Roast Figs, Sugar Snow

Written by Diana Henry

Diana Henry’s first book: Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons caught the imaginations of food lovers everywhere. Roast Figs, Sugar Snow is similarly rich in style, and harbours armfuls of recipes that delve into the depths of your pantry and lead your senses wondering into the colder climes of Russia, New England, Quebec and her homeland of Ireland.

The pages are full of Henry’s own narrative: her enchantment with foreign lands, her discovery of new ingredients and her reluctance to go a day without some kind of cheese all work to challenge your mouth not to drool over the pages. Onion & cider soup, Austrian rabbit and sour-cream apple-pie muffins collectively clamour for the attention of the kitchen.

The book’s title “Sugar Snow” refers to the kind of snowfall that beckons the beginning of the maple tree sap harvest in New England. Henry’s description of sugar snow parties, where hot maple syrup is drizzled onto snow, forming toffee-like cobwebs of deep sweetness, lures the reader into a magical whirl of winter tradition. The main danger with this book may be, that instead of cooking anything in it, you just sit there, book in lap, reading page after page just for the pleasure of it.