The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruíz Zafón

August 27, 2018August 27, 2018 ~ foodinbooks ~ 16 Comments

My game plan is to blog all of Carlos Ruíz Zafón’s quartet of books featuring The Cemetery of Forgotten Books in Barcelona, which is also one of my favorite cities in the world, before September, which is when the fourth and final installment of this amazing series ends. I previously blogged the first book in the series, The Shadow of the Wind, over a year ago and that was a fun time in the kitchen. Here’s my original post if you want to read it. Today, I’m taking on The Angel’s Game, which is the sequel/prequel to Shadow, and I think I like it even more than the first book. Davíd Martín is the dark hero of this very baroque tale, still set in Barcelona but before World War II. Barcelona is as much a character in this series, and particularly so here.

Davíd is an aspiring writer whose early years are marred by violence and tragedy. As he gets older, he becomes a newspaper writer then is approached to write a series of Grand Guignol, penny-dreadful type books with fantastical characters, magic, mayhem and murder but under a pseudonym. As time goes on, he is befriended by the Sempere family (you’ll meet them in the first book), falls in love with Cristina, the daughter of his best friend’s chauffeur, also befriends the lovely young Isabella who plays a pivotal role in his life, and is taken under the ominous wing of Andreas Corelli, an enigmatic publisher who is not who he seems and commissions David to write a book.

Davíd’s work for Corelli, which consists of creating a new religion, takes him down a very dark path. To concentrate on his work, Davíd moves into a dark, mysterious mansion that previously belonged to Diego Marlasca, a wealthy Barcelona businessman whose son died under strange circumstances. As David continues to write his religious saga, he also begins to learn about the horrible things that happened in the house and in the life of Diego Marlasca, and finds terrible connections between his own life and writing, the life of Marlasca and the publisher Corelli, who might just be the Devil in Disguise……..that superbly dressed, smooth talking agent of darkness who initially seems harmless but then you realize just how twisted and evil he truly is. That’s Corelli.

I fell in love with David’s darkness, but I have a very dark side myself so I’m drawn to that in people. He loves passionately, feels deeply, writes intensely and embodies the darker side of the heart that we all have inside us. Davíd is darkly attractive to many, including young Isabella. In a series of amusing events, Isabella manages to install herself as his housekeeper/companion/writing partner………even as she falls in love with him and though he will not admit it because he loves Cristina, is as enamored in his own way with Isabella. Isabella is a hilariously funny character, a good foil for Davíd’s darkness, and I was always peeved at him for not ever allowing her a chance in his heart until it was too late.

One evening, after they have had a terrible argument, Isabella storms out and is attacked by would-be rapists. David comes to her rescue, knifing the two men before then can do too much harm. As you’d imagine, Isabella is terrified and traumatized, and David takes care of her the way she’s cared for him, sending her to take a calming bath as he puts together a meal for her, leftover from the many delicious delicacies she has brought from her Italian father’s gourmet food shop.

I wanted to hold her arm as we went up the stairs, but she avoided any contact. Once in the apartment I took her to the bathroom and turned on the light. “Have you any clean clothes you can put on?” Isabella showed me the bag she was carrying and nodded. “Come on, you can wash while I get something ready for dinner.” “How can you be hungry after what just happened?” “Well, I am……..” I closed the bathroom door and waited until I heard the taps running, then returned to the kitchen and put some water to boil. There was a bit of rice left over, some bacon, and a few vegetables that Isabella had brought over the day before. I improvised a dish of leftovers and waited, downing almost half a bottle of wine in that time.

Hey, I can improvise with bacon like no one’s business. So after looking to see what I had in the way of vegetables, I decided some super-simple bacon-wrapped Brussels sprouts would be a perfect improvised leftover dish.

INGREDIENTS
24 Brussels sprouts
24 slices of bacon
Black pepper to taste

METHOD
Heat the oven to 375F, and wash and trim the Brussels sprouts. Let dry.

Flatten out each slice of bacon, and wrap each Brussels sprout in a slice of bacon.

Put the bacon-encased sprouts on a foil-lined baking tray.

Bake for 35 minutes, and remove from the oven.

Sprinkle over some freshly ground black pepper, and spear each with a toothpick.

Eat with a friend at a sun-drenched winery with grapes hanging over you, drinking wine and enjoying other goodies. It’s the next best thing to being in Barcelona.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

August 20, 2018August 20, 2018 ~ foodinbooks ~ 33 Comments

Very much a fairy tale for adults, Neverwhere tells the story of Richard Mayhew, a London commuter who stops to help a young woman lying bleeding on the sidewalk one night, and finds himself in the alternate universe of London Underground. The parallels with Alice in Wonderland are fairly obvious – falling into an underground alternate reality, coming of age – yet this is a much darker and bloodier otherworld.

