How Do I
Cathy's Picks
 |
Emmons, Didi Wild Flavors: One Chef’s Transformative Year Cooking from Eva’s Farm Nonfiction |
| Nominated for an International Association of Culinary
Professionals (IACP) award in 2012 in the “Food Matters” category,
Wild Flavors will be of special interest to cooks who garden
and especially to those who garden sustainably. Didi Emmons is a chef
in Boston who makes the acquaintance of Eva Sommaripa, a Connecticut
gardener who supplies the top chefs in the area with organic vegetables,
herbs and greens. It is the quirkiness of Eva that makes Wild
Flavors such a joy to read. Eva’s frugality is refreshing in
this throw-away age: she takes tupperware containers to celebrity
chef events so that leftovers don’t go to waste; she eats all of the
apple, including the core; she saves everything: clothes hangers,
plastic utensils; and wastes nothing: food scraps are compostable
and weeds are edible. Naturally, this frugality rubs off on Emmons,
who develops many recipes using the vegetables, herbs and, yes, even
weeds that Eva grows on her farm. Emmons exhibits a similarly broad-minded
approach to a recipe: if you don’t have the ingredient called for,
substitute something that you do have; after all, these recipes were
created to provide a tasty use for whatever Eva happened to be harvesting
at the moment – that is why the book is arranged by season. Fortunately,
the climate of Boston is pretty close to that of Pittsburgh, and so
the herbs, greens and vegetables featured will grow fine here as well.
Some you will not find easily in our farmer's markets: parsnips, lovage,
anise hyssop, bronze fennel, African blue basil or sunchokes. But
most of them you can grow yourself. In fact, I have some sunchokes
in my backyard that are just begging to be cooked and served up with
lovage butter. Or maybe I should try those Sunchoke Dumplings with
Swiss Chard and Walnuts on page 278…. Recommended October 2012 |
|
 |
Theroux, Jessica Cooking with Italian Grandmothers Nonfiction |
| If you like to read your cookbooks rather than cook from
them, you will find this one particularly enjoyable, especially if
you like Italian food and grandmothers. Theroux begins her travels
through Italy in the urban north, first visiting a nonna her family
had stayed with when she was a child. Interviews with these older
women tell of their lives, their traditional cooking techniques, and
highlight special recipes, many of which are simple and often unique.
Theroux eventually winds her way down to the more rural and less developed
South (during which travel her northern Italian friends are concerned
for her safety). She is charmed by the people there as well. There
are other “Italian grandmother” cookbooks but in this one you really
meet the characters. Recommended March 2012 |
|
 |
Petterson, Per I Curse the River of Time Fiction |
| The Norwegian writer Petterson (author of Out Stealing
Horses) again follows flashbacks of the narrator, in this case the
37-year-old Arvid Jansen, an introverted and somewhat ineffectual
Communist factory worker in Oslo. In the present, his wife is leaving
him, and his mother, a very strong woman with whom he has an unresolved
relationship, is dying of cancer. This takes place in 1989 when the
Berlin wall crumbles and the Soviet Union is falling apart. When Arvid’s
mother abruptly leaves Oslo to return home to Denmark, where their
family also spent their summers, Arvid follows her and this, naturally,
stimulates more memories of the past. Petterson paints a vivid picture
of their lives, of the rather bleak city and Danish coast, and of
Arvid’s internal struggles. Recommended March 2012 |
|
 |
Arnaldur Indridason Hypothermia Fiction |
| I’ve enjoyed the Swedish mysteries by Stieg Larsson and
Henning Mankell so I thought Hypothermia by Icelandic writer
Arnaldur Indridason might be a good follow-up. The audiobook version
was a good choice for my daily commute because it is short (7 discs)
and mysteries keep my attention and are easy to listen to. And it's
read by George Guidall, perhaps my favorite reader (listen to his
Lord of the Rings). The main character in Hypothermia, Erlendur,
is a middle-aged divorced police detective (reminiscent of Mankell’s
Wallender), privately investigating the suicide of Maria, a depressed
woman who was intrigued by the afterlife. The friend who finds her
hanging from the rafters of a lakeside cottage is convinced it wasn’t
suicide and sets Erlendur off on a hunt that uncovers seances, the
traumatic drowning of Maria’s father during her childhood, and the
experimental death and revival of a university student. The topic
of suicide also prompts Erlendur to find closure to two missing person
cases which were presumed suicides thirty years ago. Throughout the
novel, pieces of Erlendur’s own life surface, in particular a blizzard
in which he and his younger brother were lost when he was ten, and
in which his brother disappeared, and his estranged relationship with
