Reading in Reykjavík

I haven't written a List Love post in ages, but while going through some of my files I found a fully written post from several years ago and decided to post it, with a few minor adjustments.  Note that it was written before I was diagnosed with diabetes, so I would have to make certain adjustments if I was planning to make some of the recipes today.  This really should go on my cooking blog, but I thought it would be fun to do a cross-over post. It’s no secret that I like to cook and eat and discover new recipes, and thanks to my reading of all kinds of novels and non-fiction over the space of 40+ years I have come across lots of different interesting foods and dishes. I am not counting stuff I have come across in actual cookbooks and recipe collections and I am not including any books deliberately written as foodie books, but only books that made me take notice of some particular dish. However, I might do a post on mouth-watering foodie books later. Goodness...

As anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time will know, I enjoy reading books about food and books about history, and I love travelogues. This book combines all three. The premise of the book is to hunt down some of the foods that Mark Twain wrote about longing for when months of insipid European hotel food were beginning to wear on him during the journey he describes in his travelogue A Tramp Abroad (I know just how he feels).  Beahrs is an unapologetic foodie and clearly a fan of Twain‘s and he seems to have been tireless in chasing after the foods he chose to discuss in the book. Some of these he makes sound mouth-watering, and the reader can‘t help joining in his lament over how some of these foods have been lost or stopped being as easily available as they were in Twain‘s time, e.g. prairie chicken and terrapin. Others, I must admit, I would give a miss, such as raccoon and possum. Cranberries and maple syrup I am familiar with (when this is written, I am ...

Originally published in June 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. Mary Cassatt: 5 O'clock Tea I am an avid tea drinker and have been ever since I drank my first cup of tea around age six. I enjoy tea in many of its incarnations: the sweet, spicy chai of India and Pakistan, the minty green tea of Morocco, strong and sweet Turkish tea, delicate Darjeelings, robust Kenyans and iced tea with slices of orange and lemon, to name some examples. I have never been much fond of fruit teas or plain green teas - the first I can tolerate iced, but the second tastes to me like freshly mown grass: the smell is nice and refreshing but the flavour is less than pleasing. I guess it’s an acquired taste and no doubt I will learn to drink it if I ever visit Japan or China. I am not what you would call a tea snob - you are just as likely to find me slurping sweet milk tea made with a tea bag (oh, my!), from a chipped and stained old mug (horror of horrors!), as you are to find me sipping milkless FT...

Originally published in May 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is the third in a series of mysteries that combine cooking and crime, as amateur sleuth and professional caterer Goldy Bear serves up one delicious dish after another while sleuthing on the side. In this installation, Goldy has been hired to cater a series of events at an expensive prep school. The peace is disrupted by two murders (a third appears to be connected), and someone starts harassing her and her son. Through it all Goldy serves up one delectable dish after another (recipes included) and observes the graduating students and their parents battling it out over who deserves to go to which exclusive university. It’s a matter of touch and go whether Goldy will manage to solve the mystery in time to prevent a fourth murder. As in most amateur sleuthing series, the murders and the murderer’s methods are highly unlikely - especially how it is Goldy who finds two out of three bodies - but the characters are rounded...

Originally published in March 2005, on my original 52 Books blog. This is a wonderful, sweet memoir about mature love, between the author, a divorced American food writer and chef, and Fernando, a Venetian bank worker who fell in love with her from afar but only found the courage to approach her when she returned to Venice a year later. Within a few months she had tied up her life in the USA and moved to Venice to be with him. The book tells of their first three years together, getting to know each other, marriage preparations, their life together, adjustments to a new culture, and Marlena’s other love affairs, namely with Venice and food. At the end there is a chapter of recipes for some of the food she mentions in the books, with some truly mouth-watering recipes. Rating: A lovely, tasty combination of true romance, travel and food. 4 stars.

