Blogcritics Author: Melissa Lion

Book Review: Away, Come to Me, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You Amy Bloom

Melissa Lion — Sat, 8 Sep 2007 05:51:16 EDT

Amy Bloom explores a world where monogamy is second to the quest for beauty, love and passion.
Amy Bloom’s latest novel Away is so linear that the story is stretched far too thinly. The book covers Lillian Leyb’s arrival in the United States after escaping the pogroms in Russia where, she believes until her cousin tells her otherwise, her daughter has perished. In New York, Lillian works in the Yiddish Theater and then through...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Book Review: Barefoot in Paris: Easy French Food You Can Make at Home by Ina Garten

Melissa Lion — Tue, 7 Aug 2007 11:36:02 EDT

Never one to shy away from butter and cream, Ina Garten found her calling in her cookbook, Barefoot in Paris. The title alone conjures drowsy mornings spent in small apartments with high ceilings, sunlight and city noise streaming through windows and café au lait brought to bed. Her recipes in Barefoot in Paris are just as luxurious as the fantasy and perfect for lazy wanna-be Parisian days because they are so simple. Her Herbed-Baked Eggs are a luscious beginning to any French morning fantasy. Eggs baked in heavy cream and butter until the whites are cooked and the yokes still runny topped with fresh garlic, thyme, and rosemary are a welcome bedmate and a perfect antidote to last night's champagne.The Croque Monsieur is a much-needed hit of protein after the morning papers have been set aside and sheets have become tangled and kicked off the bed. She uses twelve ounces of Gruyere cheese for eight sandwiches, plus two cups of milk and two tablespoons of butter for the béchamel sauce she slathers over the top of the bread. But you know Ina -- she says two tablespoons of butter when she means far more. Dinner from Barefoot in Paris is a tougher proposition. If it's me cooking in my Parisian fantasy for a lover who has pulled the sheets back up, but still lies in bed reading the first pages of each book on the shelves, I make the Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic. The recipe is simple and sensuous. The chicken is moist and the garlic is mellowed and soft. Both of us will eat it, so our late night kisses will still be sweet. But if it's my lover cooking, woe is he. While I lie in bed and finish the chapters he does not, he makes me Boeuf Bourguignon. He chops and slices and calls me into the kitchen when it's time to light the whole thing on fire. Before he sets the match to the stew, he reaches for my arm, his fingers on the pulse inside my elbow and he pulls me away just a little more."It's going to be big," he says and sure enough the flames make me jump.Dessert is Pain Perdu -- lost bread for a lost day. Americans recognize this recipe as French Toast, but Ina adds Grand Marnier for an adults only dessert. Add fresh strawberries on the bread and in bowls to be enjoyed later in the night with that bottle of champagne that escaped the evening before to round out this dream of being Barefoot in Paris.

Melissa Lion is the author of two novels, Swollen and Upstream. She believes that eating strawberries from navels is an acceptable way to get in her five servings.

Book Review: Bittersweet - A Sweet, Seductive Way to Spend an Evening Alice Medrich

Melissa Lion — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 09:46:12 EDT

The recipes in Alice Medrich's award-winning Bittersweet: A Sweet, Seductive Way to Spend an Evening range from savory to sweet and all spotlight fine chocolate, now more that ever available in local supermarkets. Medrich’s essays between the recipes are a delight and more instructional than the recipes themselves. She tells of opening her Berkeley bakery Cocolat in a time when most Americans’ chocolate tastes ranged from Fudgesicles to Hershey’s kisses. As a contemporary to Alice Waters, Medrich helped launch the renaissance of serious chocolate here in America. Though her savory recipes deserve applause for the possibility of incorporating chocolate into every meal, her sweets are succulent and surprisingly easy. Her Bittersweet Decadence Cookies take no more than an hour from prep to completion. They are nutty and craggy with whole chocolate chunks barely held together by a tangy chocolate batter. I recommend using the highest percentage chocolate available for the chunks and the batter and eating them still hot, letting someone else lick the molten chocolate from your chin. My favorite possibility in this book is tempering chocolate. The purpose of tempering chocolate is to melt it, maintaining the correct temperature (touch your lips for a clue), dip in a bit of ganache, and cool the chocolate so it hardens around the ganache creating a shell that cracks when bitten. Medrich’s explanation and instructions for tempering are geared toward the home cook. She gives a passing nod to a marble slab, preferring to melt the chocolate in a double boiler and seeding the chocolate from an already tempered hunk. She recommends using a tempering tool to dip your ganache, but I find fingers in warm, silky chocolate rolling around a bit of ganache and then rubbing the whole thing in a batch of nuts to be so much more appealing. Fingers become tempered themselves opening up a world of possible body parts to dipped; the bittersweet chocolate hardened and nibbled off by a willing partner. Or if you’re alone, so much the better. Open a bottle of wine and dim the lights. The recipes in this book are too seductive to share.

Melissa Lion is the author of two novels, Swollen and Upstream. She believes that eating strawberries from navels is an acceptable way to get in her five servings.