Tripping to Sicily on a Leopard

Looking Sicilian

On Friday night ten people gathered at Casa Aquino to discuss Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard and to eat a Sicilian spread. I think we were unanimous in our love for the novel, and the food disappeared, so I believe everyone was happy. Before I post pictures and the menu and have your attention, I wonder if you might hear me out about an idea I have of making this Books & Bakes literary and food salon an online business as well. What I'm thinking is a website where one can download the whole package -- the book suggestion, discussion questions and background/supplemental material and links, a full menu for the accompanying meal and recipes to download with links to where products can be found or ordered. You would, basically, be able to have a literary and food salon of your own, wherever you are and with whomever you'd like to invite, and I'd provide you with everything except, obviously, my physical presence. I'd appreciate your comments and suggestions for how much you'd pay for something like that. Given the constraints of caregiving, I am really trying to get creative with freelance work, so this might be a possibility.

Let me know.

In other news, I am going to Sicily with my sisters, cousin and father next weekend. My father turned 80 years old last April, and we decided that we'd like to take him to the old country. We'll be going to Sicily first because we've never been, but then we're headed to Calabria and the town where our family began. I am not sure what kind of internet service I will have while away, nor will I know if I can post from my phone, but if I'm gone for ten days, you'll know why. I'll take lots of pictures, in any case and post them on Instagram, if you'd like to check out my feed there.

Here's the menu from Friday night and some photos, excepting the dried fava bean soup, homemade cannoli and vanilla ice-cream. I forgot to take pictures of those! I would like to give a shout-out to my cousin Danielle who lived in Sicily for years and helped me with the menu. I ordered genuine Sicilian products from Gustiamo, a wonderful Italian food distributor where she works and highly recommend the outrageously delicious Sicilian extra-virgin olive oil and Sicilian sea salt. OMG, as the kids say.

BOOKS & BAKES

September 30, 2016

The Leopard

By Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”

MENU

Campari and Blood Orange Soda

Caponata

Polipetti Murati

Slow-Cooked Octopus with Estratto and Wine

Bessara

Sicilian Dried Fava Bean Soup

Pesto alla Trapanese with Busiate Pasta

Insalata di Lenticche con Menta e Scorzetta di Arancia

Lentil Salad with Mint and Orange Zest

Citrus Salad with Anchovies and Black Olives

Cannoli

Vanilla Ice-Cream with Sicilian Olive Oil and Sea Salt

Big Ole Pan of Caponata

Caponata and Italian Flatbread

Insalata di Lenticche

Citrus Salad of Blood Oranges, Oranges and Grapefruit with Anchovies and Sicilian Black Olives

Polipetti Murati

Pesto alla Trapanese with Busciati Pasta

A Moveable Feast Chez Moi

Last night nine beautiful people came over to my house to discuss Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, drink an aperitif and good wine and eat a meal that I prepared.

If ya'll haven't read A Moveable Feast, you should -- particularly if you're a writer or a lover of wine or food or Paris. I practically ate the book itself, and I've never been a Hemingway-lovah.

Here's my menu:

Chambery Cassis

(vermouth, creme de cassis and soda water)

Pissaladiere

Puff Pastry with Caramelized Onions, Anchovies and Black Olives

Camembert with Crackers

Soupe au Pistou

(Hearty vegetable soup with pesto)

Coq au Vin

Endive Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

French Apple Tart with Creme Fraiche

Sorry about the lack of appropriate French accents on my menu -- I can't figure out how to do those things on my Mac.

Here are some pictures:

I have to say that my French Apple Tart was the piece de resistance (without accents that looks really, really bad). I don't bake as much as I used to, and while I trained under some amazing pastry chefs in New York City, it's been some time. I've forgotten how much I love to make pastry dough and assemble something beautiful. Like other good things happening in my life,  classic pastry is at my fingertips. I apparently haven't lost my touch and I'm grateful for that. A moveable feast --

Oh la la.

Books & Bakes Re-Cap

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup

Last night a group met at my house to discuss Magda Szabo's novel The Door and eat Hungarian food prepared by my old friend Erika. I think we all agreed that the book was wonderful and the meal outstanding. The novel is about the complicated relationship between a peasant woman and an intellectual writer, taking place in the sixties in communist Hungary. Erika, a native Hungarian, informed us of the novel's distinct "Hungarian-ness," but each of us found something to relate to whether it was female friendship, the role of caretaker and receiver, the complexities of mother/daughter relationships and even that of writing and material. The book was written in the 1980s and only recently translated into English, but The New York Times included it on their list of the Ten Best Books of 2015. It's a short book, but I think most of us at Books & Bakes would recommend it.

