Showing posts with label #AmuseBouche. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #AmuseBouche. Show all posts

Friday, September 27, 2019

Amuse Bouche


The persistent buzz of the apartment intercom pulls me from my thoughts, telling me my takeout has arrived, but as I tip the delivery boy, I decide to make my own discreet enquiries into what else the Handcocks might have been up to in the intervening years. For that I needed someone unconnected to the practice. It’s been a long time since I spoke to Alex, but if anyone is going to find out something that others have missed on the Handcocks, she will.

from The Hiding Game by Louise Phillips (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Friday, September 20, 2019

Amuse Bouche


She (Hilda) had ordered veal escalope. She sliced into it as if it caused her offence….
‘Have you talked to Mr Hawthorne about money?’ Hilda asked, chewing on her veal.
It was the question I was dreading. ‘I suggested fifty-fifty.’
‘What?’ She almost threw down her knife and fork. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘You’ve written forty novels. … If anything, he should be paying you…’

From The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz (2017). Highly Recommended.

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Amuse Bouche



The head, skin and feet of this beast (lamb) had already been removed and the first job was to deal with the innards. Hooks, a saw and a cleaver. The equipment was clean and standing by. Whether she was doing pastry or finding a lamb’s pelvic bone, or counting off the ribs with her eyes closed, Ségo operated by touch - it always seemed as if she could work blindfolded had it been required.
And when she sawed through the top of the spine, this was a thrill. Sometimes I was allowed to remove the neck but usually I wasn't allowed to do anything more than scrape the membrane from the ribs.

from One Star Awake by Andrew Meehan (2017). Recommended.

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Amuse Bouche

pic via pixabay

Dinner is a delicious march through colonial culinary outposts like mulligatawny soup and roast beef and caramel custard.  As I eat, I find myself starting to enjoy the evening…. It’s amazing how quickly old school friends slip back into remembered relationships. For an hour I’m not the poorest person here by far…
Then I meet Asim and reality slaps my beaming face.

from Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid (2000). Recommended.


Saturday, August 31, 2019

Amuse Bouche


After Ferguson unpacked,… went to the dining room for breakfast, which was still being served at ten o’clock, and had his first taste of English cuisine, a platter that consisted of one sunny-side-up egg (great but delicious), two undercooked rashers of bacon (slightly repellent but delicious), two pork sausages, a thoroughly cooked cooked tomato, and two thick slices of homemade white bread slathered with Devonshire butter that was better than any butter he had ever tasted. The coffee was undrinkable…

from 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (2017). Highly Recommended.

Friday, August 23, 2019

Amuse Bouche


We were greeted by a pleasant middle-aged lady who escorted us into a refectory….
There were some pitchers of iced tea on the table, hopefully to be turned into wine. Nice-looking young men and women, alight with the Holy Spirit, brought out platters of food. I’d expected loaves and fishes, but we got rice and beans, and poultry that had come second in a cockfight.

from The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille (2017). No Recommendation.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Amuse Bouche


She had returned home…one afternoon to the smell of roast duck procured from Lai Chee Roast Chicken and Duck at the market. There was soup bubbling away… And fishcake, raw stuffed okra, silky tofu and straw mushrooms, all plated on the side, ready to be plunged into the boiling soup. Sweet tang yuan to round off the meal. Cutlery already in place. .. It had been years since they had shared a reunion dinner…. It took them a while to stop watching each other over the tops of their bowls and begin talking about their day.

from How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Amuse Bouche


The drinks trolley rolls by, blithely smashing into the knees of the long-limbed. Compact and travel-sized, I have plenty of space, even in the cramped and ever-diminishing airline seats. I secure myself a bland Bloody Mary in a plastic cup, wondering for the dozenth time about the name of this precious, life-giving elixir - related to the gory bride we conjured in mirrors as girls.
I swirl the viscous tomato juice among the too many ice cubes and not nearly enough vodka, sipping through the tiny red straw…. I’m trying very hard to think about what I’m leaving and where I’m heading.

from Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach (2017). Very Highly Recommended.

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Amuse Bouche. Bank Holiday Special





The universal use of flavor descriptors powerfully suggests that taste acuity is tantamount to judging the quality of a wine. It is nothing of the sort.

from True Taste, The Seven Essential Wine Words, by Matt Kramer (2015). Recommended.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

Amuse Bouche

from The Sea by John Banville (2005). No recommendation.


At lunchtime the Colonel and I must shift for ourselves…. The  Colonel is a ruminant. He sits at the kitchen table in shirt-sleeves and an antique sleeveless pullover munching away at an ill-made sandwich - hacked lump of cheese or chunk of cold meat between two door-stoppers smeared with his slap, or a dash of Colman’s fieriest, or sometimes both if he feels in need of a jolt - and tries out feints of conversation on me, like a canny field commander searching for a bulge in the enemy’s defences.



Friday, July 26, 2019

Amuse Bouche


On Saturdays, she knows, they sometimes eat lunch at a restaurant. Mila told her that. They go to a café where the little girl is allowed order anything she wants and where Adam tries tasting a bit of mustard or lemon from the end of a spoon, under his parents’ tender gaze. Louise would like that. In a packed café… she would be less afraid of the silence. She would sit between Mila and her brother and she’d straighten the large white napkin on the little girl’s lap. She’d feed Adam, spoon after spoon. She’d listen to Paul and Myriam speak. It would all go too fast. She would feel good.

from Lullaby by Leïla Slimani  (2018). Recommended.

