“I just finished reading Mark Sullivan’s Beneath A Scarlet Sky, an incredible novel. There is a dish mentioned in the book for Sausage, Broccoli and Garlic that has me salivating. The main character savors this dish. The book is set during World War II Italy and even the […]
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Peking Duck Spring Rolls from Janice Y.K. Lee
The Expatriates is set in contemporary Hong Kong and is about three very different women living in the American expat community, but I think it is mostly about the bonds of women and motherhood. Expats in Hong Kong can live a rarefied life of cocktails and dinner parties. In my novel, Hilary Starling has a dinner […]
Soft Scrambled Eggs & Chanterelles from Stephanie Danler
One of the great joys of moving to the East Coast was discovering wild mushrooms. My first autumn in New York, a chef friend of mine took us foraging up in the Hudson River Valley where we hunted for chanterelles. Each golden cap was like finding treasure, though the real rewards came later when my […]
Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Pistachio Baklava
Towers Falling, my novel for middle grade readers focuses on three friends: Sabeen, a Turkish American Muslim girl, Ben, a booklover and soldier’s son, and Dèja, a homeless girl who doesn’t know her father’s damaged lungs and her family’s subsequent poverty are because of his 9/11 heroism. When Dèja and Ben cut school to […]
Kathy Gunst’s Provençal-Style Fish Soup with Rouille from SOUP SWAP
Photo: Yvonne Duivenvoorden How can making a pot of soup build community? That’s the concept behind Soup Swap, my newest cookbook. Here’s the set up: invite a group of food-loving friends over—neighbors, family, book club, yoga group, PTO, etc— and ask everyone to bring a large pot of their favorite soup (as well Mason jars […]
Alexandra Risen’s Maple Granola
I lived in Montréal for almost two decades and cherished its multicultural culinary treats. Traditional neighborhoods abound, and I wandered from French bistros to little Italy to Schwartz’s smoked meat deli to my favorite shawarma restaurant whose pita sandwiches fueled me through university. I carry two beloved Montréal memories with me: the sweet beauty of […]
Historical Dutch Apple Pie recipe from author Dominic Smith
Life is weather. Life is meals. I always recall this James Salter quote from Light Years whenever I think about food in fiction. Meals are also a signifier in novels and stories. What a character eats—and how they eat it, and with whom—tells us a lot about their background and worldview. In The Last Painting of […]
Emma Donoghue: Jack’s Sixth-Birthday Cake from ROOM
The following recipe and introduction are re-printed from THE BOOK CLUB COOKBOOK by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp (Penguin, 2012). The narrator of Emma Donoghue’s novel is a five-year-old boy who leads a busy life. Jack and his mother’s days are filled with imagination, love for each other, and “thousands of things to do,” […]
Juicy Wine Cakes from A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES COOKBOOK
In the novel A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius Reilly and the wannabe stripper, Darlene, both have an affection for wine cakes, smallish yellow cakes soaked in wine and topped with whipped cream and cherries. This dessert goes all the way back to Creole Louisiana’s antebellum days, when cakes such as savarin, a French pastry doused […]
Gingered Apple Fizz
from The Gingered Pear The Postcomers Book Club of Wellesley, Massachusetts served Gingered Apple Fizz when they discussed The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin to highlight the apples grown in the orchard. It can also be served as a cocktail with vodka or gin. 1 ounce Shrub Apple Fennel Fruit Syrup 3 mint leaves 1/2 – 1 ounce ginger beer […]