“There are two things you should never do with your father: learn how to drive and learn how to kill a chicken.”
― Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
The Review
Here is the official-type book review of Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter: Before chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton opened her New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: living in the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; working in the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality.
We see the creation of Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.
By the way, Prune is currently closed, and the website was last updated in May, 2020.
Picture it…
And now, my review. This is what it felt like to read the book. Picture it…
It’s been a long (pre-Covid) day, and you head to the local pub for a beer. Inside, you eschew the high tops and the booths, and sit down at the bar. Your beer arrives just as a stranger sits down at the seat next to yours. She smiles and nods in your direction and orders a beer. After a couple of sips, she starts casually chatting about beer.
Hamilton begins telling you about a recipe that includes a rare Italian beer as an ingredient. You’re intrigued. She opens up, talking about big family barbeques when she was a kid, how much she loved her mom although it seemed it was not reciprocated, her parent’s divorce, and her abandonment before the age of 13. But she’s happy and enigmatic and she’s throwing in lots of talk about food – the woman really loves food.
Both the beer and the stories continue. Hamilton’s compelling when she talks about her hippie punk lifestyle: shoplifting, skipping school, failing to fit in with her sarcastic, jaded teenage friends. Just like you, except you didn’t steal, you had perfect attendance and no friends. She’s cool, but not in a snotty way. And you feel cool that she’s telling you her stories over beers.
So freaking cool
In and out of university (or was it college? You are forgetting the details because the verbal journey is at a breakneck speed) and she was a Marxist, a feminist, a black nationalist supporter, a budding lesbian (which makes you laugh when she says it because you’re a couple of beers in now, and you can picture a flower with an angry face and a Mohawk). She’s a literacy advocate. So freaking cool. Plus food.
Through it all is food. Hamilton eats it, cooks it, serves it, loves it. She recreates moments in her life that draw you in. Dostoyevsky and Raskolnikov. Subcutaneous rage. Killing chickens on her dad’s farm. It seems like you should be grossed out, but damn! This woman tells a good story. She’s a bad ass, and she’s living her best life, right?
More about her dad, food, her mom, food, school, work, food, wild turkeys, a girlfriend, food. She’s a great speaker, her stories are compelling. You want to hear more. You could hang out with her all night long.
Who’s This Then?
And while you are chatting, this guy walks in and directly up to her. She stops talking to give him a quick peck on the cheek. He walks silently to a table, sits down, orders a Negroni, and turns his attention to his phone.
Laughing, she says that’s her ex-husband and adds, almost in a whisper, that she only married him to keep him in the country. She said she can’t believe she cheated on her girlfriend with him, and she never loved him anyway. And this like, oh, that’s not cool. But you want to hear more about her life so whatever. Please keep talking!
But now all she does is talk about her husband, his villa in Italy which she swears is just a ramshackle old place, not really a villa, his family, and her kids. Food is still a major focus, but all of a sudden the rest of the stories are… off. And while the stories are still told with all the same words, it just isn’t as interesting anymore. Now it’s like listening to a highschool-cheerleader-turned-soccer-mom, instead of a restaurant-running-hippie-punk.
Wild living
When you chat with a stranger at a bar, you want crazy stories, compelling narrative, wild living. You don’t want to hear about a failed marriage and how hard it is to take a yearly summer vacation to Italy with a man you don’t even live with. You don’t want to hear how this chicken-killing, food obsessed hippie-punk lesbian becoming a sour adult with a husband and 2 rugrats. While you politely listen to the stories, you find yourself checking the time and looking at your phone wondering if you can pretend to get an urgent text message that says you simply must come home.
But then, finally, she drinks the last of her beer, pays her tabs, slaps the bartop loudly and stands up. She smiles and says she has to get back to the kids. You smile and tell her to have a good evening. Hamilton walks out the bar, never having spoken again to her ex.
You think next time, you’ll plunk yourself down in a booth and pull out your phone while you drink a beer.
