Book Club Review: A History of the World in 6 Glasses

May 31, 2014 by 4 Comments

For May the Kitchen Reader book club selected reading is A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage. For our casual online club there is a new book selected for every month, each book is related to food, and members write a review on their blog during the last week of that month. If you are interested in joining, check out the website.

This was a pretty quick read for me, part of it is because the tone is very light, which makes sense as the author is an essayist who often writes articles for magazines. As you proceed through it, you get to pick up lots of interesting facts about how the six beverages of the book- beer, then wine, then liquor, then coffee, then tea, and then Coca Cola – was an incarnation of a certain time period of western history. Everything is easy to understand and follow, although at times information is just stated as a story or cause and effect without much more proof to argue that the statement or tale is true. But, there isn’t really anything controversial here. And even if there is sometimes missed opportunities, there are still plenty of fun stories and facts thrown in.

There is one particular quote that I wanted to point out, as I don’t want to give away all the good tidbits of the book, but that I think helps embody why this various liquid drinks are so important in human history:

“Unlike food, beverages can be genuinely shared.When several people drink beer from the same vessel, they are all consuming the same liquid; when cutting up meat, in contrast, some parts are deemed more desirable than others.As a result, sharing a drink with someone is a universal symbol of hospitality and friendship.”

It was true in each of the time periods, with each beverage, even if some were alcoholic, some were not, some were religious or intellectual or even initially for health reasons, several were even used as a form of currency, but all endured because of the role drinks lay in socializing.

Also interesting to me is that some of the social roles still remain today in our current society.

  • Beer remains seen as a “common man” drink that equalizes everyone. It may have also played a strong part in early human civilization settling down because the beer process makes water safer to drink. Also, people used to drink beers together from the same vessel using straws!
    Christina Collada from Google Places pouring the beer at the Guild Pub House We found a place called Tasting Arizona which offered both wine flights and beer flights. View while enjoying beer flight- you can see Snoopy Rock towards the right
  • Wine still carries to this day the air of civilized refinement from the Greeks (which probably began with the fact that wine production needs specific climate or trade, while beer is made from the much more common grain). When absorbed by the Romans, wine could emphasize social divisions based on how good your wine was (based on type and how old it was- something that still is intimidating/gives an air of judgement based on what you drink and snobbery today!).
    Tasting room stop before Sip McMinnville Wine and Food Classic: Anam Cara, where Et Fille gets their grapes for their Nicholas Pinot Noir... really liked Anam's clean bright Riesling and Mark II Vino Volo, A vacation starts with a wine flight while waiting for our flight in Seattle to get to Chicago
  • Distilled spirits are often still seen, unlike beer and wine, as a means for getting drunk. The distillation process from alchemical laboratories became dominant during the Age of Exploration, a reflection of how science and travel/navigation were becoming more intertwined – and it certainly helped that distilled alcohol worked well for long cruises in both being efficient as only small rations were needed and mixed with lemon or lime juice helped combat scurvy. The book went a little into how it also was a tool for social control – with a mention of slavery in rum production and only the vaguest hint of the effect to help subjugation with discovered civilizations in the New World. To balance that, although rum encouraged the slave trade, whiskey was a symbol of the pioneer spirit of America.
    American Whiskey Ginger by Bull Run Distilling, made with Temperence Trader American Whiskey
  • Coffee continue to be regarded now as the opposite of alcohol and a soberer (even though this isn’t true!) and the drink of those who are smart. Coffeehouses remain a gathering place for learning. This is where I noticed that the book does focus a great deal on Western Civilizations, as there are many different ways people of the worlds “take” their coffee, and I wish we could have explored that a little.
    Coffee with a heart... Kafae Boraan, Sook brewed ancient Thai coffee with condensed milk and sugar. Available hot or iced. It looks thick like an espresso, but it is sweetened up with that condensed milk and sugar, don't worry! This is also good with the Patanko and sankhaya.
  • Serving tea at home is still seen as a symbol of being genteel, probably stemming from its Asian ceremonial origins! Too bad though it has lost its ability to just be a whole new afternoon meal because I would like more accessible adorable dainty tea sandwiches and excuses for clotted cream.
    6/16/2008 Domo restaurant in Denver: enjoying tea in a handcrafted ceramic tea bowl Wave Restaurants accompaniments with tea: Sweets of Macaroons- sea salt and caramel, lemon, chocolate and berry , Scones- butter and orange-vanilla, Madeleine- vanilla and orange zest , Market fresh fruit tarts , Tea cakes- lemon-poppy seed and chocolate chip with Devonshire cream, lemon curd and strawberry jam
  • Coca Cola came from the trend at the time to market soda water as a health drink because of it’s refreshing bubbles similar to spring water. I totally admit first I laughed, and then I remembered that when I’m not feeling well I still rely on Sprite to help “settle my stomach”. I also admit that when I was in Atlanta I visited the Coca Cola museum and was surprised that it was pretty fun! I have to admit I didn’t get to finish reading the last chapter yet on globalization, but it’s pretty obvious it is true… have you heard the Coca Cola song for the World Cup, or the ad during the superbowl with America the Beautiful in different languages?

