Pastas
Street Kitchen: The Big Book of Pasta* (Lunchbox Kiadó 2020) Pasta is the dish that can be a good idea to prepare for any occasion. It can be a quick meal or a Sunday lunch, but also a festive dish. The Street Kitchen team is passionate about this type of food and tried to collect and create the most delicious recipes for the book. First, we can read basic information about what we will need if we want to knead the dough ourselves and what we need to pay attention to when cooking it. The recipes start with a few types of homemade pasta, and then the pasta dishes are grouped by season due to seasonal ingredients. The book contains almost a hundred recipes from the simplest to the most complex ones. Each recipe describes how to prepare the dough itself, but you can also work with store-bought dough, and…
Harry Potter forever
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury Publishing first published in 1997) I recently re-read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone… Although I belong to the same age group as Harry Potter (I was in primary school when it first came out), the Harry Potter-fever didn’t reach me until I was a university student. There I saw the cover of the 6th English volume and bought it. Later I also read the rest in English. I was captivated by the story and it founded my love for middle grade books, which was deepened years later by Nevermoor. I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t know Harry Potter. Even if you accidentally haven’t read the book, you definitely seen the movies. J.K. Rowling spent five years writing the first book before it was first published in the UK in 1997. It was first published in Hungary two years…
Pancakes
Sudi Pigott: Flipping Good! (Kyle Books 207) Who doesn’t love pancakes!? Pancakes are probably the most ancient food that we have prepared. Already in the Stone Age, our ancestors had a device with which they milled cereal grains into flour, and then mixed them with water and baked them into cakes on a flat stone placed on coals. In its present form, the Romans were probably the first to make pancakes, the sweet dough of which was made from eggs, milk, water and flour and eaten fried with pepper and honey. In addition to the traditional ingredients, pancakes are also made from quinoa, coconut, chestnuts or chickpeas, so even those with gluten sensitivity can eat them. There are also pancakes with yeast or potatoes, such as the Finnish ‘pannukakku’ or the Irish ‘boxty’. In addition to traditional jam or cocoa, the fillings can also be variable: e.g. meat, onion, egg…
Mission to new worlds
Donna Barba Higuera: The Last Cuentista (Levine Querido 2021) Many, many years ago, a fiery snake was born from the love of the Earth and the Sun. Growing up, the snake was angry at his father for not caring for him, so he decided to destroy him. However, he failed to achieve his goal and his father’s brightness blinded him during his close orbit, then escaped his gravity to return to Mother Earth, with whom he was never able to reunite again. Since then, once every 75 years it passes by the Earth as a fiery plume, but never meets it. Except now… In 2061, Halley comet is headed straight for Earth due to a change in its trajectory and there is a fear of destroying it. The people escape in three spaceship, which only certain people can board. Petra’s parents are scientists, so they got a place on the…
A new legend of Eerie-on-Sea
Thomas Taylor: Festergrimm (Walker Books 2022) The streets of Eerie-on-Sea are inhabited by mysterious legends. One of them is the story of Festergrimm. Clockwork and toymaker Ludovic Festergrimm was loved by everyone when he brought his toys to the Winter Fair, but when his only daughter went missing and he built a huge machine to find her, they turned away from him. Later, the legend was forgotten, but now Herbie and Violet’s old enemy Sebastian Eels, believed to be dead, has returned to reopen Festergrimm’s waxworks which – to the children’s surprise – made almost everyone happy except them. So Herbie and Violet have to keep an eye on Eels and try to uncover what he’s up to. I was especially angry for the adults in this book. Not doing anything was one thing, but not even believing what the kids were saying was really infuriating. The story was more…
Jams, jellies and chutneys
Waltraud Angele – Gabriele Gugetzer: Lady Marmelade (originally published by Buchverlag GmbH & Co 2017) I love having books in every room of the house. I have a few cookbooks, so I thought I’d write about them as well, because I’ve gotten a lot of ideas from them. Waltraud Angele is a farmer. She works with her husband on their own farm and mainly deals with vegetable and fruit preserving, the tradition of this was passed down from generation to generation in her family. Gabriele Gugetzer is an author of food and travel guides and has written 26 cookbooks already. She has two passions: books and traveling. She has been all over the world as a traveling journalist; runs a travel and gastro column. Their co-written book is the Marmalade. From the book, we can learn how to make jam from the basics. The recipes are very simple and easy…
Black birds
Stefan Bachmann: Cinders & Sparrows (Greenwillow Books – HarperCollins 2020) Nothing is what it first seems to be. It was the first day of autumn, when the trees change their green clothes to bronze, the pumpkins ripen, and the moon appears early in the sky. It was the perfect time for a witch to return to her ancestral home. Of course, Zita didn’t know at the time that she was a witch and that her family had been protecting the world of the living from those who wanted to harm it for many centuries. Until now, Zita thought she was an orphan, but as it turns out, the famous (infamous) Blackbird Castle belongs to her family. However, when she arrives, she is not welcomed with open arms, but by tough training to be able to do well as the last heir of the Brydgeborn dynasty. She makes both friends and…
Witches along the Hedge
Skye McKenna: Hedgewitch (Welbeck Flame 2022) Skye McKenna was born and raised in Australia. She always wanted to be a writer or illustrator. She liked to make up stories that took place in the remote and sparsely populated areas of Australia where she lived, but it wasn’t until she moved to England that she started writing seriously. She believes that we must experience adventures before we can write them down. In the United Kingdom, she fell in love with the British countryside, so her first novel, Hedgewitch, is also set here. In addition to writing, she works for a charity that tries to improve people’s lives by preserving traditions. In her work, she studies old maps and documents, and has been involved in organizing an exhibition about medieval magicians and alchemists, and she is currently working on a project about storytelling, poetry and songs. Cassie Morgan has been waiting for…
Aveline Jones
Phil Hickes: The Haunting of Aveline Jones (Usborne Publishing 2020) Phil Hickes: The Bewitching of Aveline Jones (Usborne Publishing 2021) Phil Hickes was born in the UK and grew up near Manchester in a house overlooking a graveyard… That explains a lot. As a child, he was always attracted to scary things. He especially liked the books of Alen Garner and Susan Cooper. Because of them, he believed that extraordinary things can happen to ordinary children. This was one of the inspirations for the creepy adventures of Aveline Jones. After the UK, he also lived in Ireland and New Zealand, but finally settled in Oregon with his wife, and on foggy, rainy, pine-scented nights, they listen to the coyotes. In his books, he believes in the mood-creating power of seasons and landscapes. Aveline Jones is an ordinary twelve-year-old girl who is particularly interested in ghost stories. She lives with her…
Teenage witch
Emma Steinkellner: The Okay Witch (Simon & Schuster 2019) Many thanks to Maxim Könyvkiadó for sending me the book! I started the Halloween period in October by reading the book I got at the Bookfestival. Moth is a 13-year-old girl who loves everything related to witches. She lives with her mother, who runs a thrift store and she doesn’t fit in at school. She has no idea that her life will change this Halloween… It turns out that witches do exist, and she even has magic herself. Her mother, on the other hand, is not as happy about this as Moth. Many other secrets from the city’s past come to light, and Moth realizes that magic is not like in the movies and books: it is much more dangerous… The Okay Witch is a very cute story about family and how everyone is eager to belong somewhere. All this with…