Tag: food blogging

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

~ foodinbooks ~ 15 Comments

No, I didn’t read this book out of any type of name ego toward the title……ok, maybe I did a little. But that quickly went by the wayside as I traveled deeper into this very hard read. This book takes on the concept of what it truly means to be a victim in our society. It takes the truth and plays with it in such a way that you don’t know who to blame, who to be angry toward, feminism, victim-blaming and victim-shaming, the sexual boundary between youth and adulthood, and what our minds do to protect ourselves and justify our actions, our thoughts and our beliefs.

The story is told in two timeframes: starting in 2000 when 14-year old Vanessa Wye starts attending a private high school and begins a tumultuous affair with her 40-something English professor Jacob Strane, and in 2017 when Vanessa is an adult, living a mediocre life of one-night stands, failed relationships, thrashed apartments and a dead-end job…….and still involved (if only emotionally) with Jacob Strane. It’s a clever device because it contrasts between the youth and hope and destructiveness of Vanessa’s teen year as she is gradually groomed into becoming Strane’s lover; and her cynicism, bitterness and inability to see herself as having been a victim as an adult. She can’t seem to get her life together in any real way, stuck as she is in her job and same ways of doing things and continuing with the dysfunctional and simultaneous love and repulsion she feels toward Strane.

It’s a sign of just how much he was able to manipulate her mentally and emotionally that even as an adult, Vanessa cannot separate her own desire to live her own life and not be considered a victim with her inability to separate herself from Strane. She is physically repulsed by him as an adult but cannot break that bond with him and still tells him she will remain loyal to him even as more and more students come out of the woodwork to accuse him of sexual assault, sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior.

Nabokov’s disturbing book Lolita is invoked throughout, and there are shades of The Police’s rock hit “Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” as well. It’s compelling and repulsive at the same time. Repulsion is a good word here, because it reminds me of that famous quote by Freud: “on the other side of desire lies repulsion.” For me, that quote perfectly sums up Vanessa’s feelings toward Strane. As a teenager, she loves his attention toward her, loves his passionate personality, loves the portrait of herself that he sees in his mind when he looks at her, and is physically repelled by the actual act of sexual intercourse with him. That pattern continues throughout their increasingly twisted relationship.

We all know that any 40-year old who pursues any type of relationship with a 14-year old is twisted. We all know that any teacher who pursues any type of sexual relationship with a student is messed up. Why this book is so hard to put down and so hard to continue reading is because there are times when you go back and forth about who pursued who and I think you’re meant to, to really get your head into that space of seeing exactly how subtle the manipulation is by Strane, but also recognizing that Vanessa genuinely loves his attention, loves him. I remember clearly being a senior in high school and becoming aware of my own feminine power and my own physicality. It’s hard, because a young woman just coming into her awareness of her own sexuality is a beautiful thing, and can be very empowering and also very heady. I think that’s why Vanessa has such a hard time allowing herself to truly believe she’s been a victim of Strane’s manipulation – it’s tied up in her own awakening and awareness of her own sexuality and the power that comes with that.

This is probably one of the heaviest reads I’ve come across in years. I couldn’t put it down but I had to at times because the intensity of Vanessa’s darkness, her switching back and forth between realizing how she’d been manipulated and abused and making excuses for Strane and blaming herself for what ultimately happens and maintaining this weird loyalty toward him……….this is the ultimate example of Stockholm Syndrome and you realize just how powerful his hold is over her. She starts gradually excavating her own feelings and realizations as the book goes on, and the ending implies she is at least starting to acknowledge how deeply and horribly damaged she was by Strane and what a bastard he truly is, and finding her own strength. But it comes at a cost, as does everything in life that makes us stronger.

I didn’t go into this book intending it as a food in books post, simply because my head wasn’t in that space due to the subject matter. But I did come across a few interesting food references, and this one in particular stood out to me since it was something I’d never heard of or made before. It’s when Strane takes Vanessa out to dinner during her senior year in college and he is trying to push her into going to graduate school……and with the expectation that after dinner, she’ll go back to his hotel with him. He takes her to some fancy-schmancy restaurant where she peruses the menu before getting drunk….so drunk that she can’t have sex with him…….her subconscious method of keeping the physical aspect of their relationship at bay. Yes, it’s creepy.

The first week in November, Strane makes a reservation at an expensive restaurant down the coast and books us a hotel room. He tells me to dress up, so I wear a black dress with thin straps, the only nice thing I own. The restaurant is Michelin-starred, Strane says, and I pretend to know what it means……..The menu is all stuff like scallops with asparagus flan, tenderloin crusted with foie gras. Nothing has a price.

So, asparagus flan it was.

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
A dozen asparagus spears, trimmed and halved
1 and 1/2 cups crumbled blue cheese
1/3 cup of sour cream (or creme fraiche if you can find it)
3 large eggs, beaten
Zest of 1 lemon

METHOD
Heat the oven to 325F and butter four oven-safe ramekins. Put on your kettle at the same time so you’ll have boiling water.

Boil the asparagus in salted water for 1-3 minutes until bright green, then drain and plunge into ice water. Drain and pat dry.

Over medium heat, whisk together the blue cheese and the sour cream until smooth and creamily melted together.

Add the eggs gradually and mix together, then divide among the four ramekins, and top with the asparagus.

Grate the lemon zest over each filled ramekin.

Place the ramekins in a large glass baking pan and carefully pour in the boiling water, so that it comes to halfway up the sides of the ramekins. This is what you’d call a water bath or a bain-marie and it helps create a smooth and creamy baked texture.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, and let cool for up to 15 minutes, before serving with skillet-seared scallops in a lemon-wine-caper-butter sauce. It’s a delicious meal, rich and decadent and satisfying without being overwhelming.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García

~ foodinbooks ~ 14 Comments

I’m as guilty as the next person of judging. I judge wine by the label on the bottle, musical artists by genre, and of course, books by their covers. In this case, can you blame me? The cover for Mexican Gothic is stunningly beautiful and hits me on all my levels: aesthetic, moody, mysterious, and colorful. Combined with the word “Gothic,” you’re damn right I pre-ordered this months in advance and devoured it in 6 hours when it finally arrived. It was well worth the wait.

