Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto - Hardcover

Riccardi, Victoria Abbott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767908511 ISBN 13: 9780767908511

Publisher: Broadway, 2003

Synopsis

Two years out of college and with a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Victoria Riccardi left a boyfriend, a rent-controlled New York City apartment, and a plum job in advertising to move to Kyoto to study kaiseki, the exquisitely refined form of cooking that accompanies the formal Japanese tea ceremony. She arrived in Kyoto, a city she had dreamed about but never seen, with two bags, an open-ended plane ticket, and the ability to speak only sushi-bar Japanese. She left a year later, having learned the language, the art of kaiseki, and what was truly important to her.
Like flower arranging or calligraphy, kaiseki is an age-old Japanese art form. It began as a modest vegetarian meal that Buddhist monks ate in Kyoto’s Zen temples and then developed into a highly symbolic Japanese ritual. Through special introductions and personal favors, Victoria was able to attend one of Kyoto’s most prestigious tea schools, where this art has been preserved for generations and where she was taken under the wing of an American expatriate who became her kaiseki mentor. As a first-hand participant in kaiseki meals and tea ceremonies, she observed the highly choreographed rituals of this extraordinary culinary discipline, absorbing the beauty and subtlety of its myriad details and symbolic gestures.
During her year in Kyoto, Victoria explored the mysterious and rarefied world of tea kaiseki, living a life inaccessible to most foreigners. She befriended a Japanese couple, teaching English at their home-based language school and eventually moving in with them. She spent countless hours with her kaiseki mentor and his partner cooking in their historic Japanese house. Eventually, she even struck up a friendship with a monk when she spent several nights at a secluded Buddhist temple.
She also discovered the beguiling realm of modern-day Japanese food—the restaurants, specialty shops, and supermarkets. She participated in many fast-disappearing culinary customs, including making mochi (chewy rice cakes) by hand, a beloved family ritual barely surviving in a mechanized age. She celebrated the annual cleansing rites of New Year’s, donning an elaborate kimono and obi for a thirty-four-course extravaganza. In her book, she includes twenty-five recipes for favorite dishes she encountered, such as Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl, Japanese Beef and Vegetable Hotpot, and Green-Tea Cooked Salmon Over Rice.
Untangling My Chopsticks is a sumptuous journey into the tastes, traditions, and exotic undercurrents of Japan. It is also a coming-of-age tale steeped in history and ancient customs, a thoughtful meditation on life, love, and learning in another land.

About this title

From the Author:

Peppered with humor, filled with adventure, and rife with unexpected surprises, UNTANGLING MY CHOPSTICKS: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto is the story of a young American woman with a passion for food and an appetite for adventure finding her way in the elusive often secretive world of modern-day Japan.

Two years out of college with a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, I packed up my life in New York to move to Kyoto, Japan to study tea kaiseki, a ritualized form of cooking that accompanies the formal tea ceremony and evolved in Kyoto’s Zen temples. When I arrived, I had no job, no place to live, and spoke only sushi-bar Japanese. A year later I left a changed person.

In UNTANGLING MY CHOPSTICKS, I take you deep into the heart of Kyoto to experience the beauty, aesthetics, social customs, and intricacies of this alluring and exotic culture. In rich and evocative detail, I reveal the subtle complexities of ancient and contemporary Japan, and share a kaleidoscope of impressions to help you understand this special place and way of life where one comes to "expect the unexpected."

Far more than a book about food, UNTANGLING MY CHOPSTICKS: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto is a tale about finding peace amidst the chaos of life. It is also a subtle love story sprinkled with Zen that will offer you a new way of looking at the world.

From the Back Cover:

“I relished every page. Victoria Riccardi’s prose reflects the same spirited, nuanced, intelligent style that she discovered on a pilgrimage to the heart of Kyoto’s tea kaiseki cuisine.”
--Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun

“As Victoria Riccardi goes in search of culinary enlightenment in this intimate and beautifully crafted memoir about living, cooking, and falling in love with Kyoto, the reader is seduced and transported by the scenes and flavors she paints with words. Riccardi writes with a sensuous eye for detail that brings alive the extraordinary beauty of Japan and the sumptuous pleasures of its table.”
--Lora Brody, author of Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet

“Victoria Riccardi writes from the heart. A personal story of determination and discovery, Untangling My Chopsticks offers a refreshing glimpse into the tastes, intrigues, and traditions of modern and ancient Japan.”
--Elizabeth Andoh, Japan correspondent, Gourmet magazine, and author of At Home with Japanese Cooking

“Victoria Abbott Riccardi’s Untangling My Chopsticks folds back the screen on a city and its traditions just enough to satisfy our curiosity without diminishing the mysterious allure. Her friendships and experiences are recounted with delightful delicacy, and the kaiseki meal and tea ceremony come alive not only as cultural rites but also as delectable gastronomic and esthetic experiences.”
--Susan Herrmann Loomis, author of On Rue Tatin

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0767908511
• ISBN 13: 9780767908511
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304