Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books

by Cara Nicoletti, Marion Bolognese (Illustrator)

Overview

An Irresistible Literary Feast

Stories and recipes inspired by the world's great books

As a young bookworm reading in her grandfather's butcher shop, Cara Nicoletti saw how books and food bring people to life. Now a butcher, cook, and talented writer, she serves up stories and recipes inspired by beloved books and the food that gives their characters depth and personality.

From the breakfast sausage in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods to chocolate cupcakes with peppermint buttercream from Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, these books and the tasty treats in them put her on the road to happiness.

Cooking through the books that changed her life, Nicoletti shares fifty recipes, including:

The perfect soft-boiled egg in Jane Austen's Emma Grilled peaches with homemade ricotta in tribute to Joan Didion's Goodbye to All That New England clam chowder inspired by Herman Melville's Moby-Dick Fava bean and chicken liver mousse crostini (with a nice Chianti) after Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs Brown butter crêpe from Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl

Beautifully illustrated, clever, and full of heart, Voracious will satisfy anyone who loves a fantastic meal with family and friends-or curling up with a great novel for dessert.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316242974
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	08/23/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Cara Nicoletti is a butcher, recipe developer, and author of the literary recipe blog Yummy Books. She comes from a long line of butchers in Boston, Massachusetts and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Illustrator Marion Bolognesi lives and works in New York City and has exhibited her paintings around the globe. Her website is Marion-B.com.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Part I Childhood

Little House in the Big Woods Breakfast Sausage 3

"Hansel and Gretel" Gingerbread Cake with Blood Orange Syrup 8

In the Night Kitchen Scalded and Malted Milk Cake 13

Nancy Drew Double Chocolate Walnut Sundae 19

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies 27

The Indian in the Cupboard Grilled Roast Beef 32

The Boxcar Children Chocolate Pudding 37

Pippi Longstocking Buttermilk Pancakes 42

Anne of Green Gables Salted Chocolate Caramels 47

Homer Price Old-Fashioned Sour Cream Donuts 53

The Witches Mussel, Shrimp, and Cod Stew 58

The Secret Garden Currant Buns 64

Charlotte's Web Pea and Bacon Soup 71

Where the Red Fern Grows Skillet Cornbread with Honey Butter 78

Strega Nona Black Pepper-Parmesan Pasta 83

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" Buckwheat Pancakes 87

Part II Adolescence and College Years

To Kill a Mockingbird Biscuits with Molasses Butter 95

Lord of the Flies Porchetta di Testa 101

The Catcher in the Rye Malted Milk Ice Cream 105

The Bell Jar Crab-Stuffed Avocados 110

Rebecca Blood Orange Marmalade 114

Les Misérables Black Rye Bread 119

Great Expectations Pork Pie 124

Moby-Dick Clam Chowder 130

Down and Out in Paris and London Rib-Eye Steak 135

Pride and Prejudice White Garlic Soup 139

The Silence of the Lambs Crostini with Fava Bean and Chicken Liver Mousses 145

Middlesex Olive Oil Yogurt Cake 151

Brideshead Revisited Blinis with Caviar 155

The Corrections Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Buttercream Frosting 159

The Aeneid Honey-Poppy Seed Cake 166

Mrs. Dalloway Chocolate Éclairs 171

Anna Karenina Oysters and Cucumber Mignonette 179

Part III Adulthood

The Bluest Eye Concord Grape Sorbet 187

A Confederacy of Dunces jelly Donuts 191

The Dog Stars Whole Roasted Trout 196

The Hours Birthday Cake 201

"Goodbye to All That" Grilled Peaches with Homemade Ricotta 207

American Pastoral Hot Cheese Sandwich 211

Emma Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg 216

"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" Goat Cheese Pumpkin Pie 221

