Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books
Cara Nicoletti
2015, 283 pages
Nonfiction
Cara Nicoletti grew up in her family’s butcher shop and was surrounded by family cooking. That didn’t start her cooking, though. She writes, “But the truth is that I fell in love with cooking through reading, and I learned quickly that being in the kitchen offered me the kind of peace that settling in with a good book did.”
As she grew up she would cook food that the characters in her stories ate as a way to feel closer to them. Later she moved to New York City and began to work in restaurants. She was surprised at how many of the chefs and staff had books in their back pockets, and they would talk about what they were reading. Cara started a literary supper club in her tiny apartment and then created a blog about food and books.
In Voracious, she takes books that made an impression on her and pairs them with delicious-sounding recipes. There are some remarkable results. She has a breakfast sausage recipe for The Little House in the Big Woods and “Biscuits with Molasses Butter” for To Kill a Mockingbird. Others are a clam chowder recipe for Moby-Dick and “Red Wine-Rosemary Bread” for The Odyssey and a pork pie one for Great Expectations. This book might make you head into the kitchen, or to the bookshelves to satisfy a hunger.
Even if you’re not a cook, this book is a treat!
Robbin Bailey
Concord Public Library
Visit CPL at concordpubliclibrary.net.