The gist of the book is thus: Noemi is a wealthy socialite living the life in 1950s Mexico. She’s a beautiful and intelligent woman whose chief problem is that she lives in a time and a place where people can’t believe a woman can be both, so she compensates by putting on a bored persona. But inside, she is ready for something more. When her father gets a urgent letter from Catalina, Noemi’s recently-married cousin, indicating she is in danger in her new marriage, he sends Noemi to the town of High Place to find out what is going on and to bring Catalina home if necessary. Not so fast, though. Catalina’s in-laws and new husband are what you’d call shady.

Catalina has married into the very wealthy and extremely weird Doyle family, and boy, do they put the “fun” in “family dysfunction.” The family patriarch, Howard, is beyond creepy. He is somewhere between 90 and death, and is pervertedly fascinated with the beautiful Noemi. Catalina’s husband, Virgil, is handsome and flirtatious toward Noemi, and she is both sexually drawn to him and repulsed by him at the same time. Florence, Virgil’s sister, runs the household like a military commander, not allowing Noemi to do or say anything. You can imagine how well that goes over with a young, independent and intelligent heroine like Noemi.

And then there’s the youngest son, Francis, whose interest in botany, plants and growing fungi – namely mushrooms – are pivotal pieces of the book’s plot. Noemi finds herself becoming friends with Francis and the longer she stays in High Place, the more she starts to be affected by the house, with terrifying dreams and visions, and she starts to suspect that something very weird and very scary is happening. It’s not actually difficult to figure out what the source of the visions and hallucinations are, but it’s part of the fun in reading this beautifully-written and atmospheric novel.

This is a wonderful book that combines mystery with Gothic romance, eugenics with some creepy Mexican folklore, some really great horror elements including ghosts, visions of blood, terrifying dreams, and a unique take on the haunted house trope that makes for some genuinely riveting reading. It actually reminded me quite a lot of the film Crimson Peak, that eerie movie by Guillermo del Toro, with similar elements of hallucinations, incestuous relations, and just that overall sense of mystery and doom.

I’d consider this book more of a slow burn than one of non-stop, intense horror. The horror is there, all right, but it’s more of a low simmer, gradually escalating, grotesque, Lovecraftian, sickening horror that creeps up on you the further into the mystery you get, until you realize you’re trapped with Noemi there with no avenue of escape. I like the intense terror as much as any horror fan, but I really enjoyed the slow build toward the final unraveling of the mystery surrounding the Doyle family.

As with many of the other books I read, I found myself culinarily inspired by a passage that isn’t necessarily a food reference. when Noemi comes across Francis foraging in, of all places, the family cemetery! Hey, whatever floats your boat, right, but it also made me start thinking about what to make with those good ol’, fungus among us, mushrooms!

He glanced down, nodding, looking at his basket. Now that he was with her, she had regained her levity, and she peered curiously at him. “What do you have there?” she asked, pointing at the basket. “I’ve been collecting mushrooms.” “Mushrooms? At a cemetery?” “Sure. They’re all around.” “As long as you don’t plan to make them into a salad.” “What would be wrong with that?” “Only the thought of them growing over dead things.” “But then mushrooms always grow over dead things in a way.”

Yes, I was inspired to make a something from this passage about ‘shrooms growing over dead things. Well, I’m strange like that. Anyway, being that the book was set in Mexico, and that it’s also green chile season here in my home state of New Mexico, I decided a tasty recipe of mushroom, chorizo, and roasted corn queso fundido with homemade tortilla chips was on the menu. And the best part? I got to roast the green chile and the corn outside on my charcoal grill in my new backyard, thus breaking it in! In a manner of speaking. 🙂

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 red onion
6 cloves of garlic
1 lb chorizo sausage, squeezed out of the casing
1 lb white mushrooms, sliced
1 lb bella mushrooms, sliced
1 lb Monterey Jack cheese
1 lb Muenster cheese
1 lb queso fresco
6 Anaheim chile peppers, roasted and peeled
2 fresh ears of corn, still in the husks, roasted and cooled
1 dozen corn tortillas

METHOD
Heat the olive oil in a heavy Dutch oven, saute the onion and garlic until soft, then add the chorizo and saute another 10 minutes.

Add in the mushrooms and saute again for another 10 minutes.

Cut the roasted corn kernels from the cobs, then add to the mushrooms and chorizo mixture. I actually did this using a Bundt pan, which was suggested to me by my friend and sous-chef Krista, and it was the best idea ever!

Chop the roasted green chile and add to the other ingredients in the pan.

Cube the cheeses into small pieces and add their gooey, melting goodness to the pan.

Mix everything together and cook on low, covered, so that the cheeses melt and get that lovely, unctuous texture that make your mouth water.

While the cheese is melting, heat the broiler in your oven and slice the corn tortillas into fourths, put on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes until they get golden and crispy. Let cool.

Serve the piping-hot, meltingly gooey queso fundido with the tortilla chips and devour. Sooooo delicious, rich and very decadent. Eat this on a day when you haven’t eaten another thing and have gotten in a good hour of cardio. It’s well worth it, and the mushrooms will only make you have visions of heavenly deliciousness!

Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown

~ foodinbooks ~ 19 Comments

If you’ve followed my blog long enough, you’ll be familiar with my great disdain for “chick lit,” not because I think literature by women for women is bad but because so much of it is terribly written, horribly edited, dumbed down, and the topic of true love is often written about in such a sappy-ass manner, or it’s totally clichéd. I can’t stand clichés, in literature or in life. However, I would deem Cinnamon and Gunpowder as a type of “chick lit” except it was written by a man. So if you can imagine a clichéd story about a female pirate on the high seas who kidnaps a male chef and makes him cook a gourmet meal for her once a week as a way to earn his freedom, I’d say, yes it has the makings of a cheesy-ass Harlequin romance novel.

