In anticipation of her upcoming Writers Victoria workshop, Writing Food, Writing Family, we asked author Jaclyn Crupi all about food writing and she served us a generous feast of wisdom. From rediscovering lost recipes, the ethics of writing about family alive and dead, and understanding how the sharing of food traditions can be an act of resistance. Crupi summarises it well – food is never just food.
Jaclyn Crupi is a book editor, project manager, event moderator and bookseller who has worked in publishing and bookselling since 2002. Her most recent book Planting for Native Birds, Bees and Butterflies is set for release on 29 July by Murdoch Books.
How can writers best capture the emotions and sensory elements (taste, smell, touch, colours) of food writing to generate compelling texts?
It can be very hard to write about food without resorting to cliches. The best descriptive food writing uses those sensory elements and creates links or similes to other objects or ideas. The reader can make those visual and sensory links and it adds so much to the writing. Ensuring that your own voice comes through is also essential whether you are writing a recipe, a review or a food narrative.
How can writers honour ancestors and their food traditions when documenting recipes or food memories?
Capturing and sharing a beloved family recipe comes with responsibilities. But I see no problem with modernising traditional recipes or putting your personal twist on them as long as your intention remains to celebrate and honour a traditional recipe quite possibly steeped in history. Telling the story of a dish and its history is so fulfilling as you’re situating food within its historical context and culture. Food is never just food. Recipes are a record of a particular dish in a particular moment in time and that can change and evolve while still always retaining its foundation.
What’s your advice for writing about lost recipes – especially when those dishes carry emotional or cultural significance, but the details were forgotten or never passed down?
Talk to as many family members or family friends who know the dish you want to recreate as possible. Quiz them on what they remember of the dish and what flavours and ingredients they remember. Trawl historical cookbooks and the internet for records of the dish. Start to test recipes and methods that bring those flavour memories to life. There is often somebody who will remember the dish and unlock the flavour profile so you can recreate it. I have loads of ideas for how to find that somebody.
Your writing beautifully shows how food stories are often interwoven with personal family and culture. How do you balance truth, privacy and respect in your storytelling? Especially those who are still alive or recently passed.
I don’t think I could have written so much about my nonni (grandparents) if they were still alive. My writing about them and wanting to capture their stories and recipes has been part of my grieving and missing them. I have written to honour their memory. In my book Pasta Love, I did write about Italian grandmothers who were alive. I interviewed them and photographed them and made sure they understood the project. I then showed them their pages in the book, asked for their approval and made any changes they requested before we went to print. This is not how a journalist would do this but I am not a journalist and these women mean too much to me to risk our friendship. I didn’t want them to feel exploited so it was important to me that they always felt part of the process of making the book. The ethics of telling and sharing other people’s stories are complex and each writer needs to establish a framework for how they will navigate the process.
How can writers approach telling stories about the absence of food – due to food insecurity, poverty, or maybe even an absence of family recipes? Do you have any considerations when writing about hunger or a lack of family food traditions?
This has been top of mind recently in terms of Palestinian food. While the people of Gaza starve, many of us are taking an interest in Palestinian cuisine. I reconcile this within myself by appreciating that the sharing of food traditions can be an act of resistance and a way to claim space and fight against erasure.
There is no doubt that displacement and migration can sever links with culture, including food traditions. But even without recipes and strong direct food tradition links, we can hold onto culture. Severed links can tell a story just as profound and moving as one of continuing food traditions. You don’t need to have personal familial food traditions to share and appreciate a food culture.
Food narratives most commonly contain what feeds us but they also can hold our hunger. There is absolutely a place for that void in food narrative. The ways food is inextricably linked to class and culture should never be ignored. Seriously some of the time (and not remotely serious most of the time), we can get our relationship to writing right, and push self-doubt back into its hole. I think the key to it is creative tension, something I want to explore at the workshop. Hope to see you there!
If you’re working on a family memoir or food writing project, Crupi will provide much-needed support and help you gain greater confidence in delving deeper into family memoir and food writing. Enrol in the workshop on Sunday 13 July, 10:30am – 1:30pm.