Layers of lies

Tom Scocca of Slate magazine is taking recipe writers to task. After reading countless recipes that assure you that you will get caramelized onions in as little as 10 minutes, Scocca finally snapped and tweeted an all-caps rant about it. He notes that even veteran cookbook authors make this claim: "Here's Madhur Jaffrey, from her otherwise reliable Indian Cooking, explaining… read more

The savory side of jams

For the past few years, home canning and preserving has been growing in popularity. As people master the basics like strawberry and raspberry jam, they look for new challenges. ABC News reports that increasingly, people are finding that outlet in savory jams. These semi-sweet concotions "occupy the space between chunky relishes made of pickled items and smoother spreads and purees"… read more

Featured Cookbooks & Recipes

At Eat Your Books we want to bring you the best recipes - our dedicated team searches out and finds online recipes excerpted from newly indexed cookbooks and magazines. And new recipes from the best blogs are indexed daily. Below you'll find this week's recommendations from the EYB team. Remember you can add any of these online recipes to your… read more

Jacques Pépin on “reality” cooking shows

Turn on any televised cooking program and you are likely to hear yelling--a lot of yelling. The drama drives ratings, but how much is what we are seeing like a real restaurant kitchen? If you ask Jacques Pépin, the answer is "not much." In a recent Daily Meal article, Pépin blasts this negative depiction of professional kitchens. While he admits… read more

The good, the bad and the ugly

Visit any supermarket produce department and you'll see beautifully arranged bins with towering mounds of perfectly formed, glossy fruits and vegetables. There is nary a blemish or mark on the produce. But as any gardener knows, not all cucumbers are straight, sometimes carrots look funny, and apples are frequently lopsided. A great many fruits and vegetables don't conform to the supermarket… read more

5,000 cookbooks and counting

Drum roll, please: we are thrilled to announce that we have indexed book number 5,000 in the EYB Library! So which book is lucky number 5,000? It's Monday Morning Cooking Club: The Feast Goes On, an Australian book that Yotam Ottolenghi calls "a remarkable excursion into the realm of comfort food." EYB indexers have been diligently working to reach this… read more

July 2014 cookbook roundup

Every month Susie Chang reviews new cookbook releases and notes trends in the United States. And she may also occasionally throw in a review of a "not-quite cookbook."  And for our non-U.S. members, Jane and Fiona provide similar reviews for new Canada, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand releases. US Oddly enough, the outdoorsy, spontaneous month of July brings a surprising… read more

Dinner with friends – potluck or theme?

My favorite way to see my friends is to get together for dinner.  I love going to other people's beautiful, clean houses and bringing dessert or drinks or sides.  I love having people to our messy, chaotic house and plying them with good things to eat and drink.  And I love summer, because that's when we have time to do… read more

31 ways to enjoy your morning cuppa

Coffee is enjoyed (some might say required) by millions of people every day. It's interesting to see how different cultures have put their distinctive mark on this stimulating beverage. Food Republic shared an appealing infographic that lists 31 different coffee drinks from around the world. While the last such photo depiction published here stirred a bit of controversy, this graphic doesn't make any bold… read more

Underappreciated summer vegetables

Summertime brings a plethora of vegetables. Many people eagerly await the first corn, tomatoes, and melons of the season. But as this articles explains, there are other great vegetables that get overlooked in the shadows of these more popular foods. Break out of your routine and try some of these delicious vegetables, starting with kohlrabi. Sometimes thought of as "the… read more

B-List cocktails make a comeback

Many factors have spurred the renaissance of classic cocktails over the last few years. Recipes have gone viral on social media, hipsters have brought back fashions including cocktails, and distilleries have brushed the dust off old recipes and reissued classic spirits (and other distilleries have reimagined them). Most bartenders can now make a proper Manhattan and martini, but those cocktails… read more

Why it’s better from scratch

Ivy Manning is a Portland, Oregon-based food and travel writer, food stylist, and cookbook author. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Cooking Light, Sunset Magazine, Fine Cooking, and Bon Appétit. Although her home base is in Oregon, Manning travels the globe studying the cuisines of diverse countries including Thailand, Italy, France, and Mexico. The author of last year's book on… read more

