Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes

Falling Cloudberries is beautiful, engaging, and filled with the kind of recipes that call to you from the pages, saying, don't be shy, this is home cooking, anyone can make this, and you can, too. More than a cookbook, but less than a memoir, Falling Cloudberries is a commonplace book, a collection of recipes, memories and photographs of food, families, and places the author has lived. It is designed to look like a scrapbook, with lovely chintz endpapers and spine, and a script font for the title and section headings.

The wonderful thing about this cookbook is that, like any good scrapbook, the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. The recipes, while interesting, are generally not complex; they are mostly common foods from show more the countries Tessa Kiros has lived. For me that is part of their appeal. I attend a yearly Greek festival each year. I love going for many reasons, but the best part is the food. I opened Falling Cloudberries at random, and there they all were, my Greek favorites: Lamb with lemon and oregano, pastitsia, fried haloumi cheese, loukoumades. In the South African section there is a recipe for garlic bread tucked in among more exotic offerings. There are less familiar recipes, too, including a number of enticing desserts, but this is mostly comfort food from Scandinavia, Greece, South Africa, and other places Tessa Kiros has lived.

The vignettes that go along with these recipes are small, evocative passages, sensuous memories that recall a taste, a smell, the family member who shaped the dough or seasoned the chicken, the sight of octopus drying on a clothesline, the sad music from the ice-cream van.

The photographs are really what make me keep coming back to this book . They are not just perfectly presented plates of finished dishes and stunning landscapes, nor are they how-to photos. Not every recipe has a photo, and not all the photos are of the food. They are large, full colored, abundant, and like the writing, evocative-- I could almost taste the black-eyed peas swimming in their glistening puddles of olive oil, or feel the heat radiating off the wall of a Greek church. The sepia-toned photos of Kiros's family look like interesting people I wish I'd known and been able to share a meal with.

Overall, this is a lovely book to look through, to open at random and taste, and to be inspired by when looking for something new to cook . The recipes I've tried have been easy to follow and were eaten with great appreciation by my family. My only complaint is that the type used for the actual recipe directions is so much smaller than anything else in the book that it can be a bit difficult to read. In spite of that, I wholeheartedly recommend Falling Cloudberries as a memorable addition to your cookbook library. show less

Jealous of Kiros' diverse family recipes and map-skipping travels, I read "Falling Cloudberries" from cover to cover, bookmarking tasty bites with flavors that span the globe. I was inspired to cook something immediately, but choosing a recipe proved difficult. My sweet tooth argued for dessert. But would it be the crumbly crisp Cinnamon and Cardamom Buns from Finland? Bougatsa from Greece, layered filo with sweet, custard-like filling? Cream cheese-filled Bourekia cookies from Cyprus? In the end, Kiros' grandfather's Rice Pudding recipe (page 192), a mildly sweet and comforting dish, was the perfect footnote for the dinner I'd already eaten.

Part memoir, part family scrapbook and entirely food-driven, this is the cookbook I wish I had show more written. Reading it feels familial, infused with childhood and nostalgia. Finished with my initial reading, I flipped through the book a second time to make my grocery list. The book already looked like a member of my (admittedly large) cooking library, torn paper scraps marking favored items and desserts with my notes for accompaniments. It being April, I'm baking up the South African cinnamon-swirled Bobba's Babka (page 246) for Easter brunch. Hopefully my family will love the recipe as much as I do.

Served with a bit of nostalgia, this recipe collection provides a great balance of flavors with an approachable, continental flair. When this book arrived in the mail, I celebrated. There's a beautiful heft to the book — brimming with gorgeous patterns, color photography and thick, glossy pages — that makes it seem a prize, certainly worthy of celebration and, perhaps, a bit more of that lovely rice pudding. show less

I received my copy of this book in the Library Things Early Reviewer Program. My immediate reaction upon opening my package was: “Wow, this is a beautiful book with beautiful pictures.” I was thrilled. However, I quickly had a couple of other observations. It is a heavy book which is not quite so nice when holding it to read and I didn’t care for the layout for use as a cookbook. The design is not the most practical for the use of the reader who actually wants to cook from the book.

For each recipe, ingredients are listed first, then the name of the recipe, then a personal blurb about the recipe or the food. Directions for the recipe are given last and in smaller print then the personal blurb which make them harder to read while show more cooking. However, the directions are very thorough and go over to a second page in some cases. It would have been better if the second page was always a facing page but some of them finish after turning the page.

Quite a few of the foods have pictures of the finished product. Serving suggestions and variations are frequently given. I like that Kiros also encourages the cook to add a little more or a little less of some ingredients depending on personal taste.

There are many pictures. In addition to pictures of the food, some are of family members and some are scenic. Family members are identified, but the scenic pictures do not have any caption. I would have liked added information for those.

