“The people who live on tropical islands are among the toughest, scrappiest, most resilient people of the planet,” writes author Von Diaz, an Emmy Award-winning documentarian, food historian, and author of Coconuts to Collards: Recipes and Stories from Puerto Rico to the Deep South (University Press of Florida) . “Storms have always been unpredictable, and generations of islanders have cultivated ancestral knowledge around how to survive and, importantly, how to feed themselves despite it all. With limited ingredients, they cook in ways that are soul-nourishing and emphasize flavor. Making magic out of what’s available.”
Her cookbook is about preserving the wisdom and values of island people who live in what Diaz describes as the most volatile and vulnerable places on the planet. She follows their histories and how the grapple with their new realities, combining legacy, adaptability, culture, and fortitude.
She tells and shows us cooking techniques and recipes from faraway places such as Santo, Vanuatu’s largest island. Here we meet Primrose Siri who shares such recipes as Laplap, the national dish with its alternative layers of starch such as cassava or yam, seafood or chicken, herbs, spices, and fresh coconut milk cooked oven an earth oven heated with hot rock. Closer to home, there’s Pasteles de Masa, a Puerto Rican Christmas traditional dessert.
Even those who may never cook Arroz Negro Con Pulpo y Calamares (Black Rice with Octopus and Squid) with its rice blackened with squid ink, will be intrigued by this Puerto Rican dish that is definitely eye-catching.
Keshi Yena’s history dates back to the first Dutch colonial period in Curaçao, a bustling island some 30 miles off the coast of Venezuela. It is the food of enslaved people, as Curaçao was a slave port, who out of necessity took the rinds of cheeses such as Gouda that were discarded by their masters and stuffing it with meat scraps and other scavenged ingredients.
Some recipes are simple and easy to make at home without a lot of extra ingredients such as Ensalada Talong (Grilled Eggplant and Vegetable Salad) from the Philippines. Others, such as Monfongo Con Guiso, a common dish of green plantains and chicharron or fried pork skins in Puerto Rico are more time consuming but within reach of any cook who wants to give it a try.
The book is arranged by the chapters including the island’s cooking techniques: Marinating, Pickling + Fermentation, Braising + Stewing, Steaming + In-Ground Cooking, Frying, Grilling, Roasting + Smoking, as well as pantry staples, and sauces, spice blends, and condiments that can easily be made.
Whatever you cook or don’t cook, this book is a trip to the islands or islas of the world.
The cuisine of Iran, with origins dating back centuries, is arguably one of the most sophisticated in the world, offering an incredible array of dishes. This cuisine hails from the lands of ancient Persia and has evolved through the ages to what comprises the myriad and distinct regional cuisines in present-day Iran. Also shaping this cuisine is the variety of climates in Iran, the country’s terrain, and geography, with rich soil and plentiful sunshine, as well as the ethnocultural diversity of the country. From Persian Feasts(Phaidon 2024 by Leila Heller).
A beauty of a cookbook with its lush food photos set on backgrounds of Middle Eastern designs, Persian Feasts celebrates centuries of culinary and cultural history of a land that during the first Persian Empire stretched from the Balkans in Eastern Europe in the west to the Indus valley in the east. Now known as Iran, the cuisine is complex with each region having a distinct imprint upon the ingredients and how it is prepared.
Drilling down even further, according to author Leila Heller, each Iranian household holds itself to a high standard and has strong beliefs when it comes to Persian food. That said, anyone first attempting to cook these dishes at home should be assured by Heller’s statement that there is no wrong way or right way of making Persian food,
“The personal preferences do impact Persian recipes,” she writes. “For instance, some prefer sweetness over tartness, buttery over dry, and many will adjust seasoning spices and herbs accordingly.”
Making it even more accessible, most of the recipes in her book can be recreated at home from ingredients readily available in both neighborhood supermarkets and gourmet food stores. The more unique items—sumac, dried barberries dried, Persian limes, and prunes—are available at Middle Eastern or Indian food stores as well as online.