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But I’d be wrong. This book is so wonderfully and well-written, so descriptive of life at sea, and written with such dry wit, and best of all, it takes what could be considered a boring literary trope – a pirate kidnapping someone and taking them on the high seas on a quest – and turns it into a feminist manifesto of a sort. And you gotta love a good female pirate, right? There are actually some female pirates in history – Grace O’Malley being the one that comes immediately to mind. 

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Mad Hannah Mabbott – and seriously, how could she be anything but a pirate with a moniker like that? – is the captain of The Flying Rose, and committed to righting the wrongs done by Lord Ramsey and his British colonial Pendleton Trading Company. Owen Wedgwood is chef to Lord Ramsey and in the process of serving a delectable gourmet meal to Ramsey and his assorted, equally aristocratic and horrible British guests, Hannah swoops in with her motley crew, kills the men, and kidnaps Owen. Owen is taken to sea initially as a lark and to cook for Hannah, who tells him he must cook her a gourmet meal once a week. The fact that he has limited foodstuffs, nearly no equipment and must cook on a swaying sea vessel has little effect on her. I think I would lose my damn mind if I were taken hostage on a pirate ship and told to cook with next to nothing, but if the pirate captain was tall, dark and handsome and I had to cook for him, I suppose I could force myself to make the effort. 🙂

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As you can no doubt guess, eventually Owen falls under the sway of Hannah’s magic, not because she is trying to entice him sexually, as you’d likely find in a chick-lit book, but because she is truly a strong woman who has grown up in a whorehouse and been sold to many  men before she gains her own independence on the high seas, because she is kind and caring in her own tough way, and because she is the mother to The Fox, another pirate who is fairly insane in his own way and her mothering instincts are what finally break down Owen’s defenses. Owen resists until nearly the end, making three ill-advised attempts to escape the ship, each funnier than the next, until one such evening he serves her his latest concoction, he notices her beauty and the fact that she is a bit curvier than usual due to his culinary skills, and realizes he is a goner.

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Being a foodie, reading the descriptions of Owen’s attempts to cook gourmet meals on a ship with few ingredients was delightful! Owen nourishes a homemade yeast starter by keeping it next to his heart and feeds it with varying liquids to keep it active. He smokes eels in tea, is able to make a herring pâté, creates vanilla-scented amaretto cookies, brews his own banana ale, rolls out homemade ravioli, braises pigeon, attempts a delectable-sounding chocolate mole flavored with soy sauce, and my own personal favorite, concocts potato-crusted crab cakes, the description of which made my mouth water.

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The last of the potatoes went into the crab croquettes. After grating and salting the tubers, I squeezed out as much water as I could and put the liquid aside to settle out. In half an hour, the starch had precipitated. I poured off the water and stirred the starch back into the potatoes (such are the humble measures of an eggless world) along with the virginal crab meat, black pepper, and dried cilantro, and set them aside for frying.

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Luckily for me, I don’t live in an eggless world, so making potato crab cakes was for me, a walk in the park.

INGREDIENTS
1 large egg, room temperature
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons Worchestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Sprinkle of sea salt
8 ounces fresh lump crab meat
1 cup mashed potatoes (I just boiled and mashed two russets and added salt and butter)
1 cup Panko breadcrumbs
Butter

METHOD
In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, mayonnaise, parsley, cilantro, Dijon mustard, Worchestershire sauce, Old Bay, lemon juice and salt.

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Gently mix in the crab meat and the mashed potatoes and form small cakes with your hands, then cover and refrigerate for at least two hours.

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Preheat the oven to 450F and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Dredge each cake in breadcrumbs and dab the top of each crab cake with a small bit of butter before placing on the baking tray.

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Bake for 17 minutes or until light golden brown, and the smell of the crab and butter tortures you.

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Serve with a wasabi-lemon mayonnaise and dive in! So delicious, rich yet light, with the hint of the far-off sea and the zest of lemon. Wonderful! I feel certain I would not be drawn and quartered by a pirate queen for these.

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

~ foodinbooks ~ 16 Comments

Fairy tales are probably my favorite genre of book in the world, though like all my other favorites, I am very picky about which ones I read. The prose has to be quality and the elements of each individual story must be present, though I love it when they are presented in a new and different way, or with a twist. And my favorite fairy tale of all time has to be the Twelve Dancing Princesses. I mean, how can it get any better than 12 daughters of a king who, every night, dance through their expensive shoes and refuse to explain how, an errant knight who finds a way to become invisible, and a magical world of golden trees, diamond branches and a ballroom both magical and terrifying? So when I was recently listening to the podcast Books in the Freezer (also, how can you not love that name and the Friends reference) and they mentioned the book House of Salt and Sorrows as being part of the horror-fairy tale genre and as a retelling of my favorite fairy tale, hell yeah I immediately ordered it from Amazon!

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I actually have a very old fairy tale book of the story itself, kept from childhood when I purloined it from my school library. I know, I know, that’s a lousy thing to do but in my defense……..well, I have none. But I have the book over 30 years later and I still swoon over the gorgeous illustrations by Errol Le Cain. Feel free to judge me for being a library book thief. But just feast your eyes on these stunning images from my childhood book!

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In a nutshell, this book is told from the viewpoint of Annaleigh, one of 12 daughters of Duke Thaumas. Four of his daughters have already died under horrible – and mysterious – circumstances, and Annaleigh starts to suspect there is more to their deaths than meets the eye. The kingdom and universe created in this book are marvelous, and perhaps one of the reasons I loved it so much was because of the strong use of ocean symbolism and metaphor. There is an entire mythology of gods that rule over the world, and Annaleigh’s people are called People of the Salt and the sea, and everything related to it, including salt, are intensely tied into their lives.

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The elements of the shoes are one of the major plot points, as well they should be. The enchanted forests of gold, silver and diamonds are also part of the tale, as is the knight who helps discover the mystery behind the shoes and the subsequent enchantment over the daughters of the Duke. There is also, as there should be in any fairy tale story, a stepmother whose intentions are seemingly innocent, and although I did figure out her role in the entire mystery about halfway (as will any discerning reader), there is a little unexpected twist at the end that I appreciated.

