Cooking with Fernet Branca

Cooking with Fernet Branca
Author: James Hamilton-Paterson
Publisher: Europa Editions
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2005-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609450957

“A very funny sendup of Italian-cooking-holiday-romance novels” (Publishers Weekly). Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany where he whiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions––including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur known as Fernet Branca. But Gerald’s idyll is about to be shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former Soviet republic, as a series of misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity . . . “Provokes the sort of indecorous involuntary laughter that has more in common with sneezing than chuckling. Imagine a British John Waters crossed with David Sedaris.” —The New York Times

Amazing Disgrace

Amazing Disgrace
Author: James Hamilton-Paterson
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2012-10-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0571267653

Gerald Samper is a ghost writer to the stars: rock singers, racing drivers and ski champions. And to Millie Cleat, the monstrous one-armed sailor, whose round the world voyage has made her the toast of Britain, and who has become the poster-girl for the Deep Blues, a mystical and nutty environmental group. Gerald pines for greater things, however, and would prefer to write the memoirs of Max Christ, the celebrated conductor. While he schemes to land this unattainable catch, he muses hilariously and viciously on the world of which he is such an unwilling part, looking out from his Tuscan hilltop and pining for his neighbour Marta, offspring of a crime family from Voynovia, who disappeared one day into thin air. Has she been the subject of a 'rendition'? Meanwhile, some oceanographers are planning revenge on Millie Cleat for her destruction of their greatest coup. Gerald convinces her that she has seen the face of Neptune in the depths ...

A Thousand Days in Tuscany

A Thousand Days in Tuscany
Author: Marlena de Blasi
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2005-09-27
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0345481097

They had met and married on perilously short acquaintance, she an American chef and food writer, he a Venetian banker. Now they were taking another audacious leap, unstitching their ties with exquisite Venice to live in a roughly renovated stable in Tuscany. Once again, it was love at first sight. Love for the timeless countryside and the ancient village of San Casciano dei Bagni, for the local vintage and the magnificent cooking, for the Tuscan sky and the friendly church bells. Love especially for old Barlozzo, the village mago, who escorts the newcomers to Tuscany’s seasonal festivals; gives them roasted country bread drizzled with just-pressed olive oil; invites them to gather chestnuts, harvest grapes, hunt truffles; and teaches them to caress the simple pleasures of each precious day. It’s Barlozzo who guides them across the minefields of village history and into the warm and fiercely beating heart of love itself. A Thousand Days in Tuscany is set in one of the most beautiful places on earth–and tucked into its fragrant corners are luscious recipes (including one for the only true bruschetta) directly from the author’s private collection.

Branca

Branca
Author: Niccolò Branca di Romanico
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0847847322

A richly illustrated history of the world-famous Italian distillery and the country’s best-known liqueur, as seen through the brand’s legendary poster art and creative advertising campaigns. Since its founding in 1845, the Fratelli Branca Distillerie company has maintained a solid foothold in both domestic and international markets. Its unmistakable, bitter-tasting liqueur quickly became legendary with its combination of herbs and roots sourced from all over the world. The pioneering secret recipe, which is left to brew in oak barrels for more than a year, soon made history under the name Fernet-Branca. Today, the company continues to have its base in Milan, but exports its entire range worldwide thanks to a string of innovative advertising campaigns, some of which have entered design and poster history in more than a century of creative publicity. This book covers 170 years of the company’s life through a beautifully illustrated historical account that documents the continued rise of the brand, and includes many of the more successful advertising campaigns, offering a handsome collector’s album of historical coverage and archive material, with reproductions of poster art and sketches from the 1960s and 1980s.

Loving Monsters

Loving Monsters
Author: James Hamilton-Paterson
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781862074927

"Jayjay recounts in tantalizing detail his journey from the foggy, gas-lit streets of south-east London to life in colonial Egypt. Successive exploits lead him from the Suez of the 1930s, with its flop houses, shady backstreet cafes and burgeoning trade in pornographic images, to Alexandria in the heady months leading to the outbreak of the Second World War. As the months go by and their relationship evolves, the writer comes to question Jayjay's seeming candour and his own role as interpreter and evaluator of another man's life. Finally, as the layers of his constructed identity are uncovered, Jayjay comes to reveal the true nature of his love."--BOOK JACKET.

Hot Chocolate

Hot Chocolate
Author: Michael Turback
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1607743795

Featuring 60 luxurious hot chocolate concoctions and pairings, ranging from ancient Latin American originals and European café classics to comforting childhood treats. No longer just a simple, syrupy sweet drink, today's hot chocolates are brimming with extraordinary flavors like cayenne, vanilla beans, Nutella, buttered rum, pistachios, wasabi, peanut butter, and malted milk balls. Featuring white chocolate foam, marshmallow cream, and frozen and fondue versions, the 60 recipes presented in Hot Chocolate are setting trends in haute chocolate consumption. Contributed by the world's preeminent chocolatiers, including Vosges Haut-Chocolat, Serendipity 3, Citizen Cake, Fran's Chocolates, Scharffen Berger Chocolate, and many more, these imaginative modern variations are for the hip chocoholic of any age. A cup of hot chocolate is twice as rich in antioxidants as a glass of red wine. And, some would say, is just as intoxicating.

The 4-hour Chef

The 4-hour Chef
Author: Timothy Ferriss
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 677
Release: 2012
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0547884591

Building upon Timothy Ferriss's internationally successful "4-hour" franchise, The 4-Hour Chef transforms the way we cook, eat, and learn. Featuring recipes and cooking tricks from world-renowned chefs, and interspersed with the radically counterintuitive advice Ferriss's fans have come to expect, The 4-Hour Chef is a practical but unusual guide to mastering food and cooking, whether you are a seasoned pro or a blank-slate novice.

Taste

Taste
Author: Stanley Tucci
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1982168013

"From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate ... memoir of life in and out of the kitchen"--

Gerontius

Gerontius
Author: James Hamilton-Paterson
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2017-02-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0571314023

Nearing the end of his career, Sir Edward Elgar impulsively decides to travel by ship to Brazil, where he encounters a woman from his past. Set in 1923 and based on true events, Gernontius is a modern classic, and takes the great composer out of his depths in this beautiful, episodic, mysterious novel set in 1923.