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Quote by Philip Hensher

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The Emperor Waltz

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Philip Hensher
Philip Hensher

Philip Hensher, born on February 20, 1965, is a distinguished British novelist known for his unique literary style and profound insights into human nature. more

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“Su piazza Giachery batte il sole, quel pomeriggio. È giugno inoltrato, ed è da aprile che non piove. Lo scirocco è stato impietoso sulla città sin dall’inizio del mese, portando solo sabbia, rossa e densa e irrespirabile, mai una nuvola carica d’acqua per dare sollievo alla terra. Nonostante il vento oggi si sia calmato, il cielo è di quel colore malato, quel giallo itterico e opaco che lo scirocco porta con sé. Manfredi lo fissa quasi sbigottito, ovviamente la sua prima notte di nuovo al mondo deve per forza essere una serata del cazzo, di quelle in cui non è mai davvero notte, perché il rossore dell’aria rende l’atmosfera viola e cupa e si riesce a malapena a respirare, masticando sabbia fra i denti a ogni boccata.”

Gay RomanceMm RomanceSicilianSicilia
Book:Vento di Scirocco
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“A sua madre piaceva quella foto, probabilmente è per questo che papà la tiene incorniciata così in bella vista. I tempi in cui erano una famiglia, e c’era lei a tenerli insieme. Cerca di non fissarla, mentre apparecchia la tavola, altrimenti sentirebbe la felicità di quell’immagine ritorcerglisi contro. È colpa tua d’altra parte se non esiste più. Guarda cosa hai fatto a questa famiglia, Manfredi. Quasi si aspetta che sua sorella un giorno trovi le palle per dirglielo in faccia.”

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Book:Vento di Scirocco
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“Avevano deciso di vedersi direttamente davanti Di Martino 3. “Tre” perché il locale, storico ritrovo palermitano della periferia triste dell’era del sacco della città, era stato incendiato e ricostruito tre volte, fino ad adesso. Le motivazioni intuibili. Il posto, in questa sua terza versione anni duemiladieci, non era altro che un locale ampio, mal illuminato, con una cucina al coperto e tanti tavolini con la tovaglia di carta sotto un gazebo di plastica, riparo per la pioggia e per il sole, a seconda della stagione. Nonostante l’aspetto sempre più trasandato, quello di come se i proprietari si fossero ormai rotti i coglioni di mettere dell’impegno in una cosa che tanto fra un po’ verrà distrutta, il cibo da Di Martino è sempre una garanzia, sin dalla prima apertura. Panini giganteschi, grondanti ogni ben di Dio, frittura asciutta e sporca, come ogni palermitano la gradisce. Proprio quello di cui ha voglia, tanto non gli fa male mettere un po’ di carne sulle ossa.”

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Book:Vento di Scirocco
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“It is, without a doubt, the most delicious orange I've ever eaten. Notes of raspberry give it a tartness and complexity that leave the classic supermarket navel orange in the dust. "It's sunshine. It's bittersweet. It's perfect. My god," I say, gasping. "I think I just fell in love. I'm going to have a civil partnership with an orange." Leo, who has been fairly quiet for the last half hour, leans forward onto his elbows. "They're not for everyone," he says, taking a segment. "Very fleshy, delicately juicy, and not obscenely sweet." "Fleshy?" Luca says, tipping his glass toward us, playing with his mustache. "Delicately juicy?" I say, raising an eyebrow. I expect Leo to feel embarrassed, but instead he shoots Luca a cheeky grin, eyes buzzing with mischief. "Seriously, Olive," Luca says. "For me, the orange is so special to Sicily. We juice it, we ice it, we bake it, we zest it. It's an aperitif, a pasta dish, a dessert. It's the color of sunset on the outside, and a bleeding heart inside.”

PoeticSicilianCitrusBlood OrangeDigestif
Book:Just One Taste
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“Eccola dunque col pensiero laggiù. Le par d’essere ancora fanciulla, arrampicata sul belvedere del prete, in una sera di maggio. Una grande luna di rame sorge dal mare, e tutto il mondo pare d’oro e di perla. La fisarmonica riempie coi suoi gridi lamentosi il cortile illuminato da un fuoco d’alaterni il cui chiarore rossastro fa spiccare sul grigio del muro la figura svelta e bruna del suonatore, i visi violacei delle donne e dei ragazzi che ballano il ballo sardo. Le ombre si muovono fantastiche sull’erba calpestata e sui muri della chiesa; brillano i bottoni d’oro, i galloni argentei dei costumi, i tasti della fisarmonica: il resto si perde nella penombra perlacea della notte lunare. Noemi ricordava di non aver mai preso parte diretta alla festa, mentre le sorelle maggiori ridevano e si divertivano, e Lia accovacciata come una lepre in un angolo erboso del cortile forse fin da quel tempo meditava la fuga. La festa durava nove giorni di cui gli ultimi tre diventavano un ballo tondo continuo accompagnato da suoni e canti: Noemi stava sempre sul belvedere, tra gli avanzi del banchetto; intorno a lei scintillavano le bottiglie vuote, i piatti rotti, qualche mela d’un verde ghiacciato, un vassoio e un cucchiaino dimenticati; anche le stelle oscillavano sopra il cortile come scosse dal ritmo della danza. No, ella non ballava, non rideva, ma le bastava veder la gente a divertirsi perché sperava di poter anche lei prender parte alla festa della vita. Ma gli anni eran passati e la festa della vita s’era svolta lontana dal paesetto, e per poterne prender parte sua sorella Lia era fuggita di casa… Lei, Noemi, era rimasta sul balcone cadente della vecchia dimora come un tempo sul belvedere del prete.”