Featured Cookbooks & Recipes

Did you know adding online recipes to your EYB Bookshelf is a really great way to build your personal recipe collection? You can now do this even if you have a free membership! Try it out now and see how easy it is. Browse the recipes below, choose one that appeals, click on the link, and add it to your… read more

Me and my cookbooks – Diana Henry

We are back with another installment of the "Me and my cookbooks" series. Many EYB members have told us they enjoy meeting members and special guests through this feature. We'd love to introduce more people, so if you'd like to be featured, just email us at info@eatyourbooks.com. Today we highlight author and cookbook collector Diana Henry. Diana is no stranger to EYB Members;… read more

Cookbook store profile – The Cook Book Stall

It's time for another installment in the EYB series highlighting independent cookbook stores. Discover (or get reacquainted with) a store near your home - or plan a new target destination when you travel. To keep this feature vital, we're asking our members to help us. We already know of many great stores, (you can view the full list here), but… read more

The cilantro cuisines

I sometimes think of it as the "Cilantro belt" - the band of nations falling between 15 and 30 degrees north of the equator.  You know, Mexico, Cuba, Morocco, India, Thailand, and many many more.  It's not that all dishes from those countries use cilantro - they don't.  And it's not that other countries don't use cilantro- they do.  But they're… read more

Grain vs. grains

During the hot days of summer, cool salads feel just right and news feeds buzz with recipes for salads made with grains and grain products. The LA Times sings the praises of grain salads. Meanwhile, the NY Times is promoting cool noodle dishes as perfect summer food. This has all the makings of a classic East Coast/West Coast rivalry, in… read more

Five flavors to rule them all

Baskin-Robbins, the world's largest chain of ice cream specialty shops, is known for its famous "31" logo, which suggests a different flavor of ice cream available for each day of the month. However, the chain may want to winnow its lengthy list of flavors, as this Parade magazine article explains. It provides a map of each state's most popular flavors of… read more

Little known treasures

Some cookbooks become instant classics and profoundly influence generations of cooks. In the 1960s, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking became a bestseller and improved the cooking skills of legions. More recently, Ottolenghi took the world by storm, expanding the range of countless cooks. These and other classics sit on thousands of EYB members' Bookshelves. But other great… read more

The shape of things to come?

What happens when a rocket scientist applies his skills to cookware? You get a new saucepan that is up 40% more efficient than a conventional pan. The Flare cookware series, developed by Lakeland in conjunction with Dr. Thomas Povey of Oxford University, uses channels in the sides of the pan that allow more heat to enter the pan than a… read more

Life’s delicious messes

Indexed blog Food52 posted that we should "give up on clean hands and clean shirts" because it's cherry season. Contemplating the delicious mess of cherry pitting got us to thinking about other ingredients and foods that made messes in the kitchen but are so good they're worth it. The first task that came to mind was seeding a pomegranate, another… read more

Featured Cookbooks & Recipes

Whether they are from cookbooks, magazines, or blogs, all the recipes we feature in these weekly round-ups have online links so you can add any of them to your Bookshelf. Even if you have a free membership! But the recipes shown here are just the beginning. The EYB Library has over 143,000 online recipes to choose from including over 21,000… read more

Make room in the pantry for ajvar

Sometimes an ingredient or food product that was once only locally or regionally popular sweeps across the culinary world, like pimentón did a few years back. The Telegraph reports that a British chef is aiming to create a new such craze with a Balkan roasted pepper and aubergine relish called ajvar. Ajvar has been a pantry staple in Macedonia and surrounding areas since the time… read more

Camera cuisine

We've all heard the phrase "we eat first with our eyes." That has never been more true than in the digital age, when if a meal isn't on Instagram, it didn't really happen. Digital photography not only allows us to share (and perhaps overshare) our meals, it has also changed the way chefs approach their craft, according to Pete Wells… read more

Are cupcakes dead?

"The cupcake is dead." So says the tweet from Russ Parsons, food writer with the L.A. Times, with a link to an article that announces five foods that "could be the next cupcake." The post was in response to the news that Crumbs, a publicly-traded chain of cupcake shops, was closing all of its stores.  Other tweets echo the sentiment:… read more
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