J. Ryan Stradal's novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest is a terrific book. It's the story of Eva Thorval, a chef with a palate described by other characters as "the most sophisticated I've ever seen" and "once-in-a-generation." Each chapter is written from a different point of view, which took me by surprise after I'd fallen in love with the main voice in the first chapter -- but I found myself experiencing serial monogamy with each subsequent voice in the book.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest includes a few recipes, and I just had to try the one for French Onion Soup, available in full from Google Books. A couple of corrections, though: I used 8 onions and 4 cups of stock and barely served four, much less the eight the recipe claims.
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