Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes
Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes
Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes
Ebook335 pages4 hours

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

Join New York Times bestselling author Shauna Niequist as she offers an enchanting mix of funny and vulnerable storytelling in this collection of recipes and essays about the surprising and sacred things that happen when people gather around the table.

Bread & Wine is a literary feast about the moments and meals that bring us together. With beautiful and evocative writing, Shauna celebrates the sweet and savory moments that happen when family and friends sit down together. She invites us to see how God teaches and feeds us even as we nourish the people around us, and she explores the ways that hunger, loneliness, and restlessness lead us back to the table again.

Part cookbook and part spiritual memoir, Bread & Wine sheds light on:

  • How sharing food together mirrors the way we share our hearts with each other—and with God
  • What it means to follow a God who reveals His presence in breaking bread and passing a cup
  • What happens when we come together, slow down, open our homes, look into one another’s faces, and listen to one another’s stories

A satisfying read for heart and body, you’ll want to keep Bread & Wine close at hand all year round. Recreate the meals that come to life in each essay with recipes for any occasion, from Goat Cheese Biscuits and Bacon-Wrapped Dates to Mango Chicken Curry and Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Toffee.

For anyone who has found themselves swapping stories over plates of pasta, sharing takeout on the couch, laughing over a burnt recipe, and lingering a little longer for one more bite, this book is for you.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherZondervan
Release dateApr 9, 2013
ISBN9780310598879
Author

Shauna Niequist

Shauna Niequist is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books, including I Guess I Haven’t Learned that Yet and Present Over Perfect. Shauna and her husband, Aaron, and their sons, Henry and William, live in New York City. Shauna is an avid reader and traveler, and a passionate gatherer of people, especially around the table.

Read more from Shauna Niequist

Related to Bread and Wine

Related ebooks

Christianity For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Bread and Wine

Rating: 4.131578947368421 out of 5 stars
4/5

57 ratings5 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fast favorite! I laughed and cried through the whole book. I mhaveb't had the opportunity to try the recipes yet but they sound delicious!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fast favorite! I laughed and cried through the whole book. I mhaveb't had the opportunity to try the recipes yet but they sound delicious!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Lovely, beautiful book about food, family, community, gratitude, and relationship with God. Fantastic book - gift worthy!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved everything about this book. The style, the content, the author’s voice. I loved how the chapters were broken into manageable short stories, so I could read a bit, then pick it back up later without missing a beat. The author’s attitude about communion, community, and hospitality really resonated with me, as it’s something I’ve been thinking about on my own lately. I loved the voice of the book. I felt like I could just sit down at the kitchen table with the author for a chat and we’d be fast friends. I like that in a book.

    Some quotes I loved so much that I highlighted:

    “I know that there are people who see food primarily as calories, nutrients, complex bundles of energy for the whirring machines of our bodies. I know them, but they’re not my people. They’re in the same general category of people who wear sensible shoes and read manuals. Good people, but entirely foreign to me.”

    “The church is at its best, in my view, when it is more than a set of ideas and ideals, when it is a working, living, breathing, on-the-ground, in-the-mess force for good in our cities and towns.”

    “This is one of the many differences between our families of origin. His family believes in non-FDA-approved herbal supplements and the importance of spinal alignment. My family believes in Advil and the healing effects of both red wine and boating.”

    "My friend Shane says the genius of Communion, of bread and wine, is that bread is the food of the poor and wine the drink of the privileged, and that every time we see those two together, we are reminded of what we share instead of what divides us.”

    In addition to this being a jewel of a book, it is loaded with recipes at the end of nearly each chapter. Many I look forward to trying out! Read this soon. You won’t be sorry! It has inspired me to be more hospitable. 5 of 5 stars.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I found this book to be slow. I read a couple chapters and put it down. It did not engage me.

Book preview

Bread and Wine - Shauna Niequist

PRAISE FOR

BREAD & WINE

Bread & Wine is one of those rare books that grabs all of you—your mind, body, and spirit. Shauna’s soulful storytelling made me laugh, reminded me that I’m not alone, and gave me a new lens on some old struggles. There’s something sacred about this kind of truth telling. I couldn’t put this book down.

BRENÉ BROWN, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Daring Greatly and Rising Strong

Bread & Wine is a new book about an ancient meal, but more than a meal, a book about the people seated at the table, and about the laughing, and about the joy of saying hello and the pain of saying goodbye. After reading this book you may feel as you do driving away from dinner with a friend—grateful and full.

