When I was in elementary school, I used to read at the dinner table (my parents were just happy I was at the table!) and I’d always save particular books for mealtime perusal. Specifically, they were books that made me hungry with their descriptions of food. There was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House [...]
Ethereal mashed potatoes, langoustines in Moët, cherries fit for a queen. N. M. Kelby’s novel, White Truffles in Winter is a sumptuous feast, the celebration of food and table only outdone by the seductive women who surround French chef Auguste Escoffier. Hungry? Read on.
A new shop in Madrid, La Pizzateca, serves up tasty combos of books and pizza. Reports Springwise:
The brainchild of Spanish publisher ES Ediciones, La Pizzateca offers a wide range of artisanal pizzas and calzones made from natural ingredients for enjoyment in-house or to go. It’s also a bookstore, however, and it even offers specials [...]
If you are what you eat, what happens when someone else eats what you are? In Aimee Bender’s latest novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, 9-year old Rose first experiences this conundrum when she tastes her mother’s birthday cake, only to come away with the uncomfortable understanding of her mother’s lonely dissatisfaction with life. The cake betrays the inner feelings of the cook. Over the course of the novel and Rose’s life, the predicament continues, building to an unwanted fixation of what constitutes food and those who grow and prepare it.
Just in time for the scorching heat that’s blasting much of the east coast, food blog Umamimart offers a recipe for the “Literary Agent,” a cocktail that’s “a cross between a Whisky Sour and a Hemingway Daiquiri.” But it’s not the kind of agent you think. Says the blog:
Writer, adventurer, ravenous drinker, hunter, [...]
Clare: Henry holds up an onion and looks at me gravely and says, “This . . is an onion.”
I nod. “Yes. I’ve read about them.”
Henry has decided to teach me to cook.
Henry: Lourdes brings small plates of exquisitely arranged antipasti: transparent prosciutto with pale yellow melon, mussels that are mild and smoky, slender strips of carrot and beet that taste of fennel and olive oil. We eat Nell’s beautiful rare tuna, braised with a sauce of tomatoes, apples and basil. We eat small salads full of radicchio and orange peppers and we eat little brown olives that remind me of a meal I ate with my mother in a hotel in Athens when I was very young. We drink Sauvignon Blanc, toasting each other repeatedly. (”To olives!” “To baby-sitters!” “To Nell!”). Nell emerges from the kitchen carrying a small flat white cake that blazes with candles. Clare, Nell, and Lourdes sing “Happy Birthday” to me. I made a wish and blow out all the candles in one breath. “That means you’ll get your wish,” says Nell, but mine is not a wish that can be granted.
Clare: “But don’t you think that it’s better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?”
Richard DeTamble: “I’ve often wondered about that. Do you believe that?
Clare: “Yes, I do.”
An array of cold (yet sensual) dishes:
Vichyssoise / Poached Salmon, Served Cold with Citrus Mayonnaise / Homemade White Wine Fish Stock / Grilled Asparagus with Rosemary / Mango Ice Cream with Raspberry Coulis
“We begin eating, with enthusiasm. The risotto is slippery and mild, the squash is sweet, the chicken is swimming in butter. It makes me want to cry, it’s so good.” — from The Time Traveler’s Wife