Now, the menu. Good Lord, ya'll. Not only is Erika a beautiful writer, a Caretaker Extraordinaire of a beautiful little girl with severe disabilities, but damn. She can also cook. I milled around the kitchen a bit before acquiescing entirely to her skill and concentration preparing authentic Hungarian dishes. I won't divulge that the night before I had attempted to make a traditional Hungarian pastry that I had to throw in the garbage and left me in tears. I thought I'd lost my touch, but Erika assured me that the recipe I was using was at fault. Perhaps that's true, but I think that I have too many proverbial frying pans on the fire and have just lost my mind. I guess I just divulged that.

Here's the menu:

Mulled Wine forralt bor
Cheese Biscuits Pogacsa

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup Meggyleves
Meat-filled Crepes Hortobagyi husos palacsinta
Mushroom-filled Crepes
Chicken Paprikash Paprikas csirke
Mushroom Paprikash Gombaporkolt
Hungarian Cucumber Salad Uborkasalata
Dumplings Galuska
Hungarian Pickles

Assorted Traditional Hungarian Pastries

Lacrosse and Weekend Recap

Henry and I left Friday afternoon for Palm Springs where he played about seven thousand games of lacrosse while I watched.

Here are a couple of good action shots. Henry is the one on the far left at the edge of the photo, number 15.

Here's another one:

Here's me, watching the field. I have a really shitty sports-mom chair that is sort of broken, and because it was Palm Springs, and the sun was shining mercilessly at times, I rigged my sweater as a sun shield and hid out.

Normally, I wouldn't post such an alarmingly close photo of myself, but I sort of like the weirdness of the colors -- my upper lip has entirely disappeared into what appears to be lily-white skin (that I've never had), there's an enormous line running down the center of my forehead (that I've had for a short time, but it appears to have lengthened and deepened), and some horrifying crepey substance below my neck which I swear to you is NOT my skin. All moles (beauty marks) and errant eyebrow hairs are original. Posting this here is a rather vain attempt to purge myself of vanity. Humor me.

I also got to do my favorite thing which is to sleep in a hotel bed made up with white linens. I threw myself down onto this bed on both nights we stayed in the hotel, eventually making my way under the duvet with my little chapter of War and Peace (yes, I'm still going strong with a chapter a day, are you?) and then a few pages of Magda Szabo's The Door (my Books & Bakes selection for January) before literally crashing around 9:15. Henry, I believe, watched television from his own bed and claimed that I snored. Good thing he's so handsome. Here he is taping his lacrosse stick.

Here's a photo that I took at sunrise from the balcony of our hotel room, where I most certainly did not snore:

In all seriousness, being the parent to a teenaged boy is really the best, especially when your son is nearly always charming and patient, drives well on southern California freeways and never complains. All of the superlatives more than make up for having to charade as a sports mom which means yelling out every now and then in excitement, wincing when said teenager goes sprawling into the ground, tolerating the Screaming Dads and every now and then throwing in a comment or observation about the game which appears out of my mouth like a sort of cartoon bubble. Since I barely know any of the other parents on the team (there are actually some really great ones this time around), I imagine they think I know what I'm talking about, but I can assure you, Reader, I absolutely do not know what I'm talking about when I talk about lacrosse.

What happened up there is that Henry came running toward me -- I mean, the player with the ball -- and I was able to take that amazing action shot. Two seconds later, he lay sprawled on the ground, and good lacrosse mom that I am, I barely winced and certainly didn't gasp and might have even yelled at the ref, but I can't remember.

Did I say anything about living in southern California and how fantastic it is? This venue was just a two hour drive from us -- desert and blue skies and snow-capped mountains ringing the fields. Whoa. Right?

Right Ho Jeeves!

We had a lovely night on Friday at my monthly Books & Bakes salon. We had read P.G. Wodehouse's novel Right Ho Jeeves, and because several of the attendees were die-hard Wodehouse lovers and the rest of us had never cracked one open, it was a lively discussion with lots of laughs. My friend Allen had just returned from a nine-month stint at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, so he cooked our traditional French meal. His husband Craig brought wine, as did several of the other guests, and between the champagne cocktails, the rich food and French whites and reds, we were all pretty happy by the end of the evening. I bought Christmas crackers given the British setting and made placecards for each person with the name of a character from the book. It was easy to go all out when someone was making all the food.

