Walking on Walnuts

Painter/pastry chef Ring establishes herself as a talented writer in her memoir of the miseries she has endured in Manhattan's (anonymous) restaurant kitchens, juxtaposed against the trials of her Eastern European Jewish immigrant forebears in their own country and here. It's an audacious concept she carries out with sensitivity. Although on occasion Ring's metaphors strain--""Aunts like bubbles of foam skimming the edges of the table""--and her thematic imagery of walnuts grows tedious, readers will nosh her book with delight. The vibrancy of her large New Jersey family provides Ring a legacy of courage and endurance as she copes with learning her trade in rat-infested Manhattan kitchens run by exploitive managements, conditions she maintains are prevalent throughout the industry, no matter the elegance of the restaurant. The expressed desperation of the 36-year-old author to have a husband is at once so amusing and touching that readers feel her enormous pleasure when she discovers the diamond engagement ring Eric, a chef and rock musician, hides in her flour sack. And there are the handed-down recipes provided here (great-grandma Esther's taiglach, for example) adapted from her forbears, who cooked by touch and taste, not by measure--as well as those Ring developed as a pastry chef. A cornucopia of good reading and eating. (Aug.)