Without giving too much away, the inverses in London Underground are pretty fascinating. Angels are evil, doors can be opened to anywhere, and the environment resembles more of a medieval estate than modern London. Richard goes through a significant transformation when he is there. He goes from being a young, rather naive man who is willing tolerate bad behavior from his fiancee because he simply thinks this is how it is, to having a mind and will of his own. He knows he is worthy of so much more, because he’s proven himself. In many ways, this book is a “bildungsroman” as it details his transformation from boy to man.

In one passage, Richard and Door, the young woman he stopped to help and who essentially brought him to London Underground, wake up with ungodly hangovers from drinking heavenly wine with the Angel Islington. They’ve been found by Serpentine, a type of Amazon woman and part of a group of women who act as hunter/protectors and who, in her rough way, tries to help with the hangovers by feeding the two of them. Quite ironically, I too, woke up with a hangover this morning – my first in many years. I blame my friends Jake, Maggie and Heather, without whom I would not have overindulged in red wine last night. But we had a marvelous time, and this quiche can cure any hangover. It certainly did mine.

“What is there to eat?” asked Hunter. Serpentine looked at the wasp-waisted woman in the doorway. “Well?” she asked. The woman smiled the chilliest smile Richard had ever seen cross a human face, then she said, “Fried eggs poached eggs pickled eggs curried venison pickled onions pickled herrings smoked herrings salted herrings mushroom stew salted bacon stuffed cabbage calves foot jelly – “

While pickled eggs DO NOT have any kind of attraction for me, the savory tastes of fried eggs, salted bacon and mushrooms caught my attention. Remembering the wonderful fried tomatoes I had as part of a delicious morning meal when visiting London a few years ago, I decided a riff on the classic British breakfast was in order.

This is the method that worked for me.

INGREDIENTS
1.5 cups regular flour
4 tablespoons unsalted, chilled butter, cut into cubes
4 tablespoons chilled shortening, also cubed

1/4 cup ice-cold water
5 slices of smoked bacon, good quality
4 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste
1 carton sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon of garlic powder
1 tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup of half and half or heavy cream
2 large tomatoes, sliced
1 cup of grated cheese – I used a mixture of sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack

METHOD

Gradually mix together the flour, the cubed butter and the cubed shortening until it forms a “rubbly” texture. I used my most awesome Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the pastry hook attachment. It’s important that your butter and shortening are cold cold cold.

Gradually add the cold water until a dough is formed. Mine was sticky so I added a bit more flour to the mixer. Wrap the dough in plastic, form it into a ball and knead it a bit before refrigerating.

Heat the oven to 375F. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out on a floured surface. Don’t use your kitchen counter as you will have a mess and if you’re doing it recovering from a hangover, it will not make you happy. Trust me.

Press the rolled-out dough into a pie pan. Chill it again for another 10 minutes. Poke a few holes in the bottom crust with a fork. Then bake the empty quiche shell for 10 minutes.

While the crust is both chilling and baking, fry the bacon in a little bit of olive oil. Remove and drain, then crumble.

Cook the mushrooms, garlic powder and thyme leaves in the bacon oil for about 10 minutes. The smell is out of this world! But do watch out for spatters from the hot oil.

In a separate bowl, add the eggs, salt and pepper. Whisk together, then add the slightly cooled mushrooms and the bacon. Add in the heavy cream and the cheese and whisk together again.

Pour into the slightly baked quiche pieshell and top with the sliced tomatoes. Isn’t that pretty?

Bake for up to 50 minutes, checking occasionally. When the crust is golden-brown, that’s usually when it’s ready. The filling will have set, and the smell of the mushrooms and the savory scent of roasting tomatoes will also give you a hint.

Remove from the oven, allow to cool, and serve in generous slices. Accompany it with a hibiscus cocktail, which is champagne and cranberry juice, very necessary “hair of the dog” for a hangover. The flavors are luscious – the sharp cheese, the savory tomatoes, the salty bacon and the nicely set eggs, set off by the bosky taste of the mushrooms.

The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen

August 12, 2018August 12, 2018 ~ foodinbooks ~ 22 Comments

I didn’t actually intend to blog this book, not that it wasn’t enjoyable but because I had actually forgotten I had it on my bookshelves. As fortune would have it, I found some late-summer squash blossoms at my nearby grower’s market yesterday morning, along with many other garden goodies. Anyway, back to the book. Set in Italy, obviously, The Tuscan Child is a pretty good read about a young woman named Joanna whose father Hugo has died and left her what’s left of his property and fortune in England. Arranging his funeral, she naturally has to go through letters and paperwork and discovers among his things a love letter from a woman named Sofia. Sofia, it turns out, rescued Hugo during WWII, when his fighter plane was shot down over her Tuscan village of San Salvatore, and of course, they fall in love. But of course, true love never runs smoothly, particularly during a world war when the country you’ve been trapped in is invaded by disgusting Nazis.