Here's Allen preparing something:

Here's Oliver peeling pearl onions, a thankless task that he did in tears.

Here's the Green Bean Soup, my favorite dish, and one plated so beautifully in Allen's interesting soup bowls:

Here's the main course: Breast of Chicken Agnes Sorel (you can read the scandalous story about her in my previous post) with rice and wild mushrooms, glazed butternut squash, carrots and pearl onions:

I know the quality of that photo is poor, but those are asparagus sprigs on top of the chicken, and the sauce is a traditional Madeira. Everything was delicious and cooked perfectly! I felt blasted back into my days as a commis at Lespinasse in New York City where I worked for nearly two years doing ridiculous high end food for an insane chef. Allen is the total opposite!

I did make the dessert -- a Cranberry and Raspberry Vacherin. It's basically two discs of meringue, layered with whipped cream and a compote of fresh raspberries and cranberries. It's tart and sweet and crunchy and soft, all at once, and is one of my most favorite holiday desserts:

Reader, how was your weekend?

Chocolate and Dirty Martinis

Jean-Étienne Liotard: La Chocolatiere, 1743-1745

I could stare at that portrait all night long. The pink of her cap and cheeks, the folds in her apron, the tray with the cup of chocolate and clear water. How do people paint like that? I read about Jean-Etienne Liotard in this article and wish I could go to Scotland and look at the other portraits. I've never been to Scotland. Have you? Actually, the exhibit is now in London. I've never been to London, either. Have you? Liotard, the painter, is Swiss-French. I've been to the French part of Switzerland, and I've been to France. Have you?

Reader, what's new?


This is what I'm reading:

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse is the book that we're discussing this Friday at my Books & Bakes literary salon. I've got a friend who's just finished a nine-month stint at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris helping to cook the meal. It's going to be a good one!

Fighting God by David Silverman is a non-fiction book that some publicist asked me to read and perhaps review on the old blog. It's sub-titled An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World. I don't think I've ever read an atheist manifesto, so I'm curious. Stay tuned.


I saw the new James Bond movie on Friday night. It was the usual fun with one too many weird dystopian torture scenes. Missing more fun and  wishing for less dark and weird dystopian torture scenes makes me seem old, no? But Daniel Craig in his tight suits that hearken back to the 1960s makes me feel young, yes. I love Daniel Craig. Dirty vodka martini this time, still shaken, not stirred. I love a dirty martini, too.

I'd put on a pink cap and rouge up my cheeks, bring Daniel Craig as Bond some chocolat on a tray, too. You?

Looking Together United Them

I decided to serve dinner at the table for this month's Books & Bakes. One of the consummate scenes in Virgnia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is the dinner where all the family and boarders are gathered round the table and Marthe serves the boeuf en daube and Mrs. Ramsay thinks her thoughts and Virgina Woolf so brilliantly mines the mind, the female mind and writes them down for us in a sort of epic of the domestic.

... of grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, of Neptune's banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine leaves over the shoulder of Bacchus (in some picture), among the leopard skins and the torches lolloping red and gold...Thus brought up suddenly into the light it seemed possessed of great size and depth, was like a world in which one could take one's staff and climb hills, she thought, and go down into valleys, and to her pleasure (for it brought them into sympathy momentarily) she saw that Augustus too feasted his eyes on the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting to his hive. That was his way of looking, different from hers. But looking together united them.

The boeuf en daube did indeed take three days to prepare, but most of that was done in the fridge where it marinated. I used my friend Cara Nicoletti's recipe from her blog Yummybooks. *

And she must take great care, Mrs. Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass, to choose a specially tender piece for William Bankes. And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savoury brown and yellow meats and its bay leaves and its wine, and thought. This will celebrate the occasion -- a curious sense rising in her, at once freakish and tender, of celebrating a festival, as if two emotions were called up in her, one profound -- for what could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the same time, these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.

"It is a triumph," said Mr. Bankes, laying his knife down for a moment. 

