Revolting never tasted so good…
Even though there are hundreds of kid-friendly cookbooks on the market, we only own one. Why? Because a). my kid usually loses interest in cooking after a few stirs and b). once you own a kids’ cookbook called Revolting Recipes… really, how can any other cookbook really compete with that? It’s just a glorious concept brought to life by one of the best children’s writers of all time.
If you asked me to rank my daughter’s favorite authors of all time, Roald Dahl would always be at the top of the list. (Though Kate DiCamillo, Adam Rex, and a few others would give him a run for his money.) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of the first books we ever read her – we used to read it to her to calm her down as a baby – and, since then, our library of Dahl books has just grown and grown. So far, we’ve read her Charlie, The Enormous Crocodile, The Witches, The Magic Finger, George’s Marvelous Medicine, and James and the Giant Peach, and she’s adored them all. And her first-grade teacher is currently reading her class The BFG, so my daughter is coming home every day breathlessly recounting what she’s heard and telling us endlessly how much she loves the book. (We’re probably venturing into Matilda next.)
Isn’t that just glorious?
There is a lot of food – crazy, extravagant food – running throughout Dahl’s works. There’s actually a terrific blog called Dahlicious that’s devoted to the “delicious and disgusting food of Roald Dahl.” To that end, towards the end of his life, Dahl worked with his wife Felicity to collect Revolting Recipes, a cookbook designed to bring to life some of Dahl’s crazier culinary creations. (Revolting Recipes was published four years after Dahl’s death in 1994. Before he died, Dahl assembled a list of all the foods from his various works and attached a note to his wife that read, “It’s a great idea, but God knows how you will do it.”) The recipes that Felicity Dahl and Josie Fison eventually put together are all accompanied by fantastic photographs by Jan Baldwin and original illustrations by longtime Dahl collaborator Quentin Blake, which make every dish look absolutely fantastic. [read the rest of the post…]
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