Author of a variety of cookbooks (Apples for Jam, Venezia, Twelve: A Tuscan Cookbook, for example), Tessa Kiros has, in Falling Cloudberries entered the genre of memoir via recipes. (well, I do not know if this is where she enters the genre, not having seen her prior books!) Collected here are recipes and memories, subtitled quite aptly "a world of family recipes." This "Gourmet Book Club Selection" (which came free in the mail because publishers increasingly see blogs like this as free advertising, but I am still grateful) is, like many of their selections, beautiful. Even the end papers are beautiful. While I am not a big fan of books which feature the author's family photographs (trust me, mine are wonderful -- you don't care), the food photography is amazing -- and her family background does provide a rationale for this cookbook with its eclectic array of recipes.
The book's very first page says "My mother's name is Sirpa Tuula Kertuu Peiponen. My father's name is George." when I first read it, I thought: I have no idea what ethnicity this book will feature. The cloudberries, I admit, I thought were associated with Scandinavia --having once been brought a bottle of cloudberry liqueur (which was, I have to say, not my favorite) and thus assuming all things cloudberry originated somewhere in that vicinity. Somehow I missed the "world" in the book's subtitle. This matters because Kiros is indeed writing about her family -- a Cypriot grandmother, who drew on South African and Scottish recipes, a Finnish (aha) grandfather and grandmother who brings to mind gravlax and mustard, a Cypriot grandfather who brings to mind souvlaki, a peripatetic life involving South Africa, Italy, and a housekeeper from Peru. The recipes are divided geographically. All this makes for a sort of collage-y cookbook/memoir, with pretty darn incredible pictures by Manos Chatzikonstantis (alas, his/her site is under construction), styling by Michael Touros, and art direction by Lisa Greenberg. As I said, I am not entirely sure why people think that their own family photographs are entrancing for others (I like sorting through them sometimes in antique stores and imagining stories to go along with them and I also like those cards which feature old fifties-ish photographs with new oddball captions, but really -- I am not sure I think they should grace the pages of every memoir and cookbook). despite this, Kiros' family tree had led to an interesting array of recipes.
The first part of the cookbook is devoted to Finnish recipes. Most expected _- herring and gravlax and stroganoff. Less expected, cranberry sorbet. (If you want to explore Finnish cooking more generally, try this site.) This section of Falling Cloudberries (actually the part featuring that subtitle)is followed by the section on Greece. The opening page says "oregano, oranges, olive groves." One of the pictures in this section -- a close up (or sort of narrowly focused piece) of a snow white building -- is remarkable in its evocativeness. The recipes -- dolmades, tzatziki, taramasalata, for example -- evoke Greek restaurants that meant celebration when I was in graduate school -- and are followed by less familiar (to me) recipes focusing on octopus and calamari, as well as a whole fish in salt and (returning to the more familiar) a leg of lamb with lemon and potatoes that I so hope meets expectations. And, there is a baklava with nuts and dried apricots (and a variety of other dessert-y treats) that make me think I might try my hand, once again, at dessert. There is even a recipe for halva; I am not a fan, really, but I know someone who is, and for whom it provokes a remarkable nostalgia.
From Greece, we go to Cyprus (with its complex historical entanglements with Turkey and Greece), in a section of the book subtitled "cinnamon, roses." (For a site on Cyprus's food and drink, click here or perhaps even here.) And then to South Africa, subtitled "monkey's wedding." (For one site on South African food, click here.) I know some South Africans, who make curries, for example, and I drink a South African wine once in a while, but it's here where there is the biggest surprise for someone from upstate New York in Falling Cloudberries: a recipe for chicekn wings with blue cheese dressing (page 229). Of course there is much more;no curries but lots of cakes What next? Italy, subtitled "washing lines, wishing wells." Somewhat more familiar for me. And the ending section: a suitcase full of recipes. Lovely title. A bit of Thai, a salmon ceviche, a chicken curry, Desserts -- ice creams, for example, abound.
Of all these places, Finland is, as I noted, the one subtitled "falling cloudberries." And while that title clearly has a literal significance for the author -- and a nostalgic one embedded in family and food -- for me it simply is a metaphor with no referent, filled (oddly) with light. And yet, it is the perfect accompaniment to the book's final statement:
There are some things that don't change much. I find the smell of a dish, or the way a certain spice is crushed, or just a quick look at hte way something has been put on a plate, can pull me back to another place and time. I love those memories that seem so far away; yet you can hold them and carry them with you, even forget them, and then, with a single taste or hint of a smell, be chaperoned back to a beautiful moment. (p. 387)
For an interview with Tessa Kiros (complete with swell pictures of birds), click
here. For another one, in the Guardian, click
here. Her own site, alas is "under construction" but if you want to drop by,
here it is. And if you want to know even more, including a bit about her photographer, stylist, etcetera, click
here for an interview around the time of hte publication of her book
Venezia. Or even
here for a review of Falling Cloudberries (and a few recipes shared by the author).