Amuse Bouche

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I was able to get by without making a fool of myself until I was served a mandarin orange sorbet between the entrée and the meat course. I stared at the small ball garnished with a mint leaf and asked why I was being served dessert before the second course. Rodríguez laughed, and that laughter erased the braid from his sleeves and several years from his face. Everything was easier after that. He no longer seemed a symbol of national power.

from Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (1988). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

 

Everybody was very nice. Normandy peasants. There was a widow there who was running a restaurant. We used to go in and ask for oeufs sur le plat - fried eggs. But she couldn’t fry an egg. So I went into the kitchen, one day, and asked whether I could show her how to fry an egg. So I started getting my eggs for free and I used to sit drinking wine with her when the customers weren't there. And eventually, I had to fight this widow off. She became amorous.

from Dunkirk, Forgotten Voices series, by Joshua Levine (2010). Highly Recommended

Amuse Bouche

The canteen was empty and it was only after ten minutes that Ah Chok brought over the noodles and a cup of coffeetea, yinyang, a specifically Hong Kong mixture that Alex learned to like at De Suza’s insistence. The last of Alex’s noodles went down just as Ying appeared with the young officer who had driven Alex back to the station earlier.

from Emperors Once More by Duncan Jepson (2016). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

 

As the three “trench buddies” (Martha’s term) waited for their flight, he … watched in astonishment as Martha went to the airport buffet and ordered - and ate - three sandwiches. Dinner was bound to be inedible, she told them, between bites; she’d stayed at the White House before and she should know. As it turned out, she was right; it was “the worst I’ve ever eaten,” Hemingway said - “rainwater soup followed by rubber squab, a nice wilted salad, and a cake some admirer sent in.”

from Hotel Florida by Amanda Vaill (2014). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Keelin thought of October nights celebrating Samhain as a child, watching her mother bake the barm brack, stirring a coin, a pea, a rag, a ring and a stick into the mixture. Tomás would cut Keelin a slice… whispering to his daughter that he bet she would find the ring, its golden sheen foretelling of a white dress, a walk up the aisle and a handsome man waiting for her at the end.

from After The Silence by Louise O’Neill (2020). Very Highly Recommended

Amuse Bouche

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Ostrovskiy texted a picture of the proceedings to Khaykin, then ordered a continental breakfast…. As juice and rolls arrived, Ostrovskiy strained to hear the conversation at the next table. The men had accents he couldn’t quite place. Eastern European, maybe. He overheard snatches of dialogue about far-flung locations: Cyprus; a bank in Luxembourg; something about men in Russia.

from Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

 

Kiev

‘I know we can,’ Reacher said. ‘That goes without saying. We can take what we want. But that’s the least of your worries. Because this is about more than just a mean transaction. You ran across the street and ratted the old lady out. You caused no end of trouble. What was that?’

‘Are you from Kiev?’

‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘But I had their chicken once. It was pretty good.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Gregory is going down. We need to decide if you’re going down with him.’

from Blue Moon by Lee Child (2019). Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

 

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I’ve started taking refuge from the heat in an air-conditioned café… It’s icy cold inside… There’s a table I like by the window, where I sit drinking iced coffee. Sometimes I read, or sketch or make notes. Mostly I let my mind drift. The.. girl behind the counter stands there looking bored, .. checking her watch, and sighing periodically. Yesterday.., her sighs seemed especially long - - she was waiting for me to go, so she could close up. I left reluctantly.

From The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (2019). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

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 … Mexico, where there are three hundred ways to cook rice. We (Chileans) have one, and that seems more than sufficient to us. We don’t need to be creative or invent original dishes, we do that with names, which can lead the foreigner to the worst suspicions: “beat up fools” (an abalone dish), “head cheese”, “dark blood”, “fried brains”, “lady fingers”, queen’s arm”, “nun’s sighs”, “wrapped babies”, “torn bloomers”, and “monkey tail”, for a starter.

from My Invented Country by Isabel Allende (2003). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

He’s helped the Little Earth housing project to establish the Tatanka food truck, developing the concept and menu and training the staff. The truck is… proudly, and creatively indigenous. Among a chronically malnourished and diabetes-stricken community, to serve bison and turkey and walleye pike, cedar tea, and corn is something of a revolution. And Sean’s cooking has found a loyal and enthusiastic base not only among foodies and wild-food devotees but also among reservation and urban Indians, both rich and poor.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer (2019). Very Highly Recommended