DONALD MILLER, author of Blue Like Jazz and Scary Close

Shauna Niequist’s beautiful word painting in Bread & Wine is a poetic reminder to appreciate the rituals, people, and sensory experiences of our everyday lives. Her words invite us into her kitchen, and her stories challenge us to remain attentive to the many delights that complement life’s hardships and the ways in which we can share them with others.

KELLE HAMPTON, New York Times bestselling author of Bloom

No one combines all my treasured things like Shauna does in Bread & Wine: beautiful words, delicious food, recipes like the ones you jot down on the back of a napkin in shorthand, with hints and adaptations written off to the side, real-life stories, laughter. Then I read a sentence like this: Love isn’t something you prove or earn, but something you receive or allow, like a balm, like a benediction, even at your very worst, and I decide to send this book to everyone I know.

JEN HATMAKER, author of Of Mess and Moxie and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire

This magnificent book is a feast for the soul! A wise, thoughtful, and delightful read that will nourish your heart.

IAN MORGAN CRON, bestselling author of Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me and coauthor of The Road Back to You

ZONDERVAN BOOKS

Bread & Wine

Copyright © 2013, 2020 by Shauna Niequist

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Zondervan titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email SpecialMarkets@Zondervan.com.

ISBN 978-0-310-36109-1 (softcover)

ISBN 978-0-310-59888-6 (audio)

ISBN 978-0-310-59887-9 (ebook)

Epub Edition August 2020 9780310598879


The Library of Congress has cataloged the original/hardcover edition as follows:

Names: Niequist, Shauna.

Title: Bread & wine : A Love Letter to Life around the Table, with recipes / Shauna Niequist.

Other titles: Bread and wine

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : Zondervan, [2013] | Includes bibliographical references (p. 280) and indexes.

Identifiers: LCCN 2013000736 | ISBN 9780310328179

Subjects: LCSH: Dinners and dining--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Classification: LCC BR115.N87 N54 2013 | DDC 249--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2013000736


All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

Any internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com.

Cover design: Curt Diepenhorst

Cover photography: Foxys_forest_manufacture / Getty Images

Author photo: EVEREVE (Erin Smith)

Interior design: Kait Lamphere

Printed in the United States of America


20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  /LSC/  15  14  13  12  11  10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For my boys—

Aaron, Henry, and Mac

And for the Cooking Club—

Brannon Anderson

Margaret Hogan

Amanda Hybels

Melody Martinez

Casey Sundstedt

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Curried Cheeseball with Mango Chutney

