wednesday april 02
I'm passing this along to all of you who enjoy a nice, quirky memoir. Another librarian recommended Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table to me. It's not a new book, but that just means there are two sequels, Comfort Me with Apples and Garlic and Sapphires to put on your list, too, if like me you didn't read them when they came out.
Reichl is a food writer, the editor of Gourmet magazine, a one-time chef, and most famously a former restaurant critic for the New York Times. Tender at the Bone is the story of her childhood and youth.
How she ever became a foodie is something of a mystery, given the stories she tells about her manic-depressive mother's odd ways of dealing with food, particularly her blithe habit of scraping the blue layer off of leftovers and declaring, "It's only mold."
But a long line of mentors and fellow enthusiasts helped Reichl to some memorable meals, and she lovingly remembers every friend and every bite. How a boarding school friend's French father introduced her to fois gras, how two courtly locals fed her couscous in Tunis on a college trip, the time she asked a lower Manhattan matron to teach her to make gefilte fish, to the days when she whipped up the daily specials at a Berkeley collective restaurant--Reichl fills her pages with warm and delicious stories.
And she includes recipes.
friday february 01
I love to bake, so last year I took a cake decorating class thinking I might enjoy making wedding cakes from home. Let’s just say it didn’t go so well.
As Valentine’s Day approaches and wedding proposals are in the air, Martha Stewart’s Wedding Cakes gives me hope that maybe someday (and with a lot of practice) I can make perfect cakes too.
Martha's new book includes everything you need to know about baking and decorating wedding cakes, as well as complete recipes, equipment and techniques, and tips on planning, designing, transporting, and assembling them. Of course, the highlight of the book is her album of 111 beautifully photographed cakes for every bride’s taste and occasion.
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wednesday december 19
Everything after the first chapter of The Great Starvation Experiment is anticlimactic, because it's here that Todd Tucker describes Hitler's 1941-1943 siege of Leningrad. A million Russians may have starved during the 872 days before the Red Army broke through the blockade. After the zoo animals, people killed their pets. They ate wallpaper paste and shoe leather. During the second year, they began breaking more basic taboos.
Thirty-six American conscientious objectors, chosen among other reasons for their sound mental health, volunteered for an experiment whose goal was to study starvation's physiological and psychological effects, and to discover the most effective way to conclude a period of starvation. The Americans' goal was both humanitarian and military: the government assumed that Russians who had been weakened by famine would be physically and mentally unable to resist Stalin's armies at war's end.
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saturday december 08
Alice Waters is the reigning queen of American food since Julia left us. Her philosophy of eating seasonal and local foods has transformed how many of us cook at home and in restaurants. The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution is the first cookbook she has produced that is not specifically tied to Chez Panisse, her famed Berkeley restaurant.
Handsome in appearance, the book is well organized and laid out for beginning cooks, with instructions on ingredients and basic equipment. Menu planning is up front, a nice change from most books that tack it on at the end, so you are inspired to try some of the recipes as you go. Waters also has chapters on key recipes and techniques such as Four Essential Sauces, Broths and Soups, Grilling and other basics that once mastered, can be taken to different levels of taste depending on available ingredients, appetites and imagination.
The second part of the book goes into more specific recipes where Waters offers some fresh takes on veteran standards such as Nicoise salad or Leeks Vinaigrette. The chapter on vegetables is great with at least one recipe for almost any vegetable you can find in a supermarket.
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monday november 12
Thanksgiving is almost here, and so is the stress of preparing a delicious meal for your guests (insert turkey horror stories here). Thankfully, the editors of Fine Cooking Magazine have just published How to Cook a Turkey: And All the Other Trimmings, a handy guide and cookbook to help you make it through the day.
How to Cook a Turkey provides tips (to keep your sanity) and illustrated answers to all your pressing poultry questions, from which bird to buy (and how big) to how to carve it properly once cooked to perfection. There are also over 100 recipes for appetizers, turkey, stuffing and gravy, vegetables, potatoes, pies, and other autumn desserts. Plus, a whole chapter on what to do with those leftovers…
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tuesday august 14
Gordon Ramsay certainly speaks his mind. But you know, he is almost always right! What I have discovered, however, is that this talented and volatile chef is a very nice man underneath all that bravado, and an excellent teacher as well.
