Halloween is almost here, even though the muggy weather on the East coast is not cooperating with creating the mood. I’m not ready to dive into the pumpkin/apple/stew/casserole recipes right now. So I’ll be treating you with a delicious breakfast dish that is a nice alternative to Eggs Benedict.

I’m fortunate to work in a library that gives me access to a lot of great old books. The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley has never been on my radar, but I came across it while pulling books for a Halloween display. Published in 1919, it is a kooky kind of madcap mystery where the “ghosts” in the shop are the “ghosts of all great literature”. Roger Mifflin is the bookseller, and he is sure that humanity’s greatest medicine is reading a book. Mifflin is visited by a young advertising man, Aubrey Gilbert, who wants to persuade Mifflin to engage his services.

“Look here, you wouldn’t go to a doctor, a medical specialist, and tell him he ought to advertise in papers and magazines? A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don’t know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill from want of books but you are blissfully unaware of it! People don’t go to a bookseller until some serious mental accident or disease makes them aware of their danger. Then they come here. For me to advertise would be about as useful as telling people who are perfectly well that they ought to go to the doctor. Do you know why people are reading more books now than ever before? Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize that their minds are ill.”

Aubrey Gilbert is intrigued by the shop, even as Mifflin refuses his advertising services; Mifflin’s wife is away, so he offers to share his dinner with Gilbert. Gilbert is enchanted by the cozy scene in the bookshop’s private quarters, complete with brandy, a fire, a little dog named Bocaccio, and a homey and well-used kitchen. (This book is page after page full of all the most cozy and comforting scenes a bibliophile could want.) Roger and Aubrey go on to share a meal of an Egg Samuel Butler, a recipe of Roger’s own concoction.

The dining room to which the visitor was conducted betrayed a feminine touch not visible in the smoke-dimmed quarters of the shop and cabinet. At the windows were curtains of laughing chintz and pots of pink geranium. The table, under a drop light in a flame- colored silk screen, was brightly set with silver and blue china. In a cut glass decanter sparkled ruddy brown wine. The edged tool of Advertising felt his spirits undergo an unmistakable upward pressure.

“Sit down, sir,” said Mifflin, lifting the roof of a platter, “These are eggs Samuel Butler, an invention of my own, the apotheosis of hen fruit.”

Gilbert greeted the invention with applause. An Egg Samuel Butler, for the notebook of housewives, may be summarized as a pyramid, based upon toast, whereof the chief masonries are a flake of bacon, an egg poached to firmness, a wreath of mushrooms, a cap-sheaf of red peppers; the whole dribbled with a warm pink sauce of which the inventor retains the secret. To this the bookseller chef added fried potatoes from another dish, and poured for his guest a glass of wine.

The book goes on to involve spies, a plot against Woodrow Wilson, bombs placed in the bookshop, books gone missing, and found again. It’s such an old-fashioned piece of writing. Philosophical and at the same time completely kooky; I don’t know whether to call it a mystery, a treatise on great books, or a keystone-cops farce. Literary references are peppered throughout that really keep the reader on their toes. The illustrations are so charming, and even the typeface reminded me of something out of Dickens. It’s not for everyone, but if you love books you might like this one.

Eggs Samuel Butler

Just follow the steps above and you will have a delicious meal. I didn’t have any bacon in the house so I laid a piece of ham on the buttered rye toast. I warmed the ham a bit in the pan. Then I laid a poached egg on top, surrounded it with mushrooms cooked in butter with thyme, salt and pepper, capped it off with some slivers of sauteed pepper cooked in the same pan as the mushrooms, and made a Bearnaise sauce with some tomato paste to turn it pink. You could also use Hollandaise sauce as well. (Don’t tell anyone, Reader, that I doctored up the contents of a Bearnaise sauce envelope from the grocery store.)

In order to keep the washing up to a minimum, I cooked the mushrooms and peppers in the same pan. I pushed the mushrooms over to the side away from the heat when they were done. Also, I set each finished poached egg in this warm pan to stay hot, as I waited for the others to be done.

This is a nice change from Eggs Benedict.

Hello readers! After a brief (non-covid) medical hiccup, I am back and ready with new ideas. It’s been a few months and winter has come and gone, but I was able to do a lot of reading while I was home, and will start back up with a nice vermicelli soup.

Many years ago while I was in graduate school I found a copy of Zola’s The Joy of Life in the university library, and I read it, loved it, and then forgot about it until years later, when I tried to remember what it was called and could not. For some reason it became a real hunt to track it down; I don’t know why it was so difficult to figure out. It became a mystery to solve, and then suddenly, I came across a copy, just like that.

La Joie de Vivre is the twelfth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series. The main character, Pauline, is the daughter of the butcher from The Belly of Paris. (For more on that novel, see Emile Zola's Larded Veal.)

In this story she is a young girl who has now lost both of her parents, and has been sent to live with her aunt and uncle and their son, (a hypochondriac and a failure, who she is expected to eventually marry), bringing with her a small fortune from the sale of the butcher shop. Her aunt makes a great show of locking the money away until Pauline is of age to receive it. Reader, don’t be fooled.

The story takes place in a small Norman village that is continually fighting the sea. Of course the title is, as ever with Zola, ironic- you will find little joy in these lives- but plenty of what I love Zola for: an unsentimental examination of the human condition. Zola’s pragmatic, unscrupulous characters share the page with the innocent or naive, whose slowly drawn-out misfortunes turn them toward resentment, resignation, or disillusion, and the wicked don’t always get what they deserve.

At this point in the story, however, we are at the beginning of little Pauline’s relationship with her new family, and all is well. She is a generous and helpful little soul who draws everyone to her with her cheerful, gentle ways. Here, she enjoys her first dinner with her new family after a long trip from Paris:

The cook brought in some vermicelli soup, warning them, in her crabbed fashion, that it was much overcooked. No one dared complain, however. They were all very hungry, and the soup hissed in their spoons. Next came some soup-beef. Chanteau, fond of dainties, scarcely took any of it, reserving himself for the leg of mutton.

It’s a drizzly, dreary weekend here, perfect soup weather. I wanted to make my own broth for this one using chicken and a beef shin; beef shins weren’t available at the store so I used beef ribs.

I made the broth the day before we wanted to eat it, so that I could let the fat come to the top and skim it off. I like a nice clear broth for soup. I cooked up the beef and the chicken thighs with carrot, shallot, one clove of garlic, a bay leaf and salt and pepper.

After refrigeration overnight. Now you can just scoop the fat off the top.

The rest is easy: cook your vermicelli separately, and put aside to add to your reheated broth at the last minute. (I used broken up spaghetti.) After reheating the broth, I took out the pieces of meat and put them on a serving platter. In the broth I mashed the carrot up with the back of a wooden spoon, adjusted the seasoning, and added the vermicelli. I sprinkled each bowl with parmesan cheese.

I made a green salad and everyone had their choice of boiled meat- it doesn’t look very tasty in the picture but it is fall-off-the bone tender and very flavorful.

If you’re in the mood for more soup, go to my entry for Sicilian Stories and Soup for a delicious chickpea recipe.