A gothic novel and a cookbook

Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s third adult book after “Shadow of the wind” and “Angel’s game“is out.

“Prisoner of Heaven” is a sequel of the first two and continues in the same dark, mysterious and a little bit creepy fashion in the streets of Barcelona. I always have troubles summarizing his stories, because I find the thread often very winding and sometimes confusing, in fact I’m not even sure I ever totally understand in the “Angel’s game”. However, here goes my best effort: Daniel Sempere works in his father’s book store that has slid into financial difficulties. Fermin Romero de Torres, the close family friend, seems troubled even throughout his wedding preparations. After a mysterious stranger shows up, looking for Fermin, the reader is lead into the dark past of the latter. Through a labyrinth of passion, love and murder the book leads to a satisfying conclusion. Just a very good story.

Ok. so I know this is not a cooking blog ( not yet anyway ), but here I do want to mention a cook book I really like.

A dear friend of mine gave it to me for x-mas this year: “How to cook without a book recipes and techniques every cook should know by heart” by Pam Anderson.

I already have a full shelf of cook books of course and yet I still get stuck in a rut sometimes, then spending hours perusing my books looking for new recipes. Usually I come up with 5 new complicated recipes, half of which I end up making, lots of ingredients unused.

This book however, is different. It starts by explaining how to stock your pantry ( ok that’s not new), but then gives you very basic recipes, that are easy to remember: i.e: supper soup: 1 pound of meat. 1pound of vegetable, some starch, a quart of stock, a medium onion. That’s it ( I just remembered that all without looking it up.) Then she takes these basic recipes and gives you variations on it. It is a brilliant concept, because in a way we are already doing that in our effort to throw some dinner together with the stuff that’s in the fridge at that moment. This book gives you great tips how to do it in a more organized way and especially come up with more recipe ideas.

I love it and started doing it just recently, let’s see where it takes me.