Voracious

Starred review from June 8, 2015
Nicoletti, a butcher, former pastry chef, and food blogger, writes of a passion for books and food that’s as inviting as a bowl of homemade chocolate pudding. That’s just one of the dishes enjoyed by the Boxcar Children that can be whipped up from directions in Nicoletti’s warm, lovely, recipe-rich memoir. As an anxious child growing up outside of Boston, she found immense pleasure and escapism in literature and later in cooking, which brought her closer to the characters and stories that entranced her. Nicoletti spent many happy hours sitting on a milk crake in her grandfather’s butcher shop and developed a taste for atypical kid foods, such as the chicken liver pâté her grandfather put on Ritz crackers for her after-school snack. Her youth was filled with Grimm’s fairy tales, along with a gingerbread house that reading Hansel and Gretel stirred her to build (she includes a recipe for an adult version of gingerbread cake with blood orange syrup), and Anne of Green Gables, which inspired particularly delicious salted chocolate caramels. As an adult, she appreciated the power a book had to help her get over a heartbreak, bond with her grandfather, or endure a winter holiday spent with her parents (respectively, the Aeniad, Middlesex, and Brideshead Revisited). Nicoletti turns both reading and cooking into eagerly anticipated visceral experiences.

June 15, 2015
An exploration of "the profound connection between eating and reading." Food blogger and Brooklyn-based butcher Nicoletti has pretty good taste in books and food alike, though some of them are acquired and perhaps won't be widely shared. A pig's head recipe, for example, has its gruesome aspects, and even if you call it Porchetta di Testa, there's still that Lord of the Flies association. To her credit, Nicoletti doesn't avoid that pairing-far from it. To her demerit, she has two chapters devoted to Donna Tartt and not a one devoted to Faulkner (corn souffle, anyone?). Some of the recipes and their bookish pairings seem rather too obvious, and the book choices tend to the middlebrow: Lynne Banks' The Indian in the Cupboard as inspiration for an ordinary roast beef sandwich just doesn't quite scintillate. Sometimes the connections are a little loose, but they yield nice food anyway: Little House on the Prairie could have just as easily teamed with a recipe for corn dodgers, or for prairie oysters, for that matter, but the sausage concoction that Nicoletti serves up is an easy-to-make delight, certainly easier than taming the prairie. The author is at her best when keeping close to home and hearth and to the beloved books of childhood: readers will want not only to try her take on cacio e pepe, but also to hunt up Tomie dePaola's Strega Nona series of Calabrian-inspired yarns. Another highlight, obvious though it may be, is a Melville-an chowdah; Nicoletti deserves a medal for explaining elsewhere why hot soup in a blender isn't a good idea, though she doesn't work the obvious Phantom of the Opera (or V for Vendetta) possibilities. And is it too soon to say that no Sylvia Plath recipe should involve using an oven? Good, because Nicoletti's recipe for a Bell Jar-inspired crab and avocado salad is lovely. All in all, a pleasure for hungry readers.

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April 15, 2015

This charming collection of essays is sure to delight anyone who savors both a great book and a great meal. Nicoletti demonstrates her chops as a writer and in the kitchen; she's a butcher and former pastry chef. Initially, the author cooked for friends, making dishes that were inspired by her favorite tomes, an endeavor that grew into a supper club and is documented on her blog, yummy-books.com. The volume also serves as a sort of memoir, giving readers perspective into the author's interests and thoughts via the works she highlights. Each chapter concludes with a recipe of Nicoletti's, inspired by the books and scenes she writes about: a Nancy Drew double chocolate walnut sundae, white garlic soup inspired by Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, or porchetta di testa (William Golding's Lord of the Flies). The prose is honest, funny, and thoughtful, and the recipes should be accessible to most home cooks. VERDICT Lovers of food and books will eat this up, though they may struggle to decide whether to first read (or reread) the featured works, or simply run straight into the kitchen to cook.--Courtney Greene McDonald, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2015
Nicoletti takes devouring a book to a whole new level in these essays about some of her favorite books and the recipes they inspired. The entries, covering 50 books in all, evolved from the butcher and former pastry chef's blog Yummy Books. Her nostalgia-tinged recollections of food in the books she read from her earliest years through adulthood give glimpses into her life and reveal tidbits about some of the authors' own relationships with food. The recipes, like the books, are meant to be luxuriated in, made from scratch with choice ingredients. With reassurance and confidence, Nicoletti guides the reader through cooking such items as fava-bean-and-chicken-liver mousse (from, naturally, Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs; grilled peaches with homemade ricotta (in tribute to Joan Didion's essay Goodbye to All That; even a pig's head (a nod to Lord of the Flies). Her repertoire mixes food from the classics with more modern works, and the majority will be easily recognizable and appreciated by ravenous readers. When indulging in literature with your eyes is not enough, Voracious offers a way to savor it more literally, with delicious results.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)