Posted on

Anyone can cook, but Thimble knows best

Legends & Lattes – Travis Baldtree

Summary: An orc from a legendary group of fighters completes one last score for a lucky charm to help her leave the mercenary lifestyle for a simple life where she owns and operates a coffee shop in a mid-size port town.

The rattkin made an urgent dipping motion. 

Viv shrugged. She dunked one end into her latte and took another bite. Her eyes went wide. She chewed, swallowed, and allowed herself a moment to appreciate this subtle elegant comingling of flavors. “Oh hells, Thimble. That old man was right. You are a genius.”

p. 149

From the tagline of “A novel of high fantasy … and low stakes,” this book had me. As someone who has now been involved with a role-playing group for nearly 10 years and who loves the game’s rare town days as much as she enjoys slaying her foes, the tagline and the idea spoke to me. I’m happy to say that the book didn’t disappoint; the tagline was accurate and delivered exactly as hoped. 

In some ways, there is not much more to the story than the summary I provided above and the previous paragraph—but where the book excels and where you would hope it would excels given its claim of “low stakes” is how much it focused on the small joys of a coffee shop (which I will admit is a rarer experience for me in this post[???]-COVID world), the scents of freshly ground beans and fresh baked bread, and immense pleasures of getting to know the local characters, and more importantly those who get you well enough to form a friendship, perhaps a new team but this one a little less focused on treasures and the slaying of supposed beasts. Baltree clearly knew what he was doing in focusing on character-building and slowing down the “action” to enjoy a quick sip, a small bit, a moment of conversation. 

The peak for me was the creation of thimblets, clearly a biscotti, but the moment where the food and drink come together and as the shop needs something new for its customers. But also, perhaps when everything is finally coming together for the characters and this new less dangerous but no less thrilling adventure in a fantasy world. Though the book doesn’t provide a recipe, enough of a description is given, and I have made biscotti before, that I figured I could approximate it well enough.

Thimblets

Here’s what I did: 

Ingredients

  • 3 eggs
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 6 T. butter, melted, plus more for coating
  • 1 T. cardamom 
  • Zest from 1 orange
  • 2 t. juice from (same) 1 orange
  • 1 T. baking powder
  • 3 c. flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 c. walnuts
  • 1 c. currants

Directions

  • Step 1: Whisk together eggs and sugar, and then add butter, cardamom, and zests and juice from orange. 
  • Step 2: Mix in baking powder and salt, and then gradually stir in flour until well cohered into a dough. 
  • Step 3: Once dough is mixed, add in the walnuts and currants. 
  • Step 4: Form into two 2 in. logs, and bake on a coated baking sheet in an oven preheated to 350 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes. 
  • Step 5: Let cool slightly, and then cut logs to about 1 inch on a bias. 
  • Step 6: Place crescents onto another (or cooled) baking sheet, recoated with butter, and bake for about 20 minutes, flipping halfway through. Let cool.
  • Step 7: Enjoy with a nice hot coffee, or perhaps a latte, and a good sword and sorcery book. 
Posted on

Hello (again), world!

I’ve been saying I’m going to do this project for more than a year now, but I recently read a couple of books in a row that reminded me exactly why I wanted to start this project. For the past few years, I’ve been reading a lot more fiction. The world has been stressful (to say the least), and I found comfort in the imaginary worlds of books, specifically in the genres of science fiction/fantasy (SFF) and young adult (YA) fiction.

And one thing I’ve found in reading those books is that any time an author writes about a food item really well I’ve wanted to make the item or imagine a way that it could be made if the details are lacking in exactly how it comes together. I spent nearly a decade writing about food for newspapers, and I kept it up for a while after leaving journalism, so you could say I’m a bit of a foodie. I also got my “start” in writing as a critic—from writing music reviews that only my dad read to my first published reviews in college—and I’ve missed thinking about why I like what I like and why it works for me. 

Then, I thought, why not combine those two things? Read books, review them, and come up with a recipe from something in the text. 

So, welcome to “Cooking the Books,” where on some TBD schedule I’ll release a review of a book I read and a recipe tied to the book, (mostly) using a specific quote from said book. My hope is to release every two weeks, and I have built a bit of a backlog … but the world is not any less stressful, I’m not getting any younger, and I’ve definitely had reading slumps and book hangovers that left me incapable of reading (or instead re-reading the same books for comfort). 

Given the backlog I have already built, I’ll plan to intersperse some of the older books with some of the newer books I read this year (and beyond), though not all are/were new releases when I read them. While I do tend to read newer releases, it’s by no means my entire reading diet, and I’ll consider anything I read/re-read that has a foodie element (or even something else worth discussion!) as fair game in writing. This is my food blog, and I’ll do what I want to. 

I’ll return (hopefully) in two weeks with my first actual foodie post!