his wife, son and daughter. This is not a bloody action thriller but
a thoughtful investigation of interrelated events from the past that
are tied together by “hypothermia,” an appropriate Icelandic topic. Recommended January 2012 |
|
|
Black, Cara Murder in the Marais Mystery |
| If you liked Lisbeth Salander, the female computer-hacking
investigator in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you might
like the Aimée Leduc mysteries by Cara Black. Aimée is also an unconventional
and computer-savvy private investigator but the series has the advantage
of taking place in Paris. Each book highlights a Parisian neighborhood
so, if you are planning a trip to Paris, you might want to pick up
the volume corresponding to the arrondissement in which you are staying
(it’s an easy read for the plane ride). Here’s the background: Aimée’s
mother, an American, abandoned Aimée when she was eight, leaving her
in her father’s care. Aimée worked with her father, a police investigator,
until he died in a bombing. Despite these traumatic experiences, she
continues investigative work as Detective Leduc. Black’s stories take
place in the 1990s. The history and politics of each neighborhood
play a large part in the plot. For instance, in Murder in the
Marais, since the Marais was an historically Jewish neighborhood,
the murder has its roots in the Nazi occupation of Paris in the 1940s.
Paralleling LeDuc’s investigation are chapters on individuals who
play a role in the murder or the political situation and it is always
interesting to see where they come in. Cara Black gives the reader
a taste of Paris that is not in most guidebooks. Aimée lives in an
Ile St. Louis apartment with “a temperamental electrical system, archaic
plumbing and warped seventeenth-century parquet floors overlooking
the Seine.” And the neighborhoods she investigates are often gritty.
Cara Black, who lives in San Francisco, does historical research for
each book. If you enjoy spunky female private investigators and Paris,
I recommend the Aimée Leduc mysteries. Recommended January 2011 |
|
|
Ziegelman, Jane 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement Nonfiction |
| Ziegelman portrays five families who lived in the tenement
at 97 Orchard Street in Manhattan (now the Tenement Museum) to tell
the history of immigrant foodways between 1863 (when the tenement
was built) and 1935 (when it was no longer used for residences). An
easy and interesting read, the author gives a broad and entertaining
history of food and social conditions in New York City during each
period. Ziegelman begins with the Glockners in the 1860s, a German
family who built the tenement. Then comes the Moore family from Ireland,
the German Jewish Gompertz family from Prussia in the 1870s, the Russian
Jewish Rogarshevsky family in the early 1900s, and finally the Italian
Baldizzi family in the 1920-30s. Ziegelman describes the living conditions
of each immigrant group and the food they would have commonly eaten.
97 Orchard gave me the final impetus I needed to visit the
Tenement Museum (http://www.tenement.org/) on the Lower East Side
in Manhattan, a followup I highly recommend, especially during this
time of immigration controversy. Recommended October 2010 |
|
|
Summers, Carolyn Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East Nonfiction |
| If you’ve read Douglas Tallamy’s Bringing
Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens
and are interested in implementing its philosophy, Summers’ book is
a helpful resource for the Pittsburgh gardener. Tallamy’s book offers
a new gardening paradigm: instead of choosing “insect-resistant” plants,
one should choose native plants that native insects can feed on, which
in turn will provide food for native birds and other wildlife. It
is a way to make your garden sustainable and a haven of biodiversity.
Summers shows you how to “go native” by providing alternative indigenous
plants to invasive non-natives we all seem to have in our gardens.
And she’ll tell you what sorts of insects, especially butterflies,
feed on them. I must admit it is tough reading when one feels guilty
for growing forsythia, butterfly bush and Japanese barberry, especially
when they are thriving. And my lovely hostas and daylilies don’t qualify
as natives either. I might not tear these plants out, but I will introduce
more native plants and for this, Summers's book is a great help. She
provides lists of native alternatives for commonly grown trees, shrubs,
perennials and grasses, and since she is from New York state, the
plants she recommends should do well here. My only complaint is the
paucity of color photographs, but the internet provides photos for
identification. Any person interested in sustainable gardening should
find Summers’s book thought-provoking and useful, and at the least,
it will change the way you look at plants and insects. Recommended September 2010 |
|
