Book Appetit! - Lord of the Rings

It's quite well-known that I'm a big fan of food, so when I saw Sheila's challenge to plan a menu to go with a bookish discussion, I couldn't resist.

Sheila wrote:

Take one of the books you are reading today.  Now lets pretend that you are going to have a book discussion with friends regarding that book.  They are all coming over to your house and you are providing food and beverage to go with said book.  That’s right, your challenge is to share with me here:

1.  Title and author of the book

2.  The menu:  the food, the beverage (if you want you can go as far plan background music, decor, whatever.   )

Now, the book I'm currently reading is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Again. And the Lord of the Rings is all about hobbits - who, as you are probably aware, are huge fans of food. Add this to the fact that The Lord of the Rings is a huge, three-volume book, and one that I could always find a lot to say about it, and I realised that we could quite easily be there all day. When I was in sixth for, my friends and I used to spend plenty of our free periods reading the books, writing bad fanfiction and discussing the details of the book and  films - which were new at that time. (Perhaps I shouldn't be sharing with you just how much of a nerd I was!)

So why not go all out and have a full day of Lord of the Rings bookclub/Hobbit party?

This Lord of the Rings day would take place in the garden, on a sunny spring day.

We'd start off with a fried breakfast of "tomatoes, sausages, nice crispy bacon" - and enough mushrooms to satisfy a hobbit.

For lunch I'd set up a buffet table full of simple, delicious food. We'd have fresh-baked bread and creamy butter, cold meats and cheeses and salad, lots of fresh fruit: crunchy apples, juicy cherries, plums and berries, served with whipped cream. In memory of Gollum, we'll serve sushi, and for those with elven tastebuds I'll try to recreate lembas bread with one of the many recipes available online. Finally, there will be a big cake, but not a stodgy fruit cake, something tasty and flavoursome. I'm thinking of a spiced pound cake or suchlike. This table would be set up first thing, and available to nibble at throughout the day, for those feeling the need for second breakfast, elevensies, afternoon tea... etc. etc.

Dinner would be some sort of stew or casserole. By rights it ought to be rabbit stew, but I haven't the heart to cook bunnies (which I know is hypocritical of me because I like other meat) so maybe it would be chicken stew, with carrots and parsnips, and a few good taters.

To drink, we'll serve plenty of tea and home-made still lemonade, and in the evening we'll light lanterns all around the garden, bring out wine and beer, and if too much of these are imbibed, no doubt Frodo's "bendy-knee chicken-dance" from the film will ensue...

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender

Today I bring to you another selection from the Richard and Judy Book Club. This week's review title has been on my to-read pile for a while.

Jusst before her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein discovers she can taste the emotions of everyone who has had a hand in making her food - a weird quirk that is much more of a curse than it sounds, because like food, humans are a complex creation with far more going on inside them than it appears on the outside. The worst thing for Rose is when she eats homemade food as she finds out far more than she ought about her closest loved ones. The lemon cake of the title, baked by her jolly and creative mother, tastes empty. Incomplete. 

The book follows Rose through her childhood as she tries to live a normal life with this curse. Too many people   contribute towards the simplest sandwich, which means every bite Rose eats is a whirlwind of conflicting feelings. It's heartbreaking to see such an essential and normally enjoyable part of life being a burden to a small girl. She also has to deal with her family's secrets. To an outsider, they are a rather average family, each member having their "little ways" but nothing out of the ordinary. Her dad is a very normal, all-American family man and businessman, her brother Joseph showing signs of something like Autism/Asberger's - a scientific genius who has no social skills and does not get the recognition at school he deserves. Mom, the main cook of the family, despite her cheerful exterior, is unfulfilled, disappointed, and Rose can tell instantly from the taste of her cooking when she embarks upon an affair with a colleague. 

I found the first half of the novel to be very readable magic realism, a fascinating concept that was written in such a way as to make you really appreciate food, family and feelings. These things are portrayed as varied, sometimes contradictory, all mixed up together to give a great impression of the unique way in which Rose views the world - an impressive feat. 

In part two of the novel, when our characters are several years older, Bender focuses more upon Joseph, Rose's elder brother. He is still unsocial to the point of reclusiveness, and now he has his own apartment, gives the family much cause for concern by frequently disappearing without explanation. When his mystery is solved, I felt that the book became something else, moving away from the magical realism to become just plain surreal, and I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief. I came to understand what Aimee Bender was aiming for, but did not think she was entirely successful.

Still, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a fascinating, original concept which explores what it means to be human. The small cast is brought to life well, leaving me really feeling that I had got to know Rose, her family and friends inside out. The writing is beautiful and rich, but I was left feeling as though something was missing from the story, that I couldn't quite place.