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Probably the most fascinating aspect of the universe created in this book is how it mirrors so much of ancient Greece and Judeo-Christianity in terms of gods, religion, rites and superstitions. The role of the priest, when burying the dead, is called the High Mariner. Bodies are not buried underground, but instead, put in wooden coffins in a cave where the sea will take the body back…….just like ashes to ashes, dust to dust, or in this case, from salt you came and to salt you will return. The god who rules over the sea is called Pontus and is visualized as a giant octopus. Water imagery is everywhere in book, images of fish and mermaids and seahorses and octopi and every ocean-living creature you can think of.

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The enchantment of the 12 daughters of the Duke results in some truly creepy results. The ghosts of the four previously dead daughters start to be seen around the castle, and they are not the restful souls you might expect. Even I, a horror aficionado, was skeezed out a bit by the description of these wraiths. Annaleigh resists the longest as she continues to investigate her sisters’ deaths and as a result, is haunted by horrific visions of being drowned by a vast sea monster. In fact, though this is not what you’d expect as a food-inspired moment, it actually did inspire me but then, I’m a black-hearted bitch sometimes and the scary stuff often inspires me. As it did here.

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I tried to scream for Camille but was suddenly yanked under by an unseen force. The dark water raced into my mouth, filling it with a brackish bite as I sputtered out a cry for help. I pushed upward, gagging on the fishy tang. It was a surprisingly familiar taste. One of Cook’s favorite dishes to make in the summer months was a black risotto, full of clams, shallots and prawns. The rice was an exotic obsidian, dyed with squid ink.

Yes, I was inspired to make squid-ink risotto with seafood by a passage where a young woman is nearly drowned. I’m evil like that.

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INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups seafood stock
2 cups clam juice
1 cup Pernod (you could use white wine but Pernod adds a delicious aniseed note that goes well with seafood)
2 squid ink packets
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 shallot, finely minced
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 cup arborio rice
1 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 can cooked clams

METHOD
In a medium sauce pan, combine the seafood stock, the clam juice and the Pernod, and bring to a low boil.

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Squeeze one packet of the squid ink into the hot liquid to dissolve, until the stock is as black as your heart. Leave to simmer on very low heat.

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In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat and add the shallots and garlic. Sprinkle with a bit of sea salt, and saute until soft, about three minutes.

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Add in the rice and stir, toasting it for about 2-3 minutes. This step is called la tostatura and is meant to toast the rice and give it a bit more flavor.

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One ladleful at a time, gradually add the hot, jet-black seafood broth into the rice, and stir with a wooden spoon until each ladleful of liquid is absorbed. Stir continually to allow the rice to absorb the broth. You cannot do this quickly, people. The idea is that slow incorporation of the liquid results in a lovely, creamy rice texture that is what makes risotto. Expect to stand and stir for about 30 minutes. It’s very Zen, actually.

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While you are stirring, heat the remaining three tablespoons of olive oil in a grill pan and when hot, grill the clams just a minute, then grill the shrimp until pink.

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Taste your risotto for texture and seasoning. You want it al dente – creamy but with a bit of a bite.

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Season with salt and pepper as needed and plate, first with a layer of black rice and then with the clams and shrimp. The taste of the blackest ocean is so salty and delicious on the tongue that you could drown in it.

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Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

~ foodinbooks ~ 13 Comments

So this was a totally bizarre, engrossing and freaky ride of a book. I haven’t read anything in quite awhile that literally hooked me from the first sentence and didn’t let go. I actually checked it out at the library and got three overdue notices because I wanted to read it slowly and savor it, and then read it over again. In fact, I ended up buying it for myself as a Christmas gift and thus far have read it a total of four times. So yes, you could say I love this book!

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Bardugo is an intense writer and I love her unique style with words. Visceral, irreverent yet serious, with occasional blasts of sick humor and an absolutely fascinating murder mystery, mixed with black magic, frat boy hijinks and one of the more uniquely loveable heroines in fiction and a wonderful world of magic set against an Ivy League university setting………such a bizarre premise that of course it works.

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Alex Stern has been given a second chance, both at life having survived a gruesome multiple murder and in academia having been chosen to attend Yale on a free ride. It turns out that her lifelong ability to see the spirits of the dead – Grays, as she calls them – is the very reason she is chosen to attend this legendary Ivy League college. She is picked to oversee the magic of the eight houses at Yale, to act as a guardian against any of the black magic being noticed or misused by these houses, and in her role as “Dante,” she is part of Lethe House, the eponymous ninth house. She acts as a type of apprentice to “Virgil,” who is Daniel Arlington when he’s at home, or Darlington, as he is more familiarly known.

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When Darlington mysteriously disappears during a magic ritual and when Alex discovers the murder of a town girl and finds connections with four of the eight magical houses, she sets out on a quest to find the murderer and becomes embroiled not just in a police procedural mystery but the real, nasty, dirty reality of the type of magic being practiced at Yale. Some of the houses cast spells of manipulation and perception, some raise the dead, some work with plants to create magical potions,  some can tell the future. Alex has taken to heart Darlington’s assessment that they are “shepherds,” meant to oversee and contain the magic and to protect innocent bystanders.

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I personally love a book that does not explain everything from the get-go and that basically sets up this alternate universe and expects you to follow along and learn as you go. That’s what Bardugo does in this book. She doesn’t stop to explain how this house came into being, why their magic works, why Alex can see Grays and how Alex came to end up at Yale after a youth filled with petty drug use, stealing and living with drug dealers. Rather, you find out in subtle flashbacks and that old “suspension of disbelief.” If you can let go and follow Bardugo into the world of magical fraternities, spirits of the dead, invisible hounds that protect sacred spaces, and ghosts who can possess the living, you will so not be disappointed.

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Darlington is watched over in his position of Virgil by “Oculus,” his cook/housekeeper/research assistant who also acts as a protector and source of information about the other houses….or as her real name goes, Dawes. She and Alex initially dislike each other on site and probably on principle, but they are united in their love for Darlington and desire to get him back, and their need to understand the supernatural. Early in the book, Virgil and Dante – Darlington and Alex – return to Darlington’s private house where Oculus – Dawes – has prepared them a meal to fortify them after all the magical goings-on of the evening, to the delight of Darlington.