Next in June the book club reading is A Moveable Feast (Lonely Planet Travel Literature) published by Lonely Planet. It has a lot of essays in it by different authors and looks very interesting!

Signature

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: ,

Book Club Review From Scratch: Inside the Food Network

April 29, 2014 by 4 Comments

I took a break in March but am back in April, especially since the book was one I had recommended, From Scratch: Inside the Food Network  by Allen Salkin. I read this book and am writing this Book Review From Scratch: Inside the Food Network as part of the online book club the Kitchen Reader.

I first found out about this book during Feast, at the Feast Cookbook Social event where I met Allen Salkin and we chatted for a bit, and when I ordered the book he promised to autograph for me (which he did!).  The description of the book promises “Big personalities, high drama—the extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of the Food Network, now about to celebrate its twentieth anniversary: the business, media, and cultural juggernaut that changed the way America thinks about food.”

“In October 1993, a tiny start-up called the Food Network debuted to little notice. Twenty years later, it is in 100 million homes, approaches a billion dollars a year in revenue, and features a galaxy of stars whose faces and names are as familiar to us as our own family’s.

But what we don’t know about them, and the people behind them, could fill a book.

Based upon extensive inside access, documents, and interviews with hundreds of executives, stars, and employees all up and down the ladder, Allen Salkin’s book is an exhilarating roller-coaster ride from chaos to conquest (and sometimes back). “

The first thing you have to keep in mind is that this is not a book about food. It is a book about the Food Network. Based on that premise, it is going to focus a lot more on the business that is Food Network, and not about necessarily loving food or the Food Network stars.

Those elements are scattered in there as there certainly are Food Network stars that are the face of Food Network to the public, and there are drivers there at the network that do love food. But ultimately, both for better and for worse, the network rolls up into an entity that is more than its individuals and has it’s own identity and story.

This book is definitely focused on the story of the Food Network as a corporation. The book also is strongly about history – with a few interesting stories scattered in. This historical reporting does end up with areas that can be very dry or confusing in trying to track some of the behind the scenes players without stronger narratives to impress all the involved people into a reader’s memory. It is a bit like a documentary series that still needed a little more editing and organizing because it forgot that it was airing in episodes over a season and not all at one sitting.

I did learn a lot though. I never will look at Food Network or the Cooking Channel the same now. As much as they advertise themselves about being about food and loving food, the truth I took away from the book is that they are at its core middlemen peddlers. They are a business that showcases and sells to those who love food, but they are a business. It’s those in the trenches who are making the food on the shows that are the food lovers with passion, working their butt off to know food and educate and entertain. But, these same food lovers are also tasked to know and work the corporate game that is the modern Food Network.

In many ways the Food Network seemed like destiny. It did a lot of stumbling into itself and success often backwards and through luck and the perseverance of a few people at the right place at the right time who didn’t give up on Food Network despite its fumbling around.

Back at its founding (some of the stories of the immature programming seemed literally and amusingly skunkswork garage level), and the book argues even now (with most shows under a theme of undercover/fixing reality show or competition and many of its original and classic stars now “graduated” away) , the Food Network highest level management had/has a surprising lack of insightful vision. The book seems to imply that this is due to not understanding its audience and its own food experts or the current culinary scene because of a conservative parent company and somehow finding presidents that are business experts with no pulse line themselves to the food culture.

