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Learn to COOK - The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (On Food)
![The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (On Food)]()
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List Price: $10.98
Our Price: $24.81
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Smithmark Publishers
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641
EAN: 9780765198297
ISBN: 0765198290
Label: Smithmark Publishers
Manufacturer: Smithmark Publishers
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 1996-06
Publisher: Smithmark Publishers
Studio: Smithmark Publishers
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Editorial Reviews:
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From a passionate and talented chef who also happens to be an Episcopalian priest comes this surprising and thought-provoking treatise on everything from prayer to poetry to puff pastry. In The Supper of the Lamb, Capon talks about festal and ferial cooking, emerging as an inspirational voice extolling the benefits and wonders of old-fashioned home cooking in a world of fast food and prepackaged cuisine.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Joyous Celebration of Food and Philosophy
Comment: Craig Claiborne and the New York Times both raved over this book, which I have recently reread after having read it first almost 40 years ago. I enjoyed it again just as much as I did back then. Not only is it an emininently practical and useful guide to food and cooking, it is a wonderful collection of essays on religion, life and thought. Father Capon writes with style, elegance, wit and kindness. He is on my short list of people with whom I wish I could have dined. I furnished my first kitchen based on his suggestions.
In many respects his writing can be compared with the great culinary essays of M.F.K. Fisher. And the recipes are very good, if a trifle unorthodox. My family has made his grandmother's recipe for plum pudding as our traditional Christmas dessert for over a quarter of a century. It wouldn't be Christmas without it! And indeed, you need only to serve good quality nuts (such as almonds or cashews) as a snack before dinner. Save your effort for the meal itself!
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Summary: Finally -- a cook with opinions and knowledge of the Holy Bible!
Comment: I read this book in an afternoon and then studied it with five other friends (three of which are not cooks but enjoyed the wit, humor, and bibilical knowledge of the author). If you are a person who loves to cook and learn new recipes, this book is for you! To have someone say what they like and dislike and "why" is refreshing. I learned many things that will be incorporated into the way I prepare and serve food. For example, I just purchased a wavy breadknife, made bread for the first time (Cuban), will only serve nuts as an appetizer for a dinner party, and will allow myself to enjoy a meal. A dream of mine would be to cook a meal for Robert Farrar Capon and have my friends join in for the fun. Father Capon is a character who has brought the gift of getting into the "habit of contemplation" into my daily living.
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Summary: Poor writing masked in philosophical hocus pocus
Comment: I am surprised this book made it into the Modern Library series. George Orwell said that "The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details." This sentence could sum up this book.
The book is filled with post-mod nonsense words: an onion is "linear" and have "vectors". What? Vector is not a visual word. And an onion is not linear, not even the cross-section of the onion is linear. I read chapter 2 at least twice and have no idea what its intended meaning should be. Something about sitting down with an onion and describing it in a way that makes other people laugh. Its philosophy in chapter one socks chapter ten in the eye. The book opines that heaven does exist even if it does not occupy physical space, a location. Later on it opines that the calorie does not exist, because it's only a measurement. There are also quasi-stream-of-consciousness writing, post-Emerson-Bly style that is hamfisted, pretentious and dull. The recipes presented are not enough for anyone to dig into this tripe. This book was a complete waste of time, especially if one took it seriously enough the first time round to read a chapter again to glean any meaning it may have. I would give this zero star if I could.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a true bedside cookbook
Comment: Meditations on food are a dime-a-dozen these days. So are books that are extended cultural examinations of a single food or recipe. Some of them are wonderfulAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,but very few are provocations to cook.
The Supper of the Lamb is, among other things, a reminder of the ordinary pleasures that come from cooking. The author's meditation on peeling an onion is such a marvel that, 2,786,342 onions later (some professionally done, others peeled from love) I still think of it whenever I peel and chop one at home.
I also think often of his concept of a tin fiddle-some simple device or brilliant idea that can be made shinier or more expensive and then sold to a gadget-hungry world. The electric knife is one example, I'm sure you can think of dozens more.
I read this book at the start of my professional culinary life and re-read it again some thirty-five years later. Amen.
Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The and another great book for the bedside,bang BANG: A Novel
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Summary: Full-throttle joy of living
Comment: This is one of the most exceptional books I've read. Bold, funny, grumpy, and wise, it is a beautifully-written cookbook and dazzling radiance of commentary.
To read this fine book is like sitting on a stool in Capon's kitchen, listening to this old-school master talk (as he slow-cooks) on subjects as diverse as onions, knives, wine, love, dinner parties, and baking soda ("the Most Extraordinary Ordinary Thing in the World").
The thing I most appreciate about this book is its unapologetic, hurricane-force, declaration of JOY with life and life's Creator. "Supper of the Lamb" is almost operatic in its celebration of God, real foods, the earth, and wine. The book is a zero-tolerance zone for synthetic foods, ideas or people.
BE WARNED: "Supper of the Lamb" was first published 37 years ago. The language flow is so beautifully full that it's a little like eating lamb after decades of consuming malted milk balls and pork rinds.
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