Cocktails For Book Lovers

Two of our favorite things!  Books and Cocktails. 

The obligatory statement that we were given a free copy of this book and why we most often don't take free books:  When we were offered a copy of this book, we jumped at the chance.  Here's the deal, we love to get books in the mail.  We are not real fond of getting books that require us to review them.  Here's why.  We like to write about books we like.  What if you send us a culmination of your life's work and we hate it?  We don't want to write that we got your book, you gave it to us, and frankly, we hate it.  Plus, we don't like to write about books we hate.  If we hate it, we don't bother.  So, most of the time, we don't take books to review.  Full disclosure.

Tessa Smith McGovern has pulled together fifty cocktails to be paired with favorite authors.  The collection is not a gaggle of cocktails simply mentioned in novels; there is no Ian Fleming Vesper Martini, for instance.  Instead, McGovern gives the reader a bit of info about a specific writer, an excerpt from their work and then a suggestion for a drink and further reading. It is a kind of like: If you love Zora Neale Hurston, you'll love the Orange Blossom.  Or, say you have read everything by Collette, but did you know she loved a glass of mulled wine?  Well now you have a recipe.

McGovern runs a web series called BookGirlTV where she interviews authors and often mixes a cocktail with them.  Frankly, this sort of companion drinking could be a huge boon to Amazon.  In addition to other books you might like, how about a cocktail to go with your book.

Yes, Virginia, we have read Virginia Woolf.  So why not have a drink in her honor.  This drink is inspired by Woolf's old address, 29 Fitzroy Square, also the location for the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma.  Who wouldn't love this.

Fitzroy Fizz

Stone's Original Ginger Wine
Champagne

Pour Stone's Original Ginger Wine into a chilled flute glass.  Top with champagne.

While drinking and driving is a bad idea, drinking a reading is a really good thing.  Pick up a copy of Cocktails For Book Lovers for inspiration.  Pick up a copy of Cocktails For Book Lovers and host the best book club -- EVER. 

P.S.  Jeff Bezos, give me a call!

Books and My Food

Books and My Food.  Is there a title that more accurately describes my life?  This little gem from 1906 was compiled by Elisabeth Luther Cary and Annie M. Jones.  The premise is simple: every day of the year is marked with a quotation from a book and a recipe.  The Misses Cary and Jones were greatly enamored of the English novel and drew most of their quotes from them.  There is Shakespeare and Thackeray.  Some Charles'  Lamb and Dickens.  And they are especially fond of Charlotte Bronté. 

As with most very early cookbooks from the 20th century, there is little direction for cooking, so you are kind of on your own.  Still, it is a cute mix of the culinary and the literary in one place.  Not to mention you have food and literature for every day of the year.

If you were following the cookbook who you be reading today?  A selection from William Makepeace Thackeray's "The Ballad of Bouillabaisse."   Today's meal, it would follow, will be a fine bouillabaisse.  Well, it would be a fine fish stew.  The author's feel that there is really no reason to put all that extraneous stuff Thackeray mentions in the poem. 

April 1st

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is --
  A sort of soup or broth, or brew,
Or hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes,
  That Greenwich never could outdo:
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
  Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace:
All these you'll eat at Terré's tavern
  In that one dish of bouillabaisse.


The famous bouillabaisse is indeed as Thackeray describes it, a sort of fish chowder, but it is seldom contains all the ingredients he mentions.  It may be made with four pounds of fresh cod, two onions, a clove of garlic, one peppercorn, two stalks of celery, a quart of white potatoes cut in small pieces, salt, pepper, and a quarter of a pound of salt pork, cut in slices. Put all the ingredients together in a granite kettle and stew slowly in water enough to cover them for three to four hours. Just before serving add 1 quart of hot milk.

I wonder what cod would look like after being cooked for four hours?  After four hours that cod and potatoes would probably be cooked down to a soup, more of a broth or slurry than a stew one might imagine.  It might be more productive to read the entire Thackeray poem and seek out a different bouillabaisse recipe.  Or simply cook the salt pork for and hour or two and add the veggies and fish during the last half hour of cooking.  You are more inclined to have a fish stew that way.

Not A Cookbook

Someone has to guard all those cookbooks!

We're Back

After an inclement and messy February where we lost lights, electricity, water and sleep, we have cookbooks books (and other books) piled high. I just need to clear Clementine off the computer and we will be back to our cookbook posts. After an entire year of posting everyday, we may just ease into it, but we still have more than enough cookbooks to keep going.