The book walks through in detail the shift over time from less and less education and more entertainment and marketing. Food Network had ridden the rising food culture wave from food and cooking being a chore hopefully outsourced to kitchen staff to dining and cooking being a leisure activity actively pursued. By being the window into the wave at the beginning, Food Network has even participated in influencing and forming the current culinary scene. However, as more players have now since been born from that wave,  it’s unclear where Food Network is going next and if is now in the falling action part of the story or about to rise, redefined, again.

This was a very interesting read,  but I would say the big personalities and high drama promised are not a strong thread to make this the engaging reading you may think it is. Set your expectations that this is more history book that has a few sidebar stories, and that you will learn more and be entertained less than the book description markets.

In honor of reading this book, I decided to try one of the top 30 most highly ranked recipes on the Food Network site. In my next cooking post tomorrow, I will be doing a Food Network chef guacamole bar with 3 guacamole, 1 recipe each from classic celebrity chefs Alton Brown, Bobby Flay, and Rick Bayless.

This recipe I thought was a perfect example of what this book was pointing out. This recipe is from Aarti Sequeira, who won the 2010/Season 6 series The Next Food Network Star. This recipe is one of the fan favorites, with more than 600 comments from fans, and is simple, approachable, but yet opens up a whole new world of flavor – kale is a relatively recent ingredient to home kitchens, as before it was most used as a decorative element at Pizza Hut salad bars! If her name isn’t familiar… well now you understand the dilemma of Food Network in nurturing and developing the next generation and planning programming.

Aarti Sequeira’s Massaged Kale Salad

Ingredients:

  • 1 bunch kale (black kale is especially good), stalks removed and discarded, leaves thinly sliced
  • 1 lemon, juiced
  • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
  • Kosher salt
  • 2 teaspoons honey
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 mango, diced small (about 1 cup)
  • Small handful toasted pepitas ( pumpkin seeds), about 2 rounded tablespoons

Directions:

  1. In large serving bowl, add the kale, half of lemon juice, a drizzle of oil and a little kosher salt. Massage until the kale starts to soften and wilt, 2 to 3 minutes. Set aside while you make the dressing.
  2. In a small bowl, whisk remaining lemon juice with the honey and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Stream in the 1/4 cup of oil while whisking until a dressing forms, and you like how it tastes.
  3. Pour the dressing over the kale, and add the mango and pepitas. Toss and serve.

For May the Kitchen Reader book club selected reading is A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage. For our casual online club there is a new book selected for every month, each book is related to food, and members write a review on their blog during the last week of that month. If you are interested in joining, check out the website.

Signature

Filed Under: Food and Drink Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Book Club Review: Below Stairs and Recipe for Escoffier Sauce

February 27, 2014 by 5 Comments

For February, the book club Kitchen Reader selected the book  Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Story that Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey by Margaret Powell. Margaret was born in 1907 England and in this book, tells of her time working as a Kitchen Maid and eventually as a Cook, and generally what it was like be a servant in those times.

This memoir starts with her childhood for a few chapters, just to establish her upbringing with her hardworking parents, the fact that they were poor and yet how even in poverty there are joys, not just hardships.

She recalls when going to school “you took a piece of bread and butter with you, wrapped in a piece of paper, and gave it to the teacher to mind, because many of us children were so hungry that we used to nibble it during the course of the morning”. Another time, wanting to go to the circus, and in order to raise the money for her and her siblings to do so (half a crown), they would collect manure.

Yet despite this, she ends positively, with how great school and learning was, or sighing how the circus was like a fairytale and she thought all night about the experience. This is a theme throughout the book- terrible conditions, hard work, but also small joys.

Book Jacket for Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey

Despite the mention of Upstairs, Downstairs and Downtown Abbey on the cover, it should be clear that this book is the story of Margaret, not of her employers- there is some reflection on them, but as she changes employers (and she does not ever work for the aristocracy- there are no Lords or Ladies here) the story is about her experiences, not their scandals.