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Dawes slid her headphones down to her neck “We have smoked salmon and egg and dill sandwiches.” “Dare I ask?” “And avgolemono.” “I’d say you’re an angel, but you’re so much more interesting.” Dawes clucked her tongue. “It’s not really a fall soup.” “It’s barely fall and there’s nothing more fortifying.”

I’d never made avgolemono soup before, that delicious, delicate yet filling Greek soup of chicken, rice and lemon made creamy with a tempered mix of eggs gently whipped into the hot soup, but I figured it was time to give it a whirl. I was very happy and honored to be given the method from Jessica, one of my favorite Instagram posters and food bloggers, who can be found on IG at @jesswhoamamma. You won’t be disappointed in her feed. Anyway, this is her method, which she got from her beloved yia-yia (grandmother) and which I am proud to share with you now.

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INGREDIENTS
1 3-lb organic chicken
1 cup white rice (I used Basmati)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3 large eggs
1 large lemon
1 cup ice-cold water
Salt and pepper to taste

METHOD
Put the chicken into a large stockpot filled with about a gallon of water. Boil for 1-2 hours, skimming fat and impurities from the surface. Once cooked, remove chicken from liquid and let cool.

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Drain the stock into a clean pot and put on to a low boil, and add the rice and the tablespoon of butter. Let cook, and once the rice is tender, remove from the heat and get on with the avgolemono.

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Separate the egg yolks from the whites.

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Add juice of half the lemon and a tablespoon of ice-cold water to the egg whites, and whisk until frothy and pale.

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Whisk the egg yolks together, then add to the egg white mixture and whisk again until well combined.

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One spoonful at a time, add some hot broth to the egg mixture and whisk madly. This is called tempering the eggs, and what it does is slowly brings them to soup temperature and makes them creamy. If you put the eggs directly into the hot soup, they would cook and become scrambled eggs, and you DO NOT want that.

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After about 6 spoonfuls of hot stock being slowly added and whisked into the egg mixture, you can now pour the entire bowlful of egg mixture into the hot soup.

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Shred the chicken, remove the skin, gristle, and bones, and add the meat to the soup. Simmer very gently on low until everything is creamy and combined. Adjust seasoning and add more salt, pepper or lemon to your taste.

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Heaven! Light, rich, delicate yet substantial, with that effervescent tang of lemon, this soup is actually perfect year-round and not just in the fall. Sorry, Dawes! Darlington was right!

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Food in Films – Star Wars: A New Hope

~ foodinbooks ~ 17 Comments

It’s the end of an era. Or at least, the official end of the Star Wars films. I haven’t actually seen the last film, but I have an idea of how it ends. Don’t spoil it for me in the comments! That being said, part of what I did to prepare for this end game was to watch the original trilogy over the weekend. I’d forgotten I had it and it was such a great trip down memory lane. I still remember seeing Star Wars: A New Hope for the very first time as a kid at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe. I was blown away, as I think every impressionable kid and teenager was at the time.

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It’s definitely a cultural icon, if you think about it. How many movie lines can you quote? I can probably quote all three of the original trilogy, so don’t watch with me if that irritates you. How many references to the film are part of our society? Endless references, I imagine, my favorite being when Ross fantasizes about Rachel in a Princess Leia costume on Friends. Can you imagine a world without Darth Vader’s ominous breathing, Luke Skywalker’s youthful naivete, Princess Leia’s iconic cinnamon-bun hairdo, Chewbacca’s growly yells, Han Solo’s swaggering arrogance, C3P0’s pedantic words, and of course, the great Obi-Wan Kenobi? I certainly can’t.

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Obi-Wan might be my favorite character in all the Star Wars films, besides R2-D2. There is just something about the classic archetype of the mentor figure that draws me. Characters like Gandalf the Grey, Professor Albus Dumbledore, Merlin the Wizard, and of course Obi-Wan, are so fascinating. The magician/wizard/mentor who guides the young knight in his quest to find the treasure is a classic trope in every culture.

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Having studied the Tarot for many years now, I also found wonderful parallels between Obi-Wan and the figure of the Magician in the Major Arcana. The Magician is symbolic of both earth and heaven, or the joining of the esoteric with the widely known, the shadow with the light. If Star Wars were a deck of Tarot cards, Obi-Wan would be the perfect embodiment of the Magician, being completely at one with The Force and at the same time, tied strongly to his physical life, demonstrated by the fact that he chooses to go into hiding until such time as he can play a role in the events of Luke’s life. I suppose the combination of the earthly and the divine attract me because, if you think about it, we as humans are all that combination of faulty humanity constantly struggling toward divine oneness with the Universe.

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Also, he has what, IMHO, is one of the most rad lines in the film series:

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The symbolism is also pretty interesting, too. Light versus dark, black versus white, The Force versus The Dark Side, the son overtaking the father……you see a lot of traditional Judeo-Christian imagery in the trilogy. If you want to stretch the analogy even further, you could argue that Obi-Wan, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker represent the Holy Trinity – Darth is the Father, Luke is the Son, and Obi-Wan is the Holy Spirit. There’s the whole story arc of rebirth and redemption, which is about as symbolic as you can get.

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I thought about what kind of food might be both fun and tasty to recreate for this latest Food in Films post. I considered blue Banta milkshakes; frog legs from the scene where Jabba the Hutt eats the frogs in the third film; Cornish game hens to stand in for the cute little Porg creatures; or even some kind of floaty fruit like what Anakin manipulates to try and impress Padmé in the Clone film, but being the dork that I am and loving a good food pun, I give you……..wait for it…………Obi-Wan Cannoli. You’re welcome.

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INGREDIENTS
6 cannoli shells
1 cup finely diced prosciutto or other ham
1 cup Ricotta cheese
Zest of one large lemon
1 cup shaved Parmesan cheese
Fresh mint and basil
1/2 cup capers, finely chopped

METHOD
Mix the finely chopped prosciutto with the Ricotta cheese until well combined.