Author’s Note

On Bread and Wine: An Introduction

Part One

1. My Mom’s Blueberry Crisp

Blueberry Crisp

2. What the Table Is For

Mini Mac & Cheese

3. Hungry

Nigella’s Flourless Chocolate Brownies

4. Start Where You Are

Basic Vinaigrette

5. Go-to Risotto

Basic Risotto

6. Enough

7. The Chopping Block

Steak au Poivre with Cognac Pan Sauce

8. On Tea and Pajamas

Breakfast Quinoa

9. Run

Green Well Salad

10. Hummingbird

Goat Cheese Biscuits

Part Two

11. Delicious Everywhere

Watermelon Feta Salad

12. Jazz and Curry

Mango Chicken Curry

13. Open the Door

White Chicken Chili

14. Baking Cookies with Batman

Breakfast Cookies

15. Morning, Noon, and Night

Sweet Potato Fries with Sriracha Dipping Sauce

16. What My Mother Taught Me

Real Simple Cassoulet

17. Cupcake in the Oven

18. Feasting and Fasting

Robin’s Super-Healthy Lentil Soup

19. Love and Enchiladas

Annette’s Enchiladas

20. Meeting Mac

Part Three

21. Hail Mary

22. Magical White Bean Soup

Magical White Bean Soup

23. Present over Perfect

Bacon-Wrapped Dates

24. The Bass Player’s Birthday

25. Russian Dolls

26. On Scrambled Eggs and Doing Hard Things

Goat Cheese Scrambled Eggs

27. Happy New Year

Dark Chocolate Sea Salted Toffee

28. Swimming in Silence

Esquites/Mexican Grilled Corn

Part Four

29. What Money Can’t Buy

Gaia Cookies

30. Last-Minute Lunch Party

Maple Balsamic Pork Tenderloin

31. City Love

32. Better Late than Never

Brannon’s Caesar Salad

33. Swimsuit, Ready or Not

Farmers Market Potato Salad

34. The Mayor of the River

Casey’s Turkey Burgers

35. Pont Neuf

Simplest Dark Chocolate Mousse

36. Take This Bread

Sullivan Street Bread

37. Come to the Table

Appendix

Four-Week Book Club/Cooking Club Discussion Guide

Four-Week Book Club/Cooking Club Menus

For Margaret: On Weeknight Cooking, with Pantry List

Dear Becky: My Best Entertaining Tips, with Sample Menus

Recommended Reading

Recipe Index

Recipe Index by Category

Acknowledgments

PREFACE

Don’t tell the other books, but this book was the most fun to write—a reward, of sorts, for writing Bittersweet, which was to that point the most difficult. I struggled through Bittersweet for a hundred reasons, and then Bread & Wine felt like play—creative and life-giving and very much a group endeavor. I was in the kitchen constantly, and rarely alone.

When I look back on it now, I realize that the Bread & Wine season of my life was one of the richest, sweetest, most delicious and nourishing seasons of my life. I was in my early/mid-thirties, with a little boy and a baby boy. Our life was packed full with cousins and in-laws and good friends and neighbors, and our kitchen felt like the center point for connection, laughter, storytelling.

Our kitchen in the house we lived in during the Bread & Wine season saw some hard use. We hosted fancy parties with lobster and little plated salads of mango and cucumber, and we hosted barbecues and late-night breakfast-for-dinner. We hosted baby showers and wedding showers and birthday parties and either my family or Aaron’s about once a week. For a while, my brother would stop over after work, and I’d feed him like he was one of my sons, lining up plates at the kitchen counter—three bowls of mac & cheese, three plates of chicken nuggets—the only difference was that the little boys drank apple juice and Uncle T drank rum from a tiny juice cup.

I learned how to throw parties in the first little townhouse I bought after college. And then I learned to cook in Grand Rapids. But that little ranch we lived in during the Bread & Wine years was where I learned the deeper practices of hospitality—not just parties and planned gatherings, but a way of living with an open door and an open heart, a way of using food and time and attentiveness as a way of loving people.

In terms of the food aspect of it, I’m sure you’ll notice this book has a very specific flavor profile: balsamic vinegar, goat cheese, maple syrup, caramelized onions . . . it seems to me that most of the recipes are just variations on this list of ingredients, and I’m fine with that—those are still some of my favorite flavor combinations of all time.

These days, though, I’d add some blue cheese and more garlic. I’d add recipes for meatballs and tacos and a couple more curries. I’d add recipes with scallions and ginger, and about a million soups. I’d add a whole section on salads, as I have become increasingly passionate (and picky!) about the necessary steps involved in making a good salad.

I’d want to include a good thin-crust pizza and also a baguette recipe and maybe even croissants, but I’m pretty sure that when it came right down to it, I’d bail out on all three of those because they’re really hard and our oven sets off the smoke alarm really easily. Also our eight-year-old loves to go by himself to the French bakery on the corner, keeping me in croissants and baguettes whenever I need them.

My daily life—and my daily table—has changed dramatically since the writing of this book. But my passion for food, for connection, and for those sacred moments that we share when we eat together has only grown. It looks different these days. Most meals I serve in our tiny New York City apartment are eaten off plates balanced on knees. And it looks different because ours isn’t a baby or toddler home anymore—those little boys have become big boys, complete with big appetites and friends who crowd into our kitchen for spaghetti and meatballs or brownies or french toast. It looks different because city life runs on a different rhythm, and somehow it seems that at least one out-of-town friend is in Manhattan on any given day. Lots of last-minute visits mean I’m always ready to set out a little plate of cheese and olives and almonds, always opening the wine, always scheming ways to stretch dinner for unexpected guests.

But what was true years ago still holds: this morning, after several days away for work, I found myself in the kitchen—cutting board, knife, vegetables. My mind still does its best work while my hands chop, and my heart is still fullest when the people I love are eating soup or bread or cheese, letting themselves be fed and restored, brought back to life by nourishment and connection.

Shauna Niequist

New York, New York

March 9, 2020

CURRIED CHEESEBALL WITH MANGO CHUTNEY

In the spirit of being stopover-ready—and with a little retro flair—I give you the Curried Cheeseball with Mango Chutney. Many years ago, one of my mom’s most stylish friends, Aliece, served something almost like this at a party in her art-filled mid-century home, and I have been making a slightly modified version of it ever since.

I serve it on a platter or board with crackers—both gluten-free and regular for our house—along with a bunch of grapes, apple or pear slices, and maybe some apricots and almonds.

