One of the things I have always liked best about Robert B. Parker's mystery stories is that urban(e) tough guy Spenser is regularly cooking some delicious gourmet dish when he is not out roughing up the bad guys. Parker is quite detailed about the mouth-watering meals that Spenser cooks up and then usually washes down with good beer, so much so that one could almost imagine doing the cooking oneself.
So it is that I try new food as much as I can; life should be a culinary adventure. Finding myself in Puerto Rico a little more than a week ago for a conference, I escaped from the lavish Rio Mar resort long enough to sample "Mofongo," a mashed plantain dish, with octopus and conch at a local restaurant. Much to my surprise, I was the only person in the restaurant, a fact compensated for by a magnificent view of the island.
The beauty of the island was in stark contrast to the rather grim reading I brought along. After much searching, I had obtained a copy of Mohammed Choukri's For Bread Alone, and I read it in the evenings after seminars. Choukri recounts his brutal upbringing in a novel that is also very much about food, because there is never enough of it. In one vignette, Choukri jumps off the pier in the harbor to retrieve a crust of bread discarded by a fisherman, only to discover that he is swimming in a sea of shit. (Milan Kundera would no doubt find the novel vulgar but not kitschy.) Choukri's novel counterpoints between desire and disgust, the torments of appetite in a world where there is never enough of anything and a cruel and ignominious death hovers constantly in the background.