Gastronomy Books - Page 15

The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Right food, right place, right time. It is my belief—and the point of this book—that this is the best recipe of all. A crab sandwich by the sea on a June afternoon; a slice of roast goose with apple sauce and roast potatoes on Christmas Day; hot sausages and a chunk of roast pumpkin on a frost-sparkling night in November. These are meals whose success relies not on the expertise of the cook but on the more basic premise that this is the food of the moment--something eaten at a time when it is most appropriate, when the ingredients are at their peak of perfection, when the food, the cook and the time of year are at one with each other.”
—Nigel Slater, The Kitchen Diaries

Nigel Slater writes about food in a way that stimulates the imagination, the heart, and the palate all at once. The Kitchen Diaries brings an especially personal ingredient to the mix, letting us glimpse his pantry, tour local farmers’ markets with him, and savor even the simplest meals at his table.

Recording twelve months in his culinary life, Slater shares seasonal dishes and the intriguing elements behind them. As someone who celebrates each visit to the cheese shop or butcher, he enthusiastically conveys the brilliant array of choices and encourages his view of food shopping as an adventure rather than a chore. A rainy day in February calls for a hearty stew; summertime finds him feasting on a lunch as simple as baked tomatoes with grated Parmesan. If an exotic mood strikes him, slow-roasted duck with star anise and ginger is in order. In The Kitchen Diaries, Nigel interweaves his meditations on how food should be enjoyed and prepared with his delicious recipes. No matter the season, The Kitchen Diaries offers a year-round invitation to cook and dine with the world’s most irresistible lover of food. BACKCOVER: Praise for Nigel Slater

“His writing could not be more palate-cleansing… his acidic riffs put you in mind of Nick Hornby, Martin Amis and Philip Larkin all at the same time.”
—The New York Times

“Nigel is a genius.”
—Jamie Oliver, author of Jamie’s Kitchen, The Naked Chef, and Happy Days with the Naked Chef

“unpretentious, delicious”
—Nigella Lawson, author of How to Be a Domestic Goddess

“The recipes sound uniformly delicious, rustic and tasty...but they’re also straight forward: easy to follow, easy to cook.”
—Independent on Sunday

“joyous”
—Guardian Weekend

“Slater wants his food, above all, to be uplifting. As a cookbook, The Kitchen Diaries succeeds brilliantly.”
—William Leith, Observer (London)

“it's a collection of scrumptious recipes, somehow written in such a way as to make your mouth genuinely water.”
—Rebecca Seal, Observer (London)

It Must've Been Something I Ate

Jeffrey Steingarten

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

About Jeffrey, Not About Food 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I made it through about 5 or 6 of the essays in the book. I was expecting a book about food, but I got a book about Jeffrey Steingarten. In one column he writes about injuring his foot and being bed-ridden for awhile. Occasionally food is mentioned when a company like Starbucks or Ben and Jerry's sends him something, but mainly it's about his bed rest, and I don't find that very interesting.

He's petty. He had a bad experience on a plane where he accidentally ate some garnish. This caused an nasty reaction that lasted a good twenty minutes or so. By using his leverage as the food writer for Vogue (he mentions how the stewardess turns pale when he shows her his business card), he makes Northwest go through what's basically a witchhunt to find the person responsible for including the poisonous garnish with the food. Finally Northwest tells him that identifying the catering company is as far as they can take it. He even gets a couple of calls from the catering company, but in the end he's disappointed because the person responsible wasn't punished. I understand that he had a bad experience (and his foolish wife even worse), but to take the whole thing to such an extreme when it was a matter of a twenty minute unpleasant experience just shows to me that he's not a very good person. That's not what I wanted to read about when I picked up the book.

On one page he complains about being "impecunious." A few pages later, he's talking about his vacation home in San Diego that he travels to from him apartment in Manhattan. Presumably his wife, whom he appears to be frequently apart from, as she's often out of the country on business, floated the cash necessary for the poverty-stricken Steingarten to afford even such meager trifles.

