vineyard in tuscany

Ferenc Maté has been writing for years; this book is from 2007 but the time period it recalls is closer to the 1990s I think, after Maté and his wife moved from New York to Tuscany, and bought a small house near the vineyards with their young son. After staying in that small house, becoming friends with their neighbors--who operated their own small vineyard--Maté became enamored with the idea of owning his own vineyard. A Vineyard in Tuscany: A Wine Lover's Dream is his love letter to Tuscany's wine making culture and history, and is his story about how his dreams came true.

Organized in a mostly chronological order, this book follows the Maté family's journey from wine lovers to wine makers. The text appears to be based on Maté's diary entries from the period when the story takes place. The notes aren't complete enough to form an entire story arc, but enough to help you follow along. Its a curated glimpse into the origins of the Maté Winery, which is by all accounts, a very successful, small, family run winery.

Many chapters of the book are stand alone stories and anecdotes related to their search for and eventual purchase of a collapsing ancient villa, its restoration, the clearing and preparing of the fields, the planting of vines, to their first run of wines. They had a lot of expert help in all of these endeavors, and it seems to have cost a pretty penny. Maté acknowledges the help he received through stories and in explicit thanks in the back matter. The back matter also includes a number of recipes of the simple foods Maté raves about in the book. My guess is that you'll really need to have local ingredients to make them taste the way he describes them, but it can't hurt to try! one of these recipes is cooked on burning grape vines. yeah, hold my wine whilst I grab some of my vineyard trimin's

If I had to guess, this book appears to have been roughly outlined by Maté and then given to his editor along with the copies of his journal entries for polishing. I may be wrong, but if that's the case, then perhaps the editor deserves more credit. I have no evidence of that however, and it could just be that this book was meant to read like it does; a relaxed, slightly disorganized, free associative remembrance of a wonderful time in the author's younger life with his family.

A fun book to read before a trip to Italy, for sure.

unexpected guest

...and some catch-up.

I'm on the last day of my vacation and I finished a few books before I left, and then read three on vacation, so... catch-up. In order of reading, for me more than you, most likely exclusively for me I need to get down my thoughts about:

An Unexpected Guest
You Suck
Friends of the Dusk
The Magician's Tale [UPDATE]*
Astray
Past Tense

The more recent reads will follow on in short order, but now, we're at An Unexpected Guest by Anne Korkeakivi. According to the bio on the book jacket, Korkeakivi has lived in France and Finland, and is now, or was at the time this was written (2012), in Switzerland, married to a UN lawyer. To me, that means writing about the intrigues of diplomatic life is probably not too much of a stretch. It also seems pretty clear that Korkeakivi enjoys food as it is woven lovely into this tale.

This is not a big novel--less than 300 pages--and it moves along pretty quickly, taking place over the span of just a few days in Paris. Clair Moorhouse is an American married to a British diplomat, who discovers that she needs to step up with very little notice, to play host with her husband for a small group of people. Clair spends her time planning the dinner, while all of the other things in her life, and suddenly her past, come swirling into view demanding her attention.

The story revolves around Moorhouse's ability to keep all the balls in the air when it seems certainly that she can't handle one more thing to happen. Life seems to conspire against her success in ways that seem both human and real. Korkeakivi does a job job of knitting those things together, following Moorhouse as she plans, dodges, reevaluates, puts out fires, retools, and moves ahead, making it clear that even though her husband sees his job as critical and complex, his wife's is just as much, and at time more so.

Its always fun to read a book written by someone with a different perspective. Korkeakivi's time overseas hasn't given her the voice of a foreign writer, but an American writer with a European influence is probably a good way to put it. I enjoyed the tension, the intrigue, the dark secrets, and the sumptuous foodie details.



* UPDATE: I found a picture on my phone of this book that I borrowed from the house were were staying in.

essential ingredients

The School of Essential Ingredients is the first novel by Erica Bauermeister, which I picked up in paperback at my library's on-going book sale. Lillian owns a small restaurant in a quiet neighborhood, tucked into a old house with a front porch and small gardens in the yard, where she mixes flowers with herbs she uses in the kitchen. Once a week, Lillian hosts a cooking class, on Mondays when the restaurant is closed. The story opens with Lillian, and why she got into cooking, what she thinks it did for her, and how she thinks that it may help others to connect or re-connect with people, feelings, memories, and their own sense.

Each of the following chapters is focused on one of her students in this particular class, what their history is, what they bring to the class and its explorations of flavor, memory, confidence, and connectedness. Lillian sees food as more than sustenance, she sees it as one of the essential ingredients in life. The point seems to be, that there are a number of things that we as human do throughout our lives, maybe even most of our lives (such as work) which are really essential to human life. What we need is food, water, air, and in some or most cases shelter, clothes, and to procreate. That's it. Of that short list, only food gives us the opportunity to dazzle all of our senses, or perhaps just comfort them.

The cooking class is not really about food--although the descriptions of the food and the cooking are well done, and help form the backbone on which this sweet story is about. This story is about the people in it, and how slowing down and allowing their senses to indulge can help unlock other feelings they may not have been allowing themselves to have.