Mini-reviews 3: Toast & The Woman He Loved Before

Toast – Nigel Slater

I was given a free copy of Nigel Slater’s autobiography Toast at a book party in my local Waterstone’s store, as part of the World Book Night celebrations. World Book Night was an initiative when publishers produced a million special editions of a range of well-loved books, for book-lovers across the UK to give away to friends, family, colleagues or total strangers. My former boss was at the event handing out copies of Toast, which was recently made into a TV movie starring Freddie Highmore and Helena Bonham Carter, among others.

Nigel Slater is a well-known TV chef, and taste is one of the most evocative senses, so it makes sense that Toast is a food-based memoir. It is a quick read, written in short chapters - some more like paragraphs - each devoted to one of Slater’s childhood memories based on to some food item. Some chapters are about general family rituals based around a dish, others cover a very specific memory. The novel takes us through Slater’s childhood, the grief at his mother’s death, and the marshmallows which cannot replace a goodnight kiss. Slater describes his discomfort as his father’s remarriage to Mrs Potter, their cleaner, and his lonely teenage years living in the middle of nowhere. We follow Slater through his school days, cookery course, first jobs up until he moved to London to start his career. Toast succeeds in making me feel peckish and nostalgic for a time I never knew (1960s-70s, as far as I can tell) when British food was not as cosmopolitan as it is now – pasta, pizza, curry, now staple parts of the British menu, all being dismissed as “foreign muck.” Though at times I think the food described sounds bland at best, unappetising at worst, Slater writes with fondness and affection. But I gag in sympathy when Slater describes the various ways his father would persuade, force or fool him into eating an egg – the one food I can’t even swallow is eggs. Yuck.

The Woman He Loved Before – Dorothy Koomson

Last time I read a Dorothy Koomson novel, I dithered about whether or not it could be classed as “chick-lit,” and had to consider what I meant by the term. Despite its candy-coloured dustjacket, The Woman He Loved Before is not so much a romance novel as a thriller with ghostly undertones. With gritty, unflinching writing about a woman trapped in prostitution, and another suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it cannot be described as "fluffy" by any stretch of the imagination, although it starts off “chicky” enough, by recounting a relationship that started off as loathing-at-first-sight before turning into attraction and love. When Libby is injured in a car accident, she finds herself re-examining her relationship with her husband, who has widowed when they met, and who she suspects has never really got over the death of his first wife, Eve. Although Eve’s death was always put down to being a tragic accident, the doubt is there: was she murdered, and is Libby herself in danger? Then she finds Eve’s secret diaries which reveal a shocking past and horrific secrets about the family. The Woman He Loved Before would be a great companion novel to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, exploring the unenviable role of the second wife, with themes of the importance of choices, and control – or lack thereof – over one’s own life.

Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, Jane Brocket

I certainly didn't think, when I started this blog, I would be writing about a cookery book, but that was before I found Jane Brocket's collection of treasures: Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. The premise of this book is to recreate the sort of food that was eaten in the golden age of children's literature. I discovered it on the shelf at work, and its very title evoked a Famous Five adventure, with "lashings of ginger beer" (a phrase that is not actually known to appear in any of Enid Blyton's novels, but describes them perfectly.) I looked at this book, and thought, "Surely not? Surely it's just the children's literature obessive in me that makes me think it could be a book about Enid Blyton's love of describing food?" It had a lovely, old-fashioned cover, and looking closely at the illustration I thought it looked suspiciously like Milly-Molly-Mandy. Looking inside, I realised this wasn't just about Enid Blyton, but food in children's literature down the ages. Of course, the first thing I looked for was to see whether there were any recipes from Anne of Green Gables, in particular, for Raspberry Cordial. There it was: "Marilla Cuthbert's Zero-Alcohol Raspberry Cordial." Along the way, I saw recipes also from Swallows and Amazons and, of course, Enid Blyton.

At that point, I realised I was not being paid to stand around reading books all day, so put it back, but my appetite was whetted. I wanted that book so badly! It looked to me as though Ms Brocket had reached into my childhood and made an edible version of it - for the books I mention here were more than just stories I read and forgot. Sometimes, looking back, I have such nostalgia for them that it takes a bit of effort to separate what I did as a child, and what I read about. Out of curiosity, I made a list of the ten most influential childhood books and series, and checked Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer to see how many featured. I expected several. I did not expect them all. But not one of my top ten was excluded. Not one! "This," I thought to myself, "Is a woman who's read all the right books."

