Edible Novels

“…Mrs. Post would have understood that. She wrote in a world in which mourning was still recognized, allowed, not hidden from view…In the end Emily post’s 1922 etiquette book turned out to be as acute in its apprehension of this other way of death, and as prescriptive in its treatment of grief, as anything else I read. I will not forget the instinctive wisdom of a friend who, every day for those first few weeks, brought me a quart container of scallion-and-ginger congee from Chinatown. Congee I could eat. Congee was all I could eat.”

Ingredients:

4.5 quarts water

1 quart chicken broth

2 chicken breasts—bone-in no skin

2 crushed garlic cloves

14 chopped scallions-white bulb removed, reserve two to chop for garnish

4 inch piece of ginger peeled and roughly chopped

1 lemon (slice and add both juices and rind to pot)

4 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

8 tsp white vinegar

8 tsp soy sauce

6 beaten eggs

Noodles or rice for serving

DIRECTIONS:

Add all of the ingredients besides the eggs together in a stock pot. Let them boil for 30-40 minutes (longer if you can bear it). Strain broth into a bowl and removed chicken from strainer. Pick chicken off of the bones and break into small pieces, then add back to the stock pot. Put burner on medium and take your bowl of beaten eggs. Stir constantly and add eggs in a slow stream, they will start to cook and rise up to the top. Garnish with remaining scallions and pour over rice or noodles to serve.

Recipe and images by Cara, at yummy-books

Inspired by The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

“I’m a very light eater. I really am. That’s why I’m so damn skinny. I was supposed to be on this diet where you eat a lot of starches and crap, to gain weight and all, but I didn’t ever do it. When I’m out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. It isn’t much, but you get quite a lot of vitamins in the malted milk. H.V. Caulfield. Holden Vitamin Caulfield.”

Creating Salinger-inspired dishes requires a certain amount of imagination; he was never particularly descriptive when it came to the food his characters ate. For this recipe, I had to research how one would go about preparing a swiss cheese sandwich in 1950s Manhattan — which, of course, was no easy task. I found recipes that included everything from red bell pepper to pulled pork, but in the end I decided to stick to the basics. What resulted is a very quick, simple meal.
 

Recipe*

2 slices pumpernickel bread

2-3 slices (or ½ cup shredded) swiss cheese 

5-7 stalks of asparagus, peeled and halved

2 tbs. olive oil

2 tbs. mayonnaise (optional)

½ tbs. dijon mustard (optional)

dash of sea salt

dash of black pepper

Preparation

Coat a small skillet with 1 tbs. of the olive oil. Add the asparagus halves and enough water to cover asparagus. Heat to a boil, lower heat and cook until tender. When fully cooked, add salt, pepper and remaining olive oil. Spread mayonnaise and mustard on the pumpernickel bread. Add cheese and asparagus to sandwich. (I toasted mine, but it’s fine as is.) Serve.

* single serving

Inspired by The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

“…I saw avocado pear after avocado pear being stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise and photographed under brilliant lights. I saw the delicate, pink-mottled claw meat poking seductively through its blanket of mayonnaise and the bland yellow year cup with its rim of alligator-green cradling the whole mess.” (p. 48)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb crab meat
• 1 small bunch fresh cilantro
• 1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley
• 1/2 small red onion
• 1 ripe mango
• 1/2 package grape tomatoes
• Juice of 3 medium limes
• 2 Tablespoons Olive oil
• 1 Tablespoon Champagne vinegar (optional–I like extra acid)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 6 ripe avocados

Directions:

Drain crabmeat well and pick through to make sure there are no shells or cartilage then toss in a bowl. Chop red onion into a small dice, along with mango, cilantro and parsley and add to the crab meat. Slice grape tomatoes in half and mix in. Juice two limes over the salad and mix until well-combined. Add salt and pepper to taste. Slice avocados in half, remove pits and pile crab salad into the center. Because there is no mayo or mustard  the salad may not stay perfectly scooped but that’s okay. Serve with hot sauce and crisp white wine or margaritas.

Recipe and images by Cara, at yummy-books

Inspired by The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

“… But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with Roman punch, roses from Henderson’s, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was a different affair, and not to be lightly undertaken. As Mrs. Archer remarked, the Roman punch made all the difference; not in itself but by its manifold implications — since it signified either canvas-backs or terrapin, two soups, a hot and a cold sweet, full décolletage with short sleeves, and guests of a proportionate importance…”

Ingredients: 

• 6 cups lemonade (see below)
• 1 cup rum
• ½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 cup chilled champagne

Image by Michelle

Recipe by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp

Inspired by The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

“Soon we were in fact coming into Tucson. We’d eaten a slight lunch outside Yuma and now he said he was hungry for a good steak. “Only thing is these truck stops ain’t got big enough steaks to suit me.” 

“Well you just park your truck up one of these Tucson supermarkets on the highway and I’ll buy a two-inch thick t-bone and we’ll stop in the desert and I’ll light a fire and broil you the greatest steak of your life.” He didn’t really believe it but I did it. Outside the lights of Tucson in a flaming red dusk over the desert, he stopped and I lit a fire with mesquite branches, adding bigger branches and logs later, as it got dark, and when the coals were hot I tried to hold the steak over them with a spit but the spit burned so I just fried the huge steaks in their own fat in my lovely new potpan cover and handed him my jackknife and he went to it and said “Hm, om, wow, that is the best steak I ever et.” (p. 97)

Ingredients:

• 1-2lb. steak
• 2 tbs. chipotle rub
• ½ tsp. garlic powder
• ½ tsp. dried oregano leaves
• ½ tsp. lemon juice
• about ¼ tsp. BBQ Grill seasoning (optional) 
• ¼ tsp. sea salt, or to taste
• ¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper, or to taste