Book of Days Tales

World Book Day is a charity event held annually in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the first Thursday in March. On World Book Day, every child in full-time education in the UK and Ireland is provided with a voucher to be spent on books; the event was first celebrated in the United Kingdom in 1998. By the time World Book Day was initiated I was not only long gone from school, I was also long gone from the UK, and was a tenured full professor in the US. I do, however, very much applaud the idea, especially in our era of functional illiteracy. To be fair, the digital age dominated by smartphones and texting, is not particularly responsible for the lack of reading among the general public. Well before the internet graced us with its presence there were plenty of people who never cracked a book for any reason.

When I was a schoolboy, we had an annual prize day to honor students who were top of their classes, and the prize for each of them was a book. I was never that lucky because I happened to be in a class of phenomenal achievers. In my year, 7 boys won scholarships to Oxford or Cambridge (including myself), so in the lower forms the competition was fierce. I made up for it in later life by writing books, and I hold out hopes that this blog will turn into a book one day.

I have always enjoyed cookbooks with reading material to accompany the recipes. My old fav is Great Dishes of the World by Robert Carrier where he waxes lyrical about restaurants and chefs he has encountered. Reading about cooking inspires me to do my best in the kitchen. I hope that it does for you also.  Here is Carrier:

I made my first contact with coq-au-vin, one of the undisputed glories of French cuisine, when I was eighteen. The place, a little French restaurant on New York’s, one of those little bistros run by a French family, where you could eat inexpensively yet wonderfully well.

Maman served smilingly behind the bar in the small front room with its three or four tables. Papa cooked the specialties of France in the back dining-room-cum-kitchen, separated from the clients by only a low counter, and their daughter served at table. Each night had papa’s favorite specialty. Monday was creamy blanquette de veau . . . .

As a young cook I was deeply inspired by Carrier’s words and I still carry a copy of Great Dishes around the world with me (my sister’s old gravy-stained copy, bequeathed to me one birthday when I lamented to her that my copy had fallen apart). 

Here is Carrier’s recipe for harira from Morocco (a common dish to break the Ramadan fast):

Ingredients

100 gm dried chickpeas
    soaked overnight and drained

100 g Puy lentils

450 gm ready-diced lamb
    cut into 1 cm cubes

1 large Spanish onion
    finely chopped

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp each ground ginger, saffron strands and paprika

50 gm butter   

100 gm long grain rice

2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

4 tbsp chopped fresh flatleaf parsley

4 large ripe tomatoes
    skinned, seeded and chopped

lemon
    quarters, to serve

Method

Tip the chickpeas and lentils into a large saucepan or flameproof casserole. Add the lamb, onion, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, saffron strands and paprika, then pour in 1.5 litres/2 ½ pints water. Season.

Bring to the boil, skimming all the froth from the surface as the water begins to bubble, then stir in half the butter. Turn down the heat and simmer the soup, covered, for 11⁄2 -2 hours until the chickpeas are tender, adding a little more water from time to time as necessary.

Towards the end of the cooking time, prepare the rice. Bring 850ml/ 1 ½ pints water to the boil in a saucepan, shower in the rice, the rest of the butter and salt to taste. Cook until the rice is very tender. Drain, reserving 3 tbsp of the liquid.

To finish, put the reserved rice liquid in a small saucepan. Stir in the coriander, parsley (hold a little back for a garnish if you like) and tomatoes, then simmer for 15 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add to the soup with the rice, and then taste for seasoning. Simmer for 5-10 minutes to thicken slightly. Serve hot, with a lemon quarter for each serving so guests can squeeze over lemon juice to taste.