Amuse Bouche

 

… We walked up to the Seaport…. We put our stuff down on the chairs outside, and we went to go inside this Pizzeria Uno - and it was locked. The bartender was leaning against the bar, watching the television with his back to us, cleaning a glass. We were pounding on the door, like “Let us in! Let us in!” He turned around and said, “We don’t open till 11.30.” I said, “Look at the TV! Let us in!” “He kept saying, “We’re not open yet. We don’t open until 11.30.”

from The Only Plane in the Sky, The Oral History of 9/11, by Garrett M. Graff (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

The nine-person FAI delegation and their advisers gathered early on.. 10 April in a room … of Boswell’s Hotel. As the FAI delegation ordered breakfast, Delaney arrived with Aidan Eames, his new personal solicitor…..

… Although Delaney ordered a fry-up he barely touched it, but drank cup after cup of coffee. The fact that Delaney would not be answering any questions about the €100,000 transaction, nor indeed anything about his 15 years as CEO, dropped like a bombshell for the rest of the delegation.

from Champagne Football by Mark Tighe & Paul Rowan (2020). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Ordering choucroute for themselves, the Germans asked the waiter to bring a sausage in a roll for Rodriguez. It was his first taste of meat since the ham sandwiches..at the RAF base..before he and Faye flew back to France in 1943. As he ate the sausage, he couldn’t help but think how surreal this experience was - sharing lunch with a Gestapo officer in a Berlin beer hall just a couple of days after he fully expected to die.

From Madame Fourcaude’s Secret War by Lynne Olson (2019). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

 

They realised how much she had aged when Severo del Valle brought her the first bottles of wine from the grapes that had matured late and that, they learned, produced a smooth voluptuous wine with very little tannin called a carmenere, as good as the best in France, which they baptised Viña Paulina. Finally they had in hand a unique wine that would bring them wealth and fame. My grandmother tasted it delicately. “It’s a shame I can’t enjoy it - let the others drink it.”

from Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende (2000). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

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But perhaps the least reassuring mode of transport on the Channel was observed by the master of the steam yacht SY Killarney. He sailed past a French officer and two Belgian soldiers attempting to reach England on a door. And balanced on the door, between the three passengers, were six large bottles of wine.

from Dunkirk by Joshua Levine (2017). Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

 

“I’ve read that Bras begins his day foraging for edible flowers and wild herbs,” Verlac said.

“This is what I call high dining. Who needs Beluga caviar?”

Somewhere after the sixth course, a bright-white monkfish covered in what the menu called “black olive oil,” Michel Bras appeared in the dining room. Happy applause broke out among the diners….

“I heard that he’s going to let his son run the kitchen soon,” Paulik said, setting his fork down. “He almost looks like André Prodos, doesn’t he?”

from Death in the Vines by M.L. Longworth (2013). Recommended. 

Amuse Bouche

 

Philippe closed his menu… “Bresaola to start, with hearts of artichoke, sun-dried tomatoes, and Parmesan. Then, the beef cheeks, which they do here with a slice of foie gras on top. And a fondant au chocolat. That will see us through until dinner…”

..Philippe turned his attention to Sophie……

“How’s your love life?”

“Philippe!” Sophie flushed prettily and appeared to find something fascinating on her plate.

from The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle (2010). Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

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It’s also from Elqui that our pisco comes, a liquor made from the muscatel: transparent, virtuous, and serene as the angelic force that emanates from the land. Pisco is the prime ingredient of the pisco sour, our sweet and treacherous national drink, which must be drunk with confidence, though the second glass has a kick that can floor the most valiant among us.

from My Invented Country by Isabel Allende (2003). Very Highly Recommended.

Amuse Bouche

Sweet: granular, powdered, brown, slow like honey or molasses. The mouth-coating sugars in milk. Once, when we were wild, sugar intoxicated us. The first narcotic we craved and languished in. We’ve tamed, refined it, but the juice from a peach still runs like a flash flood.

from Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (2016). Very Highly Recommended

Amuse Bouche

 

The tea overflowed the cup and gushed over the edges of the saucer Marjan was holding. With a noisy clatter, she released the samovar’s lever… The commotion.. did not wake Father Mahoney from his own reverie. He was brewing softly over his abgusht, his round cheeks rosy and full of life. Marjan finished cleaning the spill tea and leaned against the counter, not wanting to disturb the priest. She understood exactly what was happening to Father Mahoney.

from Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran (2005). Highly Recommended