Cooking with Booze

So, as mentioned, the fine folks at Snow Books have a clever scheme. You want a book to review? You want, sneaky sneaky, a book to review and then, GASP, you want to stick a bow on it and give it to someone for Christmas? Then you just go and have a look at the new books from Snow Books, and they pop the one you'd like in the post.

Why do some small presses always get it right?

I had a look, and sure, there was good fiction, fun fiction, scaaaary fiction, but I thought, 'Cooking with Booze? Yes, please.'



So, before anyone of my vast readership gets on their high, sober horse, this book is clearly not a serious exercise in gastronomic brilliance. It's, em, fun. That said, it is a cookbook, and yes, you can cook real, live boozy recipes and produce a tasty meal.

A gorgeous little gift hardback, it sells for a tenner and says 'give me to your friend, the lager lout, the wine connoisseur, the fresher, the cook who ruins a beautiful dinner by walking through the nineteen-hour process it took to make that beluga caviar filo parcel' in a little mischevious voice. Copious amounts of wine-stains adorn the cover and appear throughout the text, and although I might have been tempted to have fewer of the round ring-marks, the message of this package is 'nothing succeeds like excess'. Red-wine ends on nice paper, too - why do so few books sport lovely ends? Yeahyeah, unit cost. Aaaanyway. The author is George Harvey Bone, the alter-ego of a traveller, foodie and all-round up-for-it type who seems to be one of those arch, silly British types, hugely endearing and a bit over-the-top who do it all with tongue in cheek, a nudge and a wink, and a pint in their hand. Reminds me of our own authors, The Bart & the Bounder. (Actually, there might be two people behind GHB, it's hard to tell.)

Recipes are divided not by course or main ingredient, but, of course, by booze: wine, fortified wines, beer, cider, vodka, whisky, rum, brandy, tequila and other spirits and liquers. Now, no one I know has a liquor cabinet (or a drinks cupboard as I've learned it's called here) because they can't afford it. A wide variety of in-house alcohol is, you'd think, the domain of essentially tee-total relatives and city bankers. So no, you won't be able to make everything here, but, in the spirit of things (ha HAH), let the booze lead you to the food. You'd be surprised how much booze you own, or at least I hope you would be. A quick peek in my own kitchen revealed wine, half a bottle of ruby port, a gift bottle of limoncello, gin, a finger or two of pastis, a baby bottle of champers and a novelty shot's worth of absinthe. Plenty to get started with.

Many are even easy enough to whip up when you get home from the pub.



My favourites include Huîtres au Champagne, Baked Mackerel in Calvados and Hungarian Brandy Beef Goulash, which bears the note, 'don't be afraid to add plenty of paprika for that "I fancy another crack at the Ottomans" feeling'. There are some doozies, most of which, sorry, were born in the mid-west or the southern United States, including Beer Butt Chicken, Tipsy Sweet Potatoes (with marshmallows, Clinton-style), and Beer Brats, which would be tasty, but just make me think about foam cheese hats at football games.

Extreme dorkiness reigns in places, as well it should, cf. Mushrooms à le Carré, so named 'because they make me all Smiley'. I would love to share with Our Fearless Leader, who is both the good author's editor and a foodie, but I don't think I could bear to speak the words.

Some of the recipies make you wonder what the drink was for in the first place. A fine example is Advocaat. Have you ever, EVER seen ANYONE drink a glass of this yellow, egg-related Dutch abomination? Does one even drink it in a glass? Who knows. Bone gives us Advocaat Ice Cream. I see cream, sugar, alcohol and eggs. Sounds like a great dessert. Another would be the Harvey Wallbanger Cake and similar sentiments about Galliano, though why anyone allowed a cake mix to enter these pages I don't know. Make a sponge cake, people, it's not rocket science.

I see Mojito Cupcakes in my future.

Have a look at the Cooking with Booze blog here. Hey, Snowies, how about Cooking for a Hangover edition next? Think of the promos! The Amazon hook-ups! But you're probably way ahead of me . . .

Cooking with Wine. George Harvey Bone.
Snow Books. 978-1-905005-65-9. £9.99.

Periodic Plump for Independent Everything

It's that time again, time to rant and rave about the neglected glories of small, independent presses. I am, of course, not alone in my ranting - when am I ever? tschaah, never - as witnessed by the fine folks at Branching Out, a resource for reader development. What peaked my interest is their Independent Press of the Month page, in which they present a well-informed page on whatever press has taken their fancy. This month, it's Peepal Press, which specialises in Caribbean and Black British writing.

Admirably, particularly because the independent presses needn't be integral to their programme, Branching Out also makes a point to highlight the functionality of the press' website, which is extremely important; the LEAST a small press can do is set up a decent, functional and hey, attractive website. It's a small investment, and one that small Irish publishers would do well to make. Some, like Maverick Press with their myspace page, have led the way, along with Liberties Press, but so many others have fourth-rate websites or none at all.

Likewise, while we're cleaning house on all findings indie, I've finally found an independent Irish bookseller online, which I intend to use for all gifts etc. going home. It's the web branch of Dame Street's Books Upstairs in Dublin.

With the sad closure of Greene's Bookshop's city centre shop in Dublin a while back (not dead and gone, though, they've moved to *gack* Sandyford, have a look at their websitehere), something should also be done for those who prefer to purchase in the flesh (paper?), there's this website listing of Irish independent bookshops Books Upstairs in Dublin.

Will keep up a list of interesting independent publishers and sellers in the lists to the right, starting with the amazing Snow Books/and their lovely staff blog. They're doing something very clever, bringing the bloggers directly to them rather than having to go out and find them. At any rate, hopefully I'll doing a better job on the indie list than I have of the short fiction posts, *blog guilt blog guilt*...