If making it into a ball feels too fussy, you can spread it in a shallow casserole dish and then spread a layer each of chutney, chopped peanuts, and a few green onions over the top.

Whatever shape or format you choose, it has more flavor if you let it come to room temperature before serving.

I would feel very proud of myself if friends stopped over and I actually did have a cheeseball just waiting for that moment, but I would also feel pretty okay about just a block of cream cheese, softened for as long as you can, and then mixed with a handful of shredded cheddar, a spoonful of curry powder, one pinch each of salt and cayenne pepper, and then chutney and chopped peanuts spread over all of it.

And really, while we’re stripping it all down to bare bones, a block of cream cheese with mango chutney poured over it and surrounded by crackers will make nearly any last-minute guest very happy.

Ingredients

16 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 teaspoons curry powder

pinch of salt

pinch of cayenne pepper

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

¼ cup golden raisins

¼ cup chopped green onion

½ cup mango chutney, divided

1 cup chopped salted peanuts or pecans

Instructions

In a mixing bowl, add the softened cream cheese, curry powder, salt, and cayenne until well combined. Add shredded cheese, raisins, green onions, and ¼ cup of mango chutney. Mix well and then form into a ball by spooning mixture onto a piece of plastic wrap and drawing up the plastic wrap around it. Refrigerate until you want to serve it, and let it come to room temperature before serving. Before serving, spread remaining mango chutney over it and sprinkle with chopped nuts.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I’m not a recipe writer, for the most part. Many of these recipes—favorites around our table—are from chefs, cookbook writers, and restaurants I love, and I’m so happy to pass them on to you. At the beginning of each recipe, I’ve noted the source or inspiration, and I hope you buy the cookbooks, read the magazines, or bookmark the blogs, and that you find as much inspiration and instruction in them as I have.

In many cases, I’ve adapted these recipes for simplicity or preference along the way. They are, like all recipes, intended to be tinkered with and made your own, according to your tastes and your story, according to your family and your table.

Many of the recipes are gluten-free, and several of those recipes include oats. Some people who eat gluten-free, like my husband, Aaron, have no trouble with oats. For others, and certainly for people with celiac disease, only certified gluten-free oats will do.

Also on the topic of gluten-free cooking, some of these recipes call for almond meal. Almond meal can be made in a food processor by whizzing up raw almonds till they become fine like sand, but before you end up with almond butter. Or you can buy it at health food stores and Trader Joe’s.

A few more things: the only salt I use is sea salt, and I always use salted butter. Every recipe is made to serve six people, unless otherwise specified. I generally make the full recipe for our little family because I love a serving or two of leftovers the next day; for a dinner party of ten to twelve people, I double the recipe.

My prayer is that you’ll read these pages first curled up on your couch or in bed or in the bathtub, and then after that you’ll bring it to the kitchen with you, turning corners of pages, breaking the spine, spilling red wine on it, and splashing vinegar across the pages, that it will become battered and stained as you cook and chop and play, music loud and kitchen messy.

And more than anything, I pray that when you put this book down, you’ll gather the people you love around your table to eat and drink, to tell stories, to be heard and fed and nourished on every level.

an introduction

ON BREAD AND WINE

I’m a bread person—crusty, golden baguette; hearty, grainy, seeded loaves; thin, crispy pizza crust—all of it. Flaky, buttery croissants; chewy pita; tortillas, warm and fragrant, blistered by heat. Whenever my jeans are too tight, I’m reminded that I know better than to love bread the way I do, but love is blind, and certainly beyond reason. And I am a wine person—the blood-red and liquid gold, the clink and glamour of tall-stemmed glasses, and the musty, rich, almost mushroom-y smell.

More than that, I am a bread-and-wine person. By that I mean that I’m a Christian, a person of the body and blood, a person of the bread and wine. Like every Christian, I recognize the two as food and drink, and also, at the very same time, I recognize them as something much greater—mystery and tradition and symbol. Bread is bread, and wine is wine, but bread-and-wine is another thing entirely. The two together are the sacred and the material at once, the heaven and earth, the divine and the daily.

This is a collection of essays about family, friendships, and the meals that bring us together. It’s about the ways God teaches and nourishes us as we nourish the people around us, and about hunger, both physical and otherwise, and the connections between the two.

It’s about food and family and faith. It’s also about everything else, because all of life is a jumble of ideas and experiences and the things we find under the couch cushions. All of life is a whirling mash-up of the big and little things—the things we see and think and remember and smell and feel, the deep values that guide us and the dirt under our fingernails, the undercurrents of belief and doubt and the coolness of cotton sheets right when we slide our toes down to the bottom of the bed. It’s about food, and it’s not. It’s about life, which is to say it’s about everything.

