Weekend Cooking: The Glass Kitchen by Linda Francis Lee

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The Glass Kitchen by Linda Francis Lee
Published by St. Martin's Press ISBN 9780312382278
Trade paperback, $15.99, 384 pages

From the time she was a young girl, Portia Cuthcart loved cooking with her grandmother. Her grandmother had a special touch, knowing exactly what to cook to make someone feel good before they even know that they needed it. Portia inherited that unique talent.

Portia was happy living in Texas with her husband, a politician, until the day she discovered her was sleeping with her best friend. Distraught, divorced and with no money, she headed to New York City to the garden apartment her aunt left her.

Her sisters Cordelia and Olivia lived in New York as well, so Portia had a support system there. She discovered that the man who bought out Cordelia's and Olivia's apartments in her aunt's building also wanted to buy hers, but she did not want to sell.

Gabriel is a Wall Street big money man, a widower with a two daughters. He is brooding and pushy and sexy, and he wants Portia to sell him her apartment, which Portia refuses to do. You can probably guess where this is heading.

Running low on funds, Portia decides to open a restaurant with her sisters called The Glass Kitchen. Portia works her food magic, cooking dishes that come to her. She begins by selling them out of her garden apartment home, until the health department shuts her down.

Gabriel hires Portia to cook for his family, and she becomes close to his younger daughter Ariel, who misses her mother terribly and was in the car when her mother had the fatal car accident. Ariel is looking for answers to questions about her mother.

The descriptions of food in The Glass Kitchen will drive you into your own kitchen to recreate the recipes that Lee has helpfully put in the end of the book. You can create an entire six course meal with the recipes for Crab and Sweet Corn Chowder and Fried Chicken with Sweet Jalapeno Mustard, making this a good book for a book club meal.

The Glass Kitchen has some very hot sex scenes, great descriptions of food, a terrific sister relationship and some memorable characters (the elderly neighbor couple were my favorite). It's a wonderful book to while away a Sunday afternoon and then create a delicious Sunday dinner. (And the cover art is absolutely irresistible.)

rating 4 of 5 stars