Tag: foodie

Banana Heart Summer

For those who love to love and eat
For those who long to love and eat

I fell in love with the book Banana Heart Summer by Merlinda Bobis as soon as I read the title of the first chapter of the book (quoted above). Those words, strung together, told me I was going to like the novel —  I’ve always subscribed to the idea of a correlation between loving and enjoying food.

Banana Heart Summer is a Filipino novel published locally by Anvil Publishing (internationally by Delta), which tells of a summer in  Bicol (right at the foot of the Mayon volcano) in 1960. Twelve-year old Nenita,inspired by the myth of the banana heart (Close to midnight, whent the heart bows from its stem, wait for its first dew. It will drop like a gem. Catch it with your tongue. When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never grow hungry again), leaves home to become a helper in the house next door so she can earn her mother’s love and put food on her hungry family’s table.

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Manga! Manga! (Kare Kano 3, Kitchen Princess)

mangamania

Before, I didn’t really read manga, because the multiple book format makes it hard to collect. I like reading series books in order and from start to finish, and with manga, it’s hard to complete a set because they’re expensive to buy brand new and at full price, and difficult to find at bargain stores or on BookMooch.

But recently I’ve been drawn to some titles based on their storyline, and I really enjoy comical manga humor, so I’ve started to read them in the past couple of years or so, hunting down bargain copies at National Book Store and scouring the manga selection at Book Sale and on BookMooch.

The upside is that if you really can’t wait to find out what happens next, and if the series you’re reading isn’t a brand new release, you can usually read it online, on websites such as 9Panels, or onemanga.

Some manga series are adapted to Western book formats, but most use the authentic manga format,  read top to bottom and right to left. It’s interesting, because having been raised and educated in a Westernized Asian country such as the  Philippines, I  automatically read from left to right. I  initially had trouble reading manga panels, but I believe I’ve been getting the hang of it now, although every once in a while I tend to lapse into left to right reading when I get caught up in the story.

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Foodie Fiction

choco

I like reading novels about food — the foodie in me relishes reading about food almost as much as  feasting on the real thing. Sometimes the words are even better, because they always taste good in the imagination, as opposed to a dish that makes your mouth water as you read the menu but falls flat when you take the first bite.

This weekend, by chance, I read two foodie novels: The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris, and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (books # 111 and 112 of 2009, and LWFC for the Diversity Challenge- Latin American).

The two novels are no strangers to me — The Lollipop Shoes is the sequel to Chocolat, which I read last year, and Like Water for Chocolate is a book I first read back in sophomore year in high school, when we discussed Latin American literature.

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Lenten Special: Tuna Melt

I’ve been in the middle of a book for some days now (Pagan in Exile), and admittedly, I’ve been losing interest in it. So tonight I decided to “cleanse the palate” with a cookbook, my first cookbook review for the year :)
Book #44 for 2009: Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make you Melt by Marlena Spieler, from one of my favorite publishers, Chronicle Books. This book caught my eye at the National Bookstore Book-sak Presyo sale last December at Market! Market! because I looooove cheese. All sorts of cheese (no, processed cheese isn’t counted), and the stinkier, the better.
Because it’s Lent, I decided to try the recipe for spiced up tuna melt (Tuna Melt with Spanish Flavors), and it’s great because I had all the ingredients — tuna, Monterey Jack cheese, bell peppers (that I roasted in the oven toaster), paprika, half an onion, mayo, olive oil, and some salt and pepper to taste.

Aside from the long time it took me to peel the bell pepper (note: next time, canned pimientos!), it was pretty easy, just like making normal tuna spread except with more ingredients. I had fun using the mezzaluna knife (a la Nigella) that my mom bought at Crate and Barrel (comes with its own chopping board!) for the fine chopping.

And then I grilled the sandwich (brushed with olive oil on the surface) on a non-stick pan, using a clean saucer to weigh down the bread (my battery was conking out, so no photo of the saucer).

When the bread was nicely browned, I sliced it down the middle and yum — cheese came oozing out! :) It was yummy — the paprika and the bell peppers gave the tuna spread some zip, and some smokiness. The Monterey jack was nicely melted; I got cheesy strings stretching out as I bit into the sandwich. Sigh… it was perfect!

My yummy tuna melt!

My goal is to try out all the recipes in this book within my lifetime, and maybe invent some of my own. I need to collect more cheese “specimens” (not a wide variety available in this country, and expensive, too!) to experiment with the different combinations of grilled cheese sandwiches in the book… Meanwhile, just flipping through the pages makes my mouth water.

I think I’ll go make another tuna melt! :D

***

My copy: paperback, bought for P50

My rating: book 5/5 stars, tuna melt 5/5 stars