A few Christmases ago, my dear friends Steve and Sarah gave me a book called My Last Supper. It’s a gorgeous, oversized hardcover with a collection of interviews with fifty great chefs about their last suppers. Apparently that’s one of those age-old kitchen questions chefs and cooks discuss ad infinitum, in lulls between service, as they close down the kitchen at the end of a busy night—If you knew it was your very last meal, what would you eat? Who would cook it? What would you drink, who would be around the table with you, if you knew it was your very last meal?

Being married to a musician, I’m very familiar with the musician’s equivalent: Out of all recorded music, what song do you wish you had written? Or If you were putting together your dream band, who would play each instrument? For an English major like me, it’s something like, If you could sit in a café with one writer, who would you choose? Or maybe, What line do you wish you had written? It’s one of those questions you can discuss forever, and change your answer a little bit every time, one that you love answering, because it permits you to live in that world—the food world, the music world, the literary world—for as long as you’re working out your answer. If you’re like me, you keep changing your answer, because you want to stay in that world for as long as possible.

For the record, my last-supper meal looks a bit like this: first, of course, ice-cold champagne, gallons of it, flutes catching the candlelight and dancing. There would be bacon-wrapped dates oozing with goat cheese, and risotto with thick curls of Parmesan and flecks of black pepper. There would be paper-thin pizza with tomatoes and mozzarella and slim ribbons of basil, garlicky pasta and crusty bread and lots of cheeses, a plummy pinot noir and maybe a really dirty martini, because you might as well go big on your last night on earth. There would be dark chocolate sea salted toffee and a bowl of fat blackberries, and we’d stay at the table for hours and hours, laughing and telling stories and reaching for one more bite, one more bite, one more bite.

What’s becoming clearer and clearer to me is that the most sacred moments, the ones in which I feel God’s presence most profoundly, when I feel the goodness of the world most arrestingly, take place at the table. The particular alchemy of celebration and food, of connecting people and serving what I’ve made with my own hands, comes together as more than the sum of their parts. I love the sounds and smells and textures of life at the table, hands passing bowls and forks clinking against plates and bread being torn and the rhythm and energy of feeding and being fed.

I love to talk about food and cooking and entertaining. I want to hear about how other people do it, and about the surprising and significant things that happen when people gather around the table. Many of the books I’ve read and loved most dearly have been about food and gatherings at the table. My best moments have been spent in the kitchen, and many of the most deeply spiritual moments of the last year have taken place at the table.

It’s not, actually, strictly about food for me. It’s about what happens when we come together, slow down, open our homes, look into one another’s faces, listen to one another’s stories. It happens when we leave the office and get a sitter and skip our workouts every so often to celebrate a birthday or an accomplishment or a wedding or a birth, when we break out of the normal clockwork of daily life and pop the champagne on a cold, gray Wednesday for no other reason than the fact that the faces we love are gathered around our table. It happens when we enter the joy and the sorrow of the people we love, and we join together at the table to feed one another and be fed, and while it’s not strictly about food, it doesn’t happen without it. Food is the starting point, the common ground, the thing to hold and handle, the currency we offer to one another.

It’s no accident that when a loved one dies, the family is deluged with food. The impulse to feed is innate. Food is a language of care, the thing we do when traditional language fails us, when we don’t know what to say, when there are no words to say. And food is what we offer in celebration—at weddings, at anniversaries, at happy events of every kind. It’s the thing that connects us, that bears our traditions, our sense of home and family, our deepest memories, and, on a practical level, our ability to live and breathe each day. Food matters.

At the very beginning, and all through the Bible, all through the stories about God and his people, there are stories about food, about all of life changing with the bite of an apple, about trading an inheritance for a bowl of stew, about waking up to find the land littered with bread, God’s way of caring for his people; about a wedding where water turned to wine, Jesus’ first miracle; about the very first Last Supper, the humble bread and wine becoming, for all time, indelibly linked to the very body of Christ, the center point for thousands of years of tradition and belief. It matters. It mattered then, and it matters now, possibly even more so, because it’s a way of reclaiming some of the things we may have lost along the way.

Both the church and modern life, together and separately, have wandered away from the table. The church has preferred to live in the mind and the heart and the soul, and almost not at all in fingers and mouths and senses. And modern life has pushed us into faux food and fast food and highly engineered food products cased

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1