OP: Bert Greene's Kitchen

Bert Greene (1923–1988), founder of gourmet take-out shop The Store in Amagansett—as well as journalist, teacher, thespian, and irrepressible creative force in the kitchen—wrote five cookbooks and had a syndicated column for the New York Daily News, “Bert Greene’s Kitchen.” His column was so well-loved that fans frequently wrote to Greene, starting up life-long correspondences; still others collected the clippings of his column in scrapbooks to savor his prose. 

A bound collection of those essays, which spanned from 1980 until Greene’s too-soon passing in 1988, was a natural progression for the preservation of the work. Published posthumously in 1993, Bert Greene’s Kitchen contains the columns and recipes not previously seen in his earlier work. It is a real treat to get a full bite of the personal anecdotes and thoughtful musing, all around food and eating of course, with hearty, stick-to-the-ribs recipes in between. 

Greene has such an endearing way with words as to invariably bring joy and comfort. We know we are in good company when he describes his preferred way of eating lace cakes—paved with butter and syrup—or how his cat, Dude, had a particular taste for the finer stuff like jambalaya, lemon cake, and brie; or of the longings of his own heart, “Do you dream of lost loves? Or the golden chances that have passed you by, perhaps? Not me. My recurrent dreamland images are all confectionery. I dream of the coconut cakes of yesteryear.”