We had the above boeuf en daube (prepared, literally, over three days), French Cheese and Crackers, Parsnip Soup, Mussels in Cider, Apple, Kohlrabi and Celery Salad with Walnut Oil Vinaigrette, Savoy Cabbage with Caraway and Cider and French Apple Cake for dessert.**

Cheers with Calvados!








Oh, and while we're looking together, here's my son Henry before the Homecoming dance. I think we can be united here -- however superficially so -- on the dash of this kid. Lest you think he's all beef, I assert that the beauty is as much on the inside as out.

* Cara is an adorable, kick-ass butcher and baker and writer and has just published a gorgeous book about food and literature called Voracious.   I'll forgive her ambivalence about Virginia Woolf because -- well -- you need to go out right now and buy it (and read the acknowledgements).

* I got many of the recipes from the delightful Seattle cookbook: A Boat,  a Whale & a Walrus. The French Apple Cake, especially, was amazing.

Stepping Out of the Eddy

I wish you all could come to next week's Books & Bakes salon. I'm reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse for perhaps the bazillionth time and discovering that it's even more amazing than it was the last time. It might be one of those books that illuminate your present no matter your past. It does for me. I'll be making what Mrs. Ramsay serves at the dinner party around which the book revolves, but I won't tell you what it is -- honestly, if you want to get into the great woman hive-mind, you should read this novel.

When doors slam, they slam and I jump.

But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates making white circles on it. "William, sit by me," she said. "Lily," she said, wearily, "over there." They had that -- Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle -- she, only this -- an infinitely long table and plates and knives. At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning. What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him. She had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy -- there -- and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of it. It's all come to an end, she thought, while they came in one after another, Charles Tansley -- "Sit there, please," she said -- Augustus Carmichael -- and sat down. And meanwhile she waited, passively, for some one to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not a thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says.

Lutefisk Love

So, have ya'll ever had lutefisk? I ordered a pound of it from a Norwegian food company in Minnesota and girded my loins to open the bag when it came on Friday afternoon. J. Ryan Stradal's book Kitchens from the Great Midwest describes the processing and cooking of this traditional food in detail, and it wasn't good. In an interview with the author, he compares the taste to what he imagines aquarium water to be. I'm not sure about aquarium water, but the moment I cut open the bag, I smelled fish and not the good, clean smell of fish. The texture of the filets was spongy -- grossly so -- and later, when I'd roasted it in the oven, it seemed more like jelly than fish. A couple of brave souls tasted it, declared it okay, but fishy, and one woman suggested I crumble it into balls, roll it in Panko and fry it.

I threw it away when everyone left.

So that's my lutefisk experience -- apologies to all Norwegians who hold it close to their hearts.

Other than the lutefisk, we had a really lively discussion about the novel with nearly everyone agreeing that it needed a bit more character development but was otherwise entertaining and a good read. Given how light it was, though, I'm tempted to suggest a heavier one for October and am floating around To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. That's probably one of my top three favorite novels and has an incredible dinner party scene that I could replicate for Books & Bakes. What do you think? Anyone out there have any suggestions for next month's book? Please leave a note in the comments if you do.

Here's the menu from Friday night. All food, except for the caramel ice-cream, was mentioned in the book. A few of the recipes even came from the book!

Margaritas

Wisconsin Cheese and Crackers

Lutefisk

Summer Corn Chowder

Caesar Salad with Croutons

Vegetarian Lasagna

Pork Shoulder Tacos with Mint

Black Beans and Feta

Heirloom Tomato Salsa

Apple Crisp

Homemade Caramel Ice Cream

Celeste's Mud Bars

Books & Bakes

My little sister Jennifer is here visiting. She's got that thing, that touch, that know what you're doing as far as arranging a wall of paintings, throwing cool fabric over old furniture kind of thing. That's what she's been doing all day.

Tonight is my monthly Books & Bakes salon. Saint Mirtha had an unexpected emergency, so I'm going a little nutso in the kitchen. I'll post my menu and all that good stuff later tonight or tomorrow morning, if I'm still alive. We read J. Ryan Stradal's novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest. It was an entertaining read with great food scenes. Lutefisk is involved. Look that up and try to imagine this one-half Italian, one-quarter Syrian and one-quarter Scotch English gal serving it.

I hope your Friday is going well. It's still hot as hell here in southern California. Thank the good lord Jesus for air-conditioning.