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Add in the lemon zest and some sea salt, taste for seasoning and mix.

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Add in the Parmesan cheese and the mint and basil, and taste again. Adjust the seasoning as needed.

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Spoon the cheese mixture into a large plastic bag and refrigerate for an hour.

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Assemble your cannoli on a large platter.

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Snip a small hole in one corner of the plastic bag and squeeze the cheese filling into each end of each cannoli shell until each is filled, then garnish the ends with the chopped capers. Serve with marinara sauce for dipping and some good red wine, and know that The Force will be with you…….always.

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The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs

~ foodinbooks ~ 6 Comments

I thought it would be fun to blog about books I loved as a kid that also scared the crap out of me. I clean out books on a fairly regular basis because I buy so many of them, and I donate many to Little Free Libraries around my city. So while cleaning out my books the other day, I came across a stack of children’s and young adult books I’d kept for years and had some pleasant nostalgia when I saw The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs. It features the character Johnny Dixon, a young boy who lives with his grandparents in Duston Heights, Massachusetts, in the 1950s. He’s a bookworm, kind of nerdy, loves to read and loves radio drama, and loves chocolate. Well, we can all relate to that!

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Johnny is befriended by Professor Roderick Childermass, who is a hilarious character. He reenacts famous sea battles with plastic ships in his bathroom, is a professor of history who is extremely opinionated, plays chess like a wizard, and makes a mean chocolate cake. Naturally, he and Johnny become pals, which is fortunate because when Johnny discovers a mysterious book and a blue figurine in the cellar of his church that once belonged to the evil priest Father Remigius Baart, the curse comes back to haunt Johnny. A blue ushabti figurine – ushabti are small figures found in ancient Egyptian tombs with mummies usually representing servants expected to do certain agricultural labors required of the deceased in the land of the dead – contains the actual curse and when Johnny takes both the book and the figurine, all hell breaks loose.

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An example of ushabti figurines.

My edition also features the unique artwork of Edward Gorey, who I absolutely adore! Anyway, this book was a wonderful nostalgic trip down memory lane for me, taking me back to the days when I would sneak books under the covers and read by flashlight after my mom and stepdad had gone to bed and I was supposed to be asleep. I think I always particularly loved the friendship between Johnny and Professor Childermass, because I always was in search of an adult who would treat me as a peer and not a a kid, and these two definitely bond as friends over chess and chocolate. This is one of my favorite passages:

Johnny excused himself and went across the street. He had a great time that evening. The professor was a crafty and merciless chess player. He was every bit as good as Johnny was, and maybe even a bit better. As for the cake….well, Johnny had theories about chocolate cake. He felt that the cake part of the cake was just an interruption between the layers of frosting. As it turned out, the professor’s opinions about cake were similar to Johnny’s. The cake he served had three or four thin layers and the rest was a huge amount of good, dark, thick, fudgy frosting. And he served second helpings, too.

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In honor my sister’s birthday, I tried my hand at a four-tier, old-fashioned chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, with focus on the ganache frosting. I decorated it for Halloween, in honor of this high holy season of horror!

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INGREDIENTS FOR THE GANACHE FROSTING
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups dark chocolate chips, 70% cocoa solids
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Amaretto

METHOD
Make your cake tiers with whatever chocolate cake recipe you have to hand. Make sure they are completely cool before frosting them.

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In a metal saucepan, heat the heavy cream until small bubbles just start to form around the sides and you see steam rising. Don’t overheat the cream or it will curdle. Turn off the heat immediately.

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Pour in the chocolate chips and make sure they are covered by the hot cream. Add the almond extract, the vanilla extract and the Amaretto. Cover and let sit for 15 minutes.

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Remove the lid, and whisk the mixture for 5 minutes. You’ll see the chocolate ganache start to amalgamate as you continue to stir, thickening into a luscious frosting.

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One layer at a time, frost the top of each cake layer and stack them on a cake stand, until you have this magnificent layer cake. Proceed to frost the cake top and sides.

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Decorate however you want. I tried to find little blue mummies but could not, so I just went full on Halloween instead. The result? Cute, kitschy, and ultimately delicious!

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Just look at those fudgy layers! Johnny Dixon would be proud!

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The Godfather by Mario Puzo

~ foodinbooks ~ 20 Comments

I’m a bore on the topic of books vs. films, as I’ve been told many times, and I’d have to agree. Don’t get me started on whether the film version is better than the book, because I will wax poetic for a good hour or two about the merits of the book and how the book is ALWAYS better than the film. However, I must come clean and shamefacedly admit that I have never in my life read Mario Puzo’s masterpiece The Godfather. Until now, that is.

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I’ve seen the film, of course. Like 30 times. Possibly more. I own the trilogy, for God’s sake. I can quote the movie nearly line-by-line (another reason not to watch movies with me because I will irritate the shit out of you by doing that) and I will gladly debate the merits of that much-maligned film The Godfather III, because I personally think it has many hidden gems within it. Just try to ignore Sofia Coppola’s performance and give her a break…..she was young and there are worse actresses in the world.

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Unless you live under a rock, you know the storyline. The Corleone family patriarch, Vito, runs a crime syndicate in 1950s New York. He has three sons, Santino (Sonny), Frederico (Fredo), and Michael, and a daughter, Constanza (Connie.) All are very different, and Sonny is expected to take over the family business, but when he is executed Mafia-style and when Vito Corleone has an attempt made on his life, Michael takes over, becomes the Don and is far more cold and ruthless than his father ever could be.

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I was surprised at how removed the narration of the book was, though. It’s told from the third-person, but even from that remove, it is a very cold and clinically written book of a passionate family. The dichotomy was odd, though it worked extremely well because when you read the scenes of violence, murder, etc., the emotional remove makes them much more powerful. I was also surprised at how Michael’s Sicilian wife, Apolonia, was portrayed. In the film, she has very much a personality, flirtatious and passionate and quite funny, actually. In the book, she really isn’t given much character at all, beyond being this gorgeous, sexual creature that Michael falls passionately in love with and must possess, until she is, of course, killed in the car explosion meant for him.’

