My Father's Daughter - Cookbook Review
Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness
By Gwyneth Paltrow
(Grand Central Life & Style, 2011)
She acts. She administers lifestyle advice via her website Goop. She sings. She
traveled her way across Spain with Mario Batali. And now she publishes cookbooks.
Gwyneth Paltrow is certainly not the first celeb to multi-task beyond the reaches of
Tinseltown — Francis Ford Coppola makes wine; Clint Eastwood was the mayor of
Carmel; and Schwarzenegger... you get the idea. But there's just something about
Gwyneth that irks people, something that has turned the beautiful, Oscar-winning actress
into the woman people love to hate, what with her marrying a rock star, bearing his two
perfect children, becoming a super mom, super singer and now clamoring to become the
hip generation's Martha Stewart.
So it's no surprise that the feedback on her new cookbook, My Father's Daughter, has
been mostly negative. Ad nauseam we've heard critics' ridicule her owning a wood-burning pizza oven or the fact that she imports her dried chile from London. Yes,
Gwyneth is not like most of us, she can afford cooking lessons from Jamie Oliver, she
has easy access to Vegenaise and she buys only expensive organic meat. But there's
nothing intrinsically wrong with these things. If you live in rural Alabama, this book is
not for you and most of the required ingredients are certainly not available at Wal-Mart.
But the same is true, say, of The French Laundry Cookbook or anything else published by
a Thomas Keller or Ferran Adrià.
So after we overcame a certain amount of — we admit it — jealousy and hostility, we
actually quite liked the casual tone and good recipes in My Father's Daughter; especially
— as fellow parents of small children — the many creative suggestions for cooking
for picky kids. We also rather liked the personal little anecdotes with each recipe, the
duck "cassoulet" she first had in Paris with her dad, the chicken & dumplings from her
childhood, the corn chowder inspired by her summering on Long Island, the panzella we
can make when our bakery bread has gone stale. In fact, her recipes are a really good mix
of homey and comfort food-style options such as lots of great pasta (spaghetti limone
parmeggiano) with fresh and light gazpacho, fish tacos (including a veggie version) and
Indian-spiced tuna steaks. Living in L.A., we also don't take issue with her suggestion
to substitute mayo with readily available (here) Vegenaise. It's a suggestion that makes
sense, as do turkey bacon and organic eggs. So in the end, she is like many of us after all,
who live in Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York City, who grow our own veggie
patches, buy organic for our kids and travel to Europe and bring back spices. There's
much to love in her charming book and really nothing to loathe. So why do we still feel
jealous?
Reviewed by Sylvie Greil
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