morsels & sauces

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food. This eighth  installment is  a book written by someone under 30 . Lately, there haven't been many books that keep me up at 1 a.m. weeping on my couch. Lately, I have been arguing at book club that most 20th- and 21st-century novels (or at least the ones I have been reading) highlight the futility of community. Lately it's been hard to find books about connection or, let's face it, even meaning. Lately, such a viewpoint seems depressing, because it is not truly the viewpoint I actually take on the world. Lately, I have been looking for a book like this book. In Anthony Marra's absolutely stunning debut novel from 2013, The Constellation of Vital Phenomena , one must be ready for the brutality and...

Friends, are you familiar with Marjane Satrapi? Of course you are, you smartypants, you. Certainly she is most famous for her book Persepolis  (which comes in two volumes) about growing up in Tehran and Vienna during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which was made into a beautiful  movie . Beyond that though, Satrapi has collaborated on two other movies, written and illustrated two children's books, and written two more comics--including her graphic novel,  Chicken with Plums . What I love about Satrapi in all of her work is that she marries whimsy and sharp humor with melancholy and deadly seriousness. She is a woman who believes in true justice of an individual and personal nature, but never forgets (as she has put it in interviews) that life is too serious to take seriously. Thus, when I saw that Claudia Roden's  The New Book of Middle Eastern Food   featured Chicken with Plums on page 215, I was over the moon. For, you see, I had the most ama...

Summer is always my time to reconnect--to myself, to my home, to my family, and most certainly to my friends. A little over a week ago, I met up with a dear friend of mine (whom I have known since the very early summer of 2003); we sipped tea and nibbled on astonishingly delicious  salted chocolate rye cookies  at  Tartine  in the city. (Okay, I ate my cookie in about two bites, but they were just so good.) She brought me a bag of plums from the bounty of her yard--some from a  Green Gage plum tree  and some from a  Santa Rosa plum tree . She apologized for being a little late to our tea date, but she had almost forgotten the bag of plums on the table and had to turn back, for she knew I would hardly forgive her if she had left them behind. As we settled in, I asked her to tell me the story of these plums. Often when I ask someone this question about food, the story is as simple as the one that our former neighbors (who just moved, darn them) ...

I love me a grain. What I don't love is my overdependence on refined wheat. As I have mentioned before , I have snapped up gluten-free cookbooks not because I am gluten intolerant, lord no. In fact, I love gluten--what, with its pleasing protein elasticity that makes my breads rise in a light and poofy way. However, I want said cookbooks because they push me out of my comfort zone and into the world of amaranth, millet, teff, quinoa, wild rice. What is downright delightful about Maria Speck's new cookbook, Simply Ancient Grains , is that she sets up a parade for all of the gluten-free grains to attend, and the ensures that those wonderful whole grains that have gluten (such as barley, rye, bulgar, farro, freekah) all have a place in the marching band. Simply ancient grains is Speck's sophomore collection, following her delightful debut  Ancient Grains for Modern Meals , which was published in 2011 and gifted to me that year by one of my fathers-in-law (he has gre...