I’ve had a copy of Elizabeth Schneider’s Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables for about three years and refer to it quite often. Flipping through the book, I note page markings for arugula, cilantro, spaghetti squash, mangoes, radish sprouts, Swiss chard, Chinese cabbage, tomatillos and others. When published in 1986, most of these items were hard to find “curiosities.” Schneider’s book is recognized today as a classic that influenced not only cooks but also the produce market. Now, 15 years later, Schneider has produced an updated and upscale version of the 1986 book. In Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, she has dropped the fruits and winnowed out the veggies. Cilantro and other “spice” type veggies are not in the new book. Sprouts, squash and other single items in the old book are presented now within generic headings. Hugely informative, more fun to read and with lots of new material, the format and presentation of the new book—with large heavy weight glossy paper, 275 superb photos, 500 meat and meatless recipes and 220 more pages—is as elegant as the old book is text bookish. The 1996 reprint of Uncommon Fruits costs 28 dollars; Vegetables goes for $60! If I had neither and wanted a book on veggies, I would go Vegetables, price notwithstanding. Schneider has been writing for 30 years. Quite likely, this book is her magnum opus. It is a 2001 nominee for a James Beard Foundation book award.
Archive for the ‘What's to read?’ Category
Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010Mediterranean Street Food
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Mediterranean Street Food by Anissa Helou. Anissa Helou, born in Lebanon and living in London, is an experienced culinary writer who appears regularly on British TV and writes a column for the Financial Times. She is also a photographer and the book is nicely composed and presented with her black and white photos throughout. Helou states in her introduction that as a kid in Beirut she was never allowed to eat street food in as much as
“ . . . girls from good families don’t.” That set the stage for her enduring fascination with street food vendors and their dishes.
As I read on, I began to wonder if she was going to address the health risks of non-natives eating street food. (I ate the stuff without regret in Japan and Hong Kong, as a young dashing naval officer, but I doubt if I would do it now.) She views a perceived lack of hygiene as often more apparent than real, and leaves it at that—save for a note to herself to carry her own cutlery when next in Cairo. Mmmm.
If you give a thought to what street food in all about (quick and/or uncomplicated), the chapter headings here are intuitive, namely soups, snacks-salads-dips, breads and pizzas, sandwiches, BBQs, one-pot meals, sweets, desserts and drinks. She presents about 135 recipes, most capable of being prepared quickly without the need of much more than fire, a pan, product, spices and oil.
Readers of Wright’s A Mediterranean Feast or Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco will find much familiar here. If you have prepared some of Wolfert’s dishes or my tagine dishes you have the pantry and spice rack to tackle Helou’s Mediterranean street food.
We did her Moroccan Eggplant Salad the other night following the recipe, which was straightforward. It was delicious, though a bit too oily. This led me to check her other recipes to determine if Helou is a bit heavy on the olive oil. She is, at least in her salads. So, as you should do with all recipes, mark them up to your liking after following the author’s recipe. Fair enough. Next time I do this dish, I’ll cut the oil by 20%.
We’ll try, I’m sure, some of the snacks, salads and dips as well as the kebab BBQ’s. Her one-pot meal recipes look good and I should try one or two as quick-prep variants of the more elaborate lamb dishes that I favor. But, given the cost of fresh lamb shanks, maybe I won’t.
I bought the book because I liked the concept. You might too. It’s a welcome addition to the two related books, aforementioned.
The Fourth Star
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010The Fourth Star, by Leslie Brenner. This book chronicles a year (2000) behind the scenes at Daniel, Chef Daniel Boulud’s New York City restaurant. Brenner, a food writer, observes restaurant operations for endless hours as Boulud and his staff of 140 work for endless hours to create and sustain a successful French restaurant. Upon opening in 1999, the New York Times gave Daniel only 3 stars. Hurt and miffed, Boulud broods silently as all under his employ know that getting the deserved fourth star is what the year 2000 is going to be all about. Of course, they succeed. Two other restaurant books are reviewed on this page. The kitchen scenes at Daniel are at another, higher, level than those portrayed by Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, and Brenner’s narrative lays waste the dismal title of Patric Kuh’s The Last Days of Haute Cuisine. Fine dining is alive and well. Still, the three books are of a piece. A dark side of Kitchen Confidential is here too, where cooks at Daniel, albeit in a prize kitchen, endure long hours, low pay, burn out and high turnover. Front of the house operations at Daniel are apace with those described historically by Kuh. Brenner documents the key requisites of success in today’s restaurant world: culinary flair, command leadership and marketing genius. Daniel Boulud has all three. If your interest in fine dining includes diners as well as restaurant operations, Brenner portrays them–the regulars and VIPS–as quirky yet lovingly catered to by Boulud who recognizes them as vital to the success of his restaurant. A lot of pointers are provided here for the eccentric diner.