One might say that I'm simply jealous, and fair enough. Sure I'd like to have a vacation home in San Diego and the clout to push around Northwest Airlines, but the bottom line is I wanted a book about food, and I ended up with a book about a guy that I just don't like very much.

All that said, he is a good writer, so I gave it two stars instead of one.

Editorial Review:

In this outrageous and delectable new volume, the Man Who Ate Everything proves that he will do anything to eat everything. That includes going fishing for his own supply of bluefin tuna belly; nearly incinerating his oven in pursuit of the perfect pizza crust, and spending four days boning and stuffing three different fowl—into each other-- to produce the Cajun specialty called “turducken.”

It Must’ve Been Something I Ate finds Steingarten testing the virtues of chocolate and gourmet salts; debunking the mythology of lactose intolerance and Chinese Food Syndrome; roasting marrow bones for his dog , and offering recipes for everything from lobster rolls to gratin dauphinois. The result is one of those rare books that are simultaneously mouth-watering and side-splitting.

You Are Where You Eat: Stories and Recipes from the Neighborhoods of New Orleans

Elsa Hahne

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Editorial Review:

Eating and cooking well are not just industries but ways of life for all New Orleans. Writer and photographer Elsa Hahne has visited the kitchens of thirty-three of New Orleans's home cooks and raconteurs and has served up an expansive smorgasbord inspired by this vibrant city's love affair with food.

Almost every cultural group that has made its mark on New Orleans is represented in these pages: Creole, African American, Native American, Isleño, German, Cajun, Italian, Irish, Greek, Hungarian, Croatian, Cuban, Honduran, Mexican, Indian, Filipino, Chinese, Vietnamese, and more.

With thirty-three first-person accounts and over one hundred black-and-white and full-color photographs, You Are Where You Eat proves that the local population remains as passionate about cooking after the hurricanes of 2005 as at any time before. Among the eighty-five recipes are such classic New Orleans dishes as red beans and rice, catfish court bouillon, crawfish bisque, filé gumbo, grillades, and daube glacé, but also more recent arrivals to local tables: yakamein, pork tamales, crawfish samosas, and Vietnamese spring rolls.

Elsa Hahne is the creator of the touring exhibit You Are WHERE You Eat--Stories and Recipes from the Crescent City, which was supported by the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Her work has appeared in numerous international magazines and newspapers.

Staff Meals from Chanterelle

David Waltuck, Melicia Phillips

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

It's the other menu at Chanterelle, New York's dazzling four-star restaurant. Customers eat foie gras and truffles. The staff eats Venison Chili with Red Beans. Customers swoon over the signature seafood sausage. The staff, elbows on the table, cheerfully tucks into Lamb Shanks with Tomato and Rosemary. Of all the great restaurants in New York, Chanterelle serves the finest staff meals--nothing fancy, just delicious home-style peasant and bourgeois dishes. And here they are, in Staff Meals from Chanterelle.

In 200 recipes, Chanterelle's chef, David Waltuck, brings the superb culinary insights and techniques befitting one of America's best chefs (Gourmet) to the delectable stews, pasta dishes, roasts, curries, one-pot meals, and blue plate specials that have made families happy forever. Outstanding yet easy-to-make, these are dishes for home cooking and entertaining alike, including Fish Fillets with Garlic and Ginger, Thai Duck Curry, Sauteed Pork Chops with Sauce Charcutiere, and the most requested dish of all, David's Famous Fried Chicken with Creamed Spinach and Herbed Biscuits. Tips throughout put cooks in the hands of a four-star teacher, from the best way to boil a potato (uncut and in its jacket) to shaping hot, oven-fresh tuiles into sophisticated dessert cups.