The contents are:
Food from Many Kitchens
Family Tree
Falling Cloudberries - Finland
Oregano, Oranges, and Olive Groves - Greece
Cinnamon and Roses - Cyprus
Monkeys’ Weddings - South Africa
Washing Lines and Wishing Wells - Italy
Suitcase of Recipes - World
Index

I have marked several recipes that I hope to try:
Pork Schnitzels - Finland
Hasselback Potatoes - Finland
Chickpea, Feta, and Cilantro Salad - Greece
Baked Lima Beans with Onions, Tomatoes, and Parsley - Greece
Kourapiedes - Greece
Pita Bread - Cyprus
Greek-Cypriot Salad - Cyprus
Kamut Bread - South Africa
Apple Cake with Toffee Topping - South Africa
Ricotta Tart with a Chocolate Crust - Italy

I have tried the Cinnamon and Cardamom Buns from the Finland chapter. They were delicious. I am quite pleased to have won this book and be able to add it to my library. It is a wonderful book to browse and I do hope to try some of the other recipes I have listed. Kiros has written a very nice book. My only wish would be for a more user friendly layout. show less

I received "Falling Cloudberries" through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. This was exciting for me, because I've had it on my wishlist for a couple of years.

It was WELL worth the wait; Kiros has put together a beautiful package. There are beautiful pictures throughout the book: some landscapes; some random items she's come across in her travels; and my favorites, pictures of relatives Kiros mentions in the stories she tells. As she shares recipes that remind her of the places she's been and people she's grown up with or visited, she shares little bits of memories of those places and people. The story-telling takes the book from being a straight-up cookbook to being a book I enjoy just paging through and reading, even if it's show more just randomly opening to a page and going on from there.

When I receive a new cookbook, I usually flag the recipes I want to try, but there were way too many in "Falling Cloudberries" for this to be an efficient way of noting interesting recipes. Kiros's recipes seem to be a nice mix of exotic and unassuming, and I'm looking forward to getting to try them out -- even more so now that I know the stories behind many of them. show less

You know the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover"? That definitely does not apply in this case. First of all, it's gorgeous. I took the dust jacket off to keep from tearing it while reading, and was delighted to see that the inside matched the dust jacket. No, plain gray or brown. The inside is every bit as beautiful from the blue flowered design on the flyleaf, to the pictures of recipes and life. I say recipes and life, because that's what this book is, it's cookbook and a memoir all in one.

The author of the book, Tessa Kiros, opens the book with the following quote, "These are the recipe I grew up with: the recipes that have woven their way through the neighborhoods of my mind, past indifference and into love. Those that have show more stayed while others might have fluttered away with a gentle spring breeze." What a growing up she did, she was born in London to a Finnish mother and a Greek-Cypriot father. When she was four, they moved to South Africa, and she now lives in Italy with her husband, Giovanni. Wow. Kind of makes my - born in Illinois, grew up in Missouri, and moved to Tennessee, seem kind of lame.

So, it is with that rich background of cultures and influences that she puts together this collection of recipes and stories. And quite a collection it is. She begins with Finland - from her mother and her mother's side of the family, then to Greece and Cyprus - for her father, South Africa - from her upbringing, Italy - where she currently resides with her husband, and a section called suitcase - a lovely collection gathered along the way.

I started out listing all of the recipes that I wanted to try (but they soon became too numerous, this book is 397 pages, after all). A very shortened version of my list:

Finland - Potato Pancakes, Salmon Dill and Potato Soup, Cranberry Jam
Greece - Dolmades, Skordalia, Lemon and Oregano Chicken
Cyprus - Fried Haloumi Cheese, Green Olives with Coriander Seeds
South Africa - Lemon Vanilla Jam
Italy - Olive Oil Bread, Pasta with Sardines and Wild Fennel
Suitcase - Caramel Ice Cream, Milk Honey and Cinnamon Ice Cream

I can't begin to say enough nice things about this book. I absolutely loved it. It's big, gorgeous, filled with delicious sounding recipes, gorgeous photos, and a sweet family history. show less

I also have Apples for Jam by the same author, both books are beautiful. Just reading both books inspires me to get busy cooking. They are so gorgeous I hate to ruin them in the kitchen but the recipes are tempting. Apples for Jam is a bit stained but that's the sign of a good cookbook, at least in my house. Both books have little stickies notes on the pages with recipes I want to try. I enjoy the history she gives before the recipes and the wonderful photos, not just of food but of the places she has visited.
This is a delightful book not just for cooks but for those who love to travel and enjoy different foods when they travel. If by Grandma, who loved to travel and experience new things, had written a cookbook it might have looked show more like this one. show less

I found this in a bookshop and had to have it - apart from the fact it is truly the most beautiful cook book I had ever seen, it also matched the sorts of foods I understand - something Northern, something Mediterranean, something middle-eastern and a good dab of colonial southern hemisphere hospitality. I was also warmed by the stories of Tessa's family and how the food came to be in her life - this is the sort of recipe scrapbook we should all keep. Recommend the cinnamon buns for sheer bliss on a winter's day.