Besides being a television personality on popular shows in Britain (Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares) and the US (reality series Hell's Kitchen and the soon-to-be-aired Kitchen Nightmares), Chef Ramsay has published lots of cookbooks and a couple of autobiographical books that read like novels. He has also opened and run a number of restaurants, earning lots of Michelin ratings.
Anthony Bourdain, another TV chef, has a fascinatingly cynical view of life and the world of food. His documentary-style series on the Travel Channel, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, follows Bourdain around the world in pursuit of flavor. He, too, has lots of books to his name, including novels, cookbooks, and memoirs such as the fascinating Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. He cooks at the Brassiere Les Halles in New York City.
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saturday august 04
Summer is here in all of its glory, and we must revel in it as much as possible. It is quite simple really: just sit outside and feast your senses on the birdsong and the fireflies. The best recipe for tomatoes: pick one from the vine and eat it, the drippier the better. For those who prefer more detailed instructions, here are a few books that can tell you how to enjoy summer, and even if you already know how, their beautiful illustrations could easily occupy a long afternoon in the shade.
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sunday july 01
The Fourth of July is here, so set off some fireworks by cooking a pot of hot, spicy chili!
Authors Michael and Jane Stern have served up a mouth-watering book of chili recipes called Chili Nation. The husband and wife duo, best known for their book Roadfood (and website by the same name), take chili lovers on a coast-to-coast trip from Alabama (Chili a la Whistle Stop) to Wyoming (Code 10 Chili) and every state in between.
The Sterns believe that chili is this country’s one truly shared national food because it can be found on every table and crosses all cultural and ethnic lines. Indeed, the recipes they have selected represent America in all its diversity and local flavors.
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thursday may 10
An update for those of us who were not able to attend: the annual James Beard Foundation Awards Gala was held in New York City this past week. Think, 'Academy Awards for the restaurant industry'. The menu for this event is enough to send any foodophile straight into Nirvana; my favorites being the Peekytoe Crab Cappuccino with Lemon Verbena, followed by a taste of Chocolate Diablo Panna Cotta with Amarena Cherries and Cocoa Nibs. To quote Dave Barry, I am not making this up. My imagination simply cannot stretch that far.
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saturday march 03
Yeah, another braising book but I had to get this in before the weather heats up and it is too hot to use the oven. Braise: A Journey Through International Cuisine is by celebrity chef Daniel Boulud (with the able assistance of Melissa Clark).
Boulud may be a huge star in the culinary world but he pays homage here to this most humble of cooking styles. He asserts it is a common feature of cuisines world wide and adapts his own classic French style to global cuisines of Europe, Asia and the New World to illustrate his point. So you get traditional Indian lamb and Cuban pork(and American Brunswick stew) but with the Boulud spin on them.
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wednesday february 21
I was perusing the BBC's website today (I love having a foreign perspective on world news), when I stumbled upon the story of French chef Anne-Sophie Pic. Just who is Anne-Sophie Pic? She's the first woman to receive a three star rating from France's prestigious Michelin restaurant guide in more than fifty years, and is the fourth woman chef to receive the award since it's inception in 1926. And if that weren't enough, she comes from a family of three star Michelin chefs (her grandfather Andre won in 1934, and her father Jacques won in 1973).
While I personally can never be compared with a three star winning chef, I do like to cook (is it wrong that I have a dream kitchen, but couldn't tell you what the rest of my dream home looks like?). I love to make (and eat) Rachael Ray's Italian Meatball soup. I love making comfort food like macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese and BLT sandwiches, soups, and casseroles. One of my favorite gifts from my grandmother is the recipe book she made for all of her children and their spouses filled with all of our family recipes (hands off the buckeye recipe and the German doughnut recipe).