The Fourth Star
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The Fourth Star, by Leslie Brenner. This book chronicles a year (2000) behind the scenes at Daniel, Chef Daniel Boulud’s New York City restaurant. Brenner, a food writer, observes restaurant operations for endless hours as Boulud and his staff of 140 work for endless hours to create and sustain a successful French restaurant. Upon opening in 1999, the New York Times gave Daniel only 3 stars. Hurt and miffed, Boulud broods silently as all under his employ know that getting the deserved fourth star is what the year 2000 is going to be all about. Of course, they succeed. Two other restaurant books are reviewed on this page. The kitchen scenes at Daniel are at another, higher, level than those portrayed by Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, and Brenner’s narrative lays waste the dismal title of Patric Kuh’s The Last Days of Haute Cuisine. Fine dining is alive and well. Still, the three books are of a piece. A dark side of Kitchen Confidential is here too, where cooks at Daniel, albeit in a prize kitchen, endure long hours, low pay, burn out and high turnover. Front of the house operations at Daniel are apace with those described historically by Kuh. Brenner documents the key requisites of success in today’s restaurant world: culinary flair, command leadership and marketing genius. Daniel Boulud has all three. If your interest in fine dining includes diners as well as restaurant operations, Brenner portrays them–the regulars and VIPS–as quirky yet lovingly catered to by Boulud who recognizes them as vital to the success of his restaurant. A lot of pointers are provided here for the eccentric diner.
The Last Days of Haute Cuisine
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, by Patric Kuh, traces the evolution of fine dining from the opening of Le Pavillon in 1941 to the present time. Kuh has written a nostalgic essay wrapped around Henri Soulé, the maître d’hôtel of Le Pavillon, portrayed to excess in mythic aura. The rise and fall of great restaurants across the land and the influences of iconic foodies—chefs and writers—are woven into this very readable narrative. This book is essential reading for high-end restaurant goers, studious foodies and ambitious chefs. It has been nominated for a 2001 James Beard Foundation book award. If you read Kitchen Confidential, cleanse your pallet with The Last Days of Haute Cuisine.
¡Ceviche!
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010¡Ceviche! The little woman loves ceviche. Our favorite Mexican restaurant is our most frequented restaurant because they make a great ceviche and have it on the menu most nights. It’s so good I consulted the chef there before preparing it for 200 as a demonstration dish at school.
Well, along comes a single subject cookbook on ceviche. Better still, the book has been nominated for a James Beard Foundation book award this year. “Got to buy this one,” says I. “ No need to look at it at the bookstore, just go Amazon.”
¡Ceviche! by chef Guillermo Pernot and Aliza Green, offers 48 ceviche recipes—and everything you need to know about this little side dish—along with chapters on salsas, salads and cocktails—all tied together with extraordinary full-page color photographs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that ingredients called for in most of the recipes are not readily available. To their credit, the authors have a chapter on special ingredients and sources, as well as a glossary of 54 entries pulled out of the recipes. Nonetheless, to make the dishes in this book requires a commitment to shop for and stock the pantry with niche spices, condiments, veggies, fruits and booze. The material on escabeches, salads, salsas, vinaigrettes, garnishes and cocktails is more user friendly, but even here the ingredient requirements are daunting.
The book is impressive from the culinary point of view. Pernot’s techniques are well grounded. The text is to the point and fun to read. His interest in Japanese fresh fish cuisine influences his ceviche creations in inventive and delightful ways. The food presentation, serving dishes and settings for the photos are terrific. In all, Pernot presents an in-depth look at ceviche.
No, there is more to this book. Upon reflection in the process of selecting some recipes that I might use in class, I now conclude (a week or so after writing the above) that Pernot takes civiche to new and creative heights. This book is “way out there,” in the manner of The French Laundry. It is full of ideas that experienced cooks will ponder and use. Which, come to think of it, is a desired outcome of reading any cookbook. Few chef/authors, however, reach this level of creative substance.
Baking by Flavor
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010Baking by Flavor, by Lisa Yockelson. We spent a lot of time at school learning the correct techniques for baking the classic repertoire of cakes and tarts, along with icings and fillings; and an equal amount of time devoted to pastries—probably six weeks in all. I survived and even enjoyed it, my strong preference to savory cooking notwithstanding. Yockelson is well known to readers of the food section of the Washington Post. She has published extensively. Her signature is “flavor-accenting baked goods.” I remembered that getting my lemon-sugar cookie to where I liked it was all about enhancing flavors. So, maybe it was time to pick up a tome on baked desserts and see what a current master baker is up to.
