From Wilder Shores: The Tables of My Travel - Tapa dura

Part cookbook, part travelogue, this unusual book is designed to conjure up far-off lands and local dishes, from Rothschild dinner tables to Turkoman tents. The author has designed the text as a sketchbook evoking dishes, places and people encountered while on the move through life. She describes pushtu kebabs of lamb marinated in yoghurt and vinegar in Afghanistan, the rough brown bread with thick clotted cream offered at a Turkish wedding, kasha pilaffs of buckwheat, egg and wild mushrooms, cooked over a brushwood fire by partisans holding up the Orient Express, and many other dishes characterized by the author's exotic taste for romance and danger. Lesley Blanch has also written "The Wilder Shores of Love", "The Sabres of Paradise", "Journey into the Mind's Eye" and "Round the World in Eighty Dishes".