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In terms of food, I had initially planned to recreate the scene where Clemenza teaches Michael to make  homemade ragú sauce when Michael is in hiding before killing Sollozzo and McCluskey, frying the garlic, etc. It’s a classic food scene and I love nothing more than making tomato sauces because it’s so relaxing. But I then I read the scene where a pregnant Connie cooks a meal of veal with peppers for her dickwad husband Carlo, and when he tells her to fuck off, she loses her temper, smashes the dishes on the table, and he proceeds to beat the living hell out of her.

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“I’m not hungry yet,” he said, still reading the racing form. “It’s on the table,” Connie said stubbornly. “Stick it up your ass,” Carlo said. He drank off the rest of the whiskey in the water glass, tilted the bottle to fill it again. He paid no more attention to her. Connie went into the kitchen, picked up the plates filled with food and smashed them……..the loud crashes brought Carlo in from the bedroom. He looked at the greasy veal and peppers splattered all over the kitchen walls and his finicky neatness was outraged. “You filthy guinea spoiled brat……clean that up right now or I’ll kick the shit out of you.” And he does, using a belt and his fists.

Pretty awful, both in the book and the film clip above, but it did start me thinking about veal. I had never made veal saltimbocca and this seemed like an excellent way to honor the Corleone family. This method comes from the legendary Anna del Conte’s book Gastronomy of Italy, which in my opinion, is like the Bible of contemporary Italian cooking. Her method does involve making the veal into little rolls, or involtini, so my friend Luca Marchiori says these should be called vitello involtino.

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INGREDIENTS
10 thin veal veal cutlets
10 slices prosciutto
10 fresh sage leaves
1/2 cup flour, for dusting the veal
Salt and pepper to taste
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup white wine

METHOD
Lay out the veal cutlets on a flat surface.

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Place a strip of prosciutto and one sage leave atop each piece of meat.

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Roll up each veal cutlet and secure  with a toothpick to hold its shape.

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Mix salt and pepper into the flour, and dredge each veal roll in the seasoned flour.

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In a heavy skillet, heat the olive oil and melt the butter in it, and when hot and bubbly, add in five of the veal rolls, browning on each side. I estimate it was roughly 5 minute per side. Don’t crowd the frying pan because they won’t brown and your lovely $25.00 veal cutlets will have gone to waste. I’m too cheap to want that.

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Let cool and fry the other five rolls.

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Remove the last rolls from the still-hot pan, and pour in the white wine, whisking and letting it bubble until it thickens into a lovely, syrupy reduction sauce, about 10 minutes. Pour over the veal rolls. The smell is amazing!

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Et voila! Veal saltimbocca, or as my friend Luca Marchiori suggested, vitelli involtini since they are rolled. Whatever. They are absolutely, mouth-wateringly delicious!

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Serve with some lovely, buttery polenta and roasted red bell peppers….hence, veal and peppers! Just don’t throw the food across the room a la Connie Corleone.

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Food in Films – Amélie

~ foodinbooks ~ 25 Comments

I decided to do a little something different for this blog post. Many people have suggested different recipes or dishes to me that they saw in a film version of a movie, and I loved the idea but wanted to stick with my original concept of creating food either directly mentioned in a book or inspired by a book. However, my dear friend Jade gave me some delicious fresh plums from her tree, and I happened to reorganize my DVD collection over the weekend and came across one of my most favorite films of all time, Amélie. Or as it is titled in French, “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain.”

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I love love love this movie beyond most any other film I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot because I love films as much as I love books. Set in the beautiful Montmartre area of Paris, Amelie is a lovely young lady who has lived very much in her own little world since childhood, a world that started out with  teddy bear-shaped clouds, imaginary friends, and that childhood egomania where you believe that your actions affect things like world wars, sports outcomes, natural disasters, etc. This strange world was created as a result of being raised as an only child by two very neurotic parents, and this has essentially made her, even as an adult, stay enclosed and cocooned in this magical, if lonely, life she’s invented for herself.

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A chance discovery of a child’s treasure hidden for years in her apartment that she is successfully able to return to its owner causes a chain reaction of events, both in the lives of those around her as well as herself. She starts doing small deeds of goodwill for other people but in some amazingly unusual ways, like taking a blind man through a visual tour of Montmartre, romantically connecting two regulars at the cafe where she is a waitress, putting together “fake” posthumous letters for the grieving widow whose husband abandoned her, taking her father’s garden gnome and having him send photos of himself traveling the world to inspire her widowed father to get out and experience the world, and my personal favorite, befriending her unusual neighbor who cannot leave his apartment due to a very odd medical condition that makes his bones so frail that the slightest bump will injure him.

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Amelie is a very personal film for me, because I can so much relate to her character. I live very much in my own mind most of the time, and it can be hard to connect romantically, perhaps because I’ve been so hurt. I know we all have been hurt by love, and other people seem to have such an easy time reconnecting after relationship break-ups. Sometimes I feel like a freak because I’ve had such a hard time. It would be wonderful to meet someone and connect with them, but at the same time, I don’t want to be with someone just to be with someone. I want a special connection with someone, and if that’s not meant to be, that’s ok, but I also don’t want to settle for someone I don’t truly have special feelings for. As my Nana Jean used to say in Spanish “mejor sola que mala acompañada.” Better alone than in bad company.

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I think Amélie is somewhat the same. She is such an unusual and unique creature that she needs to find someone as unusual and unique as she is. When she meets Nino Quicampoix……well, “meets” is maybe not the word for it. She sees him collecting torn-up photos from underneath photo booths in metro centers and finds this so oddly charming that she immediately concocts an entire story for his life and why he collects the photos. When she finds his scrapbook of all these photos put back together, she goes on a quest to find him and return it to him, wanting to meet him but at the same time so frightened to meet him in person and engage with him in real life that she creates these elaborate intersections where their paths cross but they never really connect due to her fear of him not liking her as she is. I can relate to that so very much that it’s almost frightening.