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monday february 05
The Joy of Cooking has gone through several sea changes. First, the indomitable Irma Rombeck pulled together all the recipes of friends, neighbors and church groups in St. Louis to publish a little book to see her through financial hardship after the death of her husband. This was the first Joy, filled with Irma's chatty comments on entertaining, cooking and life in general and featuring her novel way of listing ingredients as they were used.
The Joy of Cooking was a different kind of cookbook, designed for Depression-era, middle-class women like Irma who could no longer afford a cook and suddenly had to learn their way around a stove. Later it became a standard gift for new brides facing their first dinner parties. Initially, it did not sell well, but by the end of the 30’s, sales picked up and it has been in print ever since.
The latest 2006 edition marked the 75th anniversary of the book and Rombauer’s grandson, Ethan Becker, his wife, and local chef Maggie Green returned to the traditional, tried and true recipes of earlier editions. The 1997 edition was written by a team of chef contributors and dropped many of the older, less trendy recipes to the scorn of diehard fans of the earlier editions.
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tuesday january 30
I am not one of those crafty hobbyist people. But in the last year or so, I have found a hobby that is fun, rewarding, and serves both the creative, right-brain person and the left-brain, analytical science guy within. I am talking about brewing beer. Though not an alkie or a weekend warrior, I do enjoy beer. Good beer, that is, as I am a serious beer snob. Enough about me, though, let's talk about brewing. It is simpler than you might imagine. Just hop (pun intended) in the car, drive down to
Listermann's, buy the gear and a kit, bring ‘em home, and brew it up right in your very own kitchen. Three weeks in the fermenter (a five-gallon bucket with a lid), three more weeks conditioning in the bottle, and you have two cases of yumminess to imbibe. Time for a party!
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wednesday december 13
Doesn't the title Delilah's Everyday Soul: Southern Cooking with Style just get your mouth and mind hungry? Delilah Winder is famous as the cook whose macaroni and cheese was pronounced the best in America by no less than Oprah herself (and, yes, the recipe is included here) and this is her first cookbook.
Winder owns restaurants in Philadelphia where she was born and bred but spent her summers with her grandparents in Virginia, creating an interesting food culture of urban sophistication combined with the best of country cooking. Her book reflects the traditions of both and is a handsome addition to anyone's culinary collection.
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wednesday december 06
Those of you who read the blog regularly know that Mary is our queen of cookbook posts. But I’m going to borrow her crown briefly to post about Dorie Greenspan’s new cookbook, Baking: From My Home to Yours. It deserves a royal fanfare.
Greenspan was the co-author of the award-winning Baking with Julia, has written several other cookbooks, and is a “special correspondent” for Bon Appetit magazine (how’s that for a job?), though she says she got her start as a cook by burning down her parents’ kitchen at the age of thirteen.
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wednesday november 29
One of my favorite parts of my job is talking to people about what they’re reading. Watching people light up when they tell me about something really, really good, and listening to their voices become urgent when they tell me “you’ve just got to try this”—I find that absolutely irresistible.
And of course, if it’s something I’ve read, we get to do that “isn’t he an amazing writer” and “wasn’t it wonderful when” and even “ooh, if you liked that, you have to read.”
I love writing for this blog, because of course I get to do the “you’ve just got to.” (You can probably tell from some of my much-too-long entries how enthused I can get.)
But it’s not one-way. It just occurred to me that everything I have out on my card right now and everything I currently have on hold was recommended to me personally by a library user or another librarian.
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friday november 24
The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by Vanity Fair writer David Kamp is a must read for anyone who has any semi-serious interest in the state of American food. Kamp disputes those who claim the good old days were the highlight of American eating and leads the reader through a brief history of our national food ways until he gets to the post-war years and the rise of the Big Three: Julia Child, James Beard and Craig Claiborne.
These three very different individuals taught us how to cook, eat and read about food and opened the door for a new generation of food professionals that has led us to new expectations about what we eat and how we shop for food.
