Author Archives: bookdwarf

In a Jam

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I’ve always imagined that making jam or putting up things required whole days standing over a hot stove stirring and stirring, sweat dripping off my nose, jars everywhere, fruit juice staining the walls. As canning and jam making has gotten more popular in this DIY decade, more and more books appear on the market. Many are nice and instructive, but I couldn’t get past what I imagined it would entail. That is, until I tried the simple strawberry jam recipes in Kevin West’s Saving the Season. The whole process took only an hour and we ended up with 4 half pint jars of the most amazing jam.

We kept going. So far we’ve made spicy agrodolce onions, Maraschino cherries with fruit that we foraged from the parking lot of a Valvoline near our house, the most delicious sour pickles ever, blueberry jam with gin, and last night, Methley plum jam with star anise. The last one was really a riff off of a recipe he had, but not quite the same. I’ve gotten so confident now that I want to make jam or pickle out of everything I find at the farmers’ market.

My favorite part of the book isn’t the recipes. It’s the approachable, extensive text that West includes. There are plenty of beautiful pictures of food, of course, but they’re matched with tons of stories and poems that you don’t find in other cookbooks. You get tales of his family making jam, the history of the preserving pan, and cocktails you’ll want to make instantly, plus charts and graphs about every fruit or vegetable you can think of preserving.

Below you’ll find a photo of what we’ve been up to at Chez Sullivan & Weber. From left to right, Blueberry Jam with Gin, Strawberry Jam, Pickles, Maraschino Cherries, and Spicy Agrodolce Onions:

Jams & Pickles

The Last Banquet by Jonathan Grimwood

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Europa Editions is so excited about The Last Banquet by Jonthan Grimwood that they’re eschewing their normal paperback original format and publishing it in hardcover. It’s no wonder as the book, which tells the story of Jean-Marie d’Aumout in 18th-century France, contains such sumptuous prose that you want to lick it off a spoon. Plucked from his family’s homestead after the deaths of his broke, aristocratic parents, Jean-Marie spends his life pursuing tastes. He’s sent to school for broke aristocrats and makes lifelong friends there. The novel moves along briskly though the reader never feels hurried. The lush descriptions of food are equaled by the erotic bits and I’ll just say that our main character likes to taste everything and leave it at that. This is a book that I find myself still thinking about weeks later, like that stupendous meal I had last year where I can’t recall much but the happiness and satisfaction.

Summertime, or It’s Too Bloody Hot to Blog

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I feel I should apologize for the dearth of posts in the past month. I’ve been reading a ton, but when it comes to writing a short review, work gets in the way. Why not blog at night, you might ask? Well, I live on the third floor and it’s generally about 90 degrees in there at the moment. Spending a night with a hot laptop on my legs is not exactly refreshing. So what is a gal to do? Write a few short reviews in spare moments! Expect some reviews throughout the week.

The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan: Fagan’s debut, described as “fierce” by none other than Michiko Kakutani follows teenage Anais as she navigates the Scottish foster care system. Her biological mother gave birth to her in a psychiatric ward then disappeared. She moves from place to place until she finds a foster mother Teresa, a prostitute that she finds murdered one day, forcing her back into the system. Now she’s under suspicion of having assaulted a policewoman who is still in a coma. The system moves Anais into The Panopticon, a home for chronic offenders. She’s living amongst a motley crew of misfits. Anais possesses a punk spirit and a fuck-you attitude that I found oddly endearing. She’s wise enough to know that it’s not her fault but she has no control over her own destiny. Heartfelt and wonderful writing make this first novel a real treat.

 

Eating and Writing

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I’m so glad that many authors have embraced the shared creativity of eating and writing. One of my favorite authors, Kate Christensen, has written a lovely memoir, Blue Plate Special, about the foods that are linked to her memories. The food doesn’t overwhelm the palate, it accompanies like a nice wine or piece of cheese.

As the eldest of four, born to a lawyer father and mother studying to be a pyschologist, Christensen grew up in the 60s and 70s. One of her earliest memories, described in the very first chapter, is of her father beating up her mother for innocently asking for help with the dishes. This incident forms much of the rest of her life. Bookish from a young age, she writes very openly about the hard times in her life. Food was her constant, there when needed to provide comfort and solace. Christensen has written a generous, open memoir, one that I hope will bring her writing the acclaim she deserves.