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So there were two food’n’flix moments I thought of recreating. The first is early in the film when the narrator is talking about Amelie’s love of small pleasures, such as dipping her hand into a barrel of dried beans, finding shapes in clouds, and breaking a crème brûlée with a spoon (and which is a very underrated pleasure!) The other is at the end, when Nino comes to find her baking a plum cake in her apartment and imagining their life together. It’s such a sweetly beautiful moment when she finally lets him in and he kisses her, after all of her own self-doubts and fear of connection to another person. I opted to go with the plum cake due to having been given a large bag of them fresh from my friend Jade’s tree, and the fact that I don’t have a torch to make the requisite crust on a crème brûlée….and who the hell makes a crème brûlée without a crust you can break with a spoon? Not this girl! So a luscious plum cake, spiced with crushed cardamom and made tenderly delicious with some vanilla Greek yogurt was what it had to be.

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INGREDIENTS
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon crushed cardamom pods mixed into 1 cup vanilla Greek yogurt
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pound plums, pitted and quartered

METHOD
Heat the oven to 375F and mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a bowl.

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In the bowl of your most awesome red Kitchen Aid mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar  until fluffy.

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Add the egg and vanilla and mix on low.

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Gradually add in the flour mixture, mixing slowly, and alternate with a spoonful of the cardamom-spiked vanilla yogurt until all is smooth and combined. The batter will be thick, and that is what you want.

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Butter a 9-inch springform baking pan and pour in the thick batter, smoothing with a spatula.

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Arrange the sliced plums on top, skin-side up, in a circle so that they cover most of the batter, and sprinkle over the remaining two tablespoons of sugar.20190826_112910

Bake for 60 minutes, checking at the 45 minute mark, or until golden brown on top. Make sure the center has set and completely baked, then let cool, and serve with a dollop of whipped cream and a smidgen of whimsical romance. Vive la France!

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The Investigative Paranormal Society Cookbook by Charles French

~ foodinbooks ~ 31 Comments

French has a wonderful blog – here’s the link – that I follow and enjoy so very much, in addition to his first book Maledicus: The Investigative Paranormal Society, which I blogged about last year. The book is the story of three older gentlemen who form a paranormal group and go ghost-hunting, only to find that there are spirits and specters more terrifying in life and death than they ever would have thought possible. They do battle with the titular character Maledicus, a wonderfully evil and thoroughly nasty and despicable spirit who was just as bad when he was alive, and it is overall a wonderful, fast-paced and adventuresome book.

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Being a book and food aficionado and having combined these two in my own blog, I was very pleased with the number of cooking and foodie references in Maledicus, and was happy to see that Charles French had decided to pay homage to his characters and their love of food and create this cookbook filled with delicious recipes from the characters in the book. What I like about French’s characters is that they are all so different and yet have the same love of cooking, though they all create different types of cuisine based on their own lifestyles, backgrounds, and abilities. The main character, Roosevelt Franklin, is a widower whose wife Sarah passed away. She was quite the gourmet cook, often making him lots of delectable meals that he would never attempt after her death, missing her so terribly as he does. It’s odd, because although Sarah is dead, she is as much a character in death as anyone else in the book.

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This marvelous little cookbook has such culinary delights as Carrot Cake, Grape and Walnut Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing, Chicken Parmigiana, Quiche Lorraine, and other yumminess, all made by the various other characters in the book. Two main characters and the other two original members of the Investigative Paranormal Society, Jeremy Roche and Sam Sadlowski, are also quite good cooks in their own ways, though rather different in their methods. Jeremy is much more refined than Sam, who’s a retired police officer and whose tastes run to the Hungarian classics of his own family background. Two of the recipes I most wanted to try in this book are both Sam’s.

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I limit my carbohydrate intake most of the time, so I decided to make Sam’s Hungarian Green Beans and Chicken Paprikash, omitting the noodles or rice that traditionally go with this type of dish, and the green beans provided a very nice contrast. The only things I did differently were to add some lemon and more salt to the green beans and cut down the sour cream and heavy cream somewhat to make it lighter; and to use red bell peppers and smoked paprika for the Chicken Paprikash, simply because I prefer their flavors instead.

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INGREDIENTS
For the Chicken Paprikash:
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, preferably organic
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 red bell peppers, cored, seeded and chopped into long slices
2 onions, peeled and diced
1 pound mushrooms, sliced
2 14-oz. cans crushed tomatoes
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
2 cups sour cream

For the Hungarian Green Beans:
2 lbs fresh green beans, trimmed
1 large onion, sliced
3 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1/4 cup paprika
1 generous tablespoon lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

METHOD
Poach the chicken for 10 minutes, then pat dry, before shredding.

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In a dutch oven, heat the olive oil and add half the smoked paprika so that the oil looks red, and saute the vegetables for 10 minutes.

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Add the canned tomatoes, a dash of salt and pepper, and stir again to mix. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed with more paprika, salt or pepper.

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Add the chicken chunks, cover and simmer on low for up to 2 hours.

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After 1 and 1/2 hours, add in the sour cream and taste again. Let heat, but don’t let the cream curdle.

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During the last half-hour of the Paprikash’s cooking, par-boil the green beans for two minutes in salted water, then immediately blanch in ice water. You want them still a bit crunchy and with their green color intact.

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Saute the onion in a bit of oil and some salt, until softened and slightly starting to caramelize. Just keep an eye on it and keep stirring.

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Mix together the heavy cream, the sour cream and the paprika, and add in the cooled green beans.

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Add in the sauteed onions and the paprika, stir to mix well, and taste. Add the lemon juice here as well as the salt and pepper, and taste. Adjust seasoning as needed. NOTE: this is rather bland so I would recommend more salt and more lemon, for certain.

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Serve together, and enjoy with a nice, full-bodied red wine like Pinot Noir or Cabernet Sauvignon, and toast the culinary genius of Sam Sadlowski! And a most sincere thank-you to Charles F. French, who created these wonderful characters and recipes. Check out his blog and give the man some love and kudos! And a huge thank you to Charles French for writing this wonderful cookbook and giving me much more cooking inspiration! If you get a chance, head over to his awesome blog and show him and his writing some extra love and attention!

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