Originally published in October 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Author: Anthony Bourdain Year published: 2001 Pages: 274 Genre: Travel, food Where got: Public library I’ve wanted to see the TV series ever since I read about it on a cooking website, but for now I will have to make do with the book. This is the story of Bourdain’s round-the-world journey in search of interesting food and eating situations. This was first just supposed to be a travel-foodie book, but then Television got involved, and he ended up traveling around with a TV crew in tow. Some of the visits yielded plenty of delicious food, like the visit to The French Laundry in California, others were nostalgic and unfulfilling like the trip to France, and still others pointless, like the journey to Pailin in Cambodia. The dining experiences were sometimes exotic, often delicious, at other times scary or just horrible. Some brought the intrepid chef face to face with his food, still on the hoof, or swimm...

Genre : Women’s fiction, foodie book Year of publication : 2006 Setting & time : Small town in Ireland, 1980s Sisters Merjan, Bahar and Layla, refugees from the Iranian revolution, arrive in the Irish village of Ballinacroagh and open the Babylon Café. Chef Marjan prepares mouthwatering Persian food in the kitchen and serves it with the help of their sisters. But while most of the villagers welcome them, some disapprove of their presence, especially small-town kingpin Thomas McGuire, who wants to buy the house where the café is to open a disco. Aided by the town gossip and his loutish older son, he begins a campaign against the foreign ‘sluts’. But his younger son is dating Layla, the village priest is the sisters’ most faithful customer and the café seems set for success. Each chapter begins with a Persian recipe and the food is incorporated somehow into each chapter. It’s no secret that I like to read foodie books, so when I came across this novel in the library, I took i...

I bought this book yesterday, started reading it once I got home, and didn't put it down until I had finished. Year published: 2010 Series and no.: Kyndred, #2 Genre: Urban fantasy, romance Setting & time: New York city, USA; 2000’s Shape-shifter Rowan Dietrich arrives in New York, almost as if drawn there. She’d had an unhappy childhood there, first with abusive foster parents and then as a street child, and really just wants to visit the graves of some old friends before heading onwards to Boston and the job that awaits her there. A motorbike accident throws her in the path of alluring and mysterious chef Jean-Marc Dansant, who (not entirely out of the kindness of his heart) gives her a job at his restaurant, lends her an apartment and arranges to have her neighbour, the sexy but hostile Sean Meriden, repair the bike for her. Rowan finds herself drawn to both men, but finds it hard to decide which one she wants more, and so the tension between then begins to mount. Meanwhi...

Book 15 in my first 52 books challenge. Originally published in 3 parts in May 2004. Entry 1: Author: Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir Year published: 2002 Where got: public library Genre: Food, recipes, social history Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir is at the moment Iceland's most famous cookery book author who is not a chef. Her previous two cookery tomes, Matarást (Love of Food) and Matreiðslubók Nönnu (Nanna's Cookbook) are veritable food bibles. The first is an encyclopedia of food, ingredients, cookery methods, kitchen science, cookery terms, food history etc. etc., and the second is a collection of over 3000 recipes from all over the world. Both are unfortunately only available in Icelandic. Icelandic Food and Cookery is Nanna's first cookery book written in English (to my knowledge). It focuses on food that may be called Icelandic, both traditional and modern. This book is of special interest to me because what Nanna is doing with this book is exactly what I have been doing wit...

Book 4 in my first 52 books challenge. Originally published in several parts on February 16-21, 2004. Part 1: Author : Anthony Bourdain Published : 2000 Where got : Public library Genre : Autobiography I first got wind of this book shortly after it was published in 2000, when, browsing on Salon.com, I came across an excerpt from it. I liked the style which is refreshingly honest and has great descriptions of people, and I immediately decided I wanted to read it. Below is a link to that excerpt: Kitchen god Parts 2-3: Kitchen Confidential extract Interview with Bourdain Anthony Bourdain’s top 10 books about food Part 4: Kitchen Confidential is for the most part a memoir, but one which is interspersed with anecdotes and advise and littered with profanity. This funny and entertaining account of Anthony Bourdain's progress from dishwasher to chef is written in a tough and macho tone and sprinkled with inventive vulgarisms that might offend some readers and make others laugh out lo...

