China Blues, named one of Time magazine's top ten non-fiction books of 1996. (Twenty years later, the book is still in print.) She has won numerous journalism awards and is now a professor of journalism at St. Thomas University. A third-generation Canadian, Jan is the eldest daughter of a prominent Montreal restaurateur.

Table of Contents

A Note on Names 9

Principal Characters 10

Prologue: "Stay With Us" 13

France

1 Allex 23

2 Philoméne and Pierre-Marie 30

3 Bernadette 35

4 Roti de Pigeons 44

5 Sunday Lunch 63

6 The Georgians 70

7 Odette's Flan 82

8 Le Tuade 88

9 Michelin Stars 96

10 Provence 109

11 Valentine's Day 118

Italy

12 Repergo 127

13 Italian Food Rules 135

14 Cucina Povera 141

15 Maria Rosa's Two-Stir Risotto 154

16 Cutting Against the Thumb 168

17 Federica's Polenta and Pasta 181

18 Pizza and Poached Pears 194

19 Gigi's "Drooling" Gnocchi 202

20 Mirella's Pasta E Fagioli 215

21 Maria Stella's Spaghetti Carbonara 220

22 A Cultural Revolution 236

23 The Battle of Bologna 246

China

24 Hilly 255

25 Shanghaied 264

26 The Penthouse 272

27 Maid in China 285

28 The Help 292

29 Smashed Cukes 300

30 Peony 306

31 Pearls and Scallion Pancakes 315

32 Plum and Building-the-Army 324

33 Taste Essence 333

34 Love the Big Chef 344

35 Farewell 353

Afterword 361

Acknowledgements 363

Index 365

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