The School Of Essential Ingredients

by Erica Bauermeister

Fiction writer and passionate cook Erica Bauermeister explores the profound insights that food can offer in her mouth-watering and exquisitely written debut novel, The School Of Essential Ingredients (Berkley Trade Paperback Reprint; January 5, 2010; $15).  At Lillian’s restaurant, a group of eight women and men from different stages in life gather for a cooking class taught by the chef and owner, a woman with a magical gift for both food and friendship.  It soon becomes clear, however, that each student comes seeking a recipe for something beyond the kitchen.  Over the course of the seasons, the students and the human elements of love, sex, grief, joy, and self-discovery mingle into a complex and intriguing mélange.

From the age of twelve, Lillian has been a true cook: one who can read people as well as spices, anticipate reactions before the first taste and shape the way a meal or an evening will go.  She seems to know instinctively not only how to wake up her students’ taste buds but how to reawaken them to their own lives, and each dish and its essential ingredients come to hold the key to surprising transformations.
Carl and Helen, together for over fifty years, are seen by the class as the perfect married couple, but through a lesson on cake-baking and another on fondue and chocolate, the reader comes to understand that their union is far more complicated, and in the end, far more solid, than any of the students realize.   Antonia, a beautiful Italian kitchen designer, has come to America to shake up her life.  A Thanksgiving dinner provides her with the inspiration to help a newlywed couple discover the value of tradition in an unexpected fashion.

Tom, a young lawyer and widower heartbroken by the loss of his wife, reconnects with life through the preparation of a lush garlic and red sauce.  For Claire, an overwhelmed young mother, the preparation of roasted crab – along with some gentle prodding from Helen – helps restore her sense of independence.

Isabelle, an elderly divorcee with Alzheimer’s, and Chloe, a clumsy nineteen-year-old busser at Lillian’s restaurant, are at the opposite poles of life, but each is given a priceless gift by food.  Isabelle is not always certain what day it is, but a magnificent three-course meal at Lillian’s restaurant takes her back through the most memorable stages of her life.  For Chloe, an evening spent making tortillas by hand gives her the confidence to make some difficult decisions. 

Perhaps more than any other member of the class, Ian, an ultra-logical software engineer, comes to embrace the importance of food and the sensuality of life as he learns how to cook and falls in love, but his story, in many ways, is a mirror of what all the students, and the reader, take away from the class.  In Lillian’s restaurant kitchen, life slows to a world of senses and memories and community, for in The School of Essential Ingredients you don’t learn so much how to cook, but why. 

Erica Bauermeister’s debut novel, The School Of Essential Ingredients, serves up a story of delicate complexity and surprising choices, about a cooking teacher with uncanny insight into the hearts of her students, whose lives are changed forever by the powers of food.
Erica is visiting Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Denver, and Phoenix throughout Spring 2010 to discuss The School Of Essential Ingredients!

Visit her on the web at www.ericabauermeister.com.
Berkley Trade Paperback Reprint; January 5, 2010; $15 ISBN: 978-0-425-23209-5, Visit us on the web at www.penguin.com.