Food Books
The latest food books and food buzz!
Inside The Mind of A Great Chinese Cook
By Herb Gardener. Factors Americans typically consider when choosing a place to live include property values, school quality, cultural resources and proximity to a good Chinese restaurant. Well, the last may be a stretch, but we do hold strong opinions about and yearnings for this inexhaustible gastronomic tradition. For the ambitious cook seduced by the […]
Entertain With Confidence
By Marsha Fottler. The last two years have seen an increase in home entertaining partly because most of us have felt too poor to do anything else. Game night, Sunday brunch, cocktail party, book club, movie night, dinner for eight – we’ve all been doing it with optimism and tiny budgets. But for many young […]
Recipes as a Cultural Profile
By Anna Dantoni. For three decades Southern Living magazine has annually published a cookbook composed of all the recipes that the appeared in the monthly issues of the magazine over the previous 12 months. The recipes are organized chronologically by month but the book also includes special sections devoted to other categories of cookery. For […]
A Saucy Affair
By Herb Gardener. The French Enlightenment philosopher and playwright Voltaire observed: “England has 42 religions and only two sauces.” Cooks from Cornwall to Carnoustie, then, may find relief in George Geary’s 500 Best Sauces, Salad Dressings, Marinades & More (500 Sauces). One imagines that successful restaurants refer to similar dog-eared and oil-splattered compendia for creative […]
The Meditative Pleasures of Cold Weather Cooking
By Marsha Fottler. Even if I didn’t love to cook and to savor new recipes, I’d still buy Diana Henry’s book Roast Figs Sugar Snow just for the sheer romance of the title. It’s completely poetic and evocative of “winter food to warm the soul,” which is her subtitle and the intent of the recipes […]
When Murder and Gazpacho Are on the Menu
By Anna Dantoni. The title A Plateful of Murder speaks for itself and communicates volumes to a reader with an insatiable appetite for a juicy food mystery. But, this paperback by Claudia Bishop is actually two complete novels under one cover, A Taste for Murder and A Dash of Death. They are the two initial […]
Japanese Lifestyle Diva Cooks
By Marsha Fottler. The typical American’s acquaintance with Japanese cooking begins and ends at one’s favorite sushi bar. And that’s fine because savoring sushi prepared by an expert is a sublime culinary experience. But, for American home cooks who’d like to delve more deeply into authentic Japanese cookery there’s a useful new cookbook called Everyday […]
Down on the FARM, Up with What’s Local
By Herb Gardener. Perhaps you are ready for regime change in North Korea, but what about in your kitchen? Indiana favorite son and acclaimed chef Daniel Orr has written a Midwestern manifesto for locavores everywhere called FARMfood: Green Living with Chef Daniel Orr. From Cattail Pollen Biscuits to Don’t’ Let Your Man-Go Hot Sauce there’s […]
Fulfilling A Food Fantasy
By Marsha Fottler. In 2003, when American Kathleen Flinn was 36 and had just lost her middle-management job in London, she weighed her options and then plunked down $26,500 to enter the full-diploma course at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. She’d been wanting to do it for 10 years but never had a […]