Even at that level though, being a servant wasn’t just about being poor. It was about being treated as a whole other type of human because of her class. This included being looked down and talked to by her employers in that she can’t just hand them a newspaper. She was admonished to put it on a silver platter first before handing it to them.

Her room was so cold that she had to break a layer of ice to wash up in the morning. By the way, the room is probably furnished with the employing family’s cast-offs they don’t want – such as blankets that are plush curtains with the bobbles still on them.

As a kitchen maid every day she had to undo and then redo the bootlaces of the daughter and nanny in order to iron them (!) as part of her routine in scrubbing and cleaning shoes.

Despite all that, small freedoms provided a small degree of identity and line that was hers. For instance, she seemed to revel in victories like being able to successfully move from the lowest servant position, kitchen maid, to cook, and move from house to house when she wanted a change. She was able to get away without wearing her cap as part of her uniform, she was able to sometimes negotiate a day off a week as part of her employment, and push back against being simply told to move to the countryside with the family but downgraded as a house parlourmaid instead of the cook position she had.

Johannes Vermeer - Het melkmeisje. The Milkmaid (De Melkmeid or Het Melkmeisje), sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a domestic kitchen maid by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Margaret has an awareness of social unjustice, and the divide among those who have and those who haven’t. There are many times she remarks upon the differences between Us and Them-

“Perhaps if we had been allowed to mix, we would have become quite friendly but I don’t think so because they were brought up with an ingrained idea that they were a different class of people from us altogether.”

She observes

“It was the opinion of ‘Them’ upstairs that servants couldn’t appreciate good living or comfort, therefore they must have plain fare, they must have dungeons to work in and to eat in, and must retire to cold spartan bedrooms to sleep. After all, what’s the point of spending money making life easier and more comfortable for a lot of ungrateful people who couldn’t care less what you did for them? They never tried, mind, to find out if we would have cared more by making our conditions good and our bedrooms nice places in which to rest.”

At another point, she notes

“In fact, all my life in domestic service I’ve found that employers were always greatly concerned with your moral welfare. They couldn’t have cared less about your physical welfare; so long as you were able to do the work, it didn’t matter in the least to them whether you had back-ache, stomach-ache, or what ache, but anything to do with your morals they considered was their concern. That way they called it ‘looking after the servants’.

They didn’t worry about the long hours you put in, the lack of freedom and poor wages, so long as you worked hard and knew that God was in Heaven and that He’d arranged for it that you lived down below and laboured, and that they lived upstairs in comfort and luxury, that was all right with them.”

She is observant and the tone in the book is very direct, like a great grandmother talking and not caring what you think, just telling it like she sees it. There is bitterness, but also some reflection that ends in admitting that perhaps her view is wrong, and also humor.

There are no specific recipes in the book, although she talks about a breakfasts of milk pudding or macaroni cheese or cottage pie, whatever was left over from the night before.

She recalled the fancy plating of a dish of cutlets where the mashed potatoes would be rolled in egg and breadcrumb balls slightly larger then walnuts and then arranged in a pyramid on a silver dish while the cutlets would stand on end with a little white frill on each bone all around, with parsley at intervals.

I think I read that description several times, trying to picture the craziness here.

In the book, she mentions her invention of her famous kipper savoury. It involved kipper that had not been eaten being tossed  into the pig bucket, but when told that the Madam expected her to use that leftover kipper for dinner, she fishes it out, cleans it with soap!

Then, to disguise the soap, she covers it up with

“that good old stand-by, Escoffier sauce. It’s a marvelous thing for disguising the flavor of something you don’t want noticed. I sent it up well garnished and decorated, and to my surprise Mrs Bernard sent the parlourmaid down with a compliment. She said, ‘Tell the cook that’s the most delicious savoury we’ve ever eaten.'”

So, what is this Escoffier sauce?

Recipe for Escoffier sauce, which I made vegetarian with tofu on white rice

Apparently, it’s a sauce that is rich, dark brown, thick, slightly sweet and salty with a hint of tart sourness from the wine. It is apparently associated with Auguste Escoffier, a famous French chef who organized French cooking methods, including declaring the French five mother sauces. I can see why well to do households, even small ones, needed a cook and it wasn’t considered a hobby or passion like now- cooking anything is time consuming!

