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The Tomato Festival Cookbook by Lawrence Davis-Hollander. (about $12) - From Library Journal:
In this beautifully illustrated book, Phillips vividly presents the world of mushrooms. Unlike the photographs in other guides, which are taken in the field, the more than 1000 color photographs featured here were shot in the studio in order to capture both the external features of mushrooms as well as their internal anatomy. Each picture includes specimens representing various stages of growth, and the accompanying annotation describes the anatomy of the cap, gills, stem, and spores. In addition, the author explains where the particular species of mushroom is found, its season of growth, and whether or not it is edible. Amateur mycologists as well as professionals in the field will find this book an invaluable guide. Highly recommended as a basic library reference source.
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The Tomato Festival Cookbook by Lawrence Davis-Hollander. (about $12) - From Publishers Weekly:
The majority of Americans have never tasted a good tomato. Thankfully, Davis-Hollander has devoted his life to saving future Americans from the trend of tasteless tomatoes bred for uniformity, "grown in the off-season with low levels of light, picked green, and artificially ripened and then shipped three thousand miles," via the heirloom seed-saving and propagation efforts of his Eastern Native Seed Conservancy, in western Massachusetts. Every year, participants in ENSC's Epicurean Tomato Festival celebrate the mind-blowing diversity of hundreds of generations-old tomato varieties in a full spectrum of shapes and colors, from Aunt Ruby's German Green to Cherokee Purple to Orange Banana. This book brings together familiar preparations, like tomato sauce and ratatouille, with contemporary restaurant innovations like Blue Ginger's Candied Tomato Tart with Five-Spiced Hazelnut Crust and exotic dishes like West African Chicken, Peanut, and Tomato Stew, along with specific recommendations for the best-tasting heirlooms for each. Bursting with history and folklore, this is also a practical handbook for identifying, growing and preserving heirloom tomatoes with an appendix on buying and saving seeds and a glossary explaining the difference between open-pollinated, indeterminate, and hybrid varieties.
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French Cheeses: The Visual Guide to More Than 350 Cheeses from Every Region of France by Kazuko Masui & Tomoko Yamada (Author), Joel Robuchon (Foreword), Yohei Maruyama (Photographer). (about $10 used with shipping) If there is anything that Jenkin's Cheese Primer lacks, the stunning color photographs in this volume supply it.
From Booklist:
Although many guides to the art of fromagerie exist, none provide such visual detail and at-a-glance information as Masui and Yamada. They categorize 350 cheeses in a dictionary format, divided by regions of production, and add succinct sidebars about manufacturing processes and the definition of specific terms (i.e., the distinction between artisanal and industriel), generally enlightening even the most blaseof cheese buyers. Like many California wine, few of the cheeses produced in limited quantities even leave the country, so the compilation here yields many surprises. There is a massive amount of reference data to be consumed and savored piece by piece. A glossary and a list of producers, shops, and markets are appended. Sharp color photography by Yohei Maruyama. Barbara Jacobs
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Paperback) by Michael Pollan . (about $10) Pollan examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze that bankrupted some bread and pasta companies, our obesity epidemic, etc) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again. Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly." Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients in the Chicken McNuggets.
Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted. This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. Adapted from Pamela Kaufman
Garlic Is Life: A Memoir With Recipes (Paperback) by Chester Aaron. (about $13) Amazon.com says: Loosely the story of how a divorced, middle-aged Jewish professor of English moved from San Francisco to rural Sonoma County, California, and found fulfillment in the ups and downs of garlic farming, this intensely personal narrative describes the interplay of generations and cultures in Northern California. It should have particular appeal for garlic heads, would-be writers, middle-aged men in transition, feisty septuagenarians, and touchy-feely types. Along with fiercely prejudiced discourses on garlic, Chester Aaron presents his sentimental story in crisp, no-nonsense prose loaded with Woody Allen-esque asides and self-deprecating observations. The book ends with 40 recipes.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (Hardcover) by Barbara Kingsolver (Author), Camille Kingsolver (Author), Steven L. Hopp. Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers "putting food by," as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage. Nine-year-old Lily runs a heritage poultry business, selling eggs and meat. What they don't raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Come winter, they feast on root crops and canned goods, menus slouching toward asparagus. Along the way, the Kingsolver family, having given up industrial meat years before, abandons its vegetarian ways and discovers the pleasures of conscientious carnivory.This field—local food and sustainable agriculture—is crowded with books in increasingly predictable flavors: the earnest manual, diary of an epicure, the environmental battle cry, the accidental gardener. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is all of these, and much smarter. Kingsolver takes the genre to a new literary level; a well-paced narrative and the apparent ease of the beautiful prose makes the pages fly. Her tale is both classy and disarming, substantive and entertaining, earnest and funny. Kingsolver is a moralist ("the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners"), but more often wry than pious. Another hazard of the genre is snobbery. You won't find it here. Seldom do paeans to heirloom tomatoes (which I grew up selling at farmers' markets) include equal respect for outstanding modern hybrids like Early Girl. Kingsolver has the ear of a journalist and the accuracy of a naturalist. She makes short, neat work of complex topics: what's risky about the vegan diet, why animals belong on ecologically sound farms, why bitterness in lettuce is good. Kingsolver's clue to help greenhorns remember what's in season is the best I've seen. You trace the harvest by botanical development, from buds to fruits to roots. Kingsolver is not the first to note our national "eating disorder" and the injuries industrial agriculture wreaks, yet this practical vision of how we might eat instead is as fresh as just-picked sweet corn. The narrative is peppered with useful sidebars on industrial agriculture and ecology (by husband Steven Hopp) and recipes (by daughter Camille), as if to show that local food—in the growing, buying, cooking, eating and the telling—demands teamwork. Review by Nina Planck, author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why (Bloomsbury USA, 2006). Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford . We first read excerpts of this in The New Yorker and now it is out as a book. Anthony Bourdain says: "Heat is a remarkable work on a number of fronts--and for a number of reasons. First, watching the author, an untrained, inexperienced and middle-aged desk jockey slowly transform into not just a useful line cook--but an extraordinarily knowledgable one is pure pleasure. That he chooses to do so primarily in the notoriously difficult, cramped kitchens of New York's three star Babbo provides further sado-masochistic fun. Buford not only accurately and hilariously describes the painfully acquired techniques of the professional cook (and his own humiations), but chronicles as well the mental changes--the "kitchen awareness" and peculiar world view necessary to the kitchen dweller. By end of book, he's even talking like a line cook.
Secondly, the book is a long overdue portrait of the real Mario Batali and of the real Marco Pierre White--two complicated and brilliant chefs whose coverage in the press--while appropriately fawning--has never described them in their fully debauched, delightful glory. Buford has--for the first time--managed to explain White's peculiar--almost freakish brilliance--while humanizing a man known for terrorizing cooks, customers (and Batali). As for Mario--he is finally revealed for the Falstaffian, larger than life, mercurial, frighteningly intelligent chef/enterpreneur he really is. No small accomplishment. Other cooks, chefs, butchers, artisans and restaurant lifers are described with similar insight.
Thirdly, Heat reveals a dead-on understanding--rare among non-chef writers--of the pleasures of "making" food; the real human cost, the real requirements and the real adrenelin-rush-inducing pleasures of cranking out hundreds of high quality meals. One is left with a truly unique appreciation of not only what is truly good about food--but as importantly, who cooks--and why. I can't think of another book which takes such an unsparing, uncompromising and ultimately thrilling look at the quest for culinary excellence. Heat brims with fascinating observations on cooking, incredible characters, useful discourse and argument-ending arcania. I read my copy and immediately started reading it again. It's going right in between Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Zola's The Belly of Paris on my bookshelf."
The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, M. F. K. Fisher (Translator) Amazon.com says: "You can't properly call yourself a gourmand (or even a minor foodie) until you've digested Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's delectable 1825 treatise, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Brilliantly and lovingly translated in 1949 by M.F.K. Fisher (herself the doyenne of 20th-century food writing), the book offers the Professor's meditations not just on matters of cooking and eating, but extends to sleep, dreams, exhaustion, and even death (which he defines as the "complete interruption of sensual relations"). Brillat-Savarin, whose genius is in the examination and discussion of food, cooking, and eating, proclaims that "the discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star."
