Hoppin John’s Lowcountry Cooking cookbook played a hearty cornbread role twenty years ago in putting hyper-regional low-country cooking on the nationwide map — and stone ground grits on fine dining menus (thank you, John Martin Taylor, however can we thank you). But back then, if you didn’t live in a grits-friendly community, you weren’t likely to have access to much more than generic boxes of the “quick” or “instant” version. “What’s THAT?!” kids in my L.A. cooking classes say whenever I pull out a box (they always love them).
Continue Reading...
At a moment in our culinary history when even our everyday weeknight dinner focus — or fuss, depending on your recipe perspective — is on (more) sustainable, farmers market-friendly, nose-to-tail cooking, we were curious what we might find among the pages of a modern Betty Crocker cookbook. Slow-cooker pig trotters with Weiser Farm potatoes? Right. But surely, at least no more powdered mashed potatoes?
Continue Reading...
“A proper English pub is not like a tavern or dive bar in the United States. It’s not like anything else, anywhere. I feel a different energy when I pop in midday to a shabby bar in New York. Sure, English pubs can be dark and dingy and odd. But that’s the fun bit. The familiar bit. You feel comfortable there, you kind of become a part of the furniture. Pubs are beautiful in their way — Victorian places lovingly battered by their customers.”
Continue Reading...
We — yeah, really me, myself and I — like to think of Dining With the Washingtons as the cookbook antidote to all of those “breaking” news stories on what the presidential candidates are eating on the campaign trail. (In a nutshell, fast food: Burgers, hot dogs, fries and plenty of Pizza Ranches on the Republican side.) Nothing like an election year to get you back in that good old-fashioned cooking mood.
Continue Reading...
Alton Brown’s just-released Good Eats 3: The Later Years is, as we are told on the front jacket flap, The End. Per Brown: “Everyone knows that part three is the end (unless, of course, you’re Bond or Potter), and expectations run high.” Yes, after ten years of watching Brown investigate everything from the humble cracker (p. 174) to oeufs à la niege (poached egg-shaped meringues floating in crème anglaise, p. 376), expectations for this cookbook are high.
Continue Reading...
There are a handful of cookbook authors — Diana Kennedy (hyper local Mexican cuisine), Maida Heatter (home baking), Paula Wolfert (Moroccan cuisine) — whose personal obsession not only with cooking, but truly with a culinary culture, is so focused, so resolute, that when they finally release another cookbook, there really isn’t much to review. Cookbooks like Wolfert’s latest,The Food of Morocco.
Continue Reading...
Really good comfort food is both nostalgic *and* tastes great. Not so great (anymore) comfort food gets points on the nostalgia side — mom’s lasagna at your first slumber party, the sweet potato casserole at grandmom’s every Thanksgiving — but falls short on the still-really-great-tasting aspect today. It should be an easy tweak here and there kind of fix, right?
Continue Reading...
Will we ever see the day when a whole grain baking book completely omits the word “healthy” in one of its many thinly veiled forms (health-conscious, nutritious, guilt-free)? Ancient Grains for Modern Meals gets pretty close. Most of the health-touting is on the publisher’s sales pitch side in those book jacket flaps and press releases. Turn the page for the review in today’s LA Weekly.
Continue Reading...
04 Oct 2010, Posted by admin in MEET, 0 Comments
Diana Kennedy. Those two words mean esquite expert to some, proper tamale-making instructor to others, or as so many have dubbed her, simply the “Julia Child of Mexican cuisine.” That last one is the only title that the pedigreed author of the new cookbook Oaxaca al Gusto doesn’t deserve, as Kennedy is so much more than simply a reference point. For starters, that this book was published by an academic press, the University of Texas Press, is not incidental. In the Introduction, Kennedy says the seeds for that mole verde Oaxaqueño (green Oaxacan mole) began in 1994, when the governor asked her to catalog the state’s regional foods.
Continue Reading...
Back cover cookbook accolades usually offer little more than a glimpse into the author’s connections, be them personal or professional, though it’s no secret they’re typically chosen for their relevance to the book. In Krystina Castella’s A World of Cake: 150 Recipes for Sweet Traditions From Cultures Near and Far, the kudos are an odd mixed bag. Baking Queen Mother Dorie Greenspan offers a paragraph of praise alongside Anne Byrn, she of just-doctor-the-damn-Duncan-Hines-cake-mix fame. And so a well researched, thoughtfully organized, almost documentary-like survey of cakes around the world by someone who has written several dessert books (Booze Cakes, Crazy About Cupcakes), perhaps best politely described as whimsical, was exactly — but then again not quite — what we expected.
Continue Reading...