Recipe for Escoffier sauce

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup Brown Sauce
    • 2 tablespoons Butter
    • 2 tablespoons All-Purpose Flour
    • 2 cups Beef Flavored Bouillon, or Beef Stock. I used vegetable.
  • 1 onion, finely chopped (approximately 1 cup)
  • 1 clove minced garlic (about 1 1/2 teaspoon)
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cup red wine
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions:

  1. For the Brown Sauce: In a saucepan melt the 2 tablespoons  butter, and then stir in the 2 tablespoons flour. Cook and stir over medium-low heat for 15 to 20 minutes or until browned. Add the 2 cups stock and stir constantly as you bring to boil. Boil 3 to 5 minutes. Then reduce heat and simmer, stirring frequently, for about 30 minutes or until reduced to about 1 cup. At the end, the sauce should be slightly thinner than gravy.
    Recipe, making Escoffier sauce- first make the Brown Sauce from butter, flour, and stock into a reduced gravy Recipe, making Escoffier sauce- first make the Brown Sauce from butter, flour, and stock into a reduced gravy Recipe, making Escoffier sauce- first make the Brown Sauce from butter, flour, and stock into a reduced gravy
  2. Now, for the Escoffier sauce. Saute onions and garlic in butter, add wine, and simmer for 4 minutes. Put together all the remaining ingredients (I seasoned the brown sauce, and then added the onion/garlic wine sauce after it finished simmering) and simmer over low heat for 5 minutes.
    Recipe: Escoffier sauce in progress Recipe: Escoffier sauce in progress Recipe: Escoffier sauce in progress

It’s then your choice what to serve with this Escoffier sauce. She used kipper, which is apparently some sort of herring like, oily fish. To feed vegetarian F, besides using vegetarian broth and vegetarian worcestershire sauce, I served it with Quorn Chik’n Tenders or sliced firm Tofu, which I let simmer in the sauce for a bit and served over jasmine rice.

Escoffier sauce with tofu, on white rice. Vegetarian, easy recipe

I read this book as part of the online book club the Kitchen Reader. For our casual online club there is a new book selected for every month, each book is related to food, and members write a review on their blog during the last week of that month. If you are interested in joining, check out the website.

For March the book club selected reading is The Mere Mortal’s Guide to Fine Dining: From Salad Forks to Sommeliers, How to Eat and Drink in Style Without Fear of Faux Pas by Colleen Rush. I have at least two business trips I need to take in March, so I’m pretty unsure I’ll have time to read the book, but maybe you would be interested in joining our online book club!

Signature

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Book Review: The Flavor Thesaurus Review, and Cumin Smashed Potatoes

January 31, 2014 by 10 Comments

For February, the book club selection is The Flavor Thesaurus: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes and Ideas. My The Flavor Thesaurus review, at a high level,  is that you should go in with the expectation that this is a reference book, not a cookbook.

Inside its covers, the London author Niki Segent, has compiled a list of 99 main flavors, which then translate into 99 chapters. In each chapter she explores how the chapters titular ingredient might play with the other 98. For each pair, the exploration is usually in a few sentences to perhaps a tangential story or referring to a general recipe guideline that might be 1/3 of a page.

Based on this, the book is not one you really can sit down and read. Instead, it is one you pick up to uncover some inspiration for some interesting flavor combinations.

For example, her highlight of chicken going with walnut was inspiring to me. She references the kormas of northern India which I have experienced before in thick luxurious sauces, but she also introduced the Turkish dish of Circassian chicken with shredded poached chicken at room temperature with a sauce of onions, garlic, ground walnuts, soaked bread and maybe ground coriander and cinnamon.

She also mentions satsivi from Georgia, with its walnut and spices sauces that is supplemented with sour flavorings like vinegar or pomegranate juice! I had never heard of these before, and it sounds incredibly interesting.

Other ah hahs included beef and cinnamon (citing a Elizabeth David recipe for pasticcio with beef ragu flavored with orange zest and cinnamon), blue cheese topping some mashed avocado on toasted brioche, cumin and potatoes or anchovy and potatoes (the latter exemplified by a dish called Jansson’s Temptation, a Swedish variation on potato dauphinoise), watercress with blue cheese (like with Stilton) and walnuts (say a walnut bread, and/or walnut oil), and the list goes on and on.