The book is told from two viewpoints and in two points in history. Joanna and her journey from England to Italy to learn more about Sofia and the Tuscan child she mentions in her letter, wanting to find out if this woman and her father had a baby together. Hugo’s story details his plane crash, how he and Sofia fall in love, and the occupation of Italy during WWII, which was fascinating to me. I never realized that Italy actually turned on Germany and surrendered to the Allied Forces, but the fact that the Nazi army was still actually physically in Italy made it much more difficult to fight them, since the Nazis were particularly nasty after their one-time partners turned against them.

Hugo is part of the Allied effort to fully get the Nazis out of Italy when his plane is shot down. He hides in an old, abandoned church and is found by Sofia, who has struggles of her own in the village. Her husband is gone, feared dead and later in the book, she is accused of collaborating with the Nazis. And poor Joanna is kind of an annoying character, initially whiny and passive and self-pitying. It’s not until she goes to Italy to find Hugo and Sofia’s “Tuscan child” that she starts taking initiative, seeing the bigger picture, and essentially growing up. She stays in San Salvatore with a wonderful woman named Paola, her daughter Angelina, and Angelina’s newborn daughter. Probably the best parts of this book were the cooking passages. Of course, being in Tuscany, there has to be food and food galore is part of this book. Paola cooks homemade pasta, brodo with tomatoes and stale bread, artichokes, asparagus, and the thing that made me get this book out and reread it for today’s post – the stuffed squash blossoms.

“Let’s get on with the meal, Mamma. I am hungry and I am sure Signorina Joanna is, too.” “Then lay the table and slice the bread,” Paola said, going ahead of us into the cool kitchen. “And put out the salami and the cheese and wash those radishes.” She turned to me. “Now pay attention if you want to see how we stuff the zucchini blossoms.” She put some of the white cheese into a bowl, chopped up and added some of the herb I had now decided was mint, then grated some lemon zest on it. Then she took a spoon and carefully stuffed this mixture into each of the blossoms.

I’d had them when I visited Italy a few years ago and they were divine, lightly coated with a lemony batter and stuffed with creamy, herbed cheese so I decided that, having found these beautiful yellow flowers, I was going to make them. So I did.

INGREDIENTS
12 squash blossoms
3/4 cup of flour
1 teaspoon sea salt and ground black pepper
1/2 cup of San Pellegrino sparkling limonata or any lemon seltzer
1/2 cup Ricotta cheese
Lemon zest to taste
Fresh mint
Olive oil for frying

METHOD
Heat the olive oil in a cast-iron skillet until shimmering.

Finely chop the mint. I got to bust out the mezzaluna for this so I was happy.

Mix the mint with the Ricotta cheese and zest the lemon into this mixture. Taste for seasoning and add salt or pepper as needed.

Gently open the squash blossoms and stuff each cavity with the lemony, minty cheese mixture. The smell is awesome, with the cool mint offset by the sharp lemon.

Don’t overfill them or they won’t close. Seal them by twisting together the head petals. Set aside.

Prepare the batter by adding the salt and pepper to the flour, mixing together, and slowly pouring in the limonata. Stir to mix until you have a relatively thick batter for coating the flowers.

Dip each stuffed blossom into the batter, shake off the excess, and fry for about 2 minutes per side, until golden brown.

Let drain on paper towels and devour!

And if you have any batter left, throw in some shaved Parmesan and make cheesy fritters. They were an excellent accompaniment to these gorgeous squash blossoms.

Sexy Sunday! Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

August 5, 2018 ~ foodinbooks ~ 21 Comments

WARNING! Today’s post contains explicit sexual language and profanity. Isn’t that awesome?

Today marks the first collaboration I’ve done with a fellow blogger, and I can’t tell you how simultaneously excited and amused I am to be doing this. The genesis of Sexy Sunday came from a post that Nicole at The Bookworm Drinketh (and my blogging soul sister) when we got to talking on a blog comment thread and had the idea of doing something together. She’d blogged one of those wanna-be sequels to Pride and Prejudice, and I made a snarky comment about chick-lit and how the only sequel to Pride and Prejudice that I’d ever been able to stomach had sex -and I mean, LOTS – of sex, which was the only redeeming quality in said book. One thing led to another and we decided to collaborate on a monthly post titled “Sexy Sunday,” in which we’d read a book infamous for its sex scenes; I would do a foodie post based on the book and she’d do a cocktail post based on the same book. And here we are.

Nicole and I will be doing a Sexy Sunday collaboration the first Sunday of each month on a book that features some truly hot, bizarre, insane or downright weird sex…….so please, do join us in our monthly deviance 🙂 And once you’re done reading and commenting on today’s perverted post, head over to Nicole’s website and read her post on this book.