Absinthe: History in a Bottle

Barnaby Conrad

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A lovely book riddled with errors and solecism 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the most beautiful and beautifully produced picture
books about an alcoholic beverage that I've ever seen. The plates
represent a pocket history of fine and graphic arts around the turn
of the nineteenth century.
Unfortunately the text doesn't live up to the promise of the pictures.
There are a number of errors: piquette is not exceptionally strong wine-
it is an exceptionally weak one. There is also some silliness: dogs
can't be said to have hallucinations and many experiments are reported
without a trace of interpretation or skepticism.
This lack of critical thinking is especially odd since the consensus
of researchers is that 'absinthism' was a myth. Whatever psycopathologies
may have been attributed to its consumption are no different from
those traditionally associated with drinking alcohol of questionable
purity. Moonshine drinkers in America and cashasa drinkers in Brazil
are the relevant comparisons.
There is also no mention of the recent absinthe revival and nothing on
the prickly and central question of just what ingredients are necessary
before an herbal concoction can be called 'absinthe'.
The best part of the text is the last. The author recounts his own
experience chasing down a bottle in Switzerland and consuming later
in his flat in Paris.
So buy this book for the pictures, but read almost anything else
for the real story.

Lynn Hoffman, author of the totally factual New Short Course in Wine,The and the completely fictitious bang BANG: A Novel

Editorial Review:

One hundred forty-four proof, notoriously addictive, and the drug of choice for nineteenth-century poets, absinthe is gaining bootleg popularity after almost ?a century of being banned. Due to popular demand, Absinthe: History in a Bottle is back in paperback with a handsome new cover. Like the author's bestselling The Martini and The Cigar, it is a potent brew of wild nights and social history, fact and trivia, gorgeous art and beautiful artifacts. As intoxicating as its subject, Absinthe makes a memorable gift for anyone who knows how to celebrate vice.

Gastropolis: Food and New York City (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)

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Editorial Review:

Whether you're digging into a slice of cherry cheesecake, burning your tongue on a piece of fiery Jamaican jerk chicken, or slurping the broth from a juicy soup dumpling, eating in New York City is a culinary adventure unlike any other in the world.An irresistible sampling of the city's rich food heritage, Gastropolis explores the personal and historical relationship between New Yorkers and food. Beginning with the origins of cuisine combinations, such as Mt. Olympus bagels and Puerto Rican lasagna, the book describes the nature of food and drink before the arrival of Europeans in 1624 and offers a history of early farming practices. Essays trace the function of place and memory in Asian cuisine, the rise of Jewish food icons, the evolution of food enterprises in Harlem, the relationship between restaurant dining and identity, and the role of peddlers and markets in guiding the ingredients of our meals. They share spice-scented recollections of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and colorful vignettes of the avant-garde chefs, entrepreneurs, and patrons who continue to influence the way New Yorkers eat.Touching on everything from religion, nutrition, and agriculture to economics, politics, and psychology, Gastropolis tells a story of immigration, amalgamation, and assimilation. This rich interplay between tradition and change, individual and society, and identity and community could happen only in New York.

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (The Cook's Classic Library)

Elizabeth David

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Like trying to enjoy glorious food with someone choking you. 2 out of 5 stars.
21 of 57 people found this review helpful.

I'm a total foodie and it's painful getting through this book. Instead of simply enjoying the pleasures of food and all the differences, Elizabeth David is defensive at every turn. She speaks of her experiences so delicately, and describes all around the food, so that you just want to plunge through the page, past the fences and loftiness she's encircled the food with. Granted, she was writing in that stifling time period for those stifled Brits who apparently knew nothing beyond pork pies. I know she must have thoroughly enjoyed her food adventures, but in her telling of them, she removes herself from the object of her passion. This book is a very frustrating read. I got so sick and tired of all the defensiveness. I wish she would have just allowed herself to write freely about her pleasures and enjoyment, rather than feel so much pressure from her invisible audience (she was a journalist) that she edited herself (even in the pieces that she re-wrote for this book) before anyone could complain. And although it's interesting to know the food prices in another time period, the constant iteration of cost and expensive versus not expensive places to dine became a nuisance. Of course, you do get glimpses into the world of food that she's been to and some good recipes, but if you think you're going to curl up in bed with her book and envelope yourself in literary foodie heaven, think again. You might just want to re-read your M.F.K. Fisher and Alice B. Toklas.

