Culinary Adventures with Camilla

For this round - our October-November selection - of  Cook the Books , Simona of  Briciole   chose  Tomorrow There will be Apricots  by Jessica Soffer.* You can read Simona's announcement: here . I wrote a little bit about this book when I posted my version of Masgouf for Foodie Reads 2016 a couple of months ago. What a delicious fish dinner! It's become a favorite preparation in our household. On the Page... Jessica Soffer is a gifted writer. But as talented as Soffer is, I found the plot implausible and the characters more cliché than compelling. Think about a troubled 14-year-old who self-harms and longs for the affection of her icy mother who is a professional chef. Think about an Iraqi Jewish immigrant who has recently lost a her husband and gets cajoled into teaching cooking classes. Everything you imagine about a widow with regrets and an angst-ridden teen exist in Victoria and Lorca, respectively. Then those two characters coll...

I'm a little late to the Food Matters Project   party this week. Sorry. Fathers' Day and all that. Margarita from  Let's Cook and Be Friends  picked our recipe this week. Click here to read her take on the dish: a chocolate-cherry pancake sandwich and a chocolate-cherry panino. And click here to see what the other creative cookers whipped up (look in the comments section). After a five stop walking food tour, we definitely didn't need anything else to eat tonight, but after putting the boys to bed, I decided Jake and I could have one more dessert, my version of the chocolate-cherry panini...with some Cognac. thinly sliced bread, I used an Italian ciabatta shaved dark chocolate pitted fresh cherries butter ground cardamom Butter the bread sliced on the "outside." Layer the bread, chocolate, and cherries in a heated pan. Sprinkle with a dash of cardamom. Top with another slice of bread and press down with a pot lid. When ...