Tuesday, February 12, 2013

A soup like this is what I need

This may be a first for me, quoting from a cookbook:

This recipe, however, has an entirely literary provenance: the minute I read about Ezra'a hopes for the restaurant in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, his plan for a soup made with garlic and love, I knew I had to eat it. Which meant, first, I had to come up with a recipe and cook it. I am not trying to replicate the recipe that the character had in mind, not that I could; but no matter, for this is the sort of soup that came into my head as I read. (I've spared you the gizzards — because I couldn't, in any case, get them past the home front.) With any other writer, there might be a danger of the title's being cloying or sentimental, but how — really — is that possible in an Anne Tyler novel? Your soul gets flayed on every page: I don't think any writer has managed to be so piercing and unrelentingly intense and plain downbeat at the same time.

There's not a sentence of hers I don't love, but after reading any of her books, a soup like this is what I need.

— from "Soup made with garlic and love," in Nigella Kitchen, by Nigella Lawson.

Last night's soup wasn't Nigella-perfect, but I think next time it will be. Maybe I should read some Anne Tyler.

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