Originally book 6 in my first 52 books challenge. Published in 2 parts on February 29 and March 7, 2004. Full title: Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world Author: Mark Kurlansky Published: 1997 Where got: public library Genre: History I decided it was time to learn more about the fish that can, with some justification, be called the basis of Iceland's economy. I have always liked haddock better. Maybe this book will change that. After all the rave reviews and accolades, I expected Cod to be something more than just an ordinary history book. It isn't. Like many other history books I've read, it's well researched, informative and well written, if somewhat journalistic at times, but by far the best thing about it is the quotes and recipes, for which Mr. Kurlansky is not responsible. The writing failed to get me interested in the subject and about the only thing I found interesting was chapter 2 which gives information about the biology and ecology of the...

Read one of the great foodie books. I recommend Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste . Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) was a famous French gastronome and his book on the subject, Physiologie du goût ( The Physiology of Taste ), is still in print. Here he is discussing the effects of digestion on men of literature (translation by Anne Drayton, from the Penguin edition): "I believe that men of letters, for the most part, owe their choice of genre to their stomach. According to my theory, comic poets will be found among the regular, tragic poets among the constipated, and pastoral and elegaic poets among the lax; whence it follows that the most lachrymose of poets is only removed from the most comic of poets by a degree of digestionary concoction." The book covers all kinds of subjects and their relation to food, eating and digestion, and is a must-read for true foodies. Other good food reads I can recommend are: The Book of Tea by Anthony Burgess and Alain Stel...

Subtitle: An amateur’s adventures as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany. Year published: 2006 Genre: Memoir, food writing Setting & time: New York, USA, and Tuscany, Italy; starting in 2002 Bill Buford became obsessed with learning to cook like a pro and on the basis of his friendship with celebrity chef Mario Batali was accepted into the kitchen of one of Batali's restaurants, Babbo, as an assistant, working his way up to line cook in about a year. Then he became obsessed with learning to make perfect pasta, and went to Italy to learn. Then he became obsessed with meat, and again went to Italy and became an apprentice to a butcher in Tuscany. The story of this journey is interspersed with snippets of Batali’s biography, stories about Babbo kitchen antics and politics, discussions about food and excursions into Italian culinary history. Here is a guy who is just as obsessed with food as Jeffrey Steingarten, but inste...

Year published: 1999 Genre: Memoir, food, recipes Setting & time: USA 1950s to 1970s. I got this book on some solid recommendations from the foodies in my online reading group, and I am not sorry. Reichl writes about growing up in New York with a caring but rather distant father and a bipolar mother and some of the characters, many of them wonderfully eccentric, who contributed to her education about food. She becomes a rebel, but only when her parents can't catch her at it, has friendships, travels, falls in love and marries, and lives in a commune in California and works in a cooperative restaurant. All of this contributes to her wide knowledge of food that would later lead her to become a restaurant critic, and throughout the book food is a constant theme. Reichl writes an easy and light style and her prose is entertaining but without ever being fluffy. The book is a collection of episodes from Reichl's early life rather than being one story told straight through, pro...

Series detective: Charles "Charly" Poisson, master chef No. in series: 3 Year of publication: 2001 Type of mystery: Cozy: murder, fraud, money laundering, foodie Type of investigator: Amateur Setting & time: USA, contemporary Some themes: I was initially going to include this book in the 52 mystery authors challenge, but although it is categorised as a mystery, I would rather call it a comic crime story, so insubstantial is the mystery element in it, which is why I am reviewing it as a regular non-challenge read. The murder mystery is really only a sub-plot to a crime story that is told quite openly from all points of view: criminals, police and bystanders. Most of the crime – and there is lots of it – is in no way mysterious to the reader and only to a few of the characters. Story: Charly Poisson is gathering new nettles in springtime when his dog finds a decomposing body in a pond on his land. It turns out to be that of a rather unpleasant small-time criminal. C...