Bookdwarf

How do the old Italian grannies know how to do this kind of stuff? There’s no special trick to it, just years and years of practice. They say that in some small towns, mothers would judge a potential daughter-in-law based on whether she had a good callus on her thumb. Work with pasta that long, you’re bound to get better at it. But there’s a lot of trial and a lot of errors.

For example.

This was our second attempt at trenette, the Genoese pasta traditionally served with potatoes, green beans, and pesto. Based on Giuliano Bugiali’s instructions, we’d adjusted our dough to include a mix of whole wheat and 00 white flours, rolled it thinner than last time, and gotten a crinkled roller to cut just one side of each noodle. We also decreased the amount of garlic in our pesto, which we made with basil from our porch.

It was hot and humid in our kitchen, so even sprinkled liberally with semolina, the ultra-thin noodles stuck together when piled in little nests. We hung them to rest on wire coat hangers instead, which worked pretty well. We cut up potatoes and green beans from our farm share, and boiled an enormous pot of salted water. The potatoes took about six minutes to cook. The green beans took about two minutes. We figured the pasta would take one or two.

Being that thin and that fresh, they took about thirty seconds to cook. And removing each strand of pasta off a coat hanger and putting it into the water took more than a minute. In other words, after an entire afternoon of cooking, we had mushy pasta.

Delicious, perfectly-sauced, mushy pasta.

Another thirty or sixty years of practice and we’ll wonder how anyone could find this difficult.

Here is a bit of advice: When we’re selling your at an event for you, don’t try to convince customers to buy the book by selling them from your own stash. At a discount. In front of us. Not cool. That might get you immediately banned from our shelves.

I spent Saturday and Sunday up in Portland, Maine. Besides having some really fantastic food (Po’ Boys & Pickles has some of the best pulled pork outside of the South and Local 188′s brunch kicked ass), Portland has some really nice book stores.

I visited Rabelais on Middle Street, which is dedicated to books on food & drink. Paradise! I was eager to see what they had in the way of books on pasta. As I’ve mentioned before, there seems to be scant information on pasta making. I ended up buying two books with some chapters on making various shapes and types of pasta: Bugialli on Pasta by Giuliano Bugialli and The Splendid Table by Lynne Rosetto Kasper. I spent some time yesterday afternoon reading through some of it and there’s lots of great information.

While trying to find Longfellow Books on Monument Way, I ended up in Cunningham Books in Monument Square. The owner says this happens often. I also stumbled into a used book store on Congress street, but can’t remember the name! All I know is that there’s a giant bigfoot model to the right when you walk into the place. [Editor: Mr. Bookdwarf says that the place is Green Hand Books. Thanks!]

I can’t wait to get back up to Portland, both to eat and to find more books!

We had an interesting visitor at the store the other evening: President Fernández, Meet Paige Gutenborg! | FlyByBlog | Harvard Life. To Go. | The Harvard Crimson.

Trenette Genovese

I’m on a quest to make all of the different types of pasta that I can at home. Coincidentally one of my favorite summer dishes is Trenette Genovese that I discovered in Mario’s Molto Italiano a few years back; it’s a Ligurian dish of pasta, pesto, potatoes, and green beans. Already having made some pesto earlier in the week, I had at hand some small potatoes from my farm share and thought I had some snap peas from the farmers market to subsitute for the green beans. Turns out they were shelling peas! Oh well, I used them anyway with good results. I ended up with the alliterative dish of Pasta with Pesto, Peas, and Potatoes.

I’m discovering that there is not a lot of information on how to make various types of pasta. Pasta dough recipes flourish, but instructions on making the shapes are elusive. Trenette is a narrow flat pasta similar to linguine. I decided to try my hand at hand cut noodles. After making the dough by hand and letting it rest, I used the Kitchen Aid attachment to roll out the dough to pretty thin sheets. I dusted them generously with semolina and folded them loosely before cutting into strips with my largest knife. The trick was not letting the humid kitchen make the dough stick together.

Then it was a simple matter of boiling the water and throwing in the potatoes first. I decided it would be simpler to boil everything together. I waited until the potatoes were close to done, threw in the pasta for a minute or two and added the peas, which just needed a minute themselves. Drained it all and added pesto and of course some parmesan on top. The picture above is of the finished dish. It was delicious last night and tasted great served cold for my lunch today!

• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell: How does one approach the fifth book of a favorite writer? Each book brings the fear that it won’t be as good as the last. Never fear with Thousand Autumns. While it might seem slow to start, Mitchell spends time creating layer upon layer of detail. It’s a very mature novel, one that I appreciated fully only at the end.
• The Reversal by Michael Connelly: A new chapter in Conelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series finds defense attorney Mickey Haller recruited to be prosecutor in a high-profile case of a child murderer, who’s just been released after 24 years in jail.  There’s never any doubt that he did the murder, but Connelly excels at building courtroom drama suspense as well as the tension in investigating a old case. Harry Bosch is back as well, leading the investigation.
• The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker: This book is mesmerizing. I can already imagine the film version with lots of empty landscapes and lone sheep grazing. The novel begins thirty years after Helmer has to return to the family sheep farm after the death of his twin brother Henk. He moves his elderly father upstairs and begins remodeling the house in a minimalist style. Then Riet, his brother’s fiance, shows up and asks that he let her son come live on the farm. Oh, his name is Henk, but he’s not Helmer’s nephew. Henk’s arrival throws things off course. There’s a surprise in the fourth part that I won’t ruin here. It’s a quietly humorous and tender novel.

Bookselling This Week wrote a nice article about my newish boss Jeff: Mayersohn Settles In at Harvard | Bookselling This Week.

I’ve been remiss in mention the various books I’ve read over the past week or so. Here’s a sentence or two about each:

• The Patterns of Paper Monsters by Emma Rathbone: A really strong debut novel written from the perspective of a 17 year old in a juvenile detention center. Jacob narrates his romance with Andrea; their romance is conducted through eye rolls, and stolen moments in a place with no privacy. She’s certainly a writer to watch.
• Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik: The 6th book in the Temeraire series finds Laurence and Temeraire exiled in Australia. One of my favorite series, it’s Patrick O’Brian with dragons. The historical details make the exploration of Australia all the more interesting. I wish I had read it slower, now that I have to wait a year for another!
• Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky: Dermansky excels at writing those characters whom if you met in real life, you might find exasperating at first but you find yourself liking the  more you know them. Marie is just out of prison, a live-in babysitter for a childhood friend–only they’re not really friends as it turns out–and she makes some odd choices.
• West of Here by Jonathan Evison: Okay, I really  really really liked this book, but wasn’t sure how to review it. I loved his previous novel All About Lulu and was not disappointed with this book. I won’t explain the complicated plot here. Just go read it when it comes out. I promise you’ll love it.

Check out my friend Churchill’s brand new blog on Science Fiction books with neat covers called These are the things I am.. He’s the one who found <i>The Little People</i> with the cool Nazi elves on the cover.

One of my first jobs in high school was working at the gift shop in the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville AL. I hated my uniform but I loved learning about space travel, especially the daily lives of the astronauts. In the early days of the Gemini project, you would be stuck in what amounts to the front seat of the car for several days. In the shuttle, you at least had some room to maneuver, but what did you do all day when you weren’t doing science stuff? And what if we ever send people to Mars? That’s a three year trip in a cramped cabin. Sure, lots of people think about the bravery and heroism of astronauts. But I wanted to know how bad they smelled after a week wearing the same space suit. And how did they go to the bathroom in space? Or wash their hair? And why was their food so gross?

Mary Roach knows. In Packing for Mars, she goes on board with space monkeys, watches video of austronaut auditions, reads archives of isolation experiments and studies of what happens when you put three people in a small room for a week and don’t let them change their clothes. She eats meals designed by veterinarians for minimal excretory output. And yes, she visits the center where astronauts train to use the space-commode.

As with Stiff and Bonk, her earlier books about death and sex, Roach answers questions most of us aren’t quite brave enough to ask. The story is a combination of amazing, hilarious, and amazingly hilarious. The chapter on space bathroom technology alone is worth the price of admission.

I don’t know what it is about peas, but I’m addicted. Sugar Snap Peas, Shelling Peas, I buy them whenever I see them at a farmers market. Last weekend I made a fantastic Orechiette Carbonara with Peas and Pea Tendrils. This week I decided to try making a ravioli with peas.

I started with a simple pasta dough: 1 1/2 cups of semolina flour, 3/4 cup of 00 flour, 2 eggs, a little olive oil and water enough to get it together. I find that using a wide bowl with a low edge is great for mixing and kneading. I’ve tried making the dough with both my kitchen aid and food processor with mixed results. I find that hand kneading gives you better control over how sticky or dry the dough becomes. Plus there’s less to wash!