Anne of Green Gables, as I may have mentioned before, was the series that was most influential. I found in Anne a "kindred spirit," one who was like me in ways no one in the real world was. She was a dreamer, constantly making believe and telling stories in her mind, if not to others. I have already made the Anne recipes from Cherry Cake... two items of food and drink that involve similar mistakes on the behalf of Anne: the raspberry cordial that Anne meant to give Diana when she came to tea, and the layer cake that was unfortunately flavoured with anodyne liniment. I replaced the liniment with vanilla flavouring, however, not being quite sure what anodyne liniment was when it was at home. Googling the word implies that it is some kind of antiseptic or painkilling medicine - tasty(!) I was very happy with how that turned out. Ms Brocket's recipe was unashamedly going for recreating the childhood fancy of a "layer cake" rather than realism, which was probably nothing grander than a Victoria sandwich. The recipe here was for some kind of strawberries and cream gateau, and allowed one to double the proportions for four layers. Because we had slightly smaller tins than the recipe suggested, I made a three-layer cake, sandwiched together with strawberries and cream. I also used plain flour with baking-powder, rather than self-raising, because in Anne, the heroine at first blames the baking-powder for the disaster, to which Marilla returns, "Baking-powder, fiddlesticks!" I cannot think of the word "Baking-powder" without the word "fiddlesticks" on the end. I have to say, it was the best sponge cake I'd ever made, and it did indeed come out of the oven "as light and feathery as golden foam," thanks to mum's gluten-free flour.

Have also made raspberry cordial, a drink so sweet and indulgent that you (at least, I) wonder that it features - I tend to think of Marilla as keeping a kitchen full of plain, simple, wholesome food, whereas Raspberry Cordial (not to be mistaken for currant wine) is simply delicious! I unfortunately dropped about a quarter of the jug over the kitchen floor, and it looked rather as though I'd committed a murder.

This afternoon, I had a Swallows and Amazons themed baking session. This is the ideal holiday adventure series - not as outlandish as Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, but escapism nonetheless. The series captures a less paranoid time when children would be allowed to go sailing and camping without adult supervision, with a father who reasons that his children are "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers, won't drown." It too is a wonderful world of make-believe, with the town (I visited there when I was younger, but I can't remember what it was called,) renamed Rio, and the Old Man of Coniston (that I do remember) christened Kanchenjunga. The series is well-written because it doesn't talk down to the children, but reports the stories with the same juxtaposition of reality and fantasy as they would use, not having to explain what is "real" and what is make-believe, because we just know. The Swallows and the Amazons (and later the D's) also enjoy lashings of ginger beer, but they call it grog.

I made "Bunloaf," a nice, thick, rich fruit cake, and "Seedcake," which is a funny, old-fashioned recipe, a sponge cake with caraway seeds which I'd never used before but which have a peculiar flavour. Tasty, but a bit dry, so best eaten with plenty of grog to wash it down. Seedcake is a thing I associate with the Secret Seven as well, though I don't know whether it ever made an appearance in the Seven's clubroom. But I have clear memories of play-acting Secret Seven, and even that it was George who brought it as a meeting snack. That was before I was conscious that seed-cake really existed. It just sounded like something the Seven would eat.

The very first recipe I tried out, even before the liniment layer cake, was Debby's Jumbles from What Katy Did at School. They appear in perhaps the most evocative description of luscious food in children's literature; a chapter called "Christmas Boxes." The girls, Katy and Clover, stay at their boarding school over Christmas, but are not forgotten by their family, who send them enough cakes, fruit and sweets to feed them and all their friends. One of these cakes, which I had always wondered about, was the jumble, which was descibed as a round, crumbly cake. I had always thought of them as rather like doughnuts, but they turned out to be half-biscuitty, half-cakey, and could be flavoured with any number of things. This time I made them with lemon zest, but I wonder what they would be like with cinnamon. Hmm... perhaps next time...

In case you were wondering, the ten series to which I was referring were:

Anne of Green Gables,

What Katy Did

Little House on the Prairie (I am yet to make any of these recipes. Am tempted by cornbread but have not yet located cornmeal in Isle of Wight shops.)

Swallows and Amazons

The Chronicles of Narnia (somehow, I never really thought of these in the same category of "food" novels, probably because there was so much else going on. Sardines on toast, though, will always be associated with Mr Tumnus.)

Milly-Molly-Mandy

The Chalet School (When I went to stay with my Aunt in Germany a few years back, I was pleased to discover that kaffee und kuchen really does seem to exist as a meal - so much more honest than English afternoon tea - you skip the bread and butter and go straight onto the cake.)

The Famous Five

The Secret Seven

Malory Towers

These are the books that, one way or another, I seemed to live more than just read, whether it was by writing fill-in fan-fiction in my little blue folder (none of those stories ever got further than a page or two, but the intent was there) or played make-believe (on my own, generally. My school friends, at eight, were far too sophisticated to act out these books when I wanted to, so I had to play all seven members of the Secret Seven. Or I just read them over and over until I knew them backwards, and fictional incidents seem clearer than my own memories. And for me to find a book that has found all of these and extracted the edible parts of them - why, it's almost too good to be true. It's strange to think that anyone else could have written a cookbook that was so completely and entirely targetted at me.