The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines: China, Greece, and Rome
Jeff Smith - 1989
The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines celebrates mushrooms, olives and olive oil, squid, sesame, artichokes, lamb, chestnuts, beans, duck, asparagus, and other ingredients that have been prepared for centuries among the Chinese, Greeks, and Romans.
Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables
Joshua McFadden - 2017
After years racking up culinary cred at New York City restaurants like Lupa, Momofuku, and Blue Hill, he managed the trailblazing Four Season Farm in coastal Maine, where he developed an appreciation for every part of the plant and learned to coax the best from vegetables at each stage of their lives.In Six Seasons, McFadden channels both farmer and chef, highlighting the evolving attributes of vegetables throughout their growing seasons—an arc from spring to early summer to midsummer to the bursting harvest of late summer, then ebbing into autumn and, finally, the earthy, mellow sweetness of winter. Each chapter begins with recipes featuring raw vegetables at the start of their season. As weeks progress, McFadden turns up the heat—grilling and steaming, then moving on to sautés, pan roasts, braises, and stews. His ingenuity is on display in 225 revelatory recipes that celebrate flavor at its peak.
Feeding a Yen: Savoring Local Specialties, from Kansas City to Cuzco
Calvin Trillin - 2003
What he treasures is the superb local specialty. And he will go anywhere to find one. As it happens, some of his favorite dishes can be found only in their place of origin. Join Trillin on his charming, funny culinary adventures as he samples fried marlin in Barbados and the barbecue of his boyhood in Kansas City. Travel alongside as he hunts for the authentic fish taco, and participates in a “boudin blitzkrieg” in the part of Louisiana where people are accustomed to buying these spicy sausages and polishing them off in the parking lot. (“Cajun boudin not only doesn’t get outside the state, it usually doesn’t even get home.”) In New York, Trillin even tries to use a glorious local specialty, the bagel, to lure his daughters back from California. Feeding a Yen is a delightful reminder of why New York magazine called Calvin Trillin “our funniest food writer.”
Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day
Leanne Brown - 2011
government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program informally known as food stamps? The answer is surprisingly well: Broiled Tilapia with Lime, Spicy Pulled Pork, Green Chile and Cheddar Quesadillas, Vegetable Jambalaya, Beet and Chickpea Salad—even desserts like Coconut Chocolate Cookies and Peach Coffee Cake. In addition to creating nutritious recipes that maximize every ingredient and use economical cooking methods, Ms. Brown gives tips on shopping; on creating pantry basics; on mastering certain staples—pizza dough, flour tortillas—and saucy extras that make everything taste better, like spice oil and tzatziki; and how to make fundamentally smart, healthful food choices.Download a free PDF copy at http://www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks
Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon
Claudia Roden - 2005
Now, in her enchanting new book, Arabesque, she revisits the three countries with the most exciting cuisines today—Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon. Interweaving history, stories, and her own observations, she gives us 150 of the most delectable recipes: some of them new discoveries, some reworkings of classic dishes—all of them made even more accessible and delicious for today’s home cook.From Morocco, the most exquisite and refined cuisine of North Africa: couscous dishes; multilayered pies; delicately flavored tagines; ways of marrying meat, poultry, or fish with fruit to create extraordinary combinations of spicy, savory, and sweet.From Turkey, a highly sophisticated cuisine that dates back to the Ottoman Empire yet reflects many new influences today: a delicious array of kebabs, fillo pies, eggplant dishes in many guises, bulgur and chickpea salads, stuffed grape leaves and peppers, and sweet puddings.From Lebanon, a cuisine of great diversity: a wide variety of mezze (those tempting appetizers that can make a meal all on their own); dishes featuring sun-drenched Middle Eastern vegetables and dried legumes; and national specialties such as kibbeh, meatballs with pine nuts, and lamb shanks with yogurt.Claudia Roden knows this part of the world so intimately that we delight in being in such good hands as she translates the subtle play of flavors and simple cooking techniques to our own home kitchens.
Everyone Can Bake
Dominique Ansel - 2020
Dominique Ansel is the creator of beautiful, innovative, and delicious desserts, from the Frozen S’More to the Cronut®, the croissant-doughnut hybrid that took the world by storm. He has been called the world’s best pastry chef. But this wasn’t always the case. Raised in a large, working-class family in rural France, Ansel could not afford college and instead began work as a baker’s apprentice at age sixteen. There, he learned the basics—how to make tender chocolate cakes, silky custards, buttery shortbread, and more. Ansel shares these essential, go-to recipes for the first time. With easy-to-follow instructions and kitchen tips, home cooks can master the building-blocks of desserts. These crucial components can be mixed in a variety of ways, and Ansel will show you how: his vanilla tart shell can be rolled out and stamped into cookies; shaped and filled with lemon curd; or even crumbled into a topping for ice cream. This cookbook will inspire beginners and experienced home cooks alike to bake as imaginatively as Ansel himself.
