Title: Keep it Vegan
Author: Aine Carlin
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 176
Rating: 4/5
Aine Carlin – Keep it Vegan
As you can probably guess from the title of this one, this is a vegan cookbook that covers all sorts of plant-based delights, from starters and desserts to snacks, main courses and more. The photography here is excellent, too. It’s not too artsy, which means that it’s easier for you, as the chef, to try to replicate the way that the dishes look.
A few of my favourite recipes from this one include simple scrambled tofu, sweet and sour marinated tofu, asparagus, minted pea and caramelised red onion tart, crusty no-knead carrot and courgette bread, summer pudding and no-bake strawberry vanilla cheesecake. But really, pretty much all of the recipes in this book are worth trying.
All in all, I was pretty happy with this purchase and I’d recommend it, although it’s not my overall favourite of the cookbooks that I own. It’s taught me a lot of stuff though, which is all I wanted.
Aine Carlin
Tony Hawks – A Piano in the Pyrenees | Review
Title: A Piano in the Pyrenees
Author: Tony Hawks
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count: 312
Rating: 4/5
This non-fiction book tells the story of what happened when a middle-aged British comedian called Tony Hawks decided to buy a house in France, almost on a whim. He also decided to take his piano over there so that he could finally learn to play the thing.
It was a fun little book, and overall I found it to be a pleasure to work my way through it. My only real complaint would be that the pacing was a little off, in that it felt as though the whole book covered a period of just a couple of months or so.
Other than that though, there were some great little insights into French culture here, as well as a few smatterings of French dialogue that were enjoyable for me as someone who’s slowly but surely trying to learn the language. There were also some great little examples of culture shock or of misunderstandings, particularly when Hawks was trying to navigate the complicated French legal landscape to purchase properties and to build swimming pools, despite being utterly useless at assembling basic flat packs.
I’ve read a couple of Hawks’ other books at this point, and tonality and sense of humour wise, it’s pretty similar to those. That means that if you enjoyed Round Ireland with a Fridge, for example, then you’re probably going to enjoy this one too. Sure, his sense of humour might not be quite right for everyone, but Hawks has always made me laugh and he did so here, too.
There were occasional borderline sexist comments in it here and there, but then I suppose that gave it a certain sense of realness. He was a single bloke surrounded by Frenchwomen, after all. But overall, yeah.
Learn more about A Piano in the Pyrenees.