Delicious: Stories of cooking, love and friendship by Kate Legge

Pobblebonks, punch-ups and politics are among the many topics covered in Australian author and journalist Kate Legge’s memoir. Legges loves food, her family, and friends, books, music, rowdy dinner parties and “the comforting ritual of sharing a home-cooked meal.” I have no doubt she’d be an entertaining guest because her stories are compelling.

Delicious is Legge’s fifth book. She shares engaging accounts of the many people in her life and describes her culinary evolution as she embraced an ever-expanding variety of ingredients – including pepitas, crème fraîche, and crispy fried capers. As an ambitious young journalist, Legge sustained herself “on a death-wish diet of corn chips, coffee and cigarettes”. While working in the Canberra press gallery, Legge admired her boss and chief political correspondent (aka the ‘chief cobber’), a bespectacled two-finger typist renowned for her diligence and accuracy.

Fixated on politics, Michelle [Grattan] had scant time for hair, nails, make-up, clothes, though of course she wore them. From behind her screen we’d hear the sssssss of a perfume spritzer whenever she was summoned by a minister, and out she’d dash in a cloud of fragrance, cantering across the wooden walkway that led from our annex to the parliamentary corridors.

Equally captivating are Legge’s descriptions of other colleagues as well as people she met through her roles as a mother, daughter, partner, flatmate, neighbour, in-law or friend-of-a-friend. She reminisces about times when she’s been both physically and emotionally so close to her friends that they have “lived in each other’s kitchens”, sharing meals and confidences, and offering each other emotional and practical support.

Although this is firmly a memoir rather than a cookbook, Legge includes around 25 recipes, each central to an anecdote in the related chapter. Each of the 21 chapters opens with a black-and-white photo. Although few of the people in the shots are identified, many of them appear to be Legge. Other people – sometimes alone, sometimes part of a group – are likely those whose recipes are featured. The recipes look good; several use terms I haven’t come across before, such as the “handful of mixed sugar” required in Janet’s Date Slice and the bomba rice essential to Marylyn’s Paella. The endpapers – extracts from handwritten recipes splattered with rogue ingredients – are worth checking out too.

I wonder how many of us, like Legge’s former restaurateur friend Mez, hang onto recipes we’ve clipped from newspapers or magazines even though a world of recipes is available to us online. Legge and her friend rifle with amazement through a stash of yellowing cuttings.

We hoot at the triumph of hope and the lick of hunger that inspire every collection of culinary dreams stuffed into a kitchen folder for a someday that rarely dawns.

Legge has moved many times, within Australia as well as internationally. For a while in the late 1980s, she and her family lived in Washington, D.C., amid gunfire and sirens, where the local laundromat warned people to check their pockets for bullets before running a load. Making friends in D.C. was not easy. Legge was grateful when she got to know Kathleen, whose three-tiered carrot cake (“a confectionary marvel … frosted with sweetened cream cheese and crushed pecans”) is one of the recipes featured in the book.

There are many references throughout the book to other authors, sometimes alongside extracts from their work. Some authors Legge cites are well known, such as cooks Elizabeth David, Stephanie Alexander and Yotam Ottolenghi, and writers Samantha Harvey, Elizabeth Strout, and Helen Garner. Yet there are also people and places mentioned that may not be as familiar to New Zealand readers as they are to Australians. Some of the wildlife Legge mentions was new to me too, like the pobblebonks (native frogs) croaking in the wetlands of her Melbourne neighbourhood.

Although there’s plenty of light and laughter in the memoir, Legge has also lived through challenging periods. She refers to her husband’s infidelity and the associated “dark days … discombobulation tearing my household apart at the seams”, the focus of one of her earlier books. She’s had periods of intense loneliness, grieved close relationships that have drifted apart over time, and has sat beside loved ones as they died.

I’d never [before] witnessed the moment of dying. The silence and stillness as night to the day of birth’s noisy, bloody euphoria.

Legge writes in detail about the ups and downs of her relationship with one friend, including the difficulty of learning how to disagree agreeably, their “locking of horns” and self-righteous sulking. Legge’s friend, who she identifies by name, is a controversial figure who divides opinion. Presumably the friend is okay with having their relationship laid bare in the memoir. Despite betrayals and blow-ups, they’ve remained staunch friends and Tina’s Penne con Sugo di Salsiccie makes it into the book.

Legge’s stories prompt self-reflection, and some may leave a lasting impact. Above all, she highlights the importance of friendships and the many ways friends add value to our lives, particularly those with whom we share a history.

Reviewer: Anne Kerslake Hendricks

Allen & Unwin