Editorial Review:

Contains delightful explorations of food and cooking, among which are the collection's namesake essay and many other gems; with black-and-white photographs and illustrations.

Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut

PAUL R. MULLINS

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Beloved and Detested Sweet Treat 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

"Tell me what you eat," said that philosopher of the kitchen Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "and I will tell you what you are." What would he make of a nation which has the doughnut as one of the foods the world knows it by? What does it mean that doughnuts are defined as a particularly American food? Perhaps an anthropologist could tell us, and in the surprising and enlightening _Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut_ (University Press of Florida), anthropologist Paul R. Mullins has done so. Indeed, he has found those who say that a Krispy Kreme shop makes them proud to be Americans, and those who regard a shop as a shrine with pilgrims and converts. "It may seem absurd," Mullins writes, "that an apparently innocuous doughnut could be wrapped in the flag and lent an air of religiosity, but few dimensions of our world say as much about us as food." We do, however, have mixed feelings about our doughnuts. We may like them, but even those of us who like them know they are not really good for us, and there are those who hate them because they represent decadence or foolish food choices. Doughnuts, then, have a disputed symbolism, and their marketing and consumption can be mined, surprisingly, for various insights into American life.

The book reproduces a 1627 still life painting by Juan van der Hamen y Leon which shows pastries of the torus shape anyone would now recognize. This particular shape had one of its first mentions in print in 1877. That the toroidal shape certainly pre-dates cookbooks or oil paintings did not prevent an American from claiming invention of the doughnut hole. Captain Hanson Gregory, a cook at sea, found that the soggy and greasy doughnuts he was making resisted becoming more digestible by changing their ingredients, but once he lessened the lumps of dough by cutting a hole out, changing the shape made all the difference. He was nominated to the National Doughnut Hall of Fame for his contribution; the nomination read in part that he "not only discovered the hole in the first place, but invented the proper process for enclosing the hole in the doughnut." The Doughnut Corporation of America thus in the 1940s attempted to certify the appeal of assigning the origin of the hole in the doughnut to a New England seafarer. This is the same company that produced what Mullins says is "an ideologically distorted 1944 account" which claimed that the Pilgrims themselves brought their treasured doughnut recipe with them to the New World on the _Mayflower_.

In 2005, Florida governor Jeb Bush tried to strike a blow for Republicans within blue collar workers, when he wanted to know how many tax cuts Democrats had proposed for "Joe Bag of Donuts." In this, he was able to avoid reference to the drinking habits of Joe Six Pack, but Mullins shows that the consumption of doughnuts transcends economic class. However, the great spokesman for the doughnut is that industrial worker Homer Simpson, who gets four pages of coverage here in acknowledgment of his addiction. Mullins writes, "In _The Simpsons'_ hands, doughnuts are an especially powerful mechanism to examine the limits of desire, since doughnuts seem to have no significant redeeming feature besides the pleasure their ingestion produces." This "bad" characteristic has been the focus of the moralizing about doughnuts as early as 1846, and the importation of American doughnut franchises to other countries has been called "`calorie colonialism' planned by corporate America". The moral connection links cops to doughnuts, too; perhaps doughnut shops encourage being frequented by cops to keep robberies down, and perhaps, as one policeman argued, doughnut shops are easy places for cops to meet to discuss and solve crimes. Perhaps also they get free doughnuts (although any police force has rules against this), but there is no perhaps that doughnut shops remind citizens of the policeman's reputation for sloth and corruption. On a lighter note, wedding cakes are made from Krispy Kremes; one such record-breaker weighed over a ton, but many brides opt for a smaller version. In Portland, Oregon, Voodoo Doughnuts has doughnuts for weddings, and since the proprietors are ordained ministers, they offer weddings in the store. Mullins, as you can tell from this little summary, has pulled many facets of a humble luxury food together in a serious but entertaining study that answers in diverse ways the question, "What does the doughnut mean?"

