Colette Rossant

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Food Memoirs:
The World in My Kitchen
Return to Paris
Apricots on the Nile

The World in My Kitchen

2007.01.21 - Sunday Express

2007.01.13 - The Guardian

2007.01.12 - The Austin Chronicle:

These inextricable links between aroma, flavor, and memory gracefully weave together Colette Rossant's memoir The World in My Kitchen. Rossant, arguably the godmother of fusion cuisine, ascended to fame, both as a chef and a writer, due to her high-spirited genius for combining flavors from all reaches of the globe...

Each chapter describes an era of her life, and at each chapter's conclusion, she gives the recipes for the dishes that figure prominently in her narrative. The result is a doubly engrossing book that gives us a window into the birth of modern American cookery.

2007.01.11 - Chowhound.com

2006.11.07 - Village Voice:

If you wish you were a food writer or world traveler, or generally fulfilled, successful, happily married, attractive person, she might make you angry. But Rossant's tale of her life in America is an extremely engaging one, especially for food-loving New Yorkers.

2006.11.03 - Entertainment Weekly

2006.10.30 - Becca & Bella

2006.10.06 - BookPage

2006.10.01 - Newsday

2006.09.17 - Los Angeles Times (Calendar)

2006.09.15 - LibraryJournal.com

Summer 2006 - Kitchen, Arts & Letters

2006.04.29 - Library of Congress

Publishers Weekly

[Rossant] has had a genuinely adventurous life, with a lot to tell, both about her New York neighborhood and the larger world ....

Rossant's writing is vivid and opinionated, which makes her good company, and the recipes that folow each chapter are as eclectic as one would wish from a well-traveled writer ....

Kirkus Review

(A star is assigned to books of unusual merit, determined by the editors of Kirkus Reviews.)

Rossant (Return to Paris, 2003, etc.) concludes her trilogy of memoirs with this mouthwatering reminiscence of marriage and her stellar epicurean career.

In 1955, the author and her husband left France for New York. For Rossant, moving to America meant, foremost, the discovery of new food, starting with an ice-cream sundae. She'd read about this "mountain of ice cream" in French reporters' accounts of America, but had never tasted one. Baked potatoes and bagels quickly became favorites as well. She missed lunching on a baguette stuffed with ham, but made do with cream cheese on walnut bread from Chock Full 'o Nuts. Broccoli took some getting used to: "It looked like a small tree, and tasted somewhat like cabbage . . . too bland." Indeed, American vegetables were generally a problem. String beans seemed a wholly different species than the haricots verts Rossant had enjoyed in France. Iceberg lettuce was . . . well, barely lettuce. She also found American packaged food tricky; making her first attempt with a cake mix, she baked the icing and used the cake powder as glaze. While navigating American cuisine, Rossant had children and a series of jobs, including writing for a French-language newspaper and teaching French at Hofstra Univ., where she met Alice Trillin. After Trillin's husband Calvin praised Rossant's cooking in his book Alice, Let's Eat, she was invited to write for Vogue and other magazines. Around the same time, she presided over a cooking club formed by her daughter Juliette, then in fifth grade. The club quickly grew into a series of children's cooking classes, the classes spawned a TV show, and the TV show led to a book contract for a children's cookbook. Rossant's breathless yet humble descriptions of her cooking and her vocational success are great fun to read. Scrumptious-sounding recipes (goose neck pâte, poached pears with caramel, apple mousse) conclude each chapter.

Delectable: Bon appetit!