Real Food: What to Eat and Why
Nina Planck - 2006
The country's leading expert on farmers' markets and traditional foods tells the truth about the foods your grandmother praised but doctors call dangerous.Everyone loves real food, but they're afraid bacon and eggs will give them a heart attack--thus the culinary abomination known as the egg-white omelet. But it turns out that tossing out the yolk isn't smart. Real Food reveals why traditional foods are not only delicious--everyone knows that butter tastes better--but are actually good for you, making the nutritional case for egg, cream, butter, grass-fed beef, roast chicken with the skin, lard, cocoa butter, and more.In lively, personal chapters on produce, dairy, meat, fish, Nina explains how the foods we've eaten for thousands of years--pork, lamb, raw milk cheese, sea salt--have been falsely accused. Industrial foods like corn syrup, which lurks everywhere from fruit juice to chicken broth, are to blame for the triple epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, not real food.Nina Planck grew up on a vegetable farm in Virginia and learned to eat right from her no-nonsense parents: along with lots of local fruits and vegetables, the Plancks drank raw milk and ate meatloaf, bacon, and eggs with impunity. But the nutritional trends ran the other way--fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol were taboo--and in her teens and twenties, Nina tried vegan, vegetarian, low-fat, and low-cholesterol diets, with unhappy results.When she opened the first farmers' markets in London, Nina began to eat real food again--for pleasure, not health--and to her surprise she lost weight and felt great. She began to wonder about the farmhouse diet back home. Was it deadly, as the cardiologists say? Happily for people who love food, the answer is no.Real Food upends the conventional wisdom on diet and health. Prepare for pleasant surprises on whipped cream and other delights. The days of deprivation are over.(from the flap)
The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making
Alana Chernila - 2012
Come on in, but be prepared—it might not be quite what you expect. There is flour on the counter, oats that overflowed onto the floor, chocolate-encrusted spoons in the sink. There is Joey, the husband, exhausted by the thirty-five preschoolers who were hanging on him all day, and he is stuffing granola into his mouth to ease his five o’clock starvation. There are two little girls trying to show me cartwheels in that miniscule space between the refrigerator and the counter where I really need to be.” In her debut cookbook, Alana Chernila inspires you to step inside your kitchen, take a look around, and change the way you relate to food. The Homemade Pantry was born of a tight budget, Alana’s love for sharing recipes with her farmers’ market customers, and a desire to enjoy a happy cooking and eating life with her young family. On a mission to kick their packaged-food habit, she learned that with a little determination, anything she could buy at the store could be made in her kitchen, and her homemade versions were more satisfying, easier to make than she expected, and tastier. Here are her very approachable recipes for 101 everyday staples, organized by supermarket aisle—from crackers to cheese, pesto to sauerkraut, and mayonnaise to toaster pastries. The Homemade Pantry is a celebration of food made by hand—warm mozzarella that is stretched, thick lasagna noodles rolled from flour and egg, fresh tomato sauce that bubbles on the stove. Whether you are trying a recipe for butter, potato chips, spice mixes, or ketchup, you will discover the magic and thrill that comes with the homemade pantry. Alana captures the humor and messiness of everyday family life, too. A true friend to the home cook, she shares her “tense moments” to help you get through your own. With stories offering patient, humble advice, tips for storing the homemade foods, and rich four-color photography throughout, The Homemade Pantry will quickly become the go-to source for how to make delicious staples in your home kitchen.
French Comfort Food
Hillary Davis - 2014
What has remained true over time is that the French have a determined hold on their beloved regional classic dishes, the ones they grew up with that their mothers and grandmothers and grandmothers before them made—French comfort food.
Collected here are recipes from friends and acquaintances Hillary Davis has made while living in France, recipes handed down through the years as well as modern family remakes of the originals. With these resources, plus referring to her hundreds of well-worn cookbooks, Davis has brought together her favorite comfort food recipes from France, with a hope that they will inspire and charm you, showing just how fabulous good home-cooked food from France can be.
Hillary Davis , food journalist, cooking instructor, and writer and creator of the popular food blog Marche Dimanche, is a long-time food columnist and restaurant critic for New Hampshire Magazine, and her work has been featured in many national and international magazine and website articles. She is also the author of Cuisine Nicoise and has been a food and travel lecturer on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity cruise lines. She lives in New Hampshire.
The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese
Kathe Lison - 2013
And there’s much to love: hundreds of gloriously pungent varieties—crumbly, creamy, buttery, even shot through with bottle-green mold. So many varieties, in fact, that the aspiring gourmand may wonder: How does one make sense of it all?In The Whole Fromage, Kathe Lison sets out to learn what makes French cheese so remarkable—why France is the “Cheese Mother Ship,” in the words of one American expert. Her journey takes her to cheese caves tucked within the craggy volcanic rock of Auvergne, to a centuries-old monastery in the French Alps, and to the farmlands that keep cheesemaking traditions alive. She meets the dairy scientists, shepherds, and affineurs who make up the world of modern French cheese, and whose lifestyles and philosophies are as varied and flavorful as the delicacies they produce. Most delicious of all, she meets the cheeses themselves—from spruce-wrapped Mont d’Or, so gooey it’s best eaten with a spoon; to luminous Beaufort, redolent of Alpine grasses and wildflowers, a single round of which can weigh as much as a Saint Bernard; to Camembert, invented in Normandy but beloved and imitated across the world.With writing as piquant and rich as a well-aged Roquefort, as charming as a tender springtime chèvre, and yet as unsentimental as a stinky Maroilles, The Whole Fromage is a tasty exploration of one of the great culinary treasures of France.
Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats
Steve Ettlinger - 2007
And, like most consumers, he often reads the ingredients label -- without a clue as to what most of it means. So when his young daughter asked, "Daddy, what's polysorbate 60?" he was at a loss -- and determined to find out. From the phosphate mines in Idaho to the corn fields in Iowa, from gypsum mines in Oklahoma to the vanilla harvest in Madagascar, Twinkie, Deconstructed is a fascinating, thoroughly researched romp of a narrative that demystifies some of the most common processed food ingredients -- where they come from, how they are made, how they are used -- and why. Beginning at the source (hint: they're often more closely linked to rock and petroleum than any of the four food groups), we follow each Twinkie ingredient through the process of being crushed, baked, fermented, refined, and/or reacted into a totally unrecognizable goo or powder with a strange name -- all for the sake of creating a simple snack cake. An insightful exploration into the food industry, if you've ever wondered what you're eating when you consume foods containing mono- and diglycerides or calcium sulfate (the latter, a food-grade equivalent) this book is for you.
The Oxford Companion to Food
Alan Davidson - 1999
Its combination of serious food history, culinary expertise, and entertaining serendipity was recognized as utterly unique. Including both an exhaustive catalogue of the foods that nourish humankind-fruit from tropical forests, mosses scraped from adamantine granite in Siberian wastes, or ears, eyeballs and testicles from a menagerie of animals-and a richly allusive commentary on the culture of food, whether expressed in literature and cookbooks, or as dishes peculiar to a country or community, the Oxford Companion to Food immediately found distinction.The study of food and food history was a new discipline at the time, but one that has developed exponentially in the years since. There are now university departments, international societies, and academic journals, in addition to a wide range of popular literature exploring the meaning of food in the daily lives of people around the world.Alan Davidson famously wrote eighty percent of the first edition, which was praised for its wit as well as its wisdom. Tom Jaine, the editor of the second edition, worked closely with Jane Davidson and Helen Saberi to ensure that new contributions continue in the same style. The result is an expanded volume that remains faithful to Davidson's peerless work. The text has been updated where necessary to keep pace with a rapidly changing subject, and Jaine assiduously alerts readers to new avenues in food studies. Agriculture; archaeology; food in art, film, literature, and music; globalization; neuroanatomy; and the Silk Road are covered for the first time, and absorbing new articles on confetti; cutlery; doggy bags; elephant; myrrh; and potluck have also found their way into the Companion.
Momofuku Milk Bar
Christina Tosi - 2011
It all started one day when Momofuku founder David Chang asked Christina to make a dessert for dinner that night. Just like that, the pastry program at Momofuku began, and Christina’s playful desserts helped the restaurants earn praise from the New York Times and the Michelin Guide and led to the opening of Milk Bar, which now draws fans from around the country and the world.With all the recipes for the bakery’s most beloved desserts—along with ones for savory baked goods that take a page from Chang’s Asian-flavored cuisine, such as Kimchi Croissants with Blue Cheese—and 100 color photographs, Momofuku Milk Bar makes baking irresistible off-beat treats at home both foolproof and fun.
The Flavour Thesaurus: Pairings, Recipes and Ideas for the Creative Cook
Niki Segnit - 2010
"Following the instructions in a recipe is like parroting pre-formed sentences from a phrasebook. Forming an understanding of how flavors work together, on the other hand, is like learning the language: it allows you to express yourself freely, to improvise, to cook a dish the way you want to cook it.""The Flavor Thesaurus "is the inquisitive cook's guide to acquiring that understanding--to learning the language of flavor.Breaking the vast universe of ingredients down to 99 essential flavors, Segnit suggests classic and less well-known pairings for each, grouping almost 1,000 entries into flavor families like "Green & Grassy," "Berry & Bush" and "Creamy Fruity." But "The Flavor Thesaurus" is much more than just a reference book, seasoning the mix of culinary science, culture and expert knowledge with the author's own insights and opinions, all presented in her witty, engaging and highly readable style. As appealing to the novice cook as to the experienced professional, "The Flavor Thesaurus "will not only immeasurably improve your cooking--it's the sort of book that might keep you up at night reading.""Cooking is an art, like writing or painting, and great cooks are artists. And although the ultimate source of creativity remains elusive, all painters have their color wheel, all writers their vocabulary. And now, in the form of this beautiful, entertaining and exhaustively researched book, cooks have their own collection of essential knowledge: "The Flavor Thesaurus."
Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Gabrielle Hamilton - 2001
Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.