Amuse Bouche

Word came that the cattle and the men would be home by evening….

All day the preparations were hectic. There were pots of soup, simmering. They had been made from peppers and onions, with different leaves for flavouring. In the dairy, women were busy making cheese balls, a speciality which they knew their men loved. … they let me sit among them. We could not communicate, and yet I was happy, content. Although I wanted to go home to my mother and our house, I was reluctant to leave. The place and the peaceful way of life had made me tranquil.

 from Girl by Edna O’Brien (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

‘The kitchen is just about the worst place a woman can be - whether or not she happens to be an artist. I think the same applies to any woman with half a cup of pride. Spend time in the kitchen and you’ll be kept there. I see it all the time, women who slave after their husbands - husbands who have little or no time for them, I might add. You step into the kitchen and you stay there. A kitchen slave for the rest of your life.’

from The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey (2019). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

We used to go there on Saturdays, for family outings. There’d be huge bowls of pasta, served with sauce and with stuffed escalopes of veal - alouettes san téte, ‘headless larks’, they were called - and meat balls, all cooked in the same sauce. The rooms would be full of the fragrant smell of tomatoes, basil, thyme and bay leaves. Bottles of rosé wine would be handed round in between bouts of laughter. Meals would always end with a singsong…….

from One Helluva Mess by Jean-Claude Izzo (1995). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Steve Buissinne via Pixabay

It was the smell of bread always baking, the smell of turf-smoke, the smell of onions, of boiling, the green tongue of boiled cabbage, the pink one of bacon with grey scum like sins rising, the smell of rhubarb that grew monstrous at the edge of the dung-heap, the smell of rain in all its iterations… the living smell of wool, the dead smell of stone, the metallic ghost stench of mackerel that disobeyed the laws of nature and like Jesus outlived itself by three days.

from This is Happiness by Niall Williams (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

“First we eat.”

And eat they did, none of the food that appeared at their table ordered by either of them, and none of it on the Marine’s laminated menu or on the list of plats du jour chalked on the blackboard… Before one dish had been see off another arrived: flash-fried fillets of red mullet; a grilled pepper and anchovy salad des Pecheurs; a couple of pavé steaks; a platter of cheese; and, finally, baked apples in Calva.

And all the while, the two men talked. The Cabrille affair… and the shoot-out in Pélisanne.

“The old man was a psycho,’…

from The Dying Minutes by Martin O’Brien (2012). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

The thunk of the front door locking shut echoed… and then everything was quiet and still.

Too quiet and still.

She took a quick inventory of the contents of the wicker basket. A box of Irish soda bread mix; six mismatched eggs; a bag of Cork Coffee Roaster’s “Rebel” blend; a bar of chocolate..; a single bottle of beer from the Franciscan Well; a small carton of milk.

from Rewind by Catherine Ryan Howard (2019). Very Highly Recommended

Amuse Bouche

That evening my mam was watching telly. She had a glass of wine. She drinks Sancerre. I’ve had some. It’s not bad. It's a sort of high-class Chardonnay. Tbf I don’t like wine, but Sancerre is ok. It’s French. They must know something about making wine they’ve been at it for a while. I said, Everything OK, Mam? She said, Yep, your chop is in the oven and oven chips. I was thinking if my dad just confessed that he had a love child by a Moroccan lady, she was taking it pretty cool.

from Suzy, Suzy by William Wall (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Ronnie regularly cooked at home, whether it was a breakfast of slowly fried garlic, chopped parsley with fresh chillies finished with a fried egg, or a simple lunch of fresh whiting dusted in seasoned flour and cooked in the pan with real Irish butter and the best Spanish olive oil. He enjoyed cooking… and delivered some excellent dishes. Food was a defining element of the Drew household.

from Beautiful Affair by Mike Hanrahan (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

The Papaya Czar on Eighty-Sixth Street and Third Avenue is my kind of place - bright orange and yellow signs pasted on every available surface screaming, Papaya is God’s Greatest Gift to Man’s Health! Our Frankfurters are the working Man’s Filet Mignon! We’re polite New Yorkers, We support Mayor Giuliani! And so on. Papaya Czar’s walls are so layered with language that I find myself immediately calmed inside their doors, as though I’ve stepped into a model interior of my own skull.

from Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (1999). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

The cafe at Chardonnay Gulf isn't quite what you’d hoped for, just an OK steak with field greens, and the waitress isn’t a California girl but a heavy guy who generally services the machinery, but the wine stays good all the way down the bottle. You’re burning the days, you’re a millionaire of time, and the sun will never sink on the county of San Luis Obispo….

You may as well head back to the car so you can hit San Francisco in time to find a good hotel. The girl sings ‘Do you know the way to San Jose?’ and you make the car hooter stand in for the Bacharach flugelhorn.

from A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks

Amuse Bouche

She truly worked an old stove, too, a tiny enamel four-burner crusted with ancient sauces and on which three or four pots invariably bubbled. The oven of this herculean appliance was never cool; the whole kitchen glowed with heat like a kiln. Mrs. Minna herself seemed to have been baked, her whole face dark and furrowed like the edges of an overdone calzone.

from Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (1999). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Can the liver and chips be bate for a hangover, Maurice? Charlie Redmond said.

Not if you were stuck into them above in the Uptown Grill, Charlie.

The Uptown, Charlie said. Regal premises.

from Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Our first week at the firm was nothing short of a full-blown seduction - the generous gifts, the deferential treatment,… We embraced it all with the unbridled enthusiasm of the young and ambitious….

By 12:30 p.m., on the dot, we’d all be salivating in anticipation of our 1:00 p.m. gourmet lunch: sous-vide Wagyu beef served with potato fondant and char-grilled asparagus or Atlantic salmon with thyme infusion paired with parsnip mash, or whatever other culinary delights the executive chef had cooked up for the day. Each meal was matched with vintage Californian wines.

from The Escape Room by Megan Goldin (2019). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Good boy. Now, come on. We have eggs. Let me cook you an omelette.

She pulled a soggy box out of the press, opened it and at once turned up her nose.

Maybe we’ll skip the eggs, she said, and took a good look around the kitchen as though she was convinced a second press, one with proper eggs and other food, was hiding from her. Her scan complete, she shook her head sadly, threw up her arms and yelled, What a dump! As fast again, she jerked her head towards the stereo, her face lighting up at what was coming out of it.

And off she went. De-de doo-duh. De-de doo-duh. Clicking her fingers.

from Ithaca by Alan McMonagle (2017). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

It was essentially a debriefing on the killing and there were high fives all around. It didn’t matter to Thompson and his associates that a young girl had heard the shots being fired and ran out to find her father lying in a pool of blood. The fact that Thompson brought his associates out just a few hours after a man’s life had been taken shows just how callous he really was. They enjoyed a good meal, drinks and posed for photographs. It was simply a party to celebrate a murder.

from Fat Freddie by Stephen Breen (2019). Very Highly Recommended (but not for the faint-hearted)

Amuse Bouche

The broth was superb…. It transmitted warmth…. down into my gullet and through my chest and shoulders as it passed. Levels of flavor unfolded, onion, coconut, chicken, a piquancy I couldn't place. I scooped up another ladleful, with a strip of chicken this time, let the nourishing fire flow through me again. Until placed in this soup’s care I hadn’t realised how chilled I was, how starved for comfort. It felt as if the soup was literally embracing my heart.

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.

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.

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.

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.