Heller, president of the Leila Heller Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in New York and Dubai. She holds a bachelor of art degree from Brown University, a master’s degree in art from Sotheby’s Institute in London, and a second master’s degree in art history and museum management from George Washington University. She lives in both New York and Dubai, bridging the gap between East and West through art, culture, and food. This book is another way for her to share her knowledge in these areas. Besides recipes, we learn about celebrations, festivities, and events and the foods involved in each.
For those just beginning to experiment with Persian cuisine, several recipes stand out as a straightforward way to get acquainted with techniques and ingredients. For example, all the ingredients needed to make Chicken Saffron Frittata are familiar and the dish can be completed in seven steps. In her description of the dish, Heller helps acquaint us with the background of the frittata locally known as chegehertmeh and hails from the lush province of Gilan in northern Iran that borders on the Caspian Sea.
Smoked Eggplant with Tomato is another dish originating from the Caspian Sea region. Again, the ingredients are readily available, and many are already probably in a home chef’s pantry. The dish has seven short steps but is slightly different in that the eggplant is smoked over an open flame to give it the distinct flavor that makes this dish a winner. A refreshing summer dessert that’s both easy to make and gluten-free, Cardamom & Rose Water Pudding takes only four steps to create a pretty presentation. Yogurt Drink with Mint is even easier—five ingredients mixed in a blender.
Once a home chef has mastered these simple recipes, more complex dishes like Herb & Noodle Potage, Shirazi Rice with Cabbage and Meatballs, and Persian Noodle Rice will seem less daunting, making Persian cooking an easy undertaking.
2 tablespoons butter 2 cups (8 oz/225 g) dried barberries, rinsed 1 tablespoon sugar 2 cups (1 lb/450 g) dried Puy lentils 1 cup (8 fl oz/250 ml) and 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 cup (6 1/2 oz/185 g) quinoa 1 cup (3 1/2 oz/300 g) finely chopped scallions (spring onions) 1/2 cup (1 oz/30 g) finely chopped cilantro (coriander), plus extra for garnish 1/2 cup (2 oz/55 g) finely chopped chives 1/2 cup (1 oz/30 g) finely chopped parsley 4 tablespoons finely chopped dill 3/4 cup (6 fl oz/175 ml) red wine vinegar or pomegranate molasses 2 tablespoons cumin seeds 1 tablespoon salt 2 teaspoons black pepper 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 1/2 cups (9 3/4 oz/275 g) pomegranate seeds, for garnish (optional)
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low, then add the barberries and sugar. Mix for 2-3 minutes, until the sugar has melted.Pick over the Puy lentils to remove any debris.
Rinse the lentils under cold running water. In a medium saucepan, combine the lentils, 4 cups (32 fl oz/950 ml) of water, and 2 tablespoons of oil. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 20-35 minutes, until the lentils are cooked through. Drain, then set aside.
Rinse the quinoa under cold running water, then drain. In a medium saucepan, combine the quinoa and 1 1/2 cups (12 fl oz/350 ml) of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until tender. Set aside to cool.
In a large bowl, combine the quinoa, lentils, scallions (spring onions), herbs, and barberries.
In a medium bowl, whisk 1 cup (8 fl oz/250 ml) of oil, vinegar, cumin, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Pour over the salad and toss well. Season to taste, then garnish with pomegranate seeds, if using.
A crumbling castle, an eccentric and slightly mad family, and intricate plotting in a Medival fantasy series about a remote earldom is the perfect antidote to stressful holidays.
Need to escape into a different world after talking politics over the Thanksgiving table–or even harder, avoiding talking politics across the Thanksgiving table? Then it’s time to visit Gormenghast, the ancestral home of the ancient Groan family who lived in a wild and isolated landscape. Written by author and artist Mervyn Peake, the books in the series are Titus Groan, published in 1947, Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959). Peake died while writing Titus Awakes, the fourth book. His widow, artist Maeve Gilmore, completed the book sometime in the 1970s but the manuscript wasn’t discovered and published until 2011.