WomenSardinia
Book:Reeds in the Wind
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“Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.”

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Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
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“As soon as we take our seats, a sequence of six antipasti materialize from the kitchen and swallow up the entire table: nickels of tender octopus with celery and black olives, a sweet and bitter dance of earth and sea; another plate of polpo, this time tossed with chickpeas and a sharp vinaigrette; a duo of tuna plates- the first seared and chunked and served with tomatoes and raw onion, the second whipped into a light pâté and showered with a flurry of bottarga that serves as a force multiplier for the tuna below; and finally, a plate of large sea snails, simply boiled and served with small forks for excavating the salty-sweet knuckle of meat inside. As is so often the case in Italy, we are full by the end of the opening salvo, but the night is still young, and the owner, who stops by frequently to fill my wineglass as well as his own, has a savage, unpredictable look in his eyes. Next comes the primo, a gorgeous mountain of spaghetti tossed with an ocean floor's worth of clams, the whole mixture shiny and golden from an indecent amount of olive oil used to mount the pasta at the last moment- the fat acting as a binding agent between the clams and the noodles, a glistening bridge from earth to sea. "These are real clams, expensive clams," the owner tells me, plucking one from the plate and holding it up to the light, "not those cheap, flavorless clams most restaurants use for pasta alle vongole." Just as I'm ready to wave the white napkin of surrender- stained, like my pants, a dozen shades of fat and sea- a thick cylinder of tuna loin arrives, charred black on the outside, cool and magenta through the center. "We caught this ourselves today," he whispers in my ear over the noise of the dining room, as if it were a secret to keep between the two of us. How can I refuse?”

SeafoodPastaTunaSurf And TurfClamsItalian CuisineSardinia
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
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“The soul of Sardinia lies in the hills of the interior and the villages peppered among them. There, in areas such as Nuoro and Ozieri, women bake bread by the flame of the communal oven, winemakers produce their potions from small caches of grapes adapted to the stubborn soil and acrid climate, and shepherds lead their flocks through the peaks and valleys in search of the fickle flora that fuels Sardinia's extraordinary cheese culture. There are more sheep than humans roaming this island- and sheep can't graze on sand. On the table, the food stands out as something only loosely connected to the cuisine of Italy's mainland. Here, every piece of the broader puzzle has its own identity: pane carasau, the island's main staple, eats more like a cracker than a loaf of bread, built to last for shepherds who spent weeks away from home. Cheese means sheep's milk manipulated in a hundred different ways, from the salt-and-spice punch of Fiore Sardo to the infamous maggot-infested casu marzu. Fish and seafood may be abundant, but they take a backseat to four-legged animals: sheep, lamb, and suckling pig. Historically, pasta came after bread in the island's hierarchy of carbs, often made by the poorest from the dregs of the wheat harvest, but you'll still find hundreds of shapes and sizes unfamiliar to a mainland Italian. All of it washed down with wine made from grapes that most people have never heard of- Cannonau, Vermentino, Torbato- that have little market beyond the island.”

CheeseFood And WineItalian FoodItalian CultureSardinia
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
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“Biddanoa cumenzàt cun d’unu suspiru. Fut su suspiru de chini, apustis de nd’èssi calau ’e su trenu in punta ’e mesudì, ndi bessìat de su fossu accantu fut sa stazioni e dda bìat di attesu, sa bidda, in artu in d’unu monti, e bìat s’arziàda mala chi fut abettendiddu po ci arribai. Is domus, bias de cussa distànzia, parìant allìgras, iscaringiàdas a arrìri, cun cuddu biancu a ingìriu de gennas e ventanas che una miràda beffiana ghettàda a is chi fùanta sudendu in s’ùrtimu trettu ’e s’arziadróxu chi acabàda in Cuccuru ’e Callia.”

SardiniaSardegnaBiddanoaLobina
Book:Po cantu Biddanoa
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“Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. With finocchio in fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.”

FishingSeafoodPastaSardiniaMussels
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
Create image