PAT WILLARD: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice

PAT WILLARD: The Vagabond Life of the World's Most Seductive Spice

Utgitt: 2001

Souvenir press

225 sider

USA PRAISE FOR Secrets of Saffron

"Saffron, the haughtiest, most expensive, and most mysterious of spices, has found its rightful biographer in Pat Willard, who plumbs its historical, mythological, and psychological depths with illuminating insight and a richly evocative (and surprisingly personal) prose. For saffron lovers, this book is a necessary read; for those like myself who have previously equated that spice with such culinary esoterica as gold leaf flakes or wild fennel pollen, Secrets of Saffron is a revelation- and a highly enjoyable page-turner, as well."

JOHN THORNE, author of Outlaw Cook and Pot on the Fire

"I am impressed by Pat Willard's single-minded devotion to one of my favorite subjects. I have been under saffron's spell for some time and it is an integral ingredient in my cooking. I love the romance of its noble and complicated history, as well as the painstaking process of cultivation."

TODD ENGLISH, chef and co-author of The Olives Dessert Table

ISBN 0-285-63636-7

9780285636361

Told in sumptuous prose, complete with fabu- lous ancient and modern recipes-including a balm for an aching heart, a dish for a Moorish wedding feast, and a luscious crême brulée pie- Secrets of Saffron will awaken in you a voracious desire for the private pleasures of this most precious spice.

Pat Willard is author of Pie Every Day and A Soothing Broth. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Author photo by Sue Willard Jacket design & photo by Lucinda Hitchcock Jacket art courtesy of Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The [saffron] threads seemed to swell and burst open, bleeding yellow across the water like the sun setting behind a still lake.... The scent rose lightly. almost sweet but as citric as lemon... the taste like warm metal across my tongue.

Saffron is evocative enough to elicit the most sensuous descriptions. Over thousands of years it has perfumed the halls of Crete's palaces, made Cleopatra more alluring, and driven crusaders and German peasants to their deaths. While many once foreign spices like cinnamon, mace, and ginger no longer spur adventurers to the ends of the earth, saffron remains tantalis- ingly exotic. Nothing more than the dried stigmas of the autumn-flowering purple crocus, it might as well be fairy dust. Resistant to mod- ern technology, the fragile blossoms must still be gathered by hand from the ancient fields of Iran, Greece, Italy, southern France, and Spain. Secrets of Saffron is the story of this extravagant rover. Guided with wit and assurance by acclaimed food writer Pat Willard, we roam the rich landscapes of history and personal memory. We dine in the heavenly gardens of Persia; bathe with Alexander the Great; are served golden swans at the medieval court of France. With Willard's help we also discover the quiet comforts of saffron, from soups that have eased illness to pies that defy death, until we arrive at last in the present day at a small garden in Brooklyn.

Continued on back flap