The Shadow of the Wind and Spanish Codfish Fritters

Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind is a fun, suspensful and rollicking novel which at its heart is about the love of books and storytelling.  The novel was originally written and Spanish and translated.  I usually like to read novels in their original language, but this translation was great and felt really natural.  The book takes place in Barcelona and tells the story of Daniel, a lonely son of a bookdealer, as his obsession with a mysterious novel takes him on a dark journey as he grows from boy into man.   The Barcelona in the book is a moody, damaged place still unsure of its future after civil war and fascism.  Food does have a place in the book, mainly as the subject of desire and enthusiasm of Daniel's strange and amusing friend - Fermin.  Fermin provides the heart of the book as well as its comic relief.  He has a big appetite and often requires Daniel to stop on their adventures for a bite to eat.  They seem to eat a lot of spanish ham sandwiches, but that seemed to boring for the blog (and I doubt I could get my hands on real spanish ham).  So I went with a traditional spanish tapas, codfish fritters, made with salt cod.  These were easy, though you must plan ahead since the cod must be soaked for several days before cooking.

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Super Bowl Sunday Chili

No book today, later this week I will be posting a review and recipe for The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, but for now, here is some Super Bowl appropriate (and winter appropriate) simple beef chili.

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Bloodroot and Berry Secret Corn Muffins

I really loved Bloodroot by Amy Greene.  It was totally engrossing and transported me to the world of Bloodroot mountain in Appalachia.  The book is eerie, disturbing and beautifully written.  The book takes place on Bloodroot mountain, which was named after the rare flower that grows there.  According to wikipedia, it is a perennial flowering plant, which has a white flower and dark roots that when you cut open, ooze a dark red colored sap.  We learn about bloodroot early in the book and the dark underside of the bloodroot serves to set the dark tone of the book.  I had a hard time deciding what to make, red velvet cake seemed to upbeat, beet ravioli seemed so removed from the Tennessee setting of the book.  So in the end I decided on making some corn muffins with a hidden pocket of dark fruit of the forest preserves.  These were a super quick and easy recipe that would be especially good in the summer when you can use fresh corn.

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The Finkler Question and Homemade Bagels

Harold Jacobson's The Finkler Question is a funny book about anti-semitism, which seems impossible to do without being offensive, right? But Jacobson does it.  The book won the 2010 Booker Prize, which is how I heard about it, and I usually love Booker Prize winners (e.g. Wolf Hall, White Teeth).  It took me some time to get into The Finkler Question, but about 100 pages in, I became hooked, and thoroughly enjoyed Jacobson’s funny, cringe-worthy and slightly ridiculous book. I think the book provides insight and humor as to Jewish identity generally, but there are certain aspects of it that are particular to the UK (e.g., there appears to be a much larger and more vocal anti-Zionist community in London than there is in the US).  The book is primarily told from the perspective of Julian Treslove, a non-Jew whose two closest friends, Libor and Sam Finkler, are Jewish.  Julian is obsessed with Jews and the experience of being Jewish, and for much of the book he actually tries to become Jewish by claiming he was the victim of an anti-Jew hate crime and dating a Jewish woman.  Treslove is a real cad - he has two children who he barely sees, sleeps with his friend’s wife, and is generally morose, self-obsessed and unreliable.   Treslove, in his head, decides that he will call all Jews "Finklers" since his friend Sam Finkler, whom he has known since childhood, thoroughly represented to Treslove the embodiment of Jews .  Thus, the book’s title is a play off of the phrase "The Jewish Question," coined in Western Europe to describe the issue of Jews in Europe (e.g., Nazi propaganda touted its concentration camps as the  "the solution to the Jewish Question.").More about the book after the jump. I would not necessarily recommend the book to everyone since I think there are some inside jokes that some folks will not get.  But anyone with particular interest in this issue would find it funny and thought provoking (Jew or non-Jew).  For the recipe, I wanted to make something stereotypically Jewish, so I went with bagels, which I have never made at home before.  This recipe is from Peter Reinhart, and while it was actually quite simple, it does require some non-typical ingredients. 

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