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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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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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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saturday january 20
Edward P. Jones is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Known World, which weaves the lives of several interconnecting African-American families back and forth through the nineteenth century.
His latest work, All Aunt Hagar's Children,is a collection of fourteen short stories echoing his earlier themes of family and connection. Four of the fourteen have already appeared in The New Yorker. Each shines as an individual piece, yet often the stories loop back to another story's characters.
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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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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 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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friday august 04
A friend told me to read Dog World: and the Humans Who Live There and I promptly forgot the name of the book until I stumbled over it at work one day. I took it home and started howling (I was getting in touch with my canine side) as I read how author Alfred Gingold succumbed to the charms of his first dog, George, and became a member of the dog world, that crazed brotherhood of fellow dog owners.
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tuesday august 01
In 2001, Alice Randall broke into the literary scene with The Wind Done Gone, her scathing retelling of Gone With the Wind from the viewpoint of Scarlett O'Hara's slaves. Margaret Mitchell's estate sued Randall, claiming she appropriated Mitchell's characers and settings. Randall countered that she had written a parody of the book and the case was settled out of court.
Pushkin and the Queen of Spades is a contemporary look at some of the same themes of family, race and sexual politics that Randall described in her earlier novel as Russian literature professor Windsor Armstrong ponders how she will reveal to her son, Pushkin X, the identity of his father.
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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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monday july 24
Does clutter rule your life? You can't have anyone over because your house is in utter chaos? That pile of junk on the kitchen counter looms like Everest? If you answer yes to any of the above, then you need Sink Reflections to set you straight.
Let Maria Cilley aka The Fly Lady (she's into fly fishing) and her simple steps to decluttering release the inner neatnik that lurks within you.
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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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monday july 17
The recent death of Jane Jacobs finally prompted my reading of her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Originally published in 1961, it has become a classic account of what makes a city work. Local planning (or the lack there of) in our community makes this required reading for anyone passionate about urban life and how to successfully sustain it.
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wednesday july 12
Wordplay is playing right now in the local art houses and is a great look at the obsession of puzzlers, a kind term for crossword puzzle addicts. Many of us can't start the day without a cup of coffee and a puzzle and yet inexplicably can't find the words to explain why we do them.
Wordplay focuses on the intense competion of the national crossword championship and the top competitors are interviewed about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (sorry, couldn't resist that one). Famous puzzlers such as Bill Clinton offer insights into the puzzler psyche and comic Jon Stewart has a good time ranting over his favorite pastime.
Everyone interviewed carries on about the difficulties posed by The New York Times crosswords but those are for rank amateurs compared to the challenges of The London Times puzzles. Some consider our local daily paper's offerings beneath contempt and others quite happily fill in the grids. Whatever the skill level of the puzzler, there exists a common fascination with the process of matching clues and words and making it all come out right.
The library catalog offers both fiction and nonfiction books about crosswords. Websites abound with downloads and you can hear New York Times editor and puzzle guru Will Shortz on NPR but nothing quite beats that moment when you fold back the newspaper with pen (yes, pen) in hand and attack that first empty square. Let's see, a nine letter word for obsession....
Can't get enough of Elizabeth Bennett and her Mr. Darcy? Lost count of how many times you've seen the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice? Or is Colin Firth the definitive Mr. D? Austen fans always pick Darcy as their favorite hero (or at least those I know) and can now rejoice in An Assembly Such as This: A novel of Fitzilliam Darcy, Gentleman.
Author Pamela Aidan (a librarian I am proud to note) begins a delightful trilogy about the courtship of Elizabeth from Darcy's point of view. Find out why he was so uncomfortable the night he met Elizabeth, thereby precipitating her negative feelings. Learn how he befriended the naive Mr. Bingley and his hateful sisters. And, of course, get the skinny on Wickham.
Regency England has been well worked over by romance novelists and only a few have been as effective in capturing the manners and ways of its society as Aidan. From the opening scenes at the Meryton assembly you are swept into the spirit of Austen's provincial intrigues and romances. Mr. Darcy's snobbery sets him up for Elizabeth's stinging retort and so the plot begins.
You don't need to read Pride and Prejudice to follow the story (but you really should or it won't be as delicious) and most readers who pick this up will probably be devoted Austen fans. Aidan follows the course of true love after this first novel with Duty and Desire and These Three Remain (unhappily the library doesn't have them yet) but each installment may be enjoyed independently though you will want to devour them all. But in a most genteel way.
saturday june 17
There is life after Stephanie Plum as Janet Evanovich's fans have discovered while waiting for the next installment of the ultimate Jersey girl and her wacky adventures as a bounty hunter. Besides Metro Girl, so ably described by a fellow blogger, the prolific Evanovich keeps her readers happy with yet another series.
Abandoning Stephanie in her beloved burgh, Evanovich and co-author Charlotte Hughes have concocted an independent series blending suspense, romance and humor centered in fictional Beaumont, South Carolina. An ensemble of interrelated characters criss-cross through the books and each title begins with Full.
In Full Scoop, pediatrician Maggie Davenport is busy with a truculent thirteen-year old daughter, a cross-eyed goat and an ex-boyfriend who just escaped from prison and is headed her way with revenge on his mind. A handsome FBI agent shows up at her door to offer protection and, of course, sparks fly. Oh, yeah, there is some heavy duty ice cream eating going on here, too.
Predictable? Yes, but then you aren't in this for the heavy plotting. Evanovich and Hughes have a good time with these folks. So until the next Stephanie, check out Full Scoop and company.
Those fancy bath salts you've been hoarding? Dig them out, run a hot tub and with favorite beverage in hand, blissfully slip into Perfect, the latest adventure of master jewel thief, Kick Keswick.
Happily retired in her gorgeous Provencal farmhouse with her new husband, Kick is called back to action when Her Majesty the Queen's favorite baubles go missing. But this time Kick is on the side of the law as her retired Scotland Yard inspector husband asks for her professional help.
Kick assumes disguises, royal aliases and a fabulous Parisian wardrobe to infiltrate an exclusive Swiss hideaway maintained by the richest man in the world for his nearest and dearest friends.
Author Marne Davis Kellogg whips social satire, travelogue and mystery into delectable froth embellished with delicious food, luxurious cars, beautiful clothes and, of course, jewelry to die for. Plotting is minimal, but who cares? Just get your kicks with Kick.
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wednesday june 07
Caitlin Flanagan is the current feminist whipping girl for her acerbic take on modern day parenting and exploitation of immigrant workers as cheap nannies for upper-middle class households. A collection of articles she has produced over the past few years for The Atlantic and The New Yorker, To Hell With All That celebrates housewives (Erma Bombeck is her inspiration) and stay at home moms.
Flanagan is a contradiction. While idolizing women who give up their careers to be with their small children, she herself has always had help. Even now, with a full time writing gig for national magazines and book publishers, she calls herself a housewife. She scoffs at Martha Stewart's quest for perfection yet succumbs to the allure of a personal organizer. And her own beloved mother fled full time domesticity and found a job when Flanagan was in junior high.
Despite it all, Flanagan's book packs zingers that will resonate with anyone wrestling with modern issues of marriage, family and relationships.
