Aunt Elvie needs a day out. She has the last will and testament, we have the car. It’s an unspoken deal. It is worth helping her out of her seat, and then up the seven steps to the restaurant (one short step at a time, stopping for a break between each riser), to get the guilt off our shoulders. This is only the third time we have taken her out this year. Continue reading »
Extracts
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London, 11 p.m. He scans the bill, checking off each course, each bottle of mineral water, as carefully as if he was doing the annual stocktake. The words ‘service included’ tucked away at the bottom stick in his throat. Had it said ‘not’, life would have been so much easier.
Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been named winner of this year’s Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Continue reading »
Hello again. My new novel, Notes from an Exhibition, the story of a damaged family and the mad genius mother at its heart, is published next summer.
Last week I sketched out some notes following the novel’s development. This week, as promised, I’m posting the book’s first chapter to see what you think - 7 months before it reaches the bookstores. If this whets your appetite, you’ll find a further chapter at www.galewarning.org in the revamped Latest Title section.
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In Italy everyone understands that a proper Italian pizza (not what we call pizza al taglio – the thicker-based one that has come in from America) has to have the perfect balance between a thin crisp base and a softer garnish, which means that you have to eat it within 5–6 minutes of it coming out of the oven, or it will be soggy and spoilt. Continue reading »
Ragù – traditional meat sauce – is best with fresh egg pasta, especially tagliatelle or pappardelle, but not with spaghetti, which is too thin to hold the chunks of meat. Continue reading »
The BBC’s Ten O’Clock News last night featured an undercover report from China on the sale of organs taken from executed prisoners. Organs from death row inmates are sold to foreigners who need transplants. China’s health ministry did not deny the practice, but said it was reviewing the system and regulations. Continue reading »
I know that many people feel nervous about brains – because either they make them feel squeamish or the BSE crisis has made them scared. If we look back into history, though, we can see that a very large proportion of the world’s population has been eating things like this for thousands of years. Continue reading »
If we want to have a proper connection with our meat, we have to do everything we can to keep the tradition of good butchers’ shops alive. And I mean butchers of quality, not the ones who can’t tell you where their beef or chickens come from, or who are just trying to compete with the supermarkets by cutting their prices. Continue reading »