Chocoholics will be satisfied to know that "carefully prepared chocolate is as healthful a food as it is pleasant ... that it is above all helpful to people who must do a great deal of mental work...." He examines the erotic properties of the truffle ("the truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac; but it can, in certain situations, make women tenderer and men more agreeable"), the financial influence of the turkey (apparently quite a prize in 19th-century Paris), and the level of gourmandise among the various professions (bankers, doctors, writers, and men of faith are all predestined to love food). Just as engrossing as the text itself are M.F.K. Fisher's lively, personal glosses at the end of every chapter, which make up almost a quarter of the book. These two are soulmates separated by centuries, and Fisher's fondness for the Professor comes through on every page. As she notes at the end, "I have yet to be bored or offended, which is more than most women can say of any relationship, either ghostly or corporeal."
The Complete Book of Caribbean Cooking (Hardcover)
by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz - We own it and we use it, but here is what other people say:
"Mrs. Ortiz can always be trusted to treat her subjects accurately because she has lived and cooked in the countries she writes about." -- Associated Press
"An eye-opener for people who are unaware of the diversity of that region's cooking, which draws on European, African and Asian influences. Caribbean cuisine is documented in 450 recipes organized in 14 chapters. The region's distinctive ingredients, cooking methods and utensils are thoroughly explained by Mrs. Ortiz." -- Kansas City Star
"Scores of recipes that will convince you that, yes, there is something new under the gastronomic sun . . . . I wish space permitted me to tell you about the lamb stew with red kidney beans from Guadeloupe, a marvelous recipe for a large Edam cheese stuffed with beef from Curacao, skewered beef kabobs with pineapple, tomatoes, onions and peppers from Anguilla, a pork and spinach dish from St. Lucia and a Camaguey meat salad from Cuba, but I'll have to refer you to the book for those items." -- Josef Mossman, Des Moines Register
Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco (Paperback)
by Paula Wolfert ($12.35, $6.65 used)
- Amazon.com writes:
North Africa is the home to one of the world's great cuisines. Redolent of saffron, cumin and cilantro, Moroccan cooking can be as elegant or as down-home hearty as you want it to be. In Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, author Paula Wolfert has collected delectable recipes that embody the essence of the cuisine. From Morocco's national dish, couscous (for which Wolfert includes more than 20 different recipes), to delicacies such as Bisteeya (a pigeon pie made with filo, eggs, and raisins among other ingredients), Wolfert describes both the background of each recipe and the best way to prepare it. As if the mouthwatering recipes weren't enough, each chapter includes some aspect of Moroccan culture or history, be it an account of Moroccan moussems, or festivals, or a description of souks, or markets. Just reading the recipes will be enough to induce ravenous hunger even on a full stomach. Once you've tried the Chicken Tagine with Prunes and Almonds, or the Seared Lamb Kebabs Cooked in Butter, Paula Wolfert's Couscous and Other Good Foods from Morocco will become a well-worn title on your cookbook shelf.
Book Description: Since it was first published in 1973, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco has established itself as the classic work on one of the world's great cuisines. From the magnificent bisteeyas (enormous, delicate pies composed of tissue-thin, buttery layers of pastry and various fillings) to endless varieties of couscous, Paula Wolfert reveals not only the riches of the Moroccan kitchen but also the variety and flavor of the country itself. With its outstanding recipes, meticulous and loving research, and keen commitment to the traditions of its subject, this is one of the rare cookbooks that are as valuable for their good reading as for their inspired food.
