Similarly, Rossant's flighty mother - a merry widow if ever there was one - cavalierly deposited her children (the writer has one brother) like other people make arrangements for their pets when they need to be away from home. Fisher made her daughters share her self-imposed exile, living in French pensions and even boarding them with a stern landlady in Aix-en-Provence.

Rossant's life, in fact, resembles that of Fisher's children. Rossant is a gentler woman who pined to be loved, and it is abundantly clear that she dotes on her own children and grandchildren and gives them all the affection that she was denied in her own childhood. You can feel both the coldness of what passed for family life during much of her youth and the warmth of the kitchens where she sought and found solace.Īt the same time, the elegance of her wordsmithing lacks the acerbic edge that captivated and at times intimidated Fisher's circle. The comparison has merit and some serious flaws: Rossant, the author of nine cookbooks, is a skilled writer who can capture any milieu vividly. Fisher, the erudite cookbook author-essayist who still has a cult following in the world of food cognoscenti. Publicists for her new book, 'Return to Paris,' a memoir that chronicles Rossant's turbulent childhood and both her culinary and cultural awakening, call her the true heir of M.F.K.

The daughter of a French mother and an Egyptian father who got ill and died when she was 6 years old, cookbook author Colette Rossant was both a child of genteel privilege and of appalling neglect.

Return to Paris by Colette Rossant