100 books like Orexi!

It was difficult to choose which of Tyler Florence’s books to include here.

His Real Kitchen was the first cookbook I cooked from in my first apartment. The cover is tattered and the pages splashed with sauces. I settled on Tyler's Ultimate because it became my go-to for tasty appetizers and tapas. I especially love the Watermelon Gazpacho with Chile and Feta Cheese.

He also provides a number of recipes in his Ultimate Antipasto Platter, including my favorites the Bocconcini Tied with Prosciutto, Herbed Goat Cheese Bites, and Marinated Chickpeas. Also, sounds weird, but the Chicken Liver Pate is so retro cool. 

I’ve dined at the restaurant Lemonade in Venice Beach several times and was thrilled when I discovered they had a cookbook.

LA is defined by exceptionally fresh produce year-round and a diverse culinary scene thanks to immigrants from all over the world. Lemonade reflects that beautifully! I used many of the recipes in this book when cooking for the Patagonia women’s surf team and was thrilled with how much people loved them and how easy they were to scale up to feed a crowd.

Narrowing it down to my favorites was tough, but I can’t get enough of the Avocado, Cherry Tomato, Pine Nut, and Lime Vinaigrette; the Black Kale, Shiitake, and Kumquat Vinaigrette; or the Red Miso Beef. And of course, they have a full lemonade chapter with interesting, virgin concoctions including my favorite, the Green Apple Jalapeno lemonade.

I found this book at a rummage sale for my children’s school, so I didn’t expect much. But I was thrilled to discover a wealth of unique recipes perfect for backyard barbecues.

I love that the flavor combinations are somewhat unpredictable and unique. It’s easy to fall into a rut when you’re entertaining around the grill (burgers, corn on the cob, and potato salad anyone?). Every recipe is prepared on the grill, even the sides, so that’s fun!

My favorite recipes include the Sticky Orange- and Chipotle-Glazed Sweet Potatoes (a perfect blend of sweet, spicy, and acidic), and the Grilled Porterhouse Steak with Venezuelan Guasaca Sauce served with Arepas that are to die for.

I stumbled on this book while on a long weekend holiday in San Francisco with my fiance. 

I love the unstudied air of the book. It feels like what a charcuterie board should be – just food casually arranged on a plate to share. I especially love her lush boards, which are luxurious, beautiful, and filled with color. Unexpected flavor combinations – grilled pineapple with poke avocado salad with edible flowers – make this a fun change of pace from traditional charcuterie board books.

Bonus, she recommends thrift shops for finding trays and boards, which makes entertaining even more accessible.

Arrian is one of the few primary sources used to illuminate the campaigns of Alexander the Great. It is also one of the few primary sources to focus directly on the Scythians – in this case, the Saka (an eastern group of Scythians). After conquering the Bactrian region, Alexander faced war with the Scythians, as well as local rebellions, which the Scythians played a role in. Arrian’s account is an important source for understanding the Scythians as it speaks directly to the clash of an army built for pitched battle against an army build for more mobile warfare.

Frederic Kakis, a brilliant scientist and moving writer, shares a personal story of survival and fortitude for a Jewish family in Northern Greece during the Nazi occupation. Close to 80,000 were relocated to Nazi concentration campus far from their homes in Thessaloniki and close to 60,000 did not survive the Holocaust. Dr. Kakis describes the terror experienced as well as the courage shown by Greek Jews and their local Christian neighbors during this tragic invasion, and how their efforts helped as many of the vulnerable as possible survive. 

As an author of mystery-thrillers, including the Sherlock Holmes Pastiche, “Elementary, My Dear Spock” as well as a longtime fan of Agatha Christie, I was drawn to the appeal of an ancient Greek “detective”, Heracles Pontor investigating murders in Plato’s Athens. And, Somoza does not disappoint, inviting us to share Pontor’s journey down a rabbit hole that grows ever more intriguing and dangerous page by page. Somoza welcomes us with a beautifully translated murder mystery that soon envelopes us in a fascinating exploration of Plato, reality, and, as reflected in the original Spanish title, the Cave of Ideas. 

The volume (the publication of a Cambridge lecture series) addresses one of the key themes of modern culture: the nature of identity. The question ‘what is a Greek?’ is not as straightforward as it seems, given that the Greek world was very diverse, and the book explores this by examining Greek culture as a series of polarities: Greek vs barbarian; free vs slave, citizen vs non-citizen; male vs female and gods vs humans. It traces how these polarities illuminate how the Greeks thought about themselves, and how we think about them.

Although aimed squarely at a student readership, it is an approachable introduction to the nature of Greek culture and reflection on questions of identity, difference, and belonging which are at the forefront of contemporary political and cultural debate.

For my high school sophomore history teacher, world history was only Greece under Pericles and England under Elizabeth I. I went to Greece under her spell, and ever since, I have been drawn to books about Greece—fiction and non-fiction.

This book is about a fictional Greek island at the end of the Ottoman empire, an English con man caught up in his archaeological con, a beautiful artist (played by a young Helen Mirren in the film version), greedy government officials, and an informer who fears for his life is our unreliable narrator. It makes for an engrossing novel of adventure and ideas that holds up on a second reading after over forty years. 

The Kapetanios put me on a course that I have expanded upon since 1980. 

It’s a close-up and dramatic account of the civil war that took place in Greece, beginning in the period of the Axis occupation, but continuing off and on in the post-WWII period to 1949. In 1980, I had wanted to travel to Greece but could not. The best I could do was find a good book on its modern history. 

I found The Kapetanios at People’s Books (now sadly defunct) in Milwaukee, WI. There are reasons to question its historical accuracy – normal for any history – but the book and its subject matter grabbed me and never let me go. I’d still recommend the book to anyone interested in that tragic, important, and avoidable conflict.