briciole

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 →

fresh beans in fresh tomato sauce / fagioli freschi al pomodoro fresco

so good, even the kitchen towel smiles (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) While Andrea Camilleri is probably the most famous contemporary Italian author of mystery novels, he is certainly not the only one. Among the good number of writers who have created engaging characters in recent years, Antonio Manzini is one of my favorites. Four of his novels have been translated into English, all featuring Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone1: Black Run, Adam's Rib (aka Cold Death), Out of Season, Spring Cleaning (four more have been published in Italian, plus two volumes of short stories). In the first novel of... Read more →

delicata squash stuffed with fagiolina del Trasimeno and leeks / zucca ripiena di fagiolina del Trasimeno e porri

dinner, plain and simple (linen by La FABBRICA del LINO) The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty1, the current selection of the Cook the Books club, is a captivating read and a book difficult to describe in a few words: world history, food history, personal memories, travels all play a part in the story, which has an epic reach, encompassing centuries and large spaces, using the author's family tree as guide. Even before reading the book, I knew Twitty is a great story teller, whether he talks about a specific dish or is inhabiting the lives of his enslaved ancestors. I understand... Read more →

Purgatory bean salad with tahini sauce and Asian pear / insalata di fagioli del Purgatorio con tahina e pera asiatica

Flavors from around the world Federico García Lorca1 is one of my favorite poets, so when I came across a novel whose protagonist's name was Lorca, I had to read it: I am glad I followed my impulse. Jessica Soffer's Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots2 is the current selection of our Cook the Books Club. The book brings together a group of people who all carry a heavy burden of pain: the pain of exile from homeland and from motherhood, the pain of an aloof mother and an absent father, the pain of loneliness, abandonment, inadequacy. Food is one way through... Read more →

rhubarb and berbere cranberry beans / borlotti con rabarbaro e berbere

garden flavors (tablecloth by La FABBRICA del LINO) Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather start a catering company in Dublin, Ireland, and in so doing bring together the large cast of characters in Maeve Binchy's novel Scarlet Feather, the current selection of our Cook the Books Club. Such cast includes the protagonists' families, spouse and spouse's family (for Cathy), girlfriend (for Tom), friends, clients and more. While some characters have more elements on the negative plate of the scale than on the positive, all of them have something on both, and the story for me is about how even well-intentioned, generous, good... Read more →

fagioli dall'occhio al berberé / Ethiopian-style black-eyed peas

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] a pretty combination The tenth stop of our World Culinary ABC1 is Antarctica (Antartide). Hostess Brii obtained from McMurdo Station2 the menu for one week to give us a sense of what the researchers who spend the fall and winter in Antarctica eat. Spicy Ethiopian Red Lentil Stew caught my attention because I like it and has been on my to-make list for a while. Getting berberé, the traditional Ethiopian spice blend3 to make the dish, took longer than expected and then I realized that, contrary to my belief, I didn't have... Read more →

fagiolina del Lago Trasimeno ai porri / cowpea of Lake Trasimeno with leeks

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] fagiolina comes in two varieties: white and "rainbow" (the beautiful bicolor linen tablecloth is from La FABBRICA del LINO) When I visit Perugia, the city in central Italy where I was born and grew up, I always bring back some fagiolina del Lago Trasimeno a local variety of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata)1. Besides being pretty, fagiolina is a pleasure to eat: tender, buttery and flavorful. Good things come in small packages. I buy fagiolina at the Antica Spezieria e Drogheria Eredi Bavicchi2 one of my favorite stores in the world. The owner is... Read more →

zuppa di ceci neri / black chickpea soup

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] a simply good soup (linen napkin from La FABBRICA del LINO) Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer1 is the protagonist of Cheap Novelties, The Pleasures of Urban Decay2 by Ben Katchor. The collection of black and white strips reads like a collection of short-short stories simple on the surface, yet haunting like the dripping of a faucet that prevents us from falling asleep. Julius is out all day in a solidly urban landscape of tall buildings grouped into blocks drawn up by roads. Instead of the sun, a myriad light bulbs (lampadine) of... Read more →

crema di fagioli / refried beans

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] painted pony beans (table runners from La FABBRICA del LINO) The seventh stop of our World Culinary ABC1 is Mexico. To celebrate our virtual visit I made a personal version of frijoles refritos. [Note that the prefix re- in this case means "very" or "well".] I had some pinto beans and that's the variety I used initially for the recipe. According to wikipedia2 "In northern Mexico and in American Tex-Mex cuisine, refried beans are usually prepared with pinto beans, but many other varieties of bean are used in other parts of Mexico,... Read more →