Secrets of the Tsil Cafe: A Novel With Recipes - Tapa dura

Young Weston Hingler becomes cuaght in the middle of his parents' culinary diversity, secrets, histories, infidelities, and needs as he grows up in a cross-cultural extended family that exists between two kitchens--one new World, the other traditional. 25,000 first printing.

Thomas Fox Averill has published two story collections, Passes at the Moon and Seeing Mona Naked. In addition, he is the editor of the anthology, What Kansas Means to Me and author of Oleander's Guide to Kansas: How to Know When You're Here, a collection of radio commentaries gleaned from his ten plus years as a Kansas commentator on public radio.

Mr. Averill earned both his BA and MA in English at the University of Kansas. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and an O. Henry Award winner, he is writer-in-residence and a professor of English at Washburn University. AUTHCOMMENTS: In the middle of writing Secrets of the Tsil Cafe, I celebrated my 50th birthday. Knowing that my restaurateur, Robert Hingler, would make his 50th an extravagant experiment in culinary pleasure and odd appetite, my agent suggested I do something similar for myself. I did. My self-indulgence was to pretend Hingler's Tsil Cafe was catering my birthday dinner. I invited nearly twenty friends and family members to a dinner selected from that menu. My wife thought it odd that I wanted to spend my birthday cooking a five-course dinner for twenty, but I called it a "gift" to both myself and my work-in-progress novel.

Our invitation included the dinner menu: Black Bean & Gooseberry Enchiladas and Chips with Sweet Habanero Salsa for appetizers; then Potato and Green Chile Soup; then the salad course, Watercress with Roasted Sunflower Dressing; and finally the main dish--Buffalo Tongue with Chipotle Barbecue Sauce--and sides, Quinoa and Squash. My wife catered the dessert, a non-Tsil Lemon Meringue Pie. I organized, shopped, cooked happily for an entire day, and we all ate well.

By putting myself in Hingler's shoes for a day, I learned something of exotic appetites. I received both compliments and occasional silence depending on the tastes of my guests. Most of all I had the best gift this novelist could receive: a deeper well for writing Secrets of the Tsil Cafe.