The soul of a cook is steeped with the desire to share. This can be done not just through the medium of food, but through words. By combining these forms of expression, a writing cook can more fully experience, capture, and communicate their love of all things savory and sweet. There are few writing cooks that bring the level of warmth and wit to this duel enterprise than M.F.K. Fisher.
Called by John Updike “a poet of the appetites,” M.F.K. Fisher wrote twenty-seven books, spanning a fifty-five year writing career, beginning in 1937 with her first book Serve it Forth. I myself discovered Fisher’s writings over fifteen years ago, in my favorite second-hand book store, as I was rummaging through the stacks of vintage Better Homes & Gardens Cookbooks and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I tore through How to Cook a Wolf (1942), and was completely smitten. She was clever, sensuous, and completely unique.
BoldFork was inspired by Fisher’s With Bold Knife and Fork (1968), an effusive and charming collection of her culinary adventures and reflections on food and memory. Through BoldFork, my own catalogue of food experiences and exploration, I strive to tap into the same wonderful rhythm of food, sensation, words, and memory that Fisher so artfully brought to all her work.