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Menus are like short stories or movements in music, Diana Henry says. Self-contained but inherently connected, each course of a carefully crafted meal can evoke distinct emotions.
“I’ve always really loved putting (menus) together. I started doing it when I was a teenager,” says the award-winning author.
“I will put menus together on the tube and they’re menus for meals that I won’t cook. I won’t have time to cook all the menus I came up with. It’s just one of my favourite aspects of cooking, really.”
In How to Eat a Peach, her 11th cookbook, Henry explores the interconnectedness of food and place. From “falling in love with France” to a Turkish-inspired feast “for when the temperature soars” (recipes follow), many of the 100 recipes conjure thoughts of travel. In essays, Henry draws on memories of times past.
“Food is not ever just food. It’s always about the kind of sense that it gives you of a place. And that might not always be positive,” she says.
“Sometimes food and place is complicated. And I think food is one of the (ways) we can become more comfortable, more connected to somewhere.”
Recipes excerpted from How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places by Diana Henry. Octopus Books.