Editorial Review:

In Mullins's skillful hands, this simple pastry provides surprisingly compelling insights into our eating habits, our identity, and modern consumer culture.

Letters to a Young Chef (Art of Mentoring)

Daniel Boulud

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Over 30 Chef 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I came late to food (32 years of age), but I had already learned a vast amount of knowledge about food and food service, via working in my Aunt and Uncle's Restaurant in Spain. I then chose to acquire formal "Chef" qualifications, which doesn't really mean anything; at the end of the day, it's all about experience, your passion for food, and your ability to 'teach' yourself everything about food.
My other point in regards to age is the British Chef, Nico Ladenis. Here's a man, who took a year off to travel France, came back home to London, started cooking from French Cook Books, worked in his friends Greek Restaurant before opening up his own, and then 20 years later, is the first English Chef to have more than 1 Restaurant awarded with Michelin Star ratings, not to mention that he has had amazing apprentices come out of his kitchens: Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, etc.
I think I would follow passion, drive, professionalism, and love for food and kitchens any day, rather than saying it's all based on what age you come into the kitchen. When you consider that no Chef will ever learn everything about food, everyday is like the first day you walked into a Kitchen. With that attitude and conviction, you can become great! Good luck with your careers.

Editorial Review:

From the reinvention of French food through the fine dining revolution in America, Daniel Boulud has been witness to, and creator of, our contemporary food culture. A modern man with a classical foundation, he speaks with the authority that comes from a lifetime of experience, and no small amount of passion, about the vocation of creating and serving food. Part memoir, part advice book, part recipe book, this delicious celebration of the art of cooking will delight and enlighten chefs of all kinds, from passionate amateurs to serious professionals.

The Young Man and the Sea : Recipes and Crispy Fish Tales from Esca

David Pasternack, Ed Levine

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Seafood genius Dave Pasternack achieved national fame in 2000, when he served his first plate of pristine raw fish sprinkled with crunchy sea salt and fresh citrus juice, adding the word crudo—Italian-style sushi—to the American culinary lexicon. And here is his much anticipated first book, a celebration of the fresh flavors of the sea, Italian-style, featuring:

• A full chapter on crudo such as Albacore with Caperberries, Nantucket Bay Scallops with Lemon and Chervil, and Two-Minute Cherrystone Clam Cerviche
• Groundbreaking pastas like Dave's brilliant invention Rigatoni with Tuna Bolognese, the definitive Linguine with Clams, Pancetta, and Red Pepper Flakes, the luxurious Spaghetti with Lobster and Chiles, and the ultrasimple Fettucine with Rock Shrimp, Corn, and Jalapeño.
• Salads such as Grilled Tuna with Artichokes, soups like Zuppa di Pesce Amalfitano, and starters that include Grilled Sardines with Caponata.
• Gills on the grill—Sicilian-Style Swordfish, Tuna on a Plank, and Salmon with Figs, Saba, and Watercress
• Pan-fried favorites like Monkfish with Sautéed Wild Mushrooms and Chestnuts, and regal roasts such as Pan-Roasted Cod with Spinach and Clementines
• The crispiest Fritto Misto or Steamers with Caper-Tarragon Aioli
• Tantalizing shellfish such as Fried Soft-Shell Crabs with Ramps or Baked Clams with Italian-Style Bread Crumbs and Horseradish

The more than one hundred recipes are at once inventive and comforting, complexly flavored yet simply prepared. And they are accompanied by the stories of an impassioned fisherman, the tips and advice of a singularly expert authority, creating a masterpiece in the field.