According to its Wikipedia citation, “The series has been included in Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels and 100 Must Read Fantasy Novels as one of the greatest fantasy works of the twentieth century. Literary critic Harold Bloom has praised the series as the best fantasy novels of the 20th century and one of the greatest sequences in modern world literature.”
Available on Amazon, find a cozy corner to escape contemporary 21st post-election American angst and whisk yourself away to Castle Gormenghast.
The books are also available on Kindle and Audible.
“In those years, the hardest of my childhood, Echo felt like a kindred spirit. I memorized her lines in Slugger 8. I practiced her stance on the field in the mirror. I cut out snapshots from Teen Beat magazine. I bought four copies of her cover issue of Sassy, the one where she wore a red cropped T-shirt with big lips smacked across her flat chest. I made a collage, carefully glued images of her together, draped it with a heart garland, and hung it over my bed. My favorite was a photo of Echo and her also-actor dad, Jamie Blue, leaving a restaurant, his arm slung over her shoulders, protecting her, the way I wished my father did.”
Goldie Klein, a writer for Manhattan Eye, has it bad when it comes to Echo Blue, the famous child actress. The obsession that worried her parents when she was growing up still has a hold on her even now. And when she learns that Echo, who was scheduled to appear on MTV’s New Year’s Eve Y2K special, one that will help her regain her foothold on stardom, hasn’t shown, Goldie knows it has to be more than just a relapse and stint in rehab. Echo has really disappeared.
Currently, Goldie is writing the kind of stories she hates and that her father, an overly critical professor loves, including her most recent article on boxing. But Goldie’s aspirations are to cover subjects much hipper and more compelling. And she sees Echo’s vanishing as just the ticket. She manages to talk her editor into sending her to Los Angeles to track down the missing star. But it’s going to be difficult. Even those close to Echo have no idea where she is, and they’re upset that Goldie is looking for her.
But in her adoration of the Echo, Goldie has spun a mythology in her own mind. She saw Echo as the only friend she had during her early teens. The boy-crazy girls in her class intimidated her with their talk about sex while Goldie was still playing with dolls. She tried to connect but it just didn’t happen despite the best efforts of her mother who planned slumber parties to help her make friends. And so, Goldie further immersed herself into Echo’s world—or the world she thought Echo inhabited.
But Echo’s life was also difficult. Her mother, a washed-up television actress, is a depressive who has locked herself away in their house. To escape that environment, Echo opted to live with her movie star father who was always away on location hoping to become an Academy-award winning actor and never had time to talk on the phone, changed girlfriends monthly and really wasn’t that concerned with his daughter’s well-being. Echo had handlers that raised her and like Goldie she was terribly lonely with just one friend. Stardom couldn’t make up for not having the type of normal life most teenagers have.
Goldie manipulates herself into the lives of people who know Goldie, including Jamie Blue. Accompanying an actor to his house, she eats a marijuana-laced cookie at the door and becomes completely stoned.
“Don’t you know not to eat cookies at a stranger’s house without asking what’s in them?” her editor asks incredulously when Goldie calls to tell her as if that’s a basic fact everyone should know. And though Goldie wants to leave, her editor tells her that she’d better get in the hot tub with Jamie, even though he’s likely to be naked.
Welcome to Hollywood.
Goldie begins to get the idea of what Echo’s life was like as she continues to hunt for the missing star. The story cuts back and forth between 2000 and the 1990s, capturing the era precisely and what life was like for Echo as she became an Oscar-winning child star. In her pursuit of her story, Goldie realizes that it’s time to chart a new course in her own life.
On Thursday, Oct. 3rd at 6:30 PM, Louis Bayard, author of The Pale Blue Eye and Jackie and Me, will be in conversation with novelistLori Rader-Day at The Book Stall. They will discuss Bayard’s new novel, The Wildes, a profoundly empathetic story about Oscar Wilde’s wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright’s imprisonment, told against Victorian England and World War I.
This program is free, but registration is required. CLICK HERE to reserve your spot.
