What a lovely book following the stories of 5 ladies who meet up and swap recipes and cook for each other. The little village in Italy sounds idyllic. ( )

What a lovely book following the stories of 5 ladies who meet up and swap recipes and cook for each other. The little village in Italy sounds idyllic. ( )

Amazing sharing of recipes and stories of women, both otherwise inaccessible in time and space. ( )

The author Marlena De Blasi has been a chef, a journalist, a food and wine consultant and a restaurant critic. In this book she relates how when she moved to the Umbrian village of Orvieto she was befriended by Miranda and became part of her regular Thursday supper club.

Miranda had been hosting such a night for years but decides due to age, that it's time for someone else to take the helm and makes Marlena her successor. As a non native this isn't initially well received by the other women. The book deals with the period between 2004 and 2008 when Marlena began hosting the group assisted and sometimes criticised by the other female members, Paolina, Gilda, Ninuccia and Miranda herself.

Over time, not only does Miranda become integrated into the group, but she also discovers the life stories of her new female friends. The stories are all different and hark back to a age far removed from the modern age. The stories build a picture of a society that was both innocent and yet corrupt, with the church and the clans (Mafia)wielding power. Their stories are emotional ones of lost loves, lost families and poverty. Yet as a balance to this is the redeeming power of love and friendship. Through all of the stories food plays an important role.

In a largely poor community reliant on subsistance farming, it became currency as well as sustenance and people ate what they had, what they could barter or what they could steal. The Thursday night suppers are also reminiscent of this as the meals are made from seasonal produce supplied by those attending, the only proviso being it has to be the best of what they have. The book is full of mouthwatering descriptions of largely peasant style food which would still grace any table in terms of provenance, flavour and skill. In additional to the descriptions throughout the book, there are also additional formal recipes supplied at the back.

I enjoyed this book, it was easy to read and felt at times likes reading a novel.The women revealed their stories over time as they prepared food in the kitchen so their stories never felt contrived, but became part of the natural course of the book. The book is part social history, part political history and part recipe book which combines to make a satisfying whole.

I received an ARC in return for an honest review.

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“A good supper…restores to us the small delights that the day ransacks. Through crisis and catastrophe, and rare moments of uninterrupted joy, it’s the round, clean and imperishable wisdom that sustains them: cook well, eat well and talk well with people who are significant to your life.”

Every Thursday night for decades a small group of Umbrian women, occasionally accompanied by the their husbands or lovers, have met in an old stone house belonging to Miranda to share their supper. Under sheaves of dried olive branches, seated on plank benches, they have laughed, cried, cooked and eaten together.

Befriended by Miranda, Marlena De Blasi, an American chef, journalist and food critic who has made her home in rural Orvieto, was invited to join the women, taking a place at the table every Thursday, delighting in both the food, and the stories each woman has to tell.

In The Umbrian Supper Club, Marlena shares what she learned of the lives of the four women members – Miranda, Ninuccia, Paolina and Gilda, as she joined with each in preparing Thursday night suppers over a period of four years.

The women’s stories are moving and fascinating, aged between 52 and 80 something, they have lived full lives. They have variously been wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers, they have endured heartache, loss, poverty and celebrated love, friends, and food. They speak, as the gather, prepare and cook their supper of childhood, family, aging, sexuality, of the evil eye, the Mafia, religion, of life and death.

“‘I wish life could end all even, like a supper when there’s that last little roasted potato with a single needle of rosemary clinging to its crust and the end of a sausage, charred to a crunch, a heel of bread, the last long pull of wine. Even. Everything in harmony. I have always preferred that last bit of my supper to the first, the beginning being fraught with hunger, the last with serenity. As life should be. Every supper can be a whole life'”

Full of mouthwatering descriptions of food preparation and feasting, The Umbrian Supper Club will delight any foodie. Crusty bread freshly baked in a woodfire oven is dipped in oil pressed by a donkey driven mill, pasta is simmered in litres of local red wine, thyme leaves are stripped from their branches to flavour scored duck breasts.
Several full recipes of traditional Umbrian dishes, such as Zucca Arrostita and La Crostata di Pere e Pecorino adapted for the modern cook, are included, but plenty of cooking advice is informally dispensed through the pages.

“In a basket on the worktable there are perhaps a dozen heads of garlic, the purple colour of the cloves bright beneath papery skins. Slapping head after head with the flat of the cleaver, she scrapes the smashed, unpeeled cloves into a five-litre jug of new oil in which she’s earlier stuffed leaves of wild sage, wild fennel flowers, rosemary,a fistful of crushed, very hot chillies. She is building one of her famous potions. Violence, she calls it. She uses it to gloss vegetables before tumbling them into the roasting pan, to massage into loins of pork and the breasts and thighs of her own fat chickens, to drizzle over burning hot charcoaled beef and veal.”

The Umbrian Supper Club is a delightful true story of family, friendship and food. ( )