A brief hiatus

Today was beautiful: the perfect autumn day. Incredible deep blue sky, the poplars turning yellow, and dew on the lawns. The truffiere's looking good, there are olives in the grove, and tonight's dinner featured an all-garden ratatouille (yellow courgette, baby aubergine, chilli (two kinds), red tomatoes and green tomatoes, oregano and basil. Served with stuffed marrow - a courgette that got away. We did pizzas in the wood-fired oven on Sunday, and they were rather tasty too. Holidays now. While MIke the editor labours over my turgid prose and a designer friend (Tony Cohen in London) considers typography, I shall whisk my family off to Rarotonga and Aitutaki for 10 days. It'll rain.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 12:00 am (permalink)

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The Truffle Book

Winner of the Special Jury Award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. "Absolutely rivetting" - a well-known prince. Available as softback, limited edition hardback, and PDF. Free sample PDF.

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current reading

It's taking me far too long to read this. I have been a fan of Pynchon since reading Gravity's Rainbow as a student. Against The Day strikes me as one of his most approachable novels, full of fantastic characters and wild invention, but I've been busy doing word things, and sometimes the last thing I want to do is read. But this is like fine wine, keeps tempting me to another glass. At 1085 pages, I'll be squiffy before I'm finished.

just read

I've read two books called Heat in the last month. One was damn scary, and one was by George Monbiot, about global warming (which has a fantastic cover). Some would say I've been and gone and had my mid-life crisis, but it didn't involve doing an apprenticeship at the altar of real Italian cuisine and a tyrannical chef. Bill Buford is not me, and for that I'm grateful. I suspect he may be too. I enjoyed it - the kitchen stuff was pretty compelling (as was the Italian butcher I may just have to visit next time I'm on Italian truffle time), but somehow the whole thing didn't hang together. I know where Bill's coming from - and I can sort of sense where he went - but his own motivation (and his family's reaction) remain mysterious.