Seldom, in the librarycook’s memory, has an issue of Delicious been so jam-packed with mouth-watering recipes. So many, indeed that the librarycook had trouble narrowing it down to just four : Burnt butter, sage & prosciutto pasta; Green curry chicken meatballs with rice noodles; Calzone ricotta e ‘nduja; and Zucchini and brown butter bread.
First up was the simplest – the pasta with burnt butter, sage and prosciutto. As simple as it sounds, and delicious with it, and yet the librarycook has two gripes – firstly, the lack of anything resembling reading time at all, and secondly, the recipe’s insistence on cultured butter. Having obediently followed this requirement, the librarycook can honestly report that once the butter has been burnt, its culture, or lack of, could only be discernible to the most exacting of palates.
Next up on the librarycook’s meal roster was the green curry chicken meatballs with rice noodles. Not quite as lacking in reading time, this recipe was nevertheless a speedy make, and with oodles of flavour too.
On to the calzone ricotta e ‘nduja – finally, a recipe with almost too much reading time (the librarycook jests, there is no such thing as too much reading time). The dough had to rest in the fridge overnight – or up to 4 days – SO MUCH READING TIME. And once the dough was well and truly rested, and taken out of the fridge, it needed another 2 hours to acclimatise. This was another Silvia Colloco recipe, and it was up to her usual standard – delicioso!
Aptly, seeing as it starts with “z”, the last recipe was Zucchini and brown butter bread. Not quite as generous an allowance of reading time, there was still a good 30-40 minutes’ worth, and a result that livened up meals for the next couple of days.
And what, dear reader, was the librarycook perusing as she cooked her way through the month? An equally varied reading menu – Emma Donoghue’s Haven, the story of three 7th century Irish monks and their attempt to found a monastery on a rocky island off the coast of Ireland. And then Robert Galbraith’s latest Cormoran Strike novel, Ink Black Heart, which finds our intrepid detectives battling a mysterious online troll. Lastly, The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles’ road trip novel – a slow start for the librarycook, but one she loved by the end.