Benjamin Dyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer’s English, says, “It requires a novelist of great audacity to dare to attempt to bring Oscar Wilde back to life, and it requires a novelist of great skill, to say nothing of wit, to manage the feat persuasively. Happily, Louis Bayard is both of those novelists.
“As if that were not enough, The Wildes also presents us with a portrait of Oscar’s wife, Constance, that is little short of breathtaking in its vibrant depth, and a recounting of the heartbreaking tragedy of the Wildes that is eloquent and fully compassionate to all its characters, certainly to the Wildes’ sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, and even to (almost astonishingly) that feckless instrument of destruction Lord Alfred Douglas. I read The Wildes in an improbable state of breathless suspense, so wonderfully well has Bayard presented us with real people pressing, often excruciatingly, toward fateful decisions. This is an intoxicatingly gorgeous novel.”
Louis Bayard is the critically acclaimed bestselling author of nine historical novels, including Jackie & Me and The Pale Blue Eye, which was adapted into the global #1 Netflix release starring Christian Bale. His articles, reviews, and recaps have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, and the Paris Review. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Anthony, Agatha, and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers’ conference Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. She served as the national president of Sisters in Crime in 2020.
Serious foodies have always raved about Tokyo’s fabulous food finds in a city where no matter the time of the place, there’s always a treat ready to be had.
Now, Brendan Liew and Caryn Ng, who established chotto, a pop-up Japanese café in Melbourne, Australia, where they introduced the art of traditional ryokan-style breakfasts, have written A Day in Tokyo(Smith Street Books), a cookbook highlighting the best of Tokyo’s round-the-clock cuisine and culture.
Lew has worked at the three-Michelin-starred Nihonryori RyuGin in Roppongi, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, and also studied the art of ramen-making in Japan before delving into kappo and modern kaiseki cuisine. In Melbourne, he worked at Kappo, Supernormal, Golden Fields and Bistro Vue. Together, Brendan and Caryn have traveled extensively through Japan’s countryside and major cities to explore, learn, and live the country’s culture and gastronomy.
As its name implies, the book is divided into chapters by the time of day starting with Early when the streets are silent. Recipes in this section include Kitsune Udon, a noodle dish made with deep-fried tofu, sea mustard, and sake and Funwari Hottokeki or Souffle Hotcakes.
Mid is a time when people head to their favorite ramen shops, curry houses, and depechika, department store basements filled with grocers, fishmongers, specialty pickle sellers, furikake or places to buy rice seasonings, wines, patisseries, umeboshi or stores selling pickled plums, and food stalls where one can buy rice balls, tempera, bento box meals, and other lunch items.
Late, when the sunsets behind Mt. Fuji and the neon lights of Tokyo flicker to life, is when Tokyo’s boisterous and lively night scene comes to life. Recipes include Chawanmushi, a savory egg custard and Kanikorokke or Crab Croquettes.
The last chapter, Basics, shows how to cook rice, milk bread, and hot spring eggs as well as tempura flour and different types of dashi. This is followed by a glossary of common ingredients in Japanese cooking found in Asian and Japanese supermarkets or greengrocers.
“It would be impossible to dine at every restaurant in Tokyo in a single lifetime. Layer upon layer of dining establishments exist here, stacked on top of each other in high-rise buildings, hidden down long narrow alleyways, and crammed tightly together in warrens. Their only signposts are noren, small-calligraphed signs accompanied by delicately arranged sprigs of flowers or traditional Japanese lanterns hung outside the door,” write the authors in the book’s introduction. “Tokyo is a city where centuries-old restaurants can be found in between modern ones, where third, fourth, and fifth generations of chefs’ neatly pressed white jackets live the life of shokunin, (a word commonly translated as artisan, but which encapsulates so much more) going through the processes their forefathers went through before them.”
The 96 recipes are not necessarily difficult, indeed some are very easy. But for those unfamiliar with Japanese cooking, it may seem daunting. The best approach is to start with recipes like Bifu Shichu Hotto Sando (Beef Stew Jaffles), Tomato Salad with Lime Dressing, or Yakitori (skewers of marinated chicken) that don’t require a long list of unusual ingredients or a lot of steps. And then continue from there.
