Amuse Bouche

Throughout the winter of 1986, disgraced Chernobyl plant director Viktor Brukhanov remained in his KGB jail in Kiev, awaiting his impending trial. He was permitted no visitors, but once a month his wife, Valentina, could bring him a five-kilogram parcel of food, which she packed with sausages, cheese, and butter. … for a while, Valentina was allowed to bring him English-language newspapers, until their son wrote a furtive four-word message.. inside one of them: “I love you, Daddy.” Then that privilege..was revoked.

from Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

When I started to work on the organisation and setup at Paris Saint-Germain, introducing a restaurant was one of my first priorities. I knew from my time in Milan how important it was for the players to have meals together, to help form a tighter unit. I wanted to bring the family environment I knew so well from Milan to Paris, and mealtimes are an important part of family life. This is how I like the culture of the club to be and I consider the family atmosphere fundamental to success.

from Quiet Leadership, winning hearts, minds and matches by Carlo Ancelotti (2016). Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

via Pixabay

Large wedges of red melon on grass-green plates sat on the table in front of Wills and Salt. “First good melon of the season.” Salt fed Wills a bite.They ate with their fingers, slicing bits with table knives and sharing the saltshaker….

“Snitches are saying somebody heard somebody, you know how it goes, say that a guy, ‘DeWare,’ common spelling” - he rolled his eyes - “is the only name we have, supposed to be a crackhead, stays in The Homes, bragged about killing the rich white woman.”

from Out of the Blues by Trudy Nam Boyce (2016). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Coolea in brine

The first permanent dairy school - and the first to take women students - was established at Munster in County Cork in 1880. An early example of that Irish county’s disproportionate influence on the fortunes of British and Irish cheese, it was well regarded enough to send cheesemaking teachers to the Cheshire Dairy Institute in Worleston in 1886 - predecessor of the Reaseheath Agricultural College, where Lucy Appleby would eventually go to hone her cheesemaking craft.

from A Cheese Monger’s History of the British Isles by Ned Palmer (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Atomic Box Lunches!!

Via Pixabay

Even the most ominous force of the age, the atomic bomb, couldn’t darken the mood. When atomic testing began in the Nevada desert in 1951, Vegas turned it into just another tourist attraction: the hotels organised rooftop viewing parties and packed “atomic box lunches” for guests who wanted to make an outing of it. The radiation fears would come later; for now Vegas radiated only glamour, excitement, and good times.

Elvis in Vegas by Richard Zoglin (2019). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Over the next few months Victor visited him several times as a friend, and on two occasions as a doctor. Neruda would greet him in his indigenous poncho and beret, affable and as much a gourmand as ever, more than ready to share a sea bass baked in the oven and a bottle of Chilean wine and to talk… No longer was he the playful joker who dressed up to entertain his friends… … his heart was heavy. He was afraid for Chile.

from A Long Petal Of The Sea by Isabel Allende (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Pic via pixabay

Available via Borrowbox

They went for a coffee ..at the top of the museum’s observation tower. They sat there munching dry cheese sandwiches and looking down at the sun-drenched museum and the crowds growing in size with each moment that passed. Stockholm’s assembled pensioner corps seemed to be there, clutching lethal pieces of bread which would soon be transferred into monstrous, deadly lumps, responsible for the death of more seabirds than the country’s poachers combined.

Though that wasn’t exactly what Paul Helm and Jorge Chavez had on their minds. They were thinking about a murder.

from Europa Blues by Arne Dahl (2001). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

There were pancakes, of course; and sausages; and duck confit and goose-liver terrine; and sweet pink onions, fried mushrooms with herbs, and little tomme cheeses rolled in ash; and pastis gascon, and nut bread, aniseed bread, fouace, olives, chillies and dates. To drink, there was cider and wine and floc, with fruit juices for the children and even a dish of leftovers for the dog, which later curled up by the fire and slept, occasionally twitching its tail and muttering vague obscenities between its teeth.

Outside, the Autan wind gained strength, and we began to hear the rain smacking against the window glass.

from Peaches for Monsieur le Curé by Joanne Harris (2012). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Thierry Puzelat (right front), in L'Atitude two years ago.

What do you think is the most misunderstood aspect about natural wine?

For winemakers, the biggest mistake is to be so involved in the philosophy that they forget their job: making good wine.

For drinkers and winemakers, in our world where everything is immediate, they generally don’t understand that wine and nature need time. 

from Natural Wine for the People by Alice Feiring (2019). Very Highly Recommended. The question is by the author, the answer by Thierry Puzelat, a winemaker from the Loire.

