It might not be summer yet, but there is a reason that this week’s #FoodFrom4th is a summer recipe. We’ve been hearing that that this weekend is going to be ‘a bit warm, but at some points cold, and it will rain’, so we thought that we’d give you a recipe that is comforting as it is fresh, and is guaranteed to warm you up. Enjoy! Read more…
‘Caponata is a Sicilian dish of aubergine and other vegetables, cut into cubes and deep-fried, then mixed with sultanas and pine nuts, and marinated in an agrodolce (sweet-and-sour) sauce. In some parts of Sicilia, it is traditional to mix in little pieces of dark bitter chocolate. Because it is such a Southern dish, I had never even tasted it until I started cooking at Olivio. Then, one day when we were looking for something sweet and sour as an accompaniment, I found the recipe in a book and I remember thinking: ‘This will never work!’ But we made it, the explosion of flavour was brilliant, and has become one of my favourite things. You can pile caponata on chunks of bread, or serve it with mozzarella or fried artichokes. Because it is vinegary, it is fantastic with roast meat, as it cuts through the fattiness, particularly lamb. Traditionally it is also served with seafood – perhaps grilled or fried scallops (see page 108), prawns or red mullet. With red mullet, I like to add a little more tomatoes to the caponata.’
Name: Will Smith 
Twitter: @willsmithuk
Occupation: Screenwriter
Book: Mainlander
What’s it about: ‘Jersey 1987, and the storm clouds are gathering over Colin Bygate. Sitting on a headland stewing over the discovery that his wife used to date Rob de la Haye, a brash hotelier who is everything that Colin is not, he spots a pupil near the edge of the cliff. Worried that the boy may have intended to jump, he drives him home, hoping that his gloomy imagination was playing tricks. But when the boy fails to turn up to school the next day, Colin feels duty bound to track him down, pitting him against the Island establishment who would rather there was a little less noise around this particular absence. A web of characters is spun around this mystery, each with their own secrets. For living in Jersey, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, you must become your own island.’ Read more…
‘Dahl. Daal. Dal. Spicy stuff made using lentils. The charming lady at the Indian High Commission assured us it’s ‘dal’. Our local curry house (The Kathmandu) reckon it’s ‘daal’. Our Aslam is adamant you spell it ‘dahl’. Who’s right? We have no idea.’
Name: Scott Blackwood
Occupation: Blackwood teaches fiction writing in the MFA program at Southern Illinois University
Book: See How Small
What’s it about: One late autumn evening in a Texas town, two strangers walk into an ice cream shop shortly before closing time. They bind up the three teenage girls who are working the counter, set fire to the shop, and disappear. ‘See How Small’ tells the stories of the survivors – family, witnesses, and suspects – who must endure in the wake of atrocity. Justice remains elusive in their world, human connection tenuous.
Read more…
January always brings with it a sense of regeneration, and this year at 4th Estate that sense was heightened as the date of our office move drew near. We spent December in a state of flux, archiving hundreds of books and packing up our things, in doing so unearthing a wunderkammer’s worth of bizarre items including a giraffe jawbone, a piñata, an artillery shell, and a cut-out of Dolly Parton. We were admittedly nervous about moving from our cosy Hammersmith home, and reticent about moving to the open-plan, glass-walled heights of London Bridge. After all, T.S. Eliot compared the commuters of London Bridge to the lost souls of Dante’s limbo in The Wasteland:
New Loves, New Lives, New Countries and New Worlds are all explored in these four wonderful novels. Leap into 2015 with one of these reads and experience the effects they have on your life, do they make you laugh? Cry? Confuse you? Or simply make you glad to be alive- here’s to a very Happy New Year! Read more…
This month, ‘Fresh’ gives us a chance to bring you the amazing new content that we’ve got planned for the year. Not only do we want to focus on our fresh new authors, our fresh food, or our upcoming books for 2015, but we want to take a look at our new covers. For ‘Fresh Look’, we’ll be asking about the old covers that are being given new life. We spoke to cover designer Jo Walker about the re-issue of ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept’ by Elizabeth Smart.
‘It was suggested by the editor that we concentrate on the classic photos of Grand Central Station that are so iconic. The beauty of these images is the light and scale of the station, the people look so tiny and the station so impressive. I found some of these images and tried a few different approaches. Read more…
