Moveable Feasts - In Paperback

Cooking gives me great joy. So does reading. No wonder then that I have always found an odd sort of comfort in reading about food descriptions in novels, as a kid and now as an experimental home-cook. I can still feel the hunger pangs of little Heidi when she came to live with her grandpa and she can't help gushing over a slab of cheese that he fire-roasts till it was sun-kissed golden. Or even Cassandra's undying lust for fresh bread and eggs that make them seem as indulgent as caviar in I Capture the Castle. Or who can forget that abundant start-of-term feast in the Harry Potter series prepared with nothing but good imagination and a flicker of a wand? I'd give anything for a seven-course meal to conjure from thin air like that!

For a burgeoning cook like myself, I can spend hours reading blogs and stories about food, mesmerized by the pictures and the underlying stories that get brewed alongside every author's personal concoction of happiness.

Food has a way to evoke any powerful and potent feeling that you've ever felt consumed by.

Nostalgia. Remember that stash of your favorite desi ghee laddoos that mum made before Diwali, and then tucked them away onto the topmost shelf out of your reach? And you stood there looking at them pitifully, whimpering like a hungry pup...well until you devised an awkward tower of chairs that'll reunite you with your beloved. 

Infatuation. That desperation and hope and the urge to win over somebody's affection...with every artifice known to man/woman...with expensive dresses and make-up and arty-farty talk and exotic dinners. And you'd do anything for it. But hey have you craved for a slice of chocolate mud cake, post midnight, when even elves are too busy sleeping to oblige you? Nothing else could incite a similar feeling of despair, I'd say!

So without furthur ado, I present to you these epic, mouthwatering word feasts collected from my favorite novels. Hope you're hungry.

Disclaimer: You may be an epitome of self-restraint with your 'Keep calm and ignore junk food' posters and herbal-tea diets but these forbidden fruits will have you wanting to eat out of, uh well, any hand that offers them :).

1. Charlie and The Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

"Mr Willy Wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change colour every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips. He can make chewing-gum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble them up. And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue birds' eggs with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny little DARK RED sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of your tongue."

And you can sure count on Mr. Dahl to make the most absurd fantasy seem real and accessible. This sugary baby bird is something that, I can vouch, will catch the fancy of the purest of puritans (as well as dentists.)

2. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

“An exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice rose from the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little flourish took the cover off. The cook had spent three days over that dish and she must take great care, Mrs. Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass to choose an especially tender piece for William Bankes. And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savory brown and yellow meats, and its bay leaves and its wine and thought, "This will celebrate the occasion…”

The delicacy in reference is the famous boeufe en daube. As intimidating as the name may sound, Ms Woolfe went to great lengths to marinate this beef stew with words that melt in your mouth. Ironic isn't it that she had to battle with food nearly all throughout her life and even her generous words failed to coax her to succumb?

3. Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel

"When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it's usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton, so even though they'd really like to devour it, they don't have the nerve to take it. It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in the walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn't feel proper."

Like Water for Chocolate is a book that'll make you either very hungry or...well the other thing...

Either way, it will have you craving.

4. Five Go Down to The Sea - Enid Blyton

"The high tea that awaited them was truly magnificent. A huge ham gleaming as pink as Timmy’s tongue; a salad fit for a king. In fact, as Dick said, fit for several kings, it was so enormous. It had in it everything that anyone could possibly want. “Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, radishes, mustard and cress, carrot grated up – that is carrot, isn’t it, Mrs. Penruthlan?” said Dick. “And lashings of hard-boiled eggs.” There was an enormous tureen of new potatoes, all gleaming with melted butter, scattered with parsley. There was a big bottle of home-made salad cream. “Look at that cream cheese, too,” marveled Dick, quite overcome. “And that fruit cake. And are those drop-scones, or what? Are we supposed to have something of everything, Mrs Penruthlan?”

The only 'proper' way to celebrate this high tea menu is to have Julia Childs read it out to you. Only if life were an Enid Blyton picnic.

5. Chocolat - Joane Harris

“I select a dark nugget from a tray marked Eastern journey. Crystallized ginger in a hard sugar shell, releasing a mouthful of liqueur like a concentration of spices, a breath of aromatic air where sandalwood and cinnamon and lime vie for attention with cedar and allspice."
"I take another, from a tray marked Peche au miel millefleurs. A slice of peach steeped in honey and eau-de-vie, a crystallized peach sliver on the chocolate lid."

Oh woman, JUST stop there. Don't disturb the peace in my cavities, will ya? But if truffles and marzipan birds and "long twisted marshmallows that dangle from the stalls of sweet-vendors on carnival days" are your thing, get this book!

6. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling

"He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs."

I don't get it. All that she did was list down different kinds of food, half of which I don't even care for. But I'm ravenous!

7. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

"Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready before­hand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah !"

Oh, forget the grace Timmy! How can you not dive in mouth-first.

8. A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway

"As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans."

And if anybody's looking for scientific evidence that oysters are a gloriously happy food, that's IT.


Got any literary food cravings? I'd love to hear from you.