Serial Killers and Box Lacrosse

Henry had his first box lacrosse game of the season this afternoon. That's him right there in the middle. Whew. Box lacrosse is scary to watch. I wasn't made for watching rough sports and wonder what sort of karma I'm enacting (is that what you say?) as not a single one of my children really likes to read. Honestly, I dreamed of one day being a sort of Marmie, sharing my favorite books with my brood. Instead, I find myself standing on the highest bleacher in a hockey rink, watching my boy slam himself into walls and others into the ground, all while running and waving a stick with a really hard, small ball. While the other parents yell and cheer and catcall the ref, I wince at every thud. My favorite part of the game is when it's over, and my beautiful boy lopes toward me in his nonchalant way, and I wonder whether everyone, just everyone, wonders who that boy is -- my boy.

Otherwise, I'm in a bit of a funk. I did go back to kundalini yoga this week and am determined to get back into it, get in some kind of physical shape and lose some weight. Enough is enough, right? I have an amazing new ghostwriting job that will keep me busy over the next three months, I'm on a mission to find an agent for my manuscript that I finished at Hedgebrook, and all three children will be at school next week for the first time in nearly two years! Oliver is going to high school, so we're taking a break from homeschooling. We're going to see how it goes as we've found a school that we believe fits him very well. I need to work and will be able to do so, now, every school day. I am continuing my Books & Bakes salon Fridays each month, so if you're in Los Angeles and want to come, please let me know. This month we read J. Ryan Stradal's Kitchens of the Great Midwest. It's an entertaining novel by a local writer that got some nice reviews, and it has a lot of inspiring food so I'm looking forward to preparing a great meal and facilitating excellent conversation.

Despite my aversion to violent sport, I'm actually on a serial killer bent. This is unusual for me (I did not like any of those Swedish books or the HBO series), so heads up. I just finished binge-watching an English miniseries with Gillian Anderson called The Fall. Despite it being about a serial killer with the usual gruesome attacks against females, the show has some incredible acting in it, great writing and complex characters. I also just started reading Jennifer Pashley's novel The Scamp, which is described as "an intense, riveting sage of .... a girl's determination to take control." I think there's a serial killer in it as well, and while I wouldn't ordinarily read this genre, I had the great good fortune to spend some time with Jennifer last night after she read from her book at a local independent bookstore last night. She's a good friend of a very good friend of mine, the writer Shanna Mahin (who wrote the hilarious romp of a novel  Oh! You Pretty Things earlier this year), so I took the recommendation seriously, the writing is terrific, and I literally can't put the book down.

Well, that was a rambler of a Saturday post. I hope you have a lovely long weekend. Tell me all about it.

Summer Bookworm Update

I had lunch today with one of my favorite bloggers whom I've been reading for years and years. The Diamond in the Window was visiting a friend in town and was kind enough to meet me for a couple of hours at a neighborhood cafe. Our brown rice bowls were secondary to the conversation as it was all about books -- what we loved, what we disliked, what we're reading now and what we read in our childhoods. It turns out that we're the same age and read many of the same things, had many of the same favorites and -- well -- I'm pretty positive we would have been great friends in the early to mid-seventies, moving into middle and high school in the eighties and perhaps rivals for the Reading Rainbow Greatest Number of Books Read in the Summer contest. Honestly, I could have jumped in her lap when she recalled the creepy china dog in No Flying in the House, because my very tattered, taped copy sits right above my desk in the Most Treasured Childhood Books spot. No offense to my beautiful and brilliant boys, but our reading tastes are wildly dissimilar, and I just never took to baseball biographies and that stinky kid series. Lunching and talking with The Diamond was like being with a friend from fourth grade after the bookmobile came to our school.

I just finished another read of Sigrid Nunez' memoir Sempre Susan, a memoir of Susan Sontag -- even better the second time since I spent a week with her at Hedgebrook. I'm also nearly orgasmic over William Finnegan's Barbarian Days A Surfing Life -- not only is it a literal romp, but it's got photos of surfers and waves and you know how I feel about such things. Diamond insisted that I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, so I picked that up at the bookstore, and when I got home Pleasures of the Table, A Literary Anthology was waiting for me, a gift from a friend. I am gearing up for a September Books & Bakes, toying with assigning Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye (all about hunger), and one of my favorite of hers, or a new book called Dietland that Diamond recommended that sounds weird and edgy and wild. If you were going to come to Books & Bakes, which would you prefer, and if it's neither, what book would you like to discuss and hopefully, eat from? The books don't need to have menus specifically or even something food-related, but hopefully, there's something culinary that can be drawn out of them -- something sensual and worthy of celebrating.