It was an interesting, and sensual look at what simple pleasures can do for us, and how they may not be so simple after all. This is a great first book, and I bet was popular with the book club folks, and cooking clutch folks as well.

lion for easter

So for those of you who don't know, I typically try to predict whether or not March will actually go out like a lamb, and I usually make the call around the 15th ides of march, right?

Given that I can cheat my way through by waiting until the middle of the month, I'm typically pretty good at guessing, but this year, because Wednesday is no longer Prince Spaghetti Day in the Boston area, its Nor'easter Day, I blew it.

The bet I made this year is: If I'm right we'll have lamb for Easter. no brainer But if I'm wrong we'll have lion. Little did I know how difficult it would be to make good on this bet. Its really difficult to find lion meat, as it is (of course) illegal, but I did find a source on line you have to dig pretty deep and took a ride to Vermont yesterday to meet a guy who brought it over the border from Canada. Don't think its legal in Canada either, but I didn't ask a lot of questions. I won't say any more, as I'm sure that the guy I met with isn't looking for publicity.

So, one squishy package into a cooler in the trunk, and some last-minute advice to try juniper berries to help with the gaminess from my guy really, where the hell am I going to find those? and I'm off home to try and cook this stuff up. I've had it in a brine all night, with salt, peppercorns, vinegar, bayleaf, and rosemary (which I read on line is a pretty good substitute for juniper berries.)

It just went into the oven to slow roast for dinner, I'm going to deglaze the pan with gin, which is flavored with juniper berries! I hope it comes out good! In any case, I'm glad its April.

Happy Easter everyone!

sour apples

This is not the kind of book I normally read, but this copy of Sour Apples came to me through an interesting connection. My office had a booth at this year's New England Library Association conference in Sturbridge, Mass, and just across the aisle from us was a booth for Sisters in Crime New England, who had a number of their authors there during the conference, signing books and doing give-aways.

During a slow point, a woman from the Sisters in Crime came over to say hello and ask about the new public library we had designed for Granby, Mass. The woman was Sheila Connolly, the author of Sour Apples, and she told me that some of her stories were based in a fictional Massachusetts town, called Granford, modeled on Granby.

Connolly knew a lot about Granby from her research, and was very interested to hear about the library design. We also talked about some of the other buildings in town, including the buildings owned by the Historical Society.

On the last day of the conference, she gave us a copy of her book, telling us it was one of those set in Granby's fictional counterpart.

Sour Apples is a murder mystery set in a small town, where things like murder don't seem to be possible. Meg Corey is somewhat new in town, and has taken over her family's recently restored apple orchard, and is making a go of it as a farmer. When Meg hears that a local dairy farmer was found dead next to a partially milked cow, some things just don't add up, so she decides to look into it herself, with some help from her beau, Seth, one of the local selectmen.

The mystery unfolds bit-by-bit as Meg digs into it, and even though the local police think she's on a wild goose chase, she sticks with it, and helps to uncover the truth.

This book was fun to read, and not just because it was fun to pick out the places in town I've seen or been to. Connolly has an easy-to-read writing style, which I'm guessing may be fueled by coffee. (Meg loves coffee, she must have made two pots a day for a week!) There are even recipes in the back, including something called Apple Custard Cake. I bet it goes great with coffee

Thanks to Sheila Connolly for this book! It was nice to meet you, and make sure you come to the grand opening of the new library.

kitchen confidential - i

Kitchen Confidential is written by Anthony Bourdain, now host of the Travel Channel Show, No Reservations. I've never seen that show, but I did see him a few times in his Food Network show called A Cook's Tour, which is also the name of a book published in 2001. I gather he wrote that book while on the tour filming the TV show.

This the first book I've read by Bourdain, but he's written a few. Amazon lists 9 titles. Bourdain's writing style is infectious and fun. He talks to his readers like we're all standing next to him at a barbecue, and he's telling war stories. His advise is the kind you'd give a friend, the kind of friend who can take a joke, absorb the criticism and see the value and humor borne by years of experience. You know what they say about the heat in the kitchen.

My first job was in a mid-sized, family owed restaurant in my hometown. My second job was cooking for worldwide burger chain, whose logo wasn't for Mmm good. My third job was at the Hilltop Steak House, when Frank Giuffrida was still the owner. All three of these jobs were eye-opening experiences, and while I can't pretend to know what its like to cook for a profession, I do know that Bourdain tells it like it is in the kitchen.

In the intro, he tells us that this book is for the cooks, and so he hasn't provided definitions for terms like chiffonaded parsley, boudin noir and soufflé blah blah blah, that dot his stories, but it doesn't detract from the pleasure of reading them. I have this feeling, that if I could understand all these terms (I looked a bunch of them up, and got nowhere with my dictionary) I'd learn a lot about cooking, but as he says: tant pis, man.

I'm about a third of the way through this one, and I'm thinking about what else of his to read. And I've GOT to get my brother and his wife to read this, if they haven't already.

More soon!

PS: Between the three, eat at the Hilltop.