Cooking With Ideas:

I am pretty sure I have read another mystery by Michelle Scott, and possibly even reviewed it here, but I am too lazy to try to figure that out. I came across the book with the same title as this entry in a Good Will Store, and bought it for 99 cents. It is vaguely possible I overpaid, in the sense that lately I have been acquiring a lot of books form various places for free, but still. It was a quick read, a fun read, and filled with food (and wine). I am not sure, but this one might be the first in the series, a series entitled Wine Lover's Mysteries, and featuring a character named Nicki Sands, once an actress who had starred (though her own reflection on that experience paint her as a pretty bad actress) in a detective television show as Detective Martini.

The book is set in Napa Valley, at a fairly high end vineyard, with all sorts of suitably soap opera like characters qwith twisted familial relationships. My one real issue with the book is the tone with which the gay characters are described; it feels a bit like "I have to include them but they put me [or at least the narrator] off." They are somewhere between caricatured and treated like they are nasty just because they are gay. And then, there are a few other quibbles -- once in a while a trace of didacticism reaches out from the page; one only needs to define brix once for this reader, at least. But the author does so several times. And, as usual, the somewhat heavy handed romantic end of the plot does grate a tad.

Did I say I enjoyed the book? It may not sound like it, but I did. It was light and airy -- somewhere between a souffle and a balloon. And, it took away some of the realities of life's problems and made them seem less important. After all, no one has been murdered that I know . . . (and this despite the violence of Chicago streets).

Ok, not my best effort as a review. Have fun if you read this. Yes, there are recipes included. And click here for additional reviews with some in depth reflection on the book (or the series) collected by the author.

Great title, eh? I have had the novel, a gift from the blog inspiration, for a long time and have finally read it. It took me quite some time to read, which is part of how I know it was a really good novel. The author? N.M. Kelby. The title? Yes -- it is White Truffles in Winter.

In many ways, many ways, this book is about food. The central character is Escoffier. And alongside him are his wife of many years, and then his flirtation (or more) Sarah Bernhardt, and a look alike servant many years later. The tale tells of recipes -- and whether or how one might create them to honor others. How does one, truly, honot love across decades or more? Can one make a dish that says that, or is that somehow trivializing things? And, all this, circuling around the cretaor of many dishes, named for or about many famous people. There are tidbots of history, of fortunes made and lost, of eggs and geese, and menus. (Many menus.) And, it is about love -- reflecting on it across a life time, as Escoffier writes his memoir.

The wife, a poet, is named Delphine Daffis. No, I had never heard of her before. Somehow the food artist outlived (at least for me) the word artist. Though, the ovelist who write White Truffles in Winter seems, quietly, to argue they belong together. And, when one googles Delphine, only Auguste Escoffier comes up. Alas.

The novel inspires adjectives -- one review said opulent, another languid. I do not have the words, but reading the book, slowly, was the right thing to do. It was, like many dishes, not to be rushed in the reading, as many are not to be rushed in the cooking. The characteris fade in and out of view. The tastes are brought forward and drift backward. It is a novel that is worth lingering over, like a long and wonderful meal.

The book is reflective in some ways, and journeys across time and place with a combination of nostalgia and regret and thoughtfulness that one wishes to have about one's own life. (Until, that is, one crashes up against the many ways the memoirist deceives himself and others. Kelby is wonderful in her sleights of hand.)

I recommend this book highly. Have you read it? Let us know.

For other discussions of this dandy novel, click here. Or here (for the Christian Science Monitor view) And, for a different view, try here, where you can discover more about Escoffier.