This is an excellent book to quickly look up when you have an ingredient you want to use and are looking to experiment with a little twist from what you know. There are not many recipes, and any that are listed are more very casually written like it is part of a conversation you are having- folded right into conversation of the paragraph summation of two flavors together.

So you will probably finding yourself searching online for more after an inspiration, as I’ll be doing with some of the examples I gave above, or just experimenting on your own. The book is definitely not showing you what or how to do anything, only offering ideas for you to grow for yourself with a few guiding hints to start your quest. If you are looking at this book as a start of thinking about what to make, and not to give you an actual meal, than the book will work for you.

I tried out one of the flavor combinations that was suggested- cumin and potatoes. The suggestion was simple- boil some potatoes, and then afterwards I roasted it in an olive oil with cumin. I used 4 medium sized potatoes, which can serve 2-4.

Flavor Inspiration: Crispy Cumin Smashed Potatoes

Smashed potatoes with olive oil and cumin Smashed potatoes with olive oil and cumin
Ingredients:

  • 4 medium sized potatoes, though you can also use half a dozen baby potatoes or a dozen fingerling
  • 6 tablespoons of Olive Oil
  • Ground Cumin – 3/4 tablespoon, divided into 1/2 and 1/4
  • Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Boil the potatoes- your choice on whether you want to peel them or not, depending on the type of potato. I like them with the skin on, and in this case I was using gold potatoes. Start with cold water and the potatoes in a pot with enough water to just cover the potatoes and a bit of salt, and then bring to boil with no lid. You know they are done when you poke them with a fork and there is no resistance.
  2. In a pan, heat the oil until it is hot but not smoking. Add 1/2 tablespoon of cumin and cook until fragrant, about one minute. If you’d like here, you can also add garlic
    olive oil and cumin, preparing to put on boiled potatoes
  3. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. On a baking pan covered with aluminum foil, take the potatoes and using another pan or pot or other cutting board, smash the potato down to flatten it so it is maybe an inch tall. Now pour the cumin oil over the potatoes. Using a spatula, lift the bottom of each potato and tilt the pan so the oil coats both side. Because of the size of my potatoes, I used about 1 1/2 tablespoon for the top and bottom for each potato, but you may be able to make do with less depending on your potatoes if they are smaller. Sprinkle a little more cumin on top, as well as the salt. Do a few turns of the freshly ground pepper- you don’t want to use too much as you want the cumin to stand out.
    Smashed potatoes with olive oil and cumin
  4. Roast in the oven at 450 degrees F for 35 minutes or so until browned and crispy at various edges. Serve with your choice of protein- be it as breakfast potatoes with sunny side eggs to kickstart your morning, or at dinner with your protein and veggies.
    Smashed potatoes with olive oil and cumin Smashed potatoes with olive oil and cumin

I read this book as part of the online book club the Kitchen Reader. For our casual online club there is a new book selected for every month, each book is related to food, and members write a review on their blog during the last week of that month. If you are interested in joining, check out the website.

For February the book club selected reading is Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Story that Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey by Margaret Powell.

Signature

Filed Under: Book Review, Cooking, Food and Drink Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Book Club Review: In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite

December 31, 2013 by 3 Comments

So, I totally missed November’s book club assignment! With travel for a wedding, vacation, work travel (and preparing for that work travel), and then Thanksgiving, November really flew by. But I’m back! For December’s book club pick, we were free to read any cookbook we wanted.  I decided to write about In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark, writer of the food column “A Good Appetite” in the New York Times.

I don’t know if this really counts as a traditional cookbook, though it does offer 150 recipes… so cookbook? Yet, instead of the traditional just all recipes with beautiful photos, the book offers lots of stories. Rather than recipes being the only thing given, there are so many kitchen and eating tales, and the recipe is the natural ending for each food memory essay. Each recipe is preceded with a tale of how it was inspired, and/or how it tastes and how it will transport you to a happy place. Unlike most cookbooks where I browse through looking at titles of recipes, this is one where I remember the story of inspiration or the flavors described and go seeking the matching recipe.