Kneading Dough

For the filling, I minced some shallots and sautéed them in olive oil. I added some dry white wine and the peas once they were soft and translucent.

Cooking the peas & shallots

I had some fresh local ricotta from an earlier meal (ricotta with sugar snap peas & olive oil!) but not quite enough, so I walked a nearby store and bought some mascarpone. I whipped the two cheeses together and added the peas once they cooled down. It ended up a bit runnier than I would have liked, but tasted great.

The Filling

Now it was time to roll out the dough into sheets. I was worried about the humidity making the pasta a little too moist, but the texture was perfect. Letting it rest for a while really goes a long way to making great pasta.

Rolling out the dough

When rolling out the dough, you start at the widest setting (1) and work your way to thinner, settings 5-8 depending on how thin you want it. I went to 5 since I was filling it. The pasta was beautiful! Look how thin it got! And yes, I took that picture one handed with the other supporting the pasta.

Look how long it is now!

I divided the dough into four pieces, rolled out each one, and then cut them in half, making a top and bottom. I didn’t do a great job of measuring the correct amount of space, but whatever. I spooned out a little of the mixture and wet the dough around it. This is where it would have been nice to have a pasta or some such instrument. Because the pea filling was so runny, I had to make really large ravioli.

Putting together the ravioli

They weren’t exactly uniform in size but they held up as I cooked them in salted boiling water. I minced some garlic, chopped some basil from my front porch and did a quick sauté.

Garlic & Basil sauce

I put a few of the ravioli in a pasta bowl, spooned some of the oil mixture, and at the last minute added some extra of the pea mixture. No meal is complete without a little parmesan in my opinion. The colors looked a little weird, but it tasted fantastic, especially with the salad made from our front porch.

Voilà!

Bon Appetit!

You can find more photos of my cooking extravaganza here.

Mr. Bookdwarf reads almost as much as I do and wanted me to share some short reviews:

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: I loved Bender’s previous novel An Invisible Sign of My Own but in this one, she’s really come into her own. It’s an absolutely compelling story of a girl growing into an upsetting and uncanny talent of tasting the emotions of the people preparing the food she eats. Her mother’s unfulfilled and lonely; her brother is furious; her friend’s mom really is as enviably good as she seems. How she eventually learns to deal with her abilities, and the way in which the rest of her family fails to manage their own oddities, is both heartbreaking and beautiful.

How Did You Get This Number? by Sloane Crosley: Sloane Crosley is the nonfiction essayist for the Tina Fey generation. Smart? Very. But also so severely dyslexic she can’t read a clock even in her twenties, and willing to document in self-deprecating detail how far she’ll go to hide it from everyone else. Canny? Of course. But not so wise that she doesn’t believe every lie she tells herself, at least for awhile. The sharp edges of her humor seem to suggest that laughter is really more of a coping mechanism, just barely preferable to binge drinking, pilates, and serial homicide.

One of my favorite cookbooks is Suzanne Goin’s Sunday Suppers at Lucques. It’s seasonal and beautiful with menus that often take lots of steps. It’s not something you cook from unless you’ve got time. Meanwhile, I’ve been getting all kinds of fun stuff in my CSA, as well as picking up other things like asparagus and strawberries from the farmers markets around town. While absently flipping through it last week, I spotted a menu that included Orecchiette Carbonara with Peas and Pea Tendrils. For dessert, Crème Fraiche Panna Cotta with Strawberries. Sold! I also had the asparagus and a lot of various lettuces for a simple salad.

I decided to make it more complicated by making my own orechiette pasta by hand. I’ve done pasta before, but mostly ravioli and strand pasta. I’ve never attempted shapes. It turned out to be easier than I thought. It just takes practice of course. I’m not an 80 year old Italian grandmother nor do I have one, so I started from scratch. Here’s a photo:

Do they look like the ones that come in the box? Not really, but they tasted great. First you roll out the dough into a thin snake, then you cut and smoosh. I’m not sure that I perfected it exactly, but I had fun doing it!

The meal came together splendidly as did several friends, many of whom brought delicious wine and even cookies. Goin’s recipes are pretty fool proof. The carbonara came together. Panna cotta is so easy, I don’t know why I don’t make it all the time. Unfortunately, we were too busy eating to take photos alas, but I’ll go on record saying that it’s the best meal I’ve ever cooked in my life. Now all I want to do is explore pasta making.

One of the books I’m most excited about is Jonathan Evison’s novel West of Here coming from Algonquin Books this Fall. I’m just starting it and searched for the title image to use in the right hand column, but couldn’t find one. I went with the bear picture over there, which also happens to be my Twitter icon. The icon is so small on Twitter I bet people wonder why on earth I’m using a stuffed bear to represent me. I’m not really a stuffed bear kind of gal. Now you see why I’m using it.

Also, I’m really excited to read West of Here! I loved All About Lulu and have heard great things about this new novel from other booksellers. I’ll let you know what I think when I’m done.

I’ve had all these great posts planned about what I’ve been reading–Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number; about what does it mean for literature now that David Markson has died–he died on Monday; Kelly Link’s heart wrenching post on why she hasn’t written anything in over two year; about all of the cool books I heard at Book Expo America that are coming this Fall.

Perhaps that New York Times article is right–technology (probably Twitter for me) is making me a poor multitasker. I did score 97% on the focus test.

I can tell you that you should read Sloane Crosley’s new essay collection. I think it’s even stronger than her first one. In particular the essays “An Abbreviated Catalog of Tongues” and “Off the Back of a Truck” struck me the most. The essays have her acerbic wit, but with a touch of melancholy.

Mostly I’m watching the Fall galleys pile up on my shelves here in my office with a growing dread that I won’t get to all of them. Just today I got copies of Room by Emma Donaghue—booksellers are raving about this one and Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End: The Story of a Crime by Swedish author Leif GW Persson. The Fall season looks like it’s going to be great. Last year we (booksellers and publishers) exclaimed about the lists, but sales were so poor. Given what I’ve seen so far, I’m predicting a blockbuster Fall.

Do you ever wish you could stop time so you could sit and read uninterrupted? My reading pile has gotten so big in the past few days. I’ll never get through it all and that makes me sort of sad. I read Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, Thomas Chatterton Williams account immersing himself into the culture of hip-hop while young and how he got out of it. The subtitle doesn’t do the book justice. Williams book really is about discovering oneself and how hip-hop culture debases the black culture. His father, a sociologist by training, spent his life reading, teaching himself because no one else would. In the book, he tells his son that he never reads for enjoyment. He carefully underlines sentences in each book, magazine, and newspaper he reads. Thomas Williams finally figures out that he’s lucky because he can read for purely aesthetic reasons. I’m paraphrasing some really wonderful chapters here.

My point about stopping time is that Williams references reading authors like Kierkegaard and Dostoevesky and what he learned from these wonderful books. It made me want to go back and read them so badly. But each day, a new galley of something equally awesome has shown up on my desk. If I could stop time, I’d read them all. Right now, I have to pick what to read next: The Brothers Karamazov or Kraken by China Mieville. What to choose?

On the escalator up toward the terminal at the Atlanta airport on Monday, I suddenly realized that I only had half of a book to read with a two hour flight to Philadelphia plus a long layover and another hour or more flight after that. Shit. What should I do? As I reached the top, I saw that my flight was beginning to board. Shit! My head turned left and right looking for the ubiquitous Hudson News. Where is it?! To the left I see a store front called Buckhead Books. Even better! An actual bookstore! I rush over to see their wares. Shelves upon shelves of books from which to choose!

Wait, the fiction section is 3 bays, mostly face outs. The classics section has approximately 8 titles, 7 of which I’ve already read. The front table only seems to have Scott Turow, Michael Crichton, and John Grisham on it in massive piles. Shit! I scan the bestseller wall. It’s a lot of Christian material plus some of Sookie Stackhouse series. Augh. What about Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant? I tried reading one of her previous books The Birth of Venus, but I didn’t care for it.

Some will start calling me a snob here. Fine. Go ahead. I just wanted something a little more solid. I can read a John Grisham novel in about 2 hours. I need a thick book that can entertain me for at least three or more hours. So stop. I know my own tastes.

This is taking forever! I’ve got 3 minutes to pick a book, pay for it, and run to my plane. Finally I spot it. Lurking toward the bottom of the fiction section, which I’m back in front of for a second look I see Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Finally! Something I haven’t read and actually want to read. Panic over. I grabbed, paid, and ran.

I’m so glad I finally read this novel. It was so good! You might be laughing at me for panicking about all this, but I’ve said it before. Being without a book is torture for me. I know I’m not alone.

Work is nuts. I’m working floor shifts, plus events not to mention my regular job. It’s hard to find the time to write about books at the moment. Look who I met on Wednesday night as he signed copies of his book Bicycle Diaries!

I found David Byrne charming and easy to chat with. Now I’m off to work at the Simmons Leadership conference for women. Then I’m off to Atlanta to spend two days with my family. Phew. I need another vacation.

Great title for the post, eh? I couldn’t think of anything more clever. I’ve been reading a lot, but nothing that has made me run to the computer to write about. The following books all were good in different ways.

• Whispering in the Giant’s Ear by William Powers: I mentioned in a previous post how much I ended up enjoying his forthcoming book Twelve by Twelve. Sometimes I like to read an authors previous works so I grabbed this one. I learned a great deal about Bolivian politics, which is to say that they’re are extremely complicated and nothing is black and white. I ended up with lots of questions too. Powers is an earnest writer. He truly wants to make a difference in the world and in the end, I find that admirable.
• When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale by Matthew Davis: I decided to follow up with more Peace Corps travel type stuff. Mr. Bookdwarf asked if everyone who joined Peace Corp had to write a book. Maybe it’s true. When Things Get Dark chronicles Davis’s two years in Mongolia and his gradual self-destruction as the cold, dark winters take their toll. If you like stories about drinking that make your jaw drop, than this is for you.
• By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan: During the Spanish Inquisition, Luis de Santangel, chancellor to the court and also from a converso family, tires of witnessing the brutality of the church. He’s implicated in the murder of a priest and his loved ones come under attack. He begins to reconnect with his Jewish roots and a finds himself falling in love with Judith Migdal, a beautiful and clever Jewish woman trying to navigate a tough world. And Christoper Columbus plays a role. It’s a nice portrait of a dramatic period in history.
• Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor: A mystery set in post World War I London, we meet Lydia Langstone who has just escaped her abusive husband to her estranged father’s house in Bleeding Heart Square. Each chapter begins with a section of a diary written by a murdered woman. It’s hard to connect all the dots at first, but as the story comes together things become more clear. You know who the murderer is from the getgo, but there’s still a surprise ending.
• Chef by Jaspreet Singh: A widely praised debut novel narrated by Kirpal Singh, called Kip, as he travels by train to Kashmir. He was twenty on his first trip to General Kumar’s camp, in the shadow of the Siachen glacier, where he apprenticed under the camp’s chef Kishen. He learns to create wonderful dishes from around the world. His life is thrown into chaos on the day he meets a supposed terrorist woman being held in the camp. Lots of lovely descriptions and it’s nice to read a novel set in India not in the warm regions.

I’m what you might call a cynic–not shocking news if you’ve read this blog long enough–which is why I was surprised that I liked William Powers’ Twelve by Twelve so much. I’ve long admired his writing (Blue Clay People on Liberia and Whispering in the Giant’s Ear on Bolivia). His new book, about to be published by New World Library, the folks behind Ekhart Tolle, sounded quite different.

While visiting his mother in North Carolina, she mentions knowing a doctor who only makes eleven thousand dollars a year and lives in a twelve foot by twelve foot house with no electricity. Intrigued, Powers tries to get in contact with this doctor, named Jackie Benton. Months later, she responds to his messages and invites him for a visit. Powers finds himself mesmerized by her permaculture lifestyle. He was back from a decade spent doing international work in Africa and South America and finding it difficult getting back into the swing of things now back in the US. He accepts an offer from Benton to stay at the cabin for a stay, while she travels out West. This isn’t a gimmicky plot though, which is what I initially thought. This book chronicles Powers’ struggle to find a meaningful life again.

Well, what does that mean? He spends a lot of time outdoors, walking in the woods, befriending his neighbors, generally observing the world around him. His description of his life, and his dislike of contemporary American consumer culture however felt increasingly like a criticism of my own lifestyle. It was hard not to be resentful. Why do I feel that way when reading these books about people making radical changes in their lives?
Then I came to the chapter titled “Humility”. In it, Powers describes how his ego got bigger as he reduced his carbon footprint and became “more enlightened”. He finally realized the trap:”the fiction of the ego is replaced by an even heavier fiction; that of being a Jedi, a spiritual warrior, an enlightened being–and therefore better than those miserable people who are not.” People can build egos while conquering them. It was this chapter that made me realize why I felt so resentful. Yet, he recognized that he was falling into the trap and this saved the book for me.

Powers was able to reach even someone as cynical as me. It’s a thought-provoking book for sure, one I hope many will read and find themselves wondering about their own motives on a daily basis.