The School of Essential Ingredients

Sweet, a pleasant read.
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A romanticized perspective of food and cooking. I don't know of anyone who perceives life (or any aspect of it) the way the author describes life and living in this book. The flavours and sights and feelings are so replete with attentiveness that she must have a lot of time on her hands to be able to create such descriptions. My life moves at a much faster pace.
I was expecting a story that came directly out of the cooking class, a story that slowly reveals the characters to each other as they really would learn about each other solely through their in-class conversations and interactions, the way we normally learn about others. However, the different chapters provide the backstory to each character in turn, following them into their past and their home life to reveal who they are and what they learn from the class. Not as interesting or skillful as I'd hoped.
I also didn't like how Lillian is this larger-than-life magician who can teach life lessons like she is a god. A very unattainable personality.
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Recommended by Anita

What a magical read about the miracles of cooking - describes how the many problems of the cooking school students were solved by spices and preperation.

I would like to own a copy of this book to jar myself back to remembering life's wonderful little details every once in a while. Beautiful cooking and food descriptions and equally beautiful characters. There were some overindulgent descriptives which were bothersome at points, however they also kept the book, people and food cohesive. ( )