In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite- I think the cover photo is her Comte Grilled Cheese with Cornichon Spread. Photo Credit Con Poulos
In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite- Photo Credit Con Poulos. I think the cover photo is her Comte Grilled Cheese with Cornichon Spread. 

The chapters are short- about 12 chapters covering Breakfast, Vegetables, Fish, Chicken, Other Proteins, Things with Cheese, Sandwiches, Fried Foods, Holiday Food, Desserts, Pie, and Cocktails. Each chapter offers about a dozen recipes, although there are also variations to them added.

Before each recipe are ~2 pages that go into the detail of the experience of making the dish, or the first time she had the dish and how she cobbled together this re-creation. She can never just follow a recipe without tinkering with it based on what she has in her kitchen or because she follows flavors back to origin countries and is inspired to add more- which made this book very much like one of short stories, with each recipe a journey.

That’s a very high level summary- but what really sets Melissa apart is her writing.

I happen to a very visual person and really need photos to make me crave (part of the reason why I started food blogging was to help track the various photos I take of food memories). If you look at all my other cookbooks, they are always full of enviable beautiful food photography. When I first borrowed this book from the library to see what it was like, I was disappointed with the lack of photos. Then I started reading it, and I realized I was only half-way through and bookmarking half the recipes. I needed to just sit and cook from my own well loved, dog eared worn copy of the book.

No photos are ever needed- her detailed, descriptive writing are enough to convince you of the allure of the recipe. Also, there is the way in only 2 recipes she sounds like your best friend who can cook amazing meals and does not hold back on secrets and tips. She is immediately endearing and makes you immediately want to eat what she’s writing about.

Photo Credit Matthew Benson, photo of Melissa Clark from book jacket of In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite, 150 Recipes & Stories About the Food You Love.
Back cover/author Melissa Clark of In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, Photo Credit Matthew Benson

I want to be her friend. First, she has a whole chapter devoted to things with cheese. Second, she also says she almost broke up with her husband on their first date when she found out he doesn’t eat cheese… I should admit that in my early 20s, despite being a wonderful friend who supported me and dragged me outside into the world after a breakup, I knew deep in my heart I could never be close friends with a girl because she hated cheese. I still feel guilty for that debt of gratitude for helping me move on but then unceremoniously dropping her out of my life after I recovered. But… cheese (I realize now with vegetarian practically vegan F, karma did get me back- though at least he eats most cheese).

As an example of how Melissa Clark charmed me, she writes about having breakfast for dinner: “One thing about breakfast for dinner is that it’s best made for an intimate number of people, preferably one… Eating cheese-topped scrambled eggs by yourself with the newspaper and a glass of wine will heal all the evils of your day, and you can assemble it in about six minutes flat… As opposed to dinner, breakfast has fewer moving parts to keep track of… it’s nowhere near as complex as mincing garlic, chopping onions and vegetables, and sauteing them all to perfect gold before adding canned tomatoes or fish or what have you. Like stretch jeans and dim lighting, breakfast is forgiving.”

This is then followed by amazing savory breakfast recipes like Buttery Polenta with Parmesan and Olive Oil- Fried Eggs and Swiss Chard, or a Creme Brulee French Toast with Orange Blossom Water, or Baked Flounder with Eggs, or Pesto Scrambled Eggs with Fresh Ricotta (recipe shared below by an adorable Melissa at home in the video. There’s a whole set of videos by Melissa at the New York Times which humorously, plays really whimsical music during the videos). I was soooo hungry reading these, and I’m not even usually a breakfast person (I love dinner most of all).

Each recipe only takes 5 steps or less, and are straightforward. Another ingenious part of this cookbook, besides her warm and inviting writing, is the combination of flavors that also is unique to Melissa and these recipes. She goes Asian with Coconut Fish Strew with Basil and Lemongrass inspired by trying to stretch leftover tom yum soup takeout into another dinner meal. She users one of her favorite pantry items, adobo sauce, to create an almost mole-like flavor in Spiced Chipotle Honey Chicken Breasts with Sweet Potatoes. She mixes up two worlds entirely with a Crispy Tofu with Chorizo and Shiitakes.

