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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Amuse Bouche

Marianne brings a cold bottle of sparkling wine out… and asks Niall to open it….. A crest of white spills over the lip of the bottle and Niall pours the wine into Elaine’s glass. The glasses are broad and narrow like saucers. Jamie..says: Do we not have proper champagne glasses?

These are champagne glasses, says Peggy.

No, I mean the tall ones, Jamie says.

You’re thinking of flutes, says Peggy. These are coupes.

from Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018). No Recommendation.

Amuse Bouche

When he looked again, the spoon had carved a well in the butter.

With her mouth full, the old woman stared at the glass top of her tea table with the fixed, unthinking gaze of a ruminant that savours her feed. Grease lined her lips, turning pink with the rouge she’d hastily layered on them upon his arrival. Only when she was satisfied with her snack did she dab her chin with a crumpled handkerchief.

….Bora choose to remain standing.

“Gospozha, I do need the rest of the information I came for. As you see, I’m upfront about it.”

Without answering him, Larissa ogled the butter.

from Tin Sky by Ben Pastor (2012). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

He’s an excellent cook. His overheated house is always smelling of something delicious. His spice rack looks like an apothecary’s shop. When he opens his refrigerator or his cupboards, there are many brand names I don’t recognize; in fact, I can’t even tell what language they’re in. We are in India. But he handles Western dishes equally well. He makes me the most zesty yet subtle macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had. And his vegetarian tacos would be the envy of all Mexico.

from Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche for the Bank Holiday

The first time I went to an Indian restaurant in Canada I used my fingers. The waiter looked at me critically and said, “Fresh off the boat, are you?” I blanched. My fingers, which a second before had been taste buds savouring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze. They froze like criminals caught in the act. I didn’t dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me…… My sambar lost its taste.

from Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

‘A shell fell on the kitchen block and killed the storeman. The chief of staff of the second battalion went out to relieve himself and was caught in the shoulder by a splinter. And some sappers caught a five-kilo pike-perch that had been stunned by a bomb. I’ve seen it myself - they gave it as a present to Captain Movshovich. And the commissar…wants you to phone him..’ ‘Very well,’ said Byerozkin. He drank a cup of tea, ate some calf’s-foot jelly, rang the chief of staff and the commissar to say he was going out to inspect his battalions..

from Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (1980). Highly Recommended. 


 Image by Andreas Barsch from Pixabay

Amuse Bouche

Pinot Noir via Pixabay

There were six of us in the cozy little dining room in the Meyer’s apartment in Lützowerstrasse. As four of them stood up and toasted me silently, I shook my head. I wasn’t sure I deserved Franz Meyer’s thanks, and besides, the wine we were drinking was a decent German red - a Spätburgunder from long before the war that he and his wife would have done better to have traded for some food instead of wasting it on me. Any wine - let alone a good German red - was almost impossible to come by in Berlin.

from A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr (2013). Recommended.

Amuse Bouche. Bank Holiday extra

..When he stopped at an establishment that

had ‘PURE VEG’ on its frontage in lieu of a name they were both too exhausted to argue.

… The waiter was a boy of about seventeen, who rushed to fetch water and refill the napkin holder. In his haste, rushing, the boy dropped the menu. Immediately he picked it up and dusted it and kissed it.

Goody understood. The day had just begun and the menu was an object of veneration, the good book that gave the boy his livelihood.

The Bombay sandwiches they ordered were soggy with butter and chutney. Xavier was lifting up a slice of bread to examine the cucumber and tomato….

from The Book of Chocolate Saints by Jeet Thayil (2018). No Recommendation.

Amuse Bouche

Image by Hansetravel from Pixabay 

I returned a few years later. No appointment. Arrived just as a busload of Belgians was pulling away. The proprietor was doddering through the room consolidating the remains of tasting glasses into a large plastic bucket. “Ah, he’ll top up his casks with that,” I assumed. When all the glasses were emptied, our vigneron placed the bucket on the floor and issued a shrill whistle whereupon his dog trotted in and proceeded to lap up what must have been several hundred dollars’ worth of Premier cru Burgundy.

 from Reading Between The Wines by Terry Theise (2010). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Big Momma Sweet made sure she had plenty of women and they all danced and howled and satisfied every lust that money could buy in prelude to the vicious night. Some brought grills in their truck beds and coolers packed with venison and pork and the smell of charcoal and meat wafted in the humid air in breaking grey clouds. Some wandered over to the open-air barn and admired vehicles that they had once owned but had been forced to turn the titles over to Big Momma Sweet to settle their bets.

from The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith (2018). Highly Recommended.