Delicious! - Gingerbread Cake

Delicious! A Novel

By Ruth Reichl

400 pages, Random House, 2014

I have mentioned previously that I am a great fan of Ruth Reichl’s work. I was deeply moved by her first memoir, Tender at the Bone, and very much enjoyed Garlic and Sapphires, in which she reveals her backstage adventures as a food critic. I like her as an author and as a narrator, the way her voice strikes a balance between kindness and no-nonsense. I have tucked away her other two memoirs for a rainy day, and look forward to reading them.

So I was very excited about her first novel, Delicious!, which came out last year. I was prepared to love it. I wanted to love it.

As it turned out, however, Delicious! is a very different animal from Reichl’s previous works, and not just because it is fiction. I found Reichl’s voice to be missing, not just because she wasn’t technically telling the story (it is narrated in the first person by her 21-year-old protagonist), but because she was barely to be found in both the style and the content. I caught glimpses of her here and there, but overall, the things I loved about her memoirs were not there.

This probably says more about my expectations than the value of the book on its own, but in this case I find it difficult to separate the two. Nevertheless, I will try.

Delicious! follows a young woman named Billie, who moves to New York and lands a job at a prestigious, long-standing food magazine, the Delicious! of the title, the offices of which are located in a gorgeous mansion. Billie, it is soon revealed, has a palate capable of identifying even the most obscure ingredients; yet, for some reason, she now refuses to cook. She also has a serious inferiority complex vis-à-vis her beautiful, brilliant older sister. It is clear from the get-go that Billie sees herself as dull, frumpy, and generally uninteresting.

And yet, despite her lack of confidence, she thrives at her new job. Her slightly eccentric boss tests her in strange, cutesy ways, and she passes with flying colors. She wins over the kindly owner of Fontanari’s, a traditional Italian food shop, who practically takes her into his family. She makes friends at work and hangs out with star chefs and chocolatiers.

And one day, it all goes to hell, as Delicious! is shockingly and abruptly closed down, and everyone is fired (parallels have of course been made between these events and Reichl’s experience when Gourmet Magazine unexpectedly closed while she was its editor). Only Billie is kept on the payroll, tasked with answering complaints about recipes in past issues of the magazine. But she finds a new purpose when she uncovers a hidden room behind the mansion’s library. In this room, she finds letters dating from World War Two, written by a 12-year-old girl named Lulu to James Beard, who in this narrative universe wrote for Delicious! She becomes fascinated with the letters and sets out to search for the rest of the correspondence, and find out what happened to Lulu.

In the process, Billie deals with her personal demons involving her family, emerges from a makeover a stunning beauty, and finds romance. I don’t feel like I am spoiling anything by revealing this, because the chick-lit vibe of Delicious! makes it quite obvious that all these things will eventually happen.

My problem with Delicious! is not that it is predictable, nor that it is light. A book can be good in spite of these things. I didn’t even mind so much that food was presented in an uncomplicated manner, with none of the discourses and politics that we know are entrenched in the real food scene. Reichl chooses to focus on the comforting side of food, its ability to bring people together, and I accepted that because it is also a reality. I even accepted that New York was portrayed as a shiny wonderland, with little of its actual grit and roughness: sometimes, it does seem that way.

No, what really threw me off were the character interactions. This is all the more surprising that Reichl so beautifully brings people to life in her memoirs. But here, characters are, for the most part, one-dimensional, and difficult to really connect with. And then, there’s Billie herself. I’m usually game for a good makeover story: I root for the ugly duckling. The problem here is that, even as Billie deprecates herself and insists on how plain and talentless she is, she is quoting the way the characters around her compliment her. And boy, do they compliment her. So much so that, in the end, it feels like everyone’s purpose in the story is to prop Billie – and she winds up looking falsely modest.

The Lulu plotline is arguably the most interesting one. Here, Reichl is able to fully display her knowledge on food and history, and the letters are quite instructive. I won’t spoil the way this storyline is resolved, because it is perhaps the one part of the book that doesn’t fit into the chick-lit mould, and is all the more satisfying for it.

Reichl’s writing still shines in places, nowhere more than when she is writing about food and the experience of it. In those passages, her style soars, and allows the reader to just bask in the moment. Here’s hoping there will be more such moments in future books.

There is only one recipe in this book: a gingerbread cake Billie bakes in the opening chapter. It is very light in texture, the boozy soak and citrus glaze prevent it from being dry, and the blend of spices keep it interesting. The only adjustment I made was to bake it in a 10-inch springform pan rather than a Bundt pan, as I did not have the latter on hand.

Gingerbread Cake

from Delicious! by Ruth Reichl

Serves 10-12

For the cake:

1/4 tsp freshly ground black peppercorns

1/4 tsp freshly ground cloves

1 tsp freshly ground cardamom

280g (10 oz, 2 cups) flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 large eggs

1 large egg yolk

250 ml (1 cup) sour cream

150g (1 1/2 sticks) butter, room temperature

190g (6.7 oz, 1 cup) sugar

60 ml (1/4 cup) freshly grated ginger root

Zest from 3 oranges, freshly grated

For the soak:

125 ml (1/2 cup) bourbon

1 1/2 tbsp sugar

For the glaze:

105g (3.7 oz, 3/4 cup) powdered sugar, sifted

5 tsp orange juice

Make the cake:

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Butter and flour a 10-inch springform pan.

In a small bowl, combine spices, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another small bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolk with the sour cream.

In a large bowl, beat the butter with the sugar until light, fluffy, and pale. Stir in the grated ginger and orange zest. Incorporate one third of the flour mixture into the butter mixture, then stir in one third of the egg mixture. Repeat this process until all the ingredients are combined, and the batter is very light, like a mousse.

Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake until golden for 40-50 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Cool on a rack, still in the pan, for 10 minutes.

Make the soak:

While the cake is cooling, combine the bourbon and sugar in a saucepan and simmer until reduced to 80 ml (1/3 cup).

Unmold the cake and brush its top and sides with the bourbon mixture, letting it absorb all the liquid.

Make the glaze:

After the cake has cooled, combine the powdered sugar and orange juice until sugar is dissolved. Drizzle the resulting glaze over the top of the cake.