YAKISOBA PAN
YAKISOBA ROLLS
SERVES 4
Yakisoba pan is a quirky Japanese creation consisting of fried noodles stuffed in bread, specifically a hot dog roll or milk bun. The story goes that a customer of Nozawaya in Tokyo asked for the combination in the 1950s, and the invention has lined the shelves of Japanese bakeries and konbini (convenience stores) ever since.
4 Milk bread rolls (page 216) [below] or store-bought mini hot dog rolls
1 tablespoon unsalted butter or margarine, softened
300 g (10½ oz) Fried noodles (page 99) [below]
beni shōga (pickled ginger), sliced, to serve
Split the bread rolls in half and spread with the butter. Divide the fried noodles between the rolls and top with lots of beni shōga. Serve immediately (though it also tastes fine cold).
SHOKUPAN
MILK BREAD
MAKES 1 X 2.8 LITRE (95 FL OZ) LIDDED LOAF TIN OR 12 ROLLS
“Our Australian chef friend, who lives in Japan, once made sourdough bread for his Japanese wife and her family,” write the authors in the introduction to this recipe.
“He couldn’t easily find the kind he ate back home, and missed the rustic, country-style loaves. He is a good baker, but we can’t say for certain that his wife and her family were charmed by his efforts. The Japanese are completely smitten with milk bread, you see, and it’s worlds apart from the chewy loaves and hard crusts typical of European breads.
“Milk bread is soft, white, sweet and fluffy: the perfect foil for a multitude of fillings, from cream, custard and red bean to katsu (crumbed and fried cutlets; page 186), fried noodles (see page 121) and curry (see page 127). It is also delicious eaten on its own.
220 g (11/2 cups) bread flour, plus extra for dusting
165 ml (51/2 fl oz) milk
50 g (13/4 oz) caster (superfine) sugar
10 g (1/4 oz) salt
4 g (1/8 oz) dried yeast
60 g (2 oz) butter, at room temperature, diced
neutral oil, for greasing
Preferment
220 g (11/2 cups) strong flour
165 ml (51/2 fl oz) water
2.5 g (1/8 oz) dried yeast
Egg Wash
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
Start by making the preferment. Mix the ingredients together, then cover and leave for 24 hours at room temperature.
The next day, put the preferment in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add all the remaining ingredients, except the butter and oil. Knead on low speed using a dough hook for 5 minutes. Scrape down the side, add the butter and knead for another 10 minutes, or until the dough is very elastic, scraping down the side of the bowl every 2 minutes.
To make a loaf, when the dough is ready, scrape down the side of the bowl again, then cover and leave to rest in a warm place for 1 hour, or until doubled in size. (To make rolls, skip to step 12.)
Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface and divide into three even pieces. Form each piece into a smooth ball, then cover and leave to rest for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, lightly grease a 2.8 litre (95 fl oz) lidded loaf tin with oil.
Lightly flour your work surface. Turn one rested dough ball over onto the work surface so the smooth side faces down. Using your hands or a rolling pin, stretch the dough to roughly the size of an A4 sheet of paper, or about 20 cm x 30 cm (8 in x 12 in). Fold the left side of the dough over two-thirds of the dough. Press down to remove any large air bubbles, then fold the right side all the way over to the left edge.
Take the top of the dough with both hands, then tightly roll from top to bottom to create a log. Seal the excess dough by pinching it together, then place, seal-side down, in the loaf tin. Repeat with the remaining two dough balls.
Slide the lid on the loaf tin and leave in a warm place for 1 hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.
When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Bake the bread for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 165°C (330°F) and bake for another 15 minutes.
Remove the loaf tin from the oven, carefully remove the lid and turn the loaf out onto a cooling rack. Allow to cool for 30 minutes before slicing.
If using the bread for sando, use it within 2 days. It will be fine as toast for up to 5 days.
