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Quote by Menna van Praag

“As the milky early morning sun slips in through her kitchen windows, Cosima plucks the blossoms off her yellow squash and begins to make her way through today's menu: courgette blossom and artichoke pizza, wild mushroom and tomato bruschetta, lemon and pistachio cake, vanilla and orange oil cannoli, espresso and hazelnut tart... And into each bowl she sprinkles a generous pinch of paternal love, protection, and devotion.”

Quote by Menna van Praag

Book:The Witches of Cambridge
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The Witches of Cambridge

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Menna van Praag

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“Today's offerings include grilled tuna in a soy wasabi marinade, and a pan-roasted squab with curried apricot chutney, neither typical bistro fare. It makes me think wistfully of compound butters and pestos of fresh herbs and toasted nuts, of mushrooms and lardons, eggs and roast chicken, none of which appear anywhere on the menu. I order myself an appetizer portion of mussels and a side of frites to start and a green salad. After an extended cross examination of the waiter, Enid orders a beet and goat cheese salad and the veal chop with Roquefort butter.”

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“This was the wedding menu. Starters Rounds of Grana Padano Breads Seafood platters Prosciutto with melon Prawn cocktails (The prawn cocktails were at Mrs. Gardner's insistence. She said she'd never heard of prosciutto and was dubious about meat served with fruit.) Entrées Chicken with white sauce and vegetables, or Beefsteak with mushrooms and béarnaise sauce (Alex's requests. We copied them from the menu of his favorite restaurant.) Dessert Platters of cannoli, cassata, biancumanciari, setteveli, and almond cookies The desserts were my wish list. Traditional and Sicilian, just the way I wanted them. Mrs. Gardner said she wasn't "a sweet tooth" (in a way that made it sound like a kind of tribe), and Alex couldn't care less about dessert. I thought of these desserts when I went to aerobics classes, trying to lose weight before the wedding- imagined the smooth filling of the cannoli, the cool velvet of the cassata, and the toothy crunch of the almond cookies.”

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“Reading about these meals is making me hungry," Isabetta declared one afternoon. Her finger ran down the page. "There is so much food. Even on a Lenten day these cardinali knew how to eat! Listen to this menu: pieces of gilded marzipan; radish and fennel salad; braised lampreys from the Tevere; fried trout with vinegar, pepper, and wine; white tourtes; razor clams; grilled oysters; pizza Neapolitan with almonds, dates, and figs; octopus and fish in the shape of chickens; fried sea turtle; prune crostatas; stuffed pears with sugar; elderflower fritters; candied almonds... Oh, the list goes on and on!”

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“Gabriel Solomon, our sandy-lashed, red-haired, soon-to-be-surgeon waiter, recited the night's menu: salad, broiled salmon, boiled red potatoes, sliced tomatoes and corn on the cob, all served family style. A vast slab of butter lay on a white plate next to baskets of bread- white Wonder bread and buttermilk biscuits, neither of which had ever touched our lips. There was a bottle of Hershey's chocolate syrup in the center of the table, a novelty for Jews who didn't mix dairy foods with meat. "The milk is from the farm's cows," Gabe explained. "It's pasteurized but it doesn't taste like city milk. If you'd like city milk, it will be delivered to you. But try the farm milk. Some guests love it. The children seem to enjoy it with syrup." Gabe paused. "I forgot to ask you, do you want your salad dressed or undressed?" Jack immediately replied, "Undressed of course," and winked. My mother worried about having fish with rolls and butter. "Fish is dairy," my father pronounced, immediately an expert on Jewish dietary laws. "With meat it's no butter and no milk for the children." Lil kept fidgeting in her straight-backed chair. "What kind of food is this?" she asked softly. "What do they call it?" "American," the two men said in unison. Within minutes Gabe brought us a bowl filled with iceberg lettuce, butter lettuce, red oak lettuce. "These are grown right here, in our own garden. We pick the greens daily. I brought you some oil and vinegar on the side, and a gravy boat of sour cream for the tomatoes. Take a look at these tomatoes." Each one was the size of a small melon, blood red, virtually seedless. Our would-be surgeon sliced them, one-two-three. We had not encountered such tomatoes before. "Beauties, aren't they?" asked Gabe. Jack held to certain eccentricities in his summer food. Without fail he sprinkled sugar over tomatoes, sugared his melons no matter how ripe and spread his corn with mustard- mustard!”

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“We have pretzels and mustard. We have doughnuts. And if we really, really like you, we have chips and dip. This is fun food. It isn't stuffy. It isn't going to make anyone nervous. The days of the waiter as a snob, the days of the menu as an exam/ the guest has to pass are over. But at the same time, we're not talking about cellophane bags here, are we? These are hand-cut potato chips with crème fraîche and a dollop of beluga caviar. This is the gift we send out. It's better than Christmas." He offered the plate to Adrienne and she helped herself to a long, golden chip. She scooped up a tiny amount of the glistening black caviar. Just tasting it made her feel like a person of distinction. Adrienne hoped the menu meeting might continue in this vein- with the staff tasting each ambrosial dish. But there wasn't time; service started in thirty minutes. Thatcher wanted to get through the menu. "The corn chowder and the shrimp bisque are cream soups, but neither of these soups is heavy. The Caesar is served with pumpernickel croutons and white anchovies. The chèvre salad is your basic mixed baby greens with a round of breaded goat cheese, and the candy-striped beets are grown locally at Bartlett Farm. Ditto the rest of the vegetables, except for the portobello mushrooms that go into the ravioli- those are flown in from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. So when you're talking about vegetables, you're talking about produce that's grown in Nantucket soil, okay? It's not sitting for thirty-six hours on the back of a truck. Fee selects them herself before any of you people are even awake in the morning. It's all very Alice Waters, what we do here with our vegetables." Thatcher clapped his hands. He was revving up, getting ready for the big game. In the article in Bon Appétit, Thatcher had mentioned that the only thing he loved more than his restaurant was college football. "Okay, okay!" he shouted. It wasn't a menu meeting; it was a pep rally! "The most popular item on the menu is the steak frites. It is twelve ounces of aged New York strip grilled to order- and please note you need a temperature on that- served with a mound of garlic fries. The duck, the sword, the lamb lollipops- see, we're having fun here- are all served at the chef's temperature. If you have a guest who wants the lamb killed- by which I mean well done- you're going to have to take it up with Fiona. The sushi plate is spelled out for you- it's bluefin tuna caught forty miles off the shore, and the sword is harpooned in case you get a guest who has just seen a Nova special about how the Canadian coast is being overfished.”

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“I'm in love with this cider. Actually all the ciders," Lou said. She had wavy, dark brown hair, and the way Al watched her- it was as if the world would end if he stopped. "You have so many different types. I would love to build a menu around it." Sanna looked confused. "A menu?" "I have a restaurant in Milwaukee, and these ciders would make a fantastic pairing for a special tasting menu. For example, Toasty Dark Brown would go beautifully with roasted chicken and root vegetables- I'm thinking beets, parsnips, and fingerling potatoes- with a sauce made from the cider." She took another sip of the cider and smacked her lips- her eyes drifted off to another place, the same way Sanna's did when she envisioned new ciders. "And thyme, maybe rosemary, I'll need to play with it. Anyway, you get the idea.”

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