Garlic and Sapphires : The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (Hardcover)
by Ruth Reichl ($16.47, $9 used)
- Amazon.com writes:
Fans of Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples know that Ruth Reichl is a wonderful memoirist--a funny, poignant, and candid storyteller whose books contain a happy mix of memories, recipes, and personal revelations. What they might not fully appreciate is that Reichl is an absolute marvel when it comes to writing about food--she can describe a dish in such satisfying detail that it becomes unnecessary for readers to eat. In her third memoir, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Reichl focuses on her life as a food critic, dishing up a feast of fabulous meals enjoyed during her tenure at The New York Times. As a critic, Reichl was determined to review the "true" nature of each restaurant she visited, so she often dined incognito--each chapter of her book highlights a new disguise, a different restaurant (including the original reviews from the Times), and a fresh culinary adventure. Garlic and Sapphires is another delicious and delightful book, sure to satisfy Reichl's foodie fans and leave admirerers looking forward to her next book, hopefully about her life with Gourmet. --Daphne Durham
Mediterranean Cooking Revised Edition (Hardcover)
by Paula Wolfert ($13.60, $4 used)
- We cook from this book all the time. If you want healthy and flavorful food, Paula Wolfert is a great guide.
From Publishers Weekly -
In this revision of her 1977 volume of the same name, Wolfert (The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean) has replaced many of the richer dishes of that book with 75 new recipes that represent "some of the best of what the Mediterranean has to offer in terms of health as well as taste." The 150 recipes here are also less demanding, epitomizing a culinary simplicity that highlights the flavor of fresh ingredients. Organized around main ingredients rather than courses or geographical borders, the chapters sport such titles as "Garlic and Oil" and "Chick Peas, Lentils and Beans." Wolfert pays particular attention to the cooking traditions and specialties of the Italian region of Apulia, of Spain's Andalusia, of Provence, Turkey and, in particular, Tunisia. The latter, in which hot red peppers feature more emphatically than in dishes from neighboring areas, includes recipes for the characteristic spice mixture called tabil, and Gamber Sghir, grilled shrimp accompanied by a spicy tomato-based sauce. More specialized than Joyce Goldstein's Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook, just out from Collins Publishers San Francisco (PW, August 29), Wolfert's revised collection will appeal to adventurous home cooks already familiar with the region's fare.
The Fat Flush Plan by Ann Louise Gittleman ($11.50, $2 used)
- The keys to overweight are liver toxicity, waterlogged tissues, fear of eating fat, excess insulin, and stress, asserts nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman. Her Fat Flush Plan addresses these problems with a targeted diet.
The Mushroom Lover's Mushroom Cookbook and Primer (Paperback) by Amy Farges ($11.50, $2 used)
- We just picked this up and if you like mushrooms, this will help you to enjoy them even more - plenty of recipies arranged in a helpful manner.
From Amazon:
No one has done more to popularize mushrooms in America than Amy Farges, food writer and co-owner of the national mushroom distributor Aux Delices Des Bois. And now that Ms. Farges made sure mushrooms are available, she shows what to do with them. The Mushroom Cookbook and Primer is an inspiration-a mushroom extravaganza with 175 exquisite yet easy-to-make recipes, plus a Mushroom 101 guide to selecting, storing, cleaning, and cooking, plus a primer with full profiles and photographs of 40 exotic mushrooms.
Full of sweet succulence, toothsome crunch, and haunting flavors from earthy to fruity to seafood-like, mushrooms offer the home cook a dazzling range of possibilities. Here are finger foods: Morels with Calvados, Ovoli and Fig Crostini, Wild Mushroom Bruschetta. Lighter offerings: Porcini Carpaccio, Cream of Asparagus Soup with Roasted Cremini, Blewitt and Crab Rolls. Glorious pairings: Risotto with Corn and Chanterelles, Sirloin Steak with Wine Caps, Mustard-coated Lamb Chops with Wild Oysters, Truffled Lobster with Cilantro Butter, Duck and Shiitake Tortillas. And the unexpected: Black Trumpet Biscuits, Portobello and Basil Salsa, Hen of the Wood Ravioli. A dozen fitting mushroomless desserts offer the irresistible finish.
About the Author
Amy Farges, along with her husband Thierry, founded and operated the wild mushroom company Aux Delices des Bois for 11 years. Currently they distribute mushrooms through their catalog, Marche aux Delices. A classmate of Steven Raichlen and Susan Herrmann Loomis at La Varenne cooking school in Paris, Ms. Farges has written articles for Fine Cooking, Food & Wine, and Brides magazine. She lives in New York.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain ($10.50, $3 used)
- From Amazon: Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it." --Sumi Hahn
The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson ($31.50, $25 used)
- The World Atlas of Wine is something of a dream-team production. The names Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson alone recommend any book on which they appear. The fifth edition (in 30 years) of this astonishingly successful book lives up to, and surpasses, its predecessors. In 350 densely packed but never clotted pages the authors manage the extraordinary feat of characterizing wine production throughout the world, from Vancouver Island to Japan--Buddhists first planted vines in that inhospitably precipitous, monsoon-lashed land over a 1,000 years ago. After a substantial introductory section dealing with the history of wine, its making, storage, and enjoyment, we're off. Starting with (where else?) France and Burgundy, each wine area is summarized in terms of its geography, climate, and preferred vines and the appellations, laws, and traditions that govern production. The discussion of Pomerol, for example, tells you a great deal in one short page. Even since 1994, when the fourth edition came out, vast changes have swept the wine world, and many parts of the atlas have been correspondingly completely reworked. South America, Canada, Southern France, Italy, Greece, Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Mediterranean are among the areas that have benefited. The regional maps that form the core of the book are a triumph of clarity. The whole production constitutes a brilliant achievement of organization and synthesis, forming an indispensable resource for any wine lover at all interested in where the wine they drink comes from and why it tastes the way it does.
There is also a pocket edition for about $10.
Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 2005 Edition : A Lively Guide by Kevin Zraly (24.95, $17 used)
- Kevin Zraly’s incomparable course (“One of the best start-from-scratch wine books ever written.”—Frank Prial, The New York Times) is still America’s top-selling guide to wine. In this year’s revised edition, Zraly takes a close look at America’s wines and their history, discussing varieties from all 50 states; his tips and guidelines for purchasing them will prove wonderfully invaluable. One thing hasn’t changed: Zraly’s inimitable, irreverent style. He answers every question about wine, offers the most up-to-date recommendations, provides advice on buying wine in stores and on the Internet, takes you on a country-by-country, region-by-region ratings tour of the latest vintages, and starts you on your way to becoming a wine connoisseur. Abundant full-color labels and maps complete the enticing picture. More current, more informative, more concise and precise than ever, this remains the wine guide against which all others are judged.
Kevin Zraly is the founder and teacher of the Windows on the World Wine School that has graduated more than 14,000 students. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Wine Council and the James Beard Award, among others. Kevin Zraly has been featured in The New York Times, People magazine, The Wall Street Journal, GQ magazine, Newsweek, and USA Today.
The Soul of a Chef - The Journey Toward Perfection by Michael Ruhlman ($10.50)
- Ruhlman, who is a CIA (Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY and St Helena, CA) graduate, observed seven chefs taking the CMC (Certified Master Chef) exam at the Hyde Park campus. About 170 chefs have taken the exam since 1981 and only 53 have passed. It is ten grueling days of lectures, menu design, and cooking. Many of the most well-known chefs don't even have a CIA degree, much less CMC accredidation. With only 53 such chefs in the world, one can imagine that the million or so others feel that they are managing well-enough without such silliness. Ruhlman goes through the test and then explores the workings of one of the hottest new restaurants in, of all places, Cleveland. He then goes on to The French Laundry in Napa Valley to observe and work with Thomas Keller at what some critics call the best restaurant in the world.