To make rolls instead of a loaf, after step 2, punch the dough down and shape into 12 evenly sized rolls. Place on a baking paper-lined tray, leaving a 10 cm (4 in) space between each roll. Cover the tray with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes to 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).
In a small bowl, beat 1 egg yolk with 2 tablespoons of milk to make an egg wash.
Pour 250ml (1 cup) of water into a metal baking tin and place on the bottom of the oven. Brush the tops of the rolls with the egg wash and bake for 15 minutes, or until the rolls sound hollow when tapped. Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool before using. The rolls will keep for up to 5 days.
NAPORITAN PAN
NAPOLETANA ROLLS
SERVES 4
“This is a twist on the Yakisoba roll (above), this time featuring spaghetti napoletana, a yōshoku (Western-style) favourite in Japan,” the authors write in the introduction to this recipe.
4 Milk bread rolls (page 216) [see Yakisoba recipe] or store-bought mini hot dog rolls
1 tablespoon unsalted butter or margarine, softened
200 g (7 oz) dried spaghetti
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely sliced
125 ml (½ cup) tomato ketchup
125 ml (½ cup) tomato passata (pureed tomatoes)
chopped parsley, to garnish
Split the bread rolls in half and spread with the butter. Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet, then drain.
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat, then add the onion and garlic and cook until soft. Stir in the ketchup and passata. Add the cooked spaghetti to the frying pan and mix well. Divide the spaghetti napoletana between the rolls and top with parsley.
Note:
The napoletana rolls can be – and are usually – served cold.
“what could be better than a cursed island, some supernatural happenings, and the righting of centuries of social wrongs?”
“It was a ship from Virginia, called Venus and it had around 400 slaves on board, packed like sardines,” bookstore owner Bruce Cable tells Mercer Mann, a writer who is looking for a new book subject. “Well, it left Africa with 400 but not all made it. Many died at sea. The conditions on board were unimaginable, to say the least. Venus finally went down about a mile to sea near Cumberland Island. Since the slaves were chained and shackled, almost all of them drowned. A few clung to the wreckage and washed ashore in the storm on Dark Island, as it became known. Or Dark Isle. It was unnamed in 1760. They were taken in by runaways from Georgia, and together they built a little community. Two hundred years went by, everybody died or moved away and now it is deserted.”
One of the many facets of John Grisham’s enthralling fiction is his ability to take complex social issues and weave them into the fabric of his novels so that they make for a compelling read.
In Camino Ghosts, the third book in the Camino series, he does it again with his compelling story of Lovely Jackson, an 80-year-old Black woman who is determined to save Dark Isle, the now deserted island once settled by both shipwrecked Africans kidnapped into slavery and escaped slaves. Lovely is the last of those who settled on the island, and she stopped living there when she was 15, only returning to tend to the cemetery where her ancestors are buried.
For years no one wanted the island, an inaccessible and unfriendly barrier island of impenetrable jungle, poisonous snakes, and prowling panthers. But Hurricane Leo has changed the island’s topography and rabid land developers with politicians in their pocket see Dark Isle as the place to build a sprawling casino and resort complex.
But Lovely is determined, believing she is the sole owner of Dark Isle and the protector of her ancestors’ history and graves. She also happens to be the only one who can lift the curse of her great, great, great grandmother, Nalla, a woman who was kidnapped from her village in Africa, taken away from her husband and only child, chained in the hold of a ship as it crossed the Atlantic, and raped repeatedly by the crew members. No white man who has stepped on the island has survived.
Camino Ghosts is the third in the series about bookstore owner Bruce Cable, who likes fine wine, good food, pretty women (he and his wife, an importer of French antiques, have an open marriage), and books. But he is more than a bon vivant and purveyor of tomes, he likes to intervene in the island’s business to produce the best outcomes and is extremely supportive of his writers. Good at pulling strings, he is the force uniting the factions fighting the development and is also helping his former lover, Mercer Mann, a bestselling author with writer’s block, find her next subject. And what could be better than a cursed island, some supernatural happenings, and the righting of centuries of social wrongs?
Shelf Life 