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 →

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 →

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 →

savoy cabbage and radicchio / cavolo verza e radicchio

a brilliant flavor behind subdued color (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) A few pages into The Patriarch by Martin Walker, the current selection of our Cook the Books Club, I had this image of Bruno, the protagonist, as a head of cabbage and Pamela, his girlfriend (who in the course of the novel becomes his ex) as a head of radicchio1. Bruno reminded me of a head of cabbage because, although he is a pleasant and sensitive person, a smart and conscientious policeman, a gardener, a cook, a horseback rider and dog owner, you'd probably overlook him at a party... Read more →

roasted cauliflower with za'atar / cavolfiore arrosto con za'atar

[cliccare il link per andare alla versione in italiano] it looks plain, it tastes deep When I walk or ride my bike around Berkeley, I stop at some of the Little Free Libraries on my way. In one of them I found The Cost of Living: Early and Uncollected Stories1 by Mavis Gallant2. I didn't know the author, but the blurb on the back cover made me curious, so I put the book in my backpack. The short stories have a common characteristic: tension, sometimes quite high, runs just under the surface and reveals itself in geysers of emotion. I enjoyed... Read more →

sweet peppers with onion and zucchini / peperoni dolci con cipolle e zucchine

a skillet of goodies (tablecloth by La FABBRICA del LINO) In the bookstore ostensibly to get a guidebook, I stumbled on Norwegian by Night by Derek. B. Miller1. Anything related to Norway (Norvegia) gets my attention. A quick look at the book jacket made me decide to purchase it. I started reading it and the story grabbed me right away. One one level it is a crime story, set in Oslo. On another level it is the story of an elderly man coming to terms with his life, in particular the death of his only son in the Vietnam War. And... Read more →

broccoli al Parmigiano-Reggiano (à la Angelo Pellegrini)

a simple, flavorful side dish (placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO) The current selection of our Cook the Books Club is The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life by Angelo Pellegrini1 (1948). At the beginning, the author declares what his book is about: I concluded that what America needs is not another cookbook, but a book on bread and wine in relation to life. As Greg Atkinson states in his West Coast Soup: [Pellegrini's] book did not provide any recipes per se. Instead, it provided an alternate perspective on cooking. Such perspective is profoundly influenced by his... Read more →