On Food and Cooking : The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee
- I used to have this next to my bed. MIT-trained chemical engineers are interested in wierd things and this answered many questions or as Arthur Boehm says: "What makes white meat white? Does searing really seal in flavor? Why is it that fruits ripen but vegetables don't? These and other food mysteries are conclusively solved in Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. A unique mix of culinary lore, food history, and scientific investigation, McGee's compellingly readable book explores every aspect of the food we eat: where it comes from, what it's made of, and how and why it behaves as it does when we bake, broil, steam, or otherwise ready it for the table. In addition to chapters on foods such as eggs, fruit, meat, and dairy products, McGee investigates wine, beer, and distilled liquors (the first alcoholic beverage was probably produced 10,000 years ago when some honey was forgotten); food additives (adulterated food has always been with us); and digestion and sensation (most of our food aversions are learned by taste-testing in childhood), among other topics. A section on nutrition reveals, among much else, that Americans have always been prey to food faddism. The book concludes with an easy-to-understand investigation of the basic food molecules--water, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats and oils--and a discussion of cooking methods and utensil materials. There's a lively chemistry primer guaranteed to make clear and enjoyable what was probably less so in the classroom. With more than 200 illustrations, including extraordinary photos of cellular food anatomy, the book will delight anyone who cooks or enjoys food."
The Curious Cook : More Kitchen Science and Lore by Harold McGee - A follow-up to the previous book. It explains that cooking with aluminum pots and pans doesn't cause Alzheimer's disease. This is only one of the curious facts that fill The Curious Cook--a book that persuasively demonstrates that science can enrich everyday experiences like cooking, eating, and living.
Cookwise : The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking by Shirley O. Corriher
- Cooking Editor's Recommended Book
Is it safe to let a biochemist into your kitchen? If it's Shirley Corriher, extend an open invitation. Her long-awaited book, Cookwise, is a unique combination of basic cooking know-how, excellent recipes--from apple pie to beurre blanc--and reference source. She makes the science of cooking entirely comprehensible, then livens it up with stories, such as when her first roast duck blew up because she overstuffed it and the fat from the bird caused it to expand beyond capacity. Food companies pay Corriher fancy fees to troubleshoot their recipes, and Cookwise puts her encyclopedic knowledge ever at your fingertips. If you want to know how to make the flakiest pastry, best-textured breads, delicious fruit desserts from fruit that's not fully ripe, impeccable sauces, and attractively bright cooked vegetables, this book contains the answers. "What this recipe shows" tells you up front what's useful in each of the book's 230-plus recipes. "At-a-glance," "What to do," and "Why" help you learn or troubleshoot in minutes. If eight steps to a perfect Juicy Roast Chicken are daunting, think of the delight of Rich Cappuccino Ice Cream in three steps or the seductive Secret Marquise in five.
The New Food Lover's Companion : Comprehensive Definitions of over 4,000 Food, Wine, and Culinary Terms (Barron's Cooking Guide) by Sharon Tyler Herbst - ($11.16) Packed with more than 4,000 terms, including 500 new ones, this newly expanded, A-to-Z guide defines and describes preparation and cooking methods, kitchen utensils, herbs and spices, cuts of meat, types of cheese and sausage, seafood, sauces, foreign food terms, unusual tropical fruits, and even gives basic descriptions of beers, wines, and cocktails. We use it all the time.
The Pocket Guide to French Food and Wine by Tessa Youell and George Kimball - This is a great addition to the volume above. Unfortunately it is out of print, but Amazon will query their network of used bookstores for you and send an update within one to two weeks.
Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins - About $12.00. From Amazon: If you want a fascinating food book, say Cheese Primer. For 20 years, Steve Jenkins has lead the way in upgrading the quality of cheese sold at fine food stores in the U.S. Finally, in this volume, he shares his encyclopedic knowledge. Jenkins tells all about cheesemaking at the commercial as well as the artistic level. Generously punctuated with maps and photos, the book includes all kinds of historical and other relevant information. Jenkins seems to describe every kind of cheese made in the U.S. and Europe, including when to eat them, how and with what. His passion and blunt opinions make it easy to travel the 548 pages of this book if you have even the smallest interest in cheese. The guide to pronunciation is particularly helpful.
After years of importing cheeses, exploring cheese-producing areas of the world, and setting up cheese counters at gourmet food shops, Steven Jenkins, our foremost cheese authority, decided to write it all down. CHEESE PRIMER tells you every thing you need to know about the hundreds of cheeses that have become available in this country. Region-by-region, Jenkins covers all the major cheeses from France, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, and the United States.
We say: It's a great book and they even have it used for a bit less.
