briciole

roasted eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes / melanzane, zucchine e pomodori in teglia

farm fresh and fabulous (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Our current Cook the Books Club selection is Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown1, a novel that follows the stories of two women, Alice and Eleanor (Nellie). In 2018, Alice and her husband, Nate, move from Manhattan to a house in a town outside New York sold because the previous owner had died. In the basement, Alice finds a cookbook and a box of old magazines. Her neighbor, Sally, tells her a bit about Eleanor, who lived in the house from the mid-1950's until her death, and gives Alice... 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 →

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 →

Sicilian long zucchini and its greens with tomatoes / cucuzza e tenerumi al pomodoro

flavors of Sicily: cucuzza e tenerumi (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Italian author Andrea Camilleri died on 17 July, 2019, aged 931. The novels he wrote narrating the adventures of detective Salvo Montalbano are one of the main reasons Novel Food came to exist and it is therefore fitting to dedicate to il maestro (the master), as he was respectfully called in Italy, this post. In the archive of briciole there are several posts dedicated to Montalbano and dishes from his (and Camilleri's) native Sicily2. Montalbano likes to eat well, though he is not a cook, so he relies on... Read more →

tomato, cucumber and radish salad / insalata di pomodori, cetrioli e ravanelli

light, refreshing, colorful, flavorful: perfect! (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) Three months ago, I listened to an interview1 with science writer Christie Aschwanden2, author of the book Good To Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery3. I was so intrigued by what I heard that I purchased the book and learned a lot by reading it. While I am not a competitive athlete, I exercise regularly and a year and a half ago I started running regularly. Regardless of how far you push yourself, recovery is a fundamental component of physical... Read more →

green bean and torpedo onion salad / insalata di fagiolini e cipolla rossa di Tropea

a simple seasonal side dish with a lot of flavor (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO, cheeseboard by BHVwoodworks1) The memoir Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton2 had been on my to-read list for a while. I had read good reviews and was intrigued by the title. Hamilton's writing and storytelling style makes for an easy reading and the events she narrates with more details are well chosen. The three parts of the title corresponds to the three parts of the book and three periods of her life: childhood-early adulthood, chef/owner of a restaurant, marriage and motherhood. My favorite part... Read more →

sugar snap peas with pancetta and pine nuts / piselli mangiatutto con pancetta e pinoli

sugar snap peas with pancetta and pine nuts (napkin by La FABBRICA del LINO) Opening a book and starting to read it is one the sweetest of life pleasures. Planning and executing a recipe is another. When I am invited to do both, I cannot refuse. Jenna Blum's The Lost Family1,2,3 is a novel rich in strong characters. Not only the main ones, Peter, June and their daughter Elsbeth, but also those in their lives, from Masha, the wife Peter lost, to Ruth and Sol, the cousins who took in Peter when he emigrated to the US, to Gregg, June's first... Read more →

braised celery and leeks / sedano e porri stufati

a plateful of flavor (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) The historical novel Feast of Sorrow by Crystal King, the current selection of our Cook the Books Club, was quite an interesting read. While the narrator is a slave named Thrasius, the protagonist is his owner, Marcus Gavius Apicius, who lived in the 1st century during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius and became famous for his love of food and his sumptuous dinners. Rich and ambitious, he is driven by the desire to become culinary advisor to the emperor. The pact with the devil (Sejanus) he makes exacts a high... Read more →