Caleb's Crossing and Clam Chowder

Although the title of Geraldine Brooks' Caleb's Crossing implies that the book is about a character named Caleb, the star of the book is Bethia Mayfield, a pious young woman living with her family on Martha's Vineyard in 1660.  Bethia is a minister's daughter whose curious, sharp mind makes her feel constricted by the traditional role she is expected to take as a woman.  She listens to her father's lessons to her older brother of Latin and Greek and absorbs them well, reaching a level of understanding that her distracted and disinterested brother is unable to achieve.  Out wandering the island one day she meets a young Native American boy of the local Wampanoag tribe who eventually becomes known as Caleb.  After some misgivings at first, Bethia (whom Caleb names Storm Eyes) and Caleb, who is the son of the chief of the tribe and the nephew of the tribe's medicine man, become good friends and teach each other about their worlds.  Bethia teaches Caleb to speak and read English and about Christianity, Caleb teaches Bethia the Wampanoag language and culture, and shares with her everything he knows about the nature on the island.  While Bethia enjoys her time with Caleb, she is wracked with guilt because by spending time with him, alone, she is breaking every rule she has been taught.  The book is told from Bethia's perspective, through her journal entries starting as a young girl on the island, through her time as a scullery maid at Harvard and eventually as an old woman, on her death bed.   The book transported me completely to late 17th century New England and Bethia joins the pantheon of inspiring young women heroines in literature  (Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennett) whose intelligence and disposition isolate them from their time.

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Restoration and a Tuscan Feast

When you read a book set in Tuscany, it is difficult to choose one dish to make!  While food is certainly not the focus of Olaf Olafsson's Restoration,  I could not resit making a few simple, fresh and hearty Tuscan dishes this week.  The book is set on at a Tuscan villa and farm owned by a British expat - Alice, and her Italian husband during World War Two.  As Italy became a battle zone,  Alice turned the villa into a hospital of sorts, and then a school and home for refugee children from the north.  One day, a mysterious Icelandic woman, Kristin, shows up at the villa severely injured from a train bombing.  Kristin is a struggling artist and has a connection to Alice that Alice is unaware of.  The book alternates between two stories - Alice's and Kristin's.  Alice's story is about life on the farm,  her grief the loss of her young son, her careless affair, and the difficulties in her relationship with her husband Claudio.  Kristin's story is about art, about her struggle to become an artist, her obsessive love affair with her boss, and about a dangerous forgery.  To me, Kristin's story was much more engaging and believable while Alice's story, told through diary entries that are written as a letter to her missing husband, were cliche and less interesting, perhaps because I found Alice kind of boring and unlikable.   More about the book and the Tuscan feast after the jump.

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Snowdrops and Chilled Borscht

This borscht is way more virtuous than what A.D. Miller's decadent, morally suspect Snowdrops called for.  The book is set in Moscow after the fall of communism, in the Putin era, when everyone was out to get rich and there were no truly "legitimate" businesses.  In this setting Miller puts Nick Platt, a British attorney in his late 30's who meets two beautiful Russian women on the subway platform and is quickly pulled into a deadly scam.  Nick knows that these women are using him, but he lets himself be used - because they are so beautiful, because he is so lonely.  The book is written as a confessional by Nick to his fiance in London years after his time in Moscow.  In order for her to really know him, he figures, she needs to know the worst of him.  The book starts with Nick describing a "snowdrop" which in wintry Moscow is a dead body found when a pile of snow melts as winter thaws.  From here Nick moves backward to tell the story of who the snowdrop was and how Nick lost himself completely once he met Masha.  More about the book and borscht after the jump.

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Half Blood Blues and French Onion Soup

Wow.  That is the first word that came to mind when I finished the last page of Esi Edugyan's wonderful novel Half-Blood Blues.  While I really like most of the books I read (the last one notwithstanding) it has been a while since I have read since a unique, moving and enjoyable book.  The novel toggles between the present day (or close to it) and 1930's Europe.  The narrator of the novel is Sidney Griffiths, who in the 30's was a bassist who traveled from Baltimore to Berlin with his best friend, a drummer, Chip Jones, to play jazz with the Hot Time Swingers, a motley of crew of German and American musicians.  Berlin before the Nazi's had a thriving jazz scene which attracted African-American musicians from the States.  The novel is both an upbeat memoir of the swinging lifestyle of these musicians and guilt ridden tale of jealousy and war.  At the heart of the story is Hieronymus Falk, a German musician of mixed race who is younger than the other band members (he is 20) and a blazing, world class talent on the trumpet.  The novel starts with Hiero being arrested by Nazi soldiers in a Paris cafe as Sidney stands by and does nothing to stop it.  The novel then moves both forward in time to the present, where Sidney is asked to travel to Berlin for a Hieronymus Falk jazz festival, and backwards, telling the story of the Hot Time Swingers and how Hiero ended up arrested.  The language and tempo of the novel are jazz-like - with generous use of the jazz hipster slang of the time.  It is a novel more about friendship than it is about jazz, though jazz is as an important character.  A struggled with a dish for the book since these cats don't spend a lot of time eating, both because of their lifestyle and the food shortages in war time Europe.  They spend most of their time drinking really cheap and brutal liquor they call "the Czech."  While they are in Paris there is a reference to "onion broth" so I seized on that and decided on a recipe for classic Onion Soup I found in a neat "Paris Cafe" cookbook.  The ingredients are so simple, perhaps they couldn't have gotten their hands on the bread and cheese during the occupation, but this soup is all about the onions.
More on the book and soup after the jump.

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Matzo Ball Soup

Happy almost passover.    In the next couple of days I hope to squeeze in a few passover recipes, starting with this classic matzo ball soup.  This is often referred to as Jewish penicillin and is just a very simple but rich chicken soup of matzo dumplings.  The recipe I made is from Ina Garten (aka the Barefoot Contessa).  Matzo ball soup has always intimidated me, as it is so hard to get the matzo ball just right. It is a fairly simple thing - just a dumpling made with matzo meal instead of flour, but when a matzo ball is good it is heavenly  - light and airy but rich with chicken flavor.  Conversely, when a matzo ball is bad it is like a hockey puck made of paste.  So there is a lot of pressure there to get it right.  Growing up, I would say at least half the time my mom bought her matzo balls from the local deli.  I remember she also had the same matzo ball anxiety that I now have.  I remember some years she would come to the table after serving us frustrated with how her matzo balls turned out.  I do remember always loving whatever matzo balls she serve, whether she thought they were good or not,  because of course she was serving them.  Unfortunately I do not have her matzo ball recipe so was forced to go to backup in the Jewish recipe department, Ina.  I made this batch of soup earlier this week as a dry run for the soup I will make for my family this weekend.  These matzo balls were great and the soup was fantastic, but to mimic my mothers matzo balls this weekend I will eliminate the herbs  - it will make them plainer but that is what a matzo ball should be - humble and homely.

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