Νεφελοκοκκυγία

Νεφελοκοκκυγία, should you need the title translated, is Ancient Greek for “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” an overly-optimistic, fantasy-like utopia in the sky, first described in Aristophanes’ drama The Birds and now the title of a new novel by Anthony Doerr. If you need help translating this title from Korean – 오징어 게임 (hope I got it right) – it’s Squid Game, the new huge hit on Netflix. Ted Lasso, translated from British English, is American English for Ted Lasso. What do those three very, very diverse works have in common? Well, they’ve been on our To-Watch/To-Read list during these last months of pandemic-related isolation. And because I’m always looking for food tie-ins, I zeroed in on these three possibilities.

First I thought a Ted Lasso Biscuit recipe (“biscuit,” when translated from British English to American English, means cookie) was perfect to blog about, but I’ve already blogged about a fabulous biscuit/cookie/shortbread. Clearly, a squid recipe in honor of The Squid Game would have been spot on, but I’ve never fixed squid – and quite possibly have never eaten it; I could have tried Dalgona candy, but that seems to be usually a store-bought, not homemade, treat.

Maybe some food from Cloud Cuckoo Land? In the first chapter we’re introduced to Konstance, a 14-year-old, who is on a space ship fleeing the earth – which has been ravaged by climate change. The mother-like character on the ship frets that Konstance isn’t eating enough and offers her a “nice risotto.” You’ll have to read the book to find out how you do risotto on a space ship – but that line made the final decision about our blog recipe quite easy. We’d do risotto!

Besides, as it turns out, we watched about 10 minutes of Squid Game before I covered my eyes and screamed to Andy to “TURN IT OFF!” And Ted Lasso – after adoring Season 1 – mostly disappointed us with Season 2. But I just finished Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land and loved it.

An NPR review of the book comments that “the greatest joy in it comes from watching the pieces snap into place. It is an epic of the quietest kind, whispering across 600 years in a voice no louder than a librarian’s. It is a book about books, a story about stories. It is tragedy and comedy and myth and fable and a warning and a comfort all at the same time. It says, Life is hard. Everyone believes the world is ending all the time. But so far, all of them have been wrong.”

Anthony Doerr’s own website has an interview with him in which he is asked what he hopes readers will take away from Cloud Cuckoo Land. I love Doerr’s response:

I hope readers are reminded of our myriad interconnections: with our ancestors, with our neighbors, with other species, with all the kids yet to be born. I believe that the more we can remember how much we’re all in the same boat—the more we can train ourselves to imagine, recognize, and remember our connections—with the bacteria in our guts, the birds outside our windows, the meals on our plates, and the children in our futures—the better off we’ll be.

With Thanksgiving coming up soon, I think we should all give thanks for such gifted, introspective, and thoughtful writers in our midst.

Before I move on to our risotto recipe and a couple of Thanksgiving suggestions, I should point out that today’s Andy’s Corner also acknowledges that life is hard…perhaps not as eloquently as Anthony Doerr, but maybe with more humor.

Now for Thanksgiving: my family is hotly debating the menu, which is not surprising given that we’re a bunch of foodies. Turkey is the main talking point, since it’s so difficult – if not impossible – to roast the perfect turkey. This year I’m buying ours from Sonoma’s Slow Food Heritage Turkey Project. As an old (in so many ways) 4-H-er and as a believer in avoiding mass-produced meat if financially possible, I’m looking forward to that part of our meal and will be using a dry-brined technique on it.

Though we’ve voted to stick with a traditional menu this year, I’d encourage you to get wild and crazy and break away from the fixation on mashed potatoes and stuffing and gravy and yams. And I’d encourage you to simplify the menu as much as possible. What about doing this super-simple risotto, using it to replace the labor intensive mashed potatoes and ubiquitous green beans? You can still make gravy to enhance the probably-dry turkey :). In all honesty, if you believe you can serve a perfect Thanksgiving meal with perfect food and perfect guests, I believe you’re in Cloud Cuckoo Land!