In Cold Blood Cherry Pie 226

The Little Friend Peppermint Stick Ice Cream 231

"Gimpel the Fool" Challah 236

In the Woods Chocolate-Covered Digestive Biscuits 240

Sometimes a Great Notion Blackberry-Hazelnut Coffee Cake 245

Gone Girl Brown Butter Crepes 250

The Odyssey Red Wine-Rosemary Bread 254

"The Best Girlfriend You Never Had" Red Flannel Hash 258

The Secret History Wine-Braised Leg of Lamb with Wild Mushrooms 263

The Books in Voracious and the Recipes They Inspired 269

Acknowledgments 273

Index 275

Editorial Reviews

"Voracious is charming, poignant, and mouthwatering-a book for anyone who has craved a meal in a novel. Cara Nicoletti's writing captures the nourishment of literature and all the magical and tempting ways food and books enrich our lives."—Kate Christensen, author of Blue Plate Special and The Great Man

"Nothing is more comforting than getting to know a new friend through their stories and their food. With Cara Nicoletti's book, I'm certain I have a new friend in her."—Joy Wilson, author of Joy the Baker: Homemade Decadence

"Voracious satisfies two powerful appetites: for great food and for great books. We come to know Cara and her family as she digs into the lives of beloved authors-Homer, Melville, Woolf, Tartt-and discovers the best techniques for making donuts and braising lamb in wine. Her debut is a feast: warm, big-hearted, and inviting."—Nina MacLaughlin, author of Hammer Head

"As inviting as a bowl of homemade chocolate pudding. . . . Nicoletti turns both reading and cooking into eagerly anticipated visceral experiences."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A pleasure for hungry readers."—Kirkus Reviews

"It's not the type of book you'll ever want to put down.... But more than this, Voracious functions as a remarkably fresh take on coming-of-age."—National Post

From the Publisher

04/15/2015
This charming collection of essays is sure to delight anyone who savors both a great book and a great meal. Nicoletti demonstrates her chops as a writer and in the kitchen; she's a butcher and former pastry chef. Initially, the author cooked for friends, making dishes that were inspired by her favorite tomes, an endeavor that grew into a supper club and is documented on her blog, yummy-books.com. The volume also serves as a sort of memoir, giving readers perspective into the author's interests and thoughts via the works she highlights. Each chapter concludes with a recipe of Nicoletti's, inspired by the books and scenes she writes about: a Nancy Drew double chocolate walnut sundae, white garlic soup inspired by Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, or porchetta di testa (William Golding's Lord of the Flies). The prose is honest, funny, and thoughtful, and the recipes should be accessible to most home cooks. VERDICT Lovers of food and books will eat this up, though they may struggle to decide whether to first read (or reread) the featured works, or simply run straight into the kitchen to cook.—Courtney Greene McDonald, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington

Library Journal

2015-06-03
An exploration of "the profound connection between eating and reading." Food blogger and Brooklyn-based butcher Nicoletti has pretty good taste in books and food alike, though some of them are acquired and perhaps won't be widely shared. A pig's head recipe, for example, has its gruesome aspects, and even if you call it Porchetta di Testa, there's still that Lord of the Flies association. To her credit, Nicoletti doesn't avoid that pairing—far from it. To her demerit, she has two chapters devoted to Donna Tartt and not a one devoted to Faulkner (corn soufflé, anyone?). Some of the recipes and their bookish pairings seem rather too obvious, and the book choices tend to the middlebrow: Lynne Banks' The Indian in the Cupboard as inspiration for an ordinary roast beef sandwich just doesn't quite scintillate. Sometimes the connections are a little loose, but they yield nice food anyway: Little House on the Prairie could have just as easily teamed with a recipe for corn dodgers, or for prairie oysters, for that matter, but the sausage concoction that Nicoletti serves up is an easy-to-make delight, certainly easier than taming the prairie. The author is at her best when keeping close to home and hearth and to the beloved books of childhood: readers will want not only to try her take on cacio e pepe, but also to hunt up Tomie dePaola's Strega Nona series of Calabrian-inspired yarns. Another highlight, obvious though it may be, is a Melville-an chowdah; Nicoletti deserves a medal for explaining elsewhere why hot soup in a blender isn't a good idea, though she doesn't work the obvious Phantom of the Opera (or V for Vendetta) possibilities. And is it too soon to say that no Sylvia Plath recipe should involve using an oven? Good, because Nicoletti's recipe for a Bell Jar-inspired crab and avocado salad is lovely. All in all, a pleasure for hungry readers.

Kirkus Reviews