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wednesday november 15
It’s pretty difficult to avoid the indefatigable Rachael Ray these days. She hosts her own TV talk show (The Rachael Ray Show), four Food Network programs (30 Minute Meals, $40 a Day, Inside Dish, and Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels) and now she even has her own food and lifestyle magazine (Every Day with Rachael Ray). But wait, there’s more! She just published two new cookbooks, Classic Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals and Rachael Ray 2, 4, 6, 8: Great Meals for Couples or Crowds, jam-packed with recipes for her trademark 30-minute meals.
Classic Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals, a compilation of recipes from her earlier books, is organized by occasion. Need to pull together a quick weeknight dinner? You’ll find plenty of tempting candidates in the “Everyday” section. Or maybe you’re looking for something to prepare with the budding young cook in your family? There’s a nice variety of recipes (all categorized by age) in the “Kidchefs” section.
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wednesday november 08
Now that the weather has cooled off, it's time for slow-cooked winter cooking, and I don't mean crockpot cooking, either! You can achieve marvelous effects with oven braising. Check out All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking by Molly Stevens.
Classic dishes like osso buco, pot roast and sauerbraten are all braised, a technique that is best described as a combination of roasting and stewing that yields wonderful smells in your kitchen as well as succulent, falling-off-the bone cuts of meat. And the leftovers are even better.
This is a thorough discussion of braising from what pots work best with which cuts of meat to an overview of the whole process before you even start exploring recipes.
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thursday october 19
It's been almost ten years since The Best American Recipes first appeared. Selections from magazines, cookbooks, backs of food boxes and other sources were tested and rated by the editors and from these recipes they picked the best of the year and packed them into an annual volume.
The concept is perfect for anyone who doesn't want to buy every new cookbook that is published or clip every magazine they read but wants fresh new ideas for recipes.
The 150 Best American Recipes: Indispensable Dishes from Legendary Chefs and Undiscovered Cooks by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens have taken this concept further and culled again.
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saturday october 14
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-quoting Butcher in Tuscany, Bill Buford's searing account of his time learning to cook in celebrity chef Mario Batali's restaurant, is fascinating reading for anyone serious about cooking.
An avid home cook, Buford thought he knew his way around a kitchen but was curious to see what it was like to cook with the big guys. He signed on as unpaid apprentice to the Falstaffian Batali and chronicled the ensuing adventure.
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wednesday september 20
With killer spinach dominating headlines, reconsidering your food sources may not be such a bad idea.
Nina Planck was a toddler when her parents abandoned the city for rural Virginia and the arduous life of farming. Growing up eating abundant fresh vegetables, eggs from the farm's free ranging chickens and cream and milk from their own cow, she was not introduced to processed food in any great amount until she was in college.
In Real Food: What to Eat and Why, Planck explores how processed foods have come to dominate the American food industry and how we can eat more healthfully and with greater satisfaction by rejecting modern food.
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monday september 11
As a follow up to the posting on the Katrina victims and the cookbooks they couldn't save, I asked for comments on what you would save if you could only grab one cookbook.
As I suspected, The Joy of Cooking, was the book of choice. Most cooks have a copy and turn to it as an everyday reference. My "disaster" book would be something a little different.
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thursday august 31
It might seem frivolous to write about cookbooks for the anniversary of the Katrina disaster but for many survivors of the storm, finding their favorite recipes is a way to reconnect with family memories and local culture.
To lose one's collection of recipes, whether from cookbooks, church notebooks, recipe cards, or newspaper clippings, is to lose your family history. Where do you find Grandma's recipe for potato salad or your child's favorite cookie dough?
People in New Orleans, a city where food is more integral to the culture than perhaps any other city in the country, have turned to university archives, libraries and used book shops to make some attempt to replace their lost treasures.
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friday august 25
The Silver Spoon is the classic how-to cookbook given every Italian bride. Originally published in 1950, it has been updated and finally translated into English to meet the insatiable demand for Italian cookbooks in this country. Not a light read by any means (my six-pound copy almost broke my kitchen scale), this is a compendium of recipes that ranges from simple salads to ostrich stew.
