About
This blog is a place for me to share recipes and cooking adventures that I undertake. As the title suggests it is inspired by Rex Stout’s detective, Nero Wolfe, who solves crimes and stops dastardly deeds while managing his professional chef, Fritz Brenner, tending to his ten thousand orchids, and eating restaurant-quality meals three times a day. You might want to take a look at my Nero Wolfe primer which gives a rundown of some of the main characters.
Wolfe views much of his life through food and indeed food is integral to many of Stout’s novels. Due to the popularity of his creation, Stout published the Nero Wolfe Cookbook, complete with recipes cooked by Fritz, Wolfe and others, and exerpts from the novels so the recipes can be placed in their proper context.
So why is this an “inspired by” rather than a “cook the book”- type blog? Well first of all, many of the recipes in the Nero Wolfe Cookbook call for ingredients no longer available (turtle meat, anyone?). Secondly – and more importantly – I’m terrible at following recipes! I use recipes as inspiration rather than dogmatic instructions to follow. Sometimes I do cook recipes as they’re meant to be but this is quite rare! I would like to think I imbue the spirit of Nero Wolfe’s cooking rather than the miniscule details.
And what about Wolfe’s other obsession, you might be asking? I am pleased to say I am the proud owner of a few baby cymbidium orchids who will hopefully grow up and flower. My living circumstances prevent me from having lots of plants but if these ones are successful I’m sure there will be more to follow.
I live in Melbourne, Australia, with my partner H, who puts up with my recipe shenanigans, encourages me to greater culinary heights – and bought me the Nero Wolfe Cookbook and many of the Nero Wolfe books in the first place!
A note about links and references: In general, I provide links to things I’m talking about and references to any specific Wolfe story when a particular recipe is mentioned. I don’t provide links to the individual Wolfe stories – they are easy to look up if you want more information and the full bibliography of Stout’s Wolfe stories is listed as part of my Links.
To contact me, you can follow me or message me on twitter (@inspiredbywolfe) or email me at inspiredbywolfe@gmail.com . I generally update once a week, usually Saturday or Sunday. Thanks for visiting!
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Inspired by Wolfe 
[…] preferences make characters both human (don’t we all have preferences?) and distinctive. Think of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, shut in his hermetic mansion where his Swiss chef Fritz Brenner provides favorite dishes prepared […]
[…] make characters both human (don’t we all have preferences?) and distinctive. Think of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, shut in his hermetic mansion where his Swiss chef Fritz Brenner provides favorite […]