To get a feel for the level of detail and soundness of techniques, I baked her lemon tart, which called for using cookie dough instead of pate sucrée to make the tart shell. Her instructions are clear and very detailed. Laborious in fact (she takes two paragraphs to tell the reader how to “blind bake” a tart shell without ever using the technical term). The ‘by flavor’ organization of the book is as inviting as it is innovative. An average of 22 pages is devoted to each of 13 flavors (chocolate gets 35). If, like the Little Woman, you don’t like almond, you can flip past it with the assurance that you will not see it again.
Yockelson knows her subject. She presents all the classics here, updated and inspired. If you do not have a confectionery baked goods cookbook, Baking by Flavor is well worth a look. For sure¸ this book will win an award next year.
What Einstein Told His Cook
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010What Einstein Told His Cook, by Robert L. Wolke. As one who has read and profiled quite a number of science and cooking books, I learned a few things from this one (the potential use of citric acid “sour salts,” for example). So up front, I will say that Wolke is worth the read. Not as thorough as McKee or as applicable as Corriher but Wolke’s article format and light style—he writes for the Washington Post—makes his stuff more fun to read and the book easy to set down and pick up again. All the usual subjects are covered here, fats, sugars, chemical reactions, calories, acids and the like, along with a recipe or two to make a point. His chapter on Tools and Technology is current and especially good regarding microwave ovens, irradiation and the worried illiterate.
Readers can expect writers of kitchen science books to delight in debunking old cooking fictions and deflating the exaggerations of both consumer and industry advocates. Wolke is no exception and the results are right up there with McKee and Corriher. Concerning what I consider the hallmarks of the food phobics and wellness hypochondriacs, he says, “I hate warnings without reasons . . . [and] anxiety without information.”
I found but one lapse. Regarding the thawing of frozen products, Wolke fails to mention thawing under potable running cold water, which is the only in-kitchen method approved by the FDA.
I’ve stated before and hold to it that Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise is the most useful of the “here’s why” books. What Einstein Told His Cook is also worth your time, in contrast to How to Read a French Fry, which is trashed in a profile on this page, below.
The Flavors of Olive Oil, A Tasting Guide and Cookbook
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
I just got a copy of The Flavors of Olive Oil, A Tasting Guide and Cookbook, by Deborah Krasner. Though it is an award-winning book (James Beard Foundation 2002 award for single subject), there is not much to it. A good 50 page tutorial on olive oil, followed by 17 pages of useful tasting notes and then 147 pages of recipes. Still, the tasting notes section is current, as is the resource section in back of the book, both with a lot of Web site addresses. These pages alone are worth your attention. Note the bottle in the photo. Krasner rates Costco’s Kirkland Signature Extra Virgin Tuscano as “one of the great bargains in olive oil.” I agree. I saw the stuff in the local Costco a couple of months ago and was impressed by the label and packaging. It is indeed good and at a very good price. I’m on my second bottle with two more bottles in the pantry.
Bundt Classics
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
There are few household kitchens in the US, inhabited by home cooks our age, that don’t have a Bundt Pan. They’ve been around for fifty years. It’s a heavy cast aluminum cake pan with a metal tube in the center, which promotes more even baking. Nordic Ware, the manufacturer of the Nordic Ware Bundt Pan (a registered name), admits that the idea originated in Europe where “bund cakes” have been baked for special occasions for generations. The classic round and rectangular pans have been joined, of late, by some really neat designs (see photo), the products, I’m sure, of computer design technology.
Along comes a little wire-binded book, Bundt Classics, by Dorothy Dalquist, published by the Nordic Ware people, that collects and updates all the cakes they have promoted over the years. Quite a few: 92 cakes and desserts, supported by 19 glazes, sauces and syrups. There are also 31 bread recipes and even a dozen savory dishes — all written to be prepared in a Bundt Pan of one shape or another. From Apple Streusel to Walnut-Bourbon Pound Cake, the list is a trip through days of yore. However, getting a cake out of a Bundt Pan, in one piece, is a challenge as old as the pans themselves. The secret is to meticulously coat the inside of the pan with unsalted butter and a dusting of flour. One cannot spend too much time in preparing a cake pan. “Prepare in haste, repent at leisure,” as our master pastry chef instructed.
Anyhow, the book is inviting and reasonable in price. The Little Woman is anxious to try some of the old recipes again “for the first time.”