So, Portnoy’s Complaint. I am no prude. Ask any of my ex-boyfriends…..or actually, maybe you shouldn’t. OK, this book, as funny as it is in many parts, is just gross. I’m sure it has all this deep cultural, philosophical and psychological meaning. However, being that the main character Alexander Portnoy, though a grown man of 33, is also dealing with memories of his very Jewish-on-the-East-Coast teen years, in which he literally wanted to fuck every single thing in the world, it’s essentially well-written smut.

Seriously. There’s a lot of mom/castration guilt referred to in this book as he does this massive information dump to his therapist (and really, can you get more East Coast Jewish than dumping all your twisted teenage masturbation sex fantasies to a shrink?) so you could argue that it’s uber-Freudian on one level. Personally, I see it as a grown man’s never-ending whine about how he wasn’t suckled enough as a baby and has turned this oral fixation outward and becomes – inwardly – a raging sex maniac. In short, it’s EVERY TEENAGE BOY’S STORY. I do wonder how this book was lionized by so many when I personally didn’t find it all that great, but perhaps if the majority of people who reviewed it were themselves men reliving their horny youth, it makes a twisted kind of sense.

Roth died this past May, and though eulogized as the last of the great white literary lions along with Joseph Heller and Norman Mailer, I think he – and yes, I’m going there – blew his literary wad with this book. However, I don’t like misogynists and the one thing that stands out in this book and his other works is his deep and abiding contempt for women, even as much as he sexually desires them. Well, many men see women like that, and it’s understandable if you’re looking at things from a Freudian viewpoint. That being said, it’s also incredibly self-indulgent as an adult to blame every single woman who comes through your life for the actions of one, whether it’s blaming women for how your mother treated you as a child; or making post-marital relationships pay the price for what one horrible ex-wife did while you were married. (And yes, RP, I’m talking to you.)

As Woody Allen once proclaimed, “Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.” (Another East Coast Jewish male….coincidence? I think not.) Anyway, in addition to the massive amounts of masturbation, self-love, onanism, jerking off, spanking the monkey and all the other euphemisms for getting oneself off, there are also some interesting mentions of food in conjunction with Portnoy’s fetishes. Warning: this passage is quite explicit.

At the Saturday afternoon movie I would leave my friends to go off to the candy machine – and wind up in a distant balcony seat, squirting my seed into the empty wrapper from a Mounds bar. On an outing of our family association, I once cored an apple, saw to my astonishment…….what it looked like, and ran off into the woods to fall upon the orifice of the fruit, pretending that the cool and mealy hole was actually between the legs of that mythical being who always called me Big Boy when she pleaded for what no girl in all recorded history had ever had. “Oh shove it in me, Big Boy,” cried the cored apple that I banged silly on that picnic. “Big Boy, Big boy, oh give me all you’ve got,” begged the empty milk bottle that I kept hidden………”Come, Big Boy, come,” screamed the maddened piece of liver that…….I bought one afternoon at a butcher shop and……….violated behind a billboard on the way to a bar mitzvah lesson.

See? I told you. Anyway, don’t you just crave some type of apple dessert after reading that passage? Me, too! Portnoy’s mother, in addition to her many other quirks, is constantly referred to as an amazing cook, baking a cake that tastes like a banana, so here goes with my foodie take, an apple and banana cake. I left off the cream frosting, though, as I’m sure you can understand why.

INGREDIENTS
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 large apples, any type. I chose a Gala, a Red Delicious, and a Granny Smith.
3 large, ripe bananas, mashed
1 stick butter or 8 tablespoons or 1/2 cup, melted
3 eggs and 1 egg yolk, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans

METHOD
Peel two of the apples, core all three of them, and chop them. I left the Gala unpeeled, to have those pretty red bits peeking out.

Heat the oven to 350F. Whisk together the flour, cornstarch, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda in a large bowl.

In the mixing bowl of your most awesome red Kitchen Aid, gently mix together the vanilla, the eggs and egg yolk, and add the melted butter.

Fold in the chopped apples and mashed bananas.

One spoonful at a time, add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix together, using the paddle attachment, then add the pecans and mix again.

Spray a 9 x 13 springform pan with baking spray and use a pan liner if you have one. Pour in the batter and bake for 60-65 minutes. It’s a moist cake, so bake a bit longer to ensure the center is cooked completely through. The ol’ toothpick test works well here.

Let cool. My cake, unfortunately, did not cook completely through the center, so I had to cut out a large circular chunk, and being the creative person I am, I filled in the space with fresh raspberries. As I’ve said before, no one is ever going to suggest I quit my day job and decorate cakes full time. And I am ok with that. Serve plain, or if you must have cream with your apples a la Alexander Portnoy, go full-on phallic and spray some Redi-Whip on top. Go on, big boy!

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