Off to New York

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Tomorrow kicks off the biggest book convention in the country, Book Expo, otherwise known as BEA. It’s always fun, full of booksellers, publishers, and authors. I also look forward to it because I get to take the train. A four hour journey, where I can get up whenever I want to stretch my legs, forced to do nothing but read? Paradise! And of course, as I’m heading to a place where galleys will be as bountiful as pollen at the moment, I don’t have to bring tons of books with me. I’m bringing along Idiopathy by Sam Byers and The Age of Ice by J.M. Sidorova, both debut novels. There will be the usual buzzing about certain books coming this Fall, but I hope to discover some overlooked gems.

Speaking of overlooked gems. I visited San Francisco recently and made my first trip to Oakland. There’s this great bookstore called Walden Pond Books on Grand Avenue. Someone had written a staff recommendation for Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter, part of the NYRB Classics series that I love. Devastating. That’s the word that best describes this novel. It’s the story of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager, eking by as a pool hustler in Portland, Oregon. He meets Billy Lancing, a young black pool hustler. Levitt bounces around from reform school, to a psychiatric facility, seedy hotels, and prison . Back on the street, he finds himself finding himself a girl, a job, and perhaps a life worth making a go for, before life gets him again. Some of the best writing is of Jack’s re-encountering of Billy in prison. The opening sequence is worth buying the book to read alone. Just don’t plan on doing anything when done for a while. The ending will make shake your head and wonder why a man can’t get any breaks.

The Magic of Casado

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A few weeks ago I had some friends over for dinner and wanted to make something welcoming and comfortable. The weather was warming up and for some reason it seemed perfect to make casado.


It’s basically a Costa Rican version of what I grew up knowing as “meat & three,” a set plate with a protein, vegetable, and
some rice and beans. The name casado may have come from restaurant customers asking to be treated as casados, or married men, getting meals like a wife would make for them. I liked the idea of making a simple, hearty meal for my friends.

It sometimes seems like I have a cookbook for every country in the world, but I don’t have one for Costa Rica. I looked a little north, to Rick Bayless’s Mexican Everyday, because I like his easy style and his food always turns out great. I found a recipe for chicken thighs with a Yucatecan Garlic Spice Marinade. I made a salad with a cilantro lime dressing, some Mexican rice, and easy pinto beans. The marinade was incredibly easy to make: take a bunch of ingredients, toss them a blender, and then put them on the chicken. It doesn’t need to marinate long at all.

Our only problem arose when we tried to grill the thighs and realized our gas grill was out of propane. Oops. We switched to the cast iron skillet and got cooking.

When we were in Costa Rica this March, we ate a lot of casado. It was inexpensive but delicious and filling after a long day of surfing (OK, mostly sitting and watching other people surf). Each restaurant made it slightly differently. One place served it with a piece of grilled cheese, some sort of Cotija cheese. When I asked for cheese at another place, they looked at me like I was crazy and threw on a piece of orange American. Some offered avocado and all had a blazing green hot sauce. With an Imperial beer chilled almost to freezing, the casado became our favorite meal. It’s one that allows for diversity and play.

I’m going to make casado again, maybe with pork instead of chicken, black beans instead of pinto, and perhaps brown rice instead of white. The beauty of the meal is that you can switch it up all you want and still end up with a delicious plate.

Quick Thought on Dragons

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I’m about half way through Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik, the seventh book in the Temeraire series, and wish I could be reading it right now instead of looking at inventory records. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, imagine Master & Commander plus dragons. It’s a wonderful series, fun and smartly written. Supposedly Peter Jackson has bought the movie rights. Now that he’s dragging out the Hobbit films, he’ll never make these into movies!

Love it When My Friends are Right

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Bookavore was absolutely correct when she said that Meg Wolitzer’s newest novel The Interestings was absorbing enough to eat an entire bag of chips while reading. While I didn’t consume chips, I found this book pretty hard to put down (I refuse to use the word unputdownable). The novel follows a group of friends who meet at an arts camp in 1974 throughout several decades. Wolitzer navigates the happenings in each era, Moonies, AIDS,etc., as well as each characters inner lives and relationships with one another.

The author has been a careful observer of human interactions for decades. I find her under appreciated as a novelist and hope this new book can get her past the glass ceiling that so many woman writers face.