briciole

tromboncino squash soup / zuppa di zucchetta

creamy delight (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) In the year of COVID, in the summer (and now fall) of fires, I am clinging to cooking and reading to keep my balance. Among my to-read books, I recently chose a novel by the late Swedish author Henning Mankell (without Kurt Wallander2 as protagonist): The Man from Beijing.1 The book opens with a horrific mass murder in a remote Swedish village. Judge Birgitta Roslin, who is connected to some of the victims, gets involved the case, whose roots go back in time and space to the construction of the Pacific Railroad, which... Read more →

konjac noodles and kelp noodles with greens and mushrooms / pasta di konjac e pasta di alghe con verdure a foglia verde e funghi

a bowl of great flavors (napkin by La FABBRICA del LINO) Our Cook the Books Club selection this time brings us to China (Cina) with the novel Kitchen Chinese by Ann Mah1, which follows the adventures of the two Lee sisters in Beijing (Pechino). Born and raised in New Jersey, the sisters follow different careers: Claire becomes a lawyer and moves to the Chinese capital to work for a prestigious firm, while Isabelle works as a fact-checker at a magazine in New York and wants to be a writer. Isabelle loses her job in a bad way and her boyfriend ends... Read more →

summer side dish: zucchini, carrots and tomatoes / contorno estivo: zucchine, carote e pomodorini

summer on the plate (napkin by La FABBRICA del LINO) The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet by Kim Adrian1 is the most engrossing memoir I have ever read and one I heartily recommend. The writing is delicate and evocative. The author tells her difficult, often deeply painful, story through vignettes organized in glossary format. The vignettes work like pieces of a puzzle: as the book proceeds, the reader reconstructs the lives of the main characters—the author, her parents and her sister. Adrian's husband and children also play an important role, one of hope, as we see that she has been able... Read more →

date energy bites / bocconcini ai datteri

simple ingredients rolled into energy bites (bar board and coaster by BHV Woodworks, napkin by La FABBRICA del LINO) After reading Laurie King's Garment of Shadows, 12th of the Mary Russell novels, I decided to read the first: The Beekper's Apprentice, originally published in 1994. A 20th anniversary edition was issued in 2014 with a new introduction by the author and that is the volume I read. The novel is narrated in first person by Mary Russell a young woman who meets semi-retired Sherlock Holmes while roaming the English countryside—in Sussex, where he is living with Mrs. Hudson—and becomes his investigative... Read more →

carrot, radish and turnip salad with microgreens / insalata di carote, ravanelli, rape e micro verdure

pretty salad for one Hippie Food by Jonathan Kauffman1, our current Cook the Books Club selection, offers a wide historical view of nutrition in recent decades, with a particular focus on foods that moved from being consumed by a relatively small number of people to becoming mainstream. Each chapter introduces a varied cast of characters each of whom has contributed one or more threads to the complex tapestry Kauffman weaves as he describe the evolution of eating habits from the 1960's to the present. As with a previous Cook the Books selection, The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone, the interest is... Read more →

chia pudding with blueberries / budino ai semi di chia con mirtilli

breakfast treat or dessert? The novel Winter Cottage by Mary Ellen Taylor is set in Cape Hudson, a coastal town in Virginia. I have never visited that part of the US, so reading descriptions of the landscape was one of the book's attractions. I also liked how the three connected stories unfolded chapter by chapter. In the present, Lucy Kincaid, still grieving for the recent death of her mother, Beth, inherits Winter Cottage and upon arriving discovers that it is actually a mansion. In a relatively recent past, Beth, then a senior in high school, interviews Mrs. Buchanan, the owner and... Read more →

Persian herb and greens frittata / frittata persiana di verdure ed erbe

green to celebrate spring (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Our Cook the Books Club selection this time brings us to Ireland (Irlanda), yet the flavors are those of Iran (whose cuisine we savored also in a recent edition1). The novel Pomegranate Soup, by Marsha Mehran2 (zuppa di melograno), follows the adventures of the three Aminpour sisters, who escape from political turmoil in their native country to the UK and ultimately settle in the small Irish town of Ballinacroagh, where they open a small café serving dishes from their home country. The novel's cast includes the sisters' landlady, the town's priest,... Read more →

bean, fennel and mushroom stew / stufato di fagioli, finocchi e funghi

a delicious combination of flavors (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Our Cook the Books Club selection, the novel The Language of Flowers1 by Vanessa Diffenbaugh takes place in places familiar to me: San Francisco and Napa Valley. The book tells the story of young Victoria, who, after bouncing from one foster family to the next, ages out of the system and ends up homeless. The novel goes back and forth between the present and a time in the past when Victoria's foster mother was Elizabeth, a winegrower in Napa, who wanted to be a caring mother for Victoria, though the... Read more →

eggplant and yellow split pea stew / stufato di melanzane e piselli gialli decorticati

eggplant meets split peas (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Our Cook the Books Club selection this time brings us to Iran, thanks to Jennifer Klinec, author of the memoir The Temporary Bride.1 The book starts with the story of Klinec's upbringing in Canada, her move to London to follow her corporate career and her decision to leave such career in favor of opening a cooking school out of her apartment. That is the background to her trip to Iran: Persian food called out to her and dissatisfaction with her life added its weight. In Iran, she meets a young man... Read more →

fruit salad with fresh dates / macedonia di frutta con datteri freschi

fruit fresh from the farmers market makes a great post-run salad (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) The story told by Daniel Stone in his book The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats1 is fascinating, at times riveting, and I found myself staying up late some evenings to read what would happen next. Before reading the book, I didn't know who David Fairchild was. Also, I didn't know who Frank Meyer was, though I am a great fan of the Meyer lemon, named after him; had never read the full story behind the... Read more →