Go check out The Diamond in the Window if you haven't already, and mine your brains for book suggestions for my salon. Tell me what you're reading and what's on your night table.

Books & Bakes Re-cap

We missed you!

Here's the menu, a kooky and entirely delicious collection of Shopsin's recipes from his memoir cookbook Eat Me and the above featured Mini Baked Alaskas:

Bing Cherry Vodka Mojitos

Avocado Guacamole

Banana Guacamole

Creamy Tomato Soup with Garlic Toasts

Coconut Rice

Pita Feta Salad with Tabbouleh

Andy's Way Sandwiches

Chicken Pecan Enchiladas

Chicken Pot Pie

Mini Baked Alaskas

The most wonderful, erudite people came last night -- some I'd never met and now call friend. We laughed and discussed the book and ate ourselves silly. 

There's still time to sign up for next month's meeting on June 22nd. Email me if you think you can make it. And have a happy Saturday --

Books & Bakes Sneak Peak

Tonight is the fifth month of my Books & Bakes Literary and Food Salon. The May selection was the kooky memoir/cookbook Eat Me, The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. I shook things up this month by asking people to bring a dish from the book in lieu of paying full price. It looks to be as kooky a line-up of food as the book was to read! I'm filling in the gaps with a main dish that isn't in the book and a dessert (Shopsin only serves milkshakes, as far as I can tell). Oliver took the photo above. I made Honeycomb Vanilla Ice-Cream and Brown Butter Poundcake. It'll be slathered with meringue and torched to make Mini Baked Alaskas. I got the recipes from Food 52, an amazing site to check out when you have a moment.

If you're in the southern California area, please think about attending one of my salons. Share with your friends, if you have a hankering to help my little cottage business grow. You might consider having me come to your home with your friends for a get-together, a change from your usual book club, a gift for someone or an office party. For more information on the June 22nd salon, see my other website. We're reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.

Wish you were here!

A Books & Bakes Chechen Feast

That's what I looked like several hours before last night's Books & Bakes, mainly because Saint Mirtha wasn't there yet to help me and also because what the hell was I thinking when I decided to concoct a Chechen menu?  Here it is:

Moscow Stinger

Eggplant Walnut Dip with Lavash

Sliced Radishes with Yogurt

Dates and Almonds

Yogurt Cream Soup with Herbs

Vegan Stuffed Grape Leaves

Beef Manti

Chechen Peppers and Mushrooms

Halvah Ice Cream

Dark Chocolate Sauce

Salted Peanuts

It was actually not entirely Chechen, but I stuck pretty close to the cuisine of the Caucasus with some Russian and Armenian borrowings. The Moscow Stinger was a very bracing cocktail made of vodka and white creme de menthe, shaken and poured over ice. I ran around Los Angeles visiting several liquor/package stores to find the white creme de menthe. I am being perfectly honest when I say that I have never been to a liquor store in Los Angeles -- not because I'm chaste or a teetotaller, but  -- you know -- any liquor that I drink is usually already at my house and has been there for at least fifteen years or someone brings it to a party. I found a very dusty bottle of the stuff at a place on Melrose and Vine, and it cost $7.99. Frankly, it might have been mouthwash (and I imagine mouthwash costs a hell of a lot more), but the combination of the vodka and that was bracing and very refreshing. We all had a swig or two while eating the eggplant dip and admitted that prior to reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomenoa, none of us had the remotest knowledge of Chechnya beyond the vague wars fought there and the recent brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon. If you haven't read Anthony Marra's novel, you must. It's a novel in which you can get lost -- lots of tragedy and drama and horror -- but it's also a novel of hope and dark humor. You will learn about Chechnya. It does feel a bit odd to be celebrating the food of the region and exulting in Marra's writing, particularly as the events and story described are so brutal and so far removed in any real way from our own. We talked about that, about the presumption and pretension of it, about the relatively pampered lives we live here. There's no getting round that discomfort, I guess, and I don't have any wise words to do so. I am grateful, though, to love like I do the words of others, for my eyes to be opened to places and situations that are different, true, but that also shed light on what it means to be human. 

That's a whole lot of cliche and folderal, though. Here's the food:

Denise wrote a wonderful blog post about last night. Read it here.