Reading is Bliss: Food in books | Stuff.co.nz

I remember the first time I read My Year of Meat, by Ruth L Ozeki. It was for a university paper, and the tutor asked us during tutorial, with a greedy twinkle in her eye, whether any of us had tried the recipe for "Coca Cola roast beef".

From memory, as someone has run off with my copy of the book (if you're reading this post, I'd like it back please), the recipe involved braising a cut of meat in a bottle of coke, letting it marinade and then roasting it. The cola was supposed to tenderise the meat, and I suspect, caramelize the outside when it was put in the oven.

The example above is just one of many instances when I've fallen in love with food in books. It's not simply delicious looking recipes that I've got my eye out for, but also descriptions of food that sound either strange, exotic or disgusting.

It appears that I'm not the only one with a fetish for food in books. There is an entire blog dedicated to the food described in Game of Thrones (the Song of Fire & Ice series). Just imagine vast forums of dedicated readers/watchers of the TV show, faithfully trying out recipes in their home kitchen based on a description that would perhaps only be a couple of sentences long. Now that is real fandom!

My favourite recipe from Inn At The Crossroads (the GoT blog) is for Honeyed Chicken, made with a whole chicken, olive oil/butter, apple cider vinegar, honey, mint and a small handful of raisins. And all inspired by this short paragraph:?

"Hungry again?, he asked. There was still half a honeyed chicken in the center of the table. Jon reached out to tear off a leg, then had a better idea. He knifed the whole bird and let the carcass slide to the floor between his legs."

For a post-apocalyptic YA novel about living in a futuristic society where people are just a loaf of bread away from starvation, The Hunger Games has an awful lot of food descriptions in it.

Check out Katniss' favourite dish - lamb stew with dried plums. A reader has come up with a recipe for it, adapted from The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. This recipe for groosling soup, also from The Hunger Games (the reader used chicken), strikes me as being perfect for winter.

And has anyone who ever read Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past resisted eating madeleines after that? "She (Marcel's mother) sent for one of those squat plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines', which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell...I raised to my lips a spoonful of tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate then a shudder ran through me..."?

What would The Grapes of Wrath be without Steinbeck's iconic description of vivid piles of oranges, covered in poison and left to rot away while farmers and their families, including little children, lay down and slowly starved to death alongside?

Then there's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop caf?, the book that made famous not just crumbed and deep fried green tomatoes from the American south, but also classic barbecued pork ribs smothered in special sauce.

Joanne Harris is another author who excels at making food come alive in her books. Remember Chocolat? Noms! Well, she's released a cookbook based on three of her novels, and has been generous enough to reveal the recipe for Vianne's Spiced Hot Chocolate on her website for free. It contains tons of chocolate, brown sugar, chilli, vanilla bean and cognac to serve, so perhaps save this for a special occasion.

Late last year, I also became enchanted by Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child. In the novel, she mentioned such dishes as fried moose heart with onions, black bear roast and fried wild mushrooms with salmon, as well as white cake made with frosting, candied rose petals and elderflower wine. It's a fictional food lover's paradise, and if I ever make it to Alaska, I hope there's a restaurant serving at least some of the food mentioned in the book.

What are some of your favourite food descriptions in books?

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Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/blogs/reading-is-bliss/8532257/Food-in-books

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