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Amuse Bouche

Battenberg by Henrycooksey https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battenbergcake.jpg

And she said, ‘…. And what about Battenberg?’ 
And I said, ‘I don’t know because I don’t know what Battenberg is.’
She said, “It’s a kind of cake. It has four pink and yellow squares in the middle and it has marzipan icing round the edge.’
And I said, ‘Is it a long cake with a square cross-section which is divided into equally-sized, alternatively coloured squares?’
And she said, ‘I think you could probably describe it like that.’

from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003). Highly Recommended.



Saturday, July 13, 2019

Amuse Bouche


Falk felt the tension in his shoulders finally start to lift around the time Gretchen poured the third glass of red… He could feel muscles in his neck loosen. He took a mouthful of wine and enjoyed the sensation as his cluttered head gave way to a more pleasant type of fog.
The kitchen was now dark, the remains of the dinner cleared… A lamb stew. Her own, she’d said. Animal, not the recipe.

from The Dry by Jane Harper (2016). Highly Recommended

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Amuse Bouche


Via Pixabay

Alastair knew quite a bit more about contemporary Iraq than I did. I hadn’t been in ten years and couldn’t remember the name of the Shiite tribe my family belonged to; moreover, when I admitted I’d never tasted sheep’s-head soup he gave a look of such incredulity you’d think I was a man from Parma claiming never to have tasted ham.

from Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday (2018). Highly Recommended

Saturday, June 29, 2019

Amuse Bouche


Fidel offered him a plate of congri - rice and beans cooked together - but Quinn said he could not take food out of the mouths of the rebel army. Fidel insisted and said there was plenty for today, that the men had eaten their fill; and so Quinn ate with great relish. He brought up Hemingway, a perennial soldier and a man of the gun, and told of Cooney’s song and Hemingway’s one-two, and the challenge. Should Hemingway fight such a duel?

“Yes, of course,” said Fidel..

from Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy (2011). Recommended.

Saturday, June 22, 2019

Amuse Bouche


She wound up at La Rotonde, the place Aunt Nora used to talk about, the place if Fiona remembered right, where Ranko Novak lost his mind. Or was it Modigliani? In any case, she sat inside where it was warm, and she ordered soup à l’oignon gratinée and wished she weren’t surrounded by so many English-speakers. There was no scruffy, drunk artists, no absinthe-drinking models, no great expat poets.
Well, how would she know? Maybe that table in the corner was full of them.
She’d asked Nora once if she ever met Hemingway, and Nora had said, “If I did, he didn’t make an impression.”

from The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018). Very Highly Recommended.

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Amuse Bouche


‘I didn’t know you could cook.’
He smiled. ‘That’s probably a bit generous. I can make this and a few other things. It’s like playing the piano, though, isn’t it? You only need to know about five decent pieces you can drag out in company and people think you’re good at it.’
‘So is this your signature dish, as they say on the cooking shows?’
‘One of them. I’ve got exactly four more.’
‘Still, five is four more than some men can make,… Can I turn on the news for a minute?’
Carmen picked up the remote… Falk could see the screen out of the corner of his eye…. The ticker scrolled across the bottom…
GRAVE FEARS FOR MISSING MELBOURNE HIKER.

from Force of Nature by Jane Harper (2017). Very Highly Recommended.

Saturday, June 8, 2019

Amuse Bouche


Alice..returned with a sheet of plywood on which she had bread and marmalade and some glistening butter… She poured me some black tea and added sweet condensed milk. She insisted I draw up a chair to eat and waited until I did.
Meanwhile I could hear Battery going through the empty bottles in the bedroom dresser. I told Alice she need not serve me. She shook her head and grasped the knife and smeared the canned butter on my bread… suddenly she smiled and a moment later her whole face collapsed and her mouth opened and she howled.
Doctor Battery came rushing… Alice abruptly controlled herself. Something very odd was occurring between them.

from A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey (2017). Highly Recommended.


Sunday, June 2, 2019

Amuse Bouche. Bank Holiday Special.




Inside, the house was already full to overflowing. There were mimosas and an omelet station. There were caterers offering bite-sized quiches and poached eggs in puddles of velvety hollandaise. There was a three-tiered pink-and-white cake.. with a sugar figurine of a baby holding the number 1…. pink and white streamers unfurling their triumphant way toward..where Mirabelle McCullough, the birthday girl, nestled in Mrs McCullough’s arms.

From Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2017). Very Highly Recommended.

Saturday, June 1, 2019

Amuse Bouche



You pass a coffee shop you hate because it’s always hot and flies constantly swarm the front of the shop, where a big patch of sun seethes with some invisible shit the flies love and where there’s always just that one seat left in the heat with the flies, which is why you hate it, on top of the fact that it doesn’t open until ten in the morning and closes at six in the evening to cater to all the hipsters and artists who hover and buzz around Oakland like flies, America’s white suburban vanilla youth, searching for some invisible thing Oakland might give them, street cred or inner-city inspiration.

from There There by Tommy Orange (2018). Highly Recommended.