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saturday august 19
I first read about Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers in a New Yorker article back in the mid-nineties that raved about their London restaurant, The River Cafe. The article was equally enthusiastic about the Rogers and Gray Italian Country Cookbook, which I promptly bought and read cover to cover. With simple, fresh ingredients and beautiful photographs, the book is a treat to read and cook from.
Happily, Italian Two Easy: Simple Recipes from the London River Cafe, their latest offering, is equally impressive.
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wednesday august 09
Sylvia Woods is the self-styled Queen of Soul Food. You've seen her face on cans in the supermarket or maybe you've eaten at her restaurant in Harlem. Her grandson Lindsey Williams grew up working in the family business and eating his grandma's fabulous cooking. But Lindsey had a problem. He kept getting bigger and bigger to the point his health was endangered.
Finally, Lindsey found a new way of cooking and eating and dropped over two hundred pounds. Neo Soul: Taking Soul Food to a Whole 'Nutha Level is how he transformed his family's recipes and food traditions into a healthy, yet flavorful and appealing cuisine.
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monday august 07
Diet cookbooks are perennial favorites on the cookbook aisle. Even though there are some reports that low-carb cooking is slowing down, low-carb diet books and cookbooks are still available at the Public Library.
One of my favorite authors is George Stella from the Food Network. George Stella’s Livin’ Low Carb: Family Recipes Stella Style and Eating Stella Style. Low-Carb Recipes for Healthy Living have easy to follow and easy to prepare recipes. I like Stella because he’s low-key. His approach is geared towards fresh and natural ingredients.
There are two South Beach Diet Cookbooks, the original South Beach Diet Cookbook and the South Beach Quick & Easy Cookbook. These are both by Arthur Agatston, author of the original South Beach Diet.
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tuesday august 01
Summer time and the tomatoes are ripe! BLT rules! Or just T for tomato. It won’t be long before our peaches are ripe, too. Then, there’s the ubiquitous zucchini. I never worry too much about having too many of them. Some of my friends know how to make zucchini bread. When all else fails, there’s always the compost heap.
When I was a child I did my share of slicing, dicing, shelling and peeling for the freezer and pantry. Mom called the other day to tell me she’s been freezing okra. I’ve chopped my last pod of okra.
For everyone else there are cookbooks about preserving the fresh fruits and vegetables of today to enjoy next winter.
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thursday july 27
Eating Well magazine wants you to eat healthy food. While not a health food magazine per se, Eating Well demonstrates a stronger slant towards nutrition then some of the other cooking magazines. The Eating Well Healthy in a Hurry Cookbook distills the recipes, techniques and advice accumulated by the magazine's staff into an attractive, easy to understand cookbook that will steer you to a healthier approach to eating.
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tuesday july 18
Julia Child's life is an open book, or at least the years she spent in France before the publication of
Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Finished after her death in 2004
, My Life in France is co-authored by her great-nephew, Alex Prud’homme. It is an amusing account of how she fell in love with Paul Child, France and good food and leads up to her success in the 1960's as public television's beloved French Chef who converted America to a new appreciation of food.
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thursday may 18
Although die-hard grillers don’t think twice about braving sleet, snow (even rain!) in pursuit of a well-prepared steak, the rest of us wait until warm weather arrives before pulling out our trusty Weber Grill. Now that summer is just around the corner, it seems like a good time to spotlight some recent favorites from our cookbook collection:
- Weeknight Grilling with the BBQ Queens by Karen Adler
- The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking and Entertaining by Cheryl Alters Jamison
- New Grilling Book: Charcoal, Gas, Smokers, Indoor Grills, Turkey Fryers, Rotisserie (Better Homes and Gardens)
- Semi-Homemade Grilling by Sandra Lee
- The Cook's Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue
- Peace, Love, and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue by Mike Mills
And of course, loads of terrific recipes and grilling tips can be found on the Web. A good place to start your search is Epicurious.com.