She takes Swedish influence from an ex with Max’s Artic Char with Egg Lemon Dragon Sauce, and introduces us to Pan Bagnat (a tuna and vegetable sandwich) from Nice. She shares a secret from an Austrian Chef for perfect light schnitzel by swirling oil as she recounts a recipe for Crisp Chicken Schnitzel with Lemony Spring Herb Salad.

She figures out how to make Lamb Tagine with Apricots, Olive, and Buttered Almonds, but using a deep Dutch oven or cast-iron pot, after combing through 30 recipes for tagine and cherry picking from them all to make the recipe to rule them all, all while never reaching for specialized kitchen equipment, or fancy techniques. Even though in one chapter she mentions she was gifted a stainless steel spaetzle maker, her recipe directions for Homemade Spaetlze with Browned Onions, Swiss chard, and Emmentaler only use a skillet, large bowls, and substitutes the spaetzle maker with a colander.

In trying to make Turkish mock manti, she researched multiple bloggers  to come up with Pasta with Turkish-Style Lamb, Eggplant, and Yogurt Sauce to re-create the manti that “as I remembered, the butter ran down the snowy yogurt in thin golden streams, pooling delectably around the pasta. As with the manti, butter and yogurt melded into a rich sauce, generously gilding the lamb, pasta, and in this case, eggplant with garlicky abandon.”

Drooool…

In her sandwich chapter, she references her mother’s sandwich theory of life, which she distills to “While the act of eating, like conversation, is comfort, the content should be an adventure- transporting and exciting, not dull and predictable”

Figgy Piggy Drumsticks and Thigh recipe, Photo Credit Matthew Benson for In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark
Figgy Piggy Drumsticks and Thigh, from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite. Photo Credit Matthew Benson

She introduces a whole new level of fried cheese with a Pan Fried Cheese with Anchovy Date Salad. There’s also a recipe for Deep-Fried Bourbon Peach Pies, and also an Un-Pumpkin Pie (Caramelized Butternut Squash Pie with Brandy). Also, she mentions Coconut Hot Chocolate with a Meringue Topping, and Coconut Egg Nog (recipe which she shared on her blog here).

About filling her refrigerator with various jars of condiments, such as nine kinds of mustard, she writes “I’m cultivating a prodigious collection of condiments… this carefully built up inventory (certain to keep us in jalapeño jelly and salted capers for the better part of a nuclear winter)… for someone who cooks a lot, an arsenal of strongly flavored condiments is a powerful secret weapon. Even when there is nothing in the house I can whip up a meal from the contents of many jars mixed with pasta or meat excavated from the freezer. Some of my best culinary feats have come out of such condiment alchemy.”

There are practical tips as well- for an Extra-sharp Leeks Vinaigrette inspired by a dish she had by a friend with a Parisian mustards, she adapts with American supermarket mustard. And she’s very approachable- as in one chapter, she talks about how “Corn on the cob. Butter. Dental floss. It’s an honored summer trinity that I look forward to every year.” and from there is inspired to find a way to eat the kernals without the fibers, producing Brown Buttered Corn that she samples too much of to now serve with dinner for her and her husband, so she turns it into a Broiled Stripe Bass with Brown Butter corn Sauce.

Don’t you wish you were one of her friends that she writes about, such as when she writes (before introducing a dreamy Cheesy Baked Pumpking with Gruyere fondue recipe) that her friend’s sister “Susan is the kind of person who slathers her toast with so much butter you can see it rise up in white waves from the side view.”? I would love to be described so eloquently.

Are you not sold on wanting to own, or at least read this In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite cookbook?

If you are interested in the online book club the Kitchen Reader, the gist of our casual club is there is a new book selected for every month, each book is related to food, and members write a review on their blog during the last week of that month. Except for December which is open-ended, it’s interesting to read the round-up of reviews at the beginning of the month and see what other members have thought! For January the book club selected reading is The Flavor Thesaurus: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes and Ideas.

Anyway- what’s your favorite cookbook, and why is it your favorite?

Signature

Filed Under: Book Review, Cooking Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »