Mistaken Identity, Cutthroat Competition, and a Cocktail That I'll Have to Wait Two Months to Drink
Plus: Literally delicious dystopian fiction
I’m so sorry this is coming to you a day late. I handed in Book Two to my editor this past Friday (yippee!), and I think my body stored up all the tiredness I’d been pushing aside for weeks and is now dumping it over me like a bucket of wet cement. I pride myself on getting up promptly every morning, and being at my desk fully dressed and breakfasted by nine AM…but today I’m writing this to you on my sofa in my pajamas. Go figure.
Anyway, happy February! I hope you are all enjoying (slightly) brighter mornings and (mildly) later sunsets. My plan for this month is to read more, work on some recipe translations, and eat forced rhubarb and blood oranges in as many forms as possible.
Recently I read and loved…
Hello Stranger by Katherine Center
If you’re like me and love the complete works of both Nora Ephron and Oliver Sacks, this is your dream book. Sadie is a portrait painter who after brain surgery becomes face blind, and has to confront a surreal, askew world where she can’t recognize anybody, even herself. Everything she’s taken for granted about her work, her family, and her love life is now in question, particularly when she meets two very different men and starts to fall for both. Her journey towards a new kind of certain is funny, compelling, and emotionally rich, and if you’re looking for a romcom that will make you laugh and make you think, this is perfect.
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
You think you know about unlikeable heroines? Carrie Soto literally talks about ripping out the beating hearts of her enemies. This book is Exhibit A of something I’ve always thought about main characters - I don’t have to like them, but I do have to care about them. Put another way, I have to want to go along for the ride they’re on. And man, this book is an incredible ride, full of the wild highs and devastating lows of the best sports movies. Carrie is a brilliant, single-minded ambitious tennis player and an awkward, cold, avoidant human being, and I found myself rooting for her both to win a Grand Slam and to find some kind of meaning in life outside of tennis. I stayed up until stupid-o-clock to finish this book, and I think you will too.
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
I read dystopian literary fiction approximately never, but the premise of Land of Milk and Honey totally drew me in - a chef deprived of her livelihood by a worldwide crop failure that leaves humans surviving on mung bean protein is hired to cook at a hilltop fortress for the wealthy where she has access to every ingredient she’s ever dreamed of. The sensuality of this book is damn near overwhelming, food and sex and nature entwining. It’s also razor-sharp on the entitlement of the wealthy, the lingering effects of grief, and the potency of longing for something out of your reach. If you’re looking to submerge yourself in something fascinating, check this one out.
I also enjoyed…Tastes like Shakkar by Nisha Sharma, Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett, Say You’ll Be My Jaan by Naina Kumar, The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
And I made…vin d’orange.
If you’ve ever been curious about preserving, but the thought of buying your own fermentation crocks or standing over water baths make you decide to call the whole thing off, making flavored booze is for you. Take seasonal fruit (particularly fruit that would burn holes in your mouth and stomach if you tried to eat it raw), sugar, and alcohol, mix them in a big jar, and wait for two to three months. Lo and behold you have a liquid that’s something more than the sum of its parts: fragrant, fresh, perfect sipped on its own or made long with soda or tonic.
Cookbook writer Jenny Linford posts her recipe for the aperitif vin d’orange every year, and I’d always looked at it longingly. I could taste the combination of bitter Seville oranges, fresh rosé, and hints of lemon and vanilla, but the space + timing + access to ingredients equation never added up.
But this year I had enough room for a big jar to hunker down in my fridge, a spare bottle of rosé knocking around, and in-season Seville oranges available at the click of a button. Twenty minutes of slicing and pouring later. I had my own jar of vin d’orange.
I won’t be able to drink it for two months, but it’ll be ready to go right around the spring equinox. I look forward to toasting the first day of spring with a little glass of winter’s bounty.
I also enjoyed…a glass of Nyetimber to celebrate The Slowest Burn’s cover reveal, a citrus cordial at Cafe Deco that tasted like lemon meringue pie, and a wet martini and an Americano at Baudry Greene, my central London bar of dreams.