JOANNA'S FOOD: family cooking, from scratch, every day


Monday, May 05, 2008

Book meme: Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray



















Like Fiona, I'm subverting this meme. You're supposed to pick up the nearest book (and in this house, I'm rarely further than one foot away from the nearest teetering pile); you can't do that if you decide to give the meme a culinary flavour, because the next instruction is to open it at a particular page and post three particular sentences.

1 green and 1 red pepper. 6 tomatoes. 1 large garlic clove, skinned and chopped. Great, that's got you all running off to consult Claire Macdonald. So I had a think, chose Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray, and, amazingly, found it on a shelf. This is what I found:

You eat the delicious but bony fishes with your fingers and mop up the liquor with bread. Is this infanticide? Are these rosy scorpion fish of a dwarf kind like the brownish
scorpaena notata (see Mediterranean Seafood p 146) which also appear on the fishmonger's platter or, if left in the sea would they grow up?

This comment comes after a recipe for a soup of little rockfish, and, although it sounds strikingly like the sort of breast-beating you might expect to find in the current copy of The Observer, Honey with a Weed was a lifetime's project, 20 years in the writing and first published in 1986. Anyone with a serious interest in the food of the Mediterranean, or slow food, or delicious eating, should read this erudite and entertaining book.



PS the real instructions for the meme are below, although it would be much better if you chose a cookery book, opened it at p 123 and then chose three consecutive interesting sentences (which is what I did). I tag (no pressure):

Riana at Garlic Breath
Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups
Francois-Xavier at FX Cuisine
Kate Hill at A French Kitchen Adventure
Nicole at Farm to Philly, who is organising this year's One Local Summer, and I hope you will all join in.




1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Thanks Fiona!

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this book so much I bought it for my mother for her birthday and she never got it. Well she did, she had to go and buy her own!

Cottage Smallholder said...

What a great choice! Thanks Joanna for playing tag.

KJ said...

I've never heard of this book, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for it now. It sounds really interesting.

Anonymous said...

I love this book and have recently re-read it.

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

Honey from a Weed . . . I'd love to read it, have to put it on my library list.
Of course you know it's a bread book just 18 inches from my elbow!

Riana Lagarde said...

sounds like an interesting cookery book! i'll have to post about wild fermentation...

Ed Bruske said...

That's one of my favorite books of all time, Joanna--and not just cooking books. I've read it many times, usually when I'm feeling confused. Patience Gray always sets me straight.

Anonymous said...

Oh that sounds like quite an appealing book.

Unknown said...

thought this might be of interest.

www.thewhettingstone.com