Amuse Bouche

Oh well. She turned her mind back to the weekend shopping. Doris had complained that the shelves were being stripped. ‘Couldn’t get Persil or baked beans, Miss Morris, Weetabix all gone, too. Won’t be the Nazis as causes the shortages - it’ll be our own hoarders!’

from Nemesis by Rory Clements (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Steaming platters of swordfish carved shuddering into slabs and delicate wobbles of eggplant and dishes of Sicilian macaroni thick with peppers and tomatoes and pork under a golden crust. Twists of bread still hot and soft. Calamari wrapped in brown sugar. 

Plato said, of Agrigento, that we build as if we expect to live forever and eat as if we expect to die tomorrow.

If we eat even half of this, Giuseppe said dryly, we likely shall.

from Lampedusa by Steven Price (2019). Very Highly Recommended. Available on Borrow Box

Amuse Bouche

I was able to sneak down… to the dressing room and watch him tog on. Then I would go back to the Glenmorgan and watch him eat dinner. He used to mash everything up and then spoon the food into him and so that was how I had to eat my dinner. Every chap had a favourite player and Ring was my idol. 

from Christy Ring by Tim Horgan (2007). Very Highly Recommended. (The man quoted here is Tipperary hurler Jimmy Doyle).

Amuse Bouche

As they stood there, taking their leave of each other, the cheeses seemed to stink even more. They all seemed to stink together, in a foul cacophony: from the oppressiveness of the heavy Dutch cheeses and the gruyères to the sharp alkaline note of the olivet. From the cantal, Cheshire, and goat’s milk came the sound of the bassoon, punctuated by the sudden, share notes of the neufchâtels, the troyes, and the mont-d’ors. Then the smells went wild and became completely jumbled….. The stench rose and spread… a huge sickening mixture.

from The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola (1873). Translation by Brian Nelson (2007). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Pic via Pixabay

We approached a village….. There was a long table with plastic cups and jugs of water. We stopped and drank and women from the village brought out blankets. They gave us bread and cherries and a small bag of nuts, then they stood back and watched us leave. I realised afterwards that the look I had mistaken for wonder was actually fear, and I imagined swapping places with them, seeing hundreds of people battered by war heading to an unknown future.

from The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Cocaine, it turned out, was as widely available in Dublin as London, and I didn’t have to travel far to get it. I grew up watching films depicting drug dealers as dodgy types, but in 2007 drug dealers in Dublin were lads like me. A few lines went hand in hand with having a few pints. If there were pills or MDMA knocking about, all the better. I was conscientious enough to keep it away from work, which was evidence to me that I didn’t have a problem.

My parents’ divorce went through the year, another unsettling episode I now had to ignore.

from Recovering by Richie Sadlier (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Not far from me, a little girl is sitting on the aisle seat. A peach glows in her hand… She asked her mother, What do we miss the most when we die?….

.. Food, I almost said to the girl. We miss peaches, strawberries, delicacies like Sandhurst curry, kebab pasanda and rogan josh. The dead do not eat marzipan. The smell of bakeries torment them day and night.

… The train is cutting through villages.

from Chef by Jaspreet Singh (2008). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Inès gazed out now at the rows and rows of Pinot Noir grapes that crawled towards the horizon. She wondered if the vines she could see now were descendants of the ones Michel had once cultivated so carefully. Even if they weren’t, certainly they carried a piece of him. His blood had spilled here, seeped into the soil, become part of the earth itself before the Nazis had hauled him away. He had given all he had to this land. And now it would help sustain the granddaughter he never had the chance to know.

from The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristin Harmel (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

That was the staircase where she was once photographed with poor Wilde, on a night when he wore his fame like an ermine stole. Shaking the hands of royalty, accepting kisses from dowagers. Signing autographs with quills dipped in vintage Château d’Yquem. Two years later, he’d be dead.

In that alcove, a peer of the realm sipped champagne from her slipper, whispered suggestions that would make an iceberg blush..

from Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

‘Tea!’ Mrs Howard pushed the door open with a rattling tray. I went to help her, shoving the folder at Derwent so he could hide it. Her eyes were red, up close, and her face was swollen but she smiled at me…

We let her fuss over us, choosing biscuits from the plate she offered, making conversations about… the house and her art. Eventually, reluctantly, Derwent put his mug on the table.

‘Mrs Howard, I need to ask about the letters. Did they come from the prison?’

from Cruel Acts by Jane Casey (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

They’ve been watching a Jamie Oliver cookery show. Her choice. Jamie Oliver’s doing locally sourced fish. Pamela doesn’t even eat fish fingers for fear of choking on the bones, but she is obsessed with Jamie Oliver. She thinks he’s good-looking in a London sort of way. ‘Like Michael Portillo,’ she explains, and Sammy understands this is something to do with the way they are both fleshy about the lip….  Sammy thinks Jamie Oliver is a gobshite. He has no interest in locally sourced fish.

He’d barely had time to get comfortable before Pamela suggested he go upstairs and have a word with Mark.

‘You should go up and talk to him,’ she said.

from The Fire Starters by Jan Carson (2019). Highly Recommended.