Where are the summer cocktails?

May 9, 2012 by
 |  One Comment  |  Leave Comment
I'm a bit late with this week's post.  It's because I'm in the final throes of the summer cookbook roundup, that mad mid-May marathon smackdown from which just ten perfect summer cookbooks will emerge on NPR's summer recommendation list.  (All the runner-ups will appear in a shortlist on my blog). I can't say what the theme is, or give away… read more

Girl trouble

April 30, 2012 by
 |  2 Comments  |  Leave Comment
We had no idea what we were getting into when the blog post on recipes that fail went up last week.  What spawned the controversy was a single phrase I put in at the end of the piece: "the home cook will blame herself [for the failures of the recipe]." It was then that one reader on a cookbook forum… read more

Epic fail – anatomy of the recipe that didn’t

April 26, 2012 by
 |  5 Comments  |  Leave Comment
I recently tested a recipe of such surpassing inscrutability that I felt it merited a post of its own.  Like last week's memorable disaster it was a sort of pie.  But unlike last week's, the fault could not be chalked up to user error. This one was a pork pie, with ground meat enclosed in puff pastry (yum! I thought.  Foolproof!).… read more

First-love cookbooks

April 23, 2012 by
 |  7 Comments  |  Leave Comment
I don't know about you, but when I first learned to cook I had no idea what to look for in a cookbook.  I had my old roommate Conrad's 365 Ways to Cook Chicken on permanent loan, and I'd been given The Essentials of Italian Cooking.  But from that point on, it was pure speculation. I bought Salad, by Amy… read more

When the pie hits the floor…the occupational hazards of cookbook reviewers

April 16, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
I am testing pies this week.  (Yes, I know, poor me.  Taking one for the team again.)  Today was key lime tart and strawberry-rhubarb crumble pie. All day I made dough and fillings.  The tart dough and filling for the key lime came together in an instant, with enough leftovers to make a second small tart--luckily, as it turned out.… read more

Read this post! Bossy cookbook titles

April 10, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
Every once in a while you come face to face with your own subtle biases.  When I'm reviewing, I hunt hard for them...I figure that to be aware of a bias is a big step towards neutralizing it.  But the one I discovered this week was a new one. It arose when restaurateur Zakary Pelaccio's book crossed my desk.  "Eat… read more

One animal books

April 2, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
It used to be that if you wanted to find that familiar diagram of a bovine, carved up with dotted lines into "rump," "loin," "plate," "brisket", you'd find yourself heading back to the Joy of Cooking, which was the last word in pretty much everything.  Nowadays, the Joy of Cooking--for all its many virtues--isn't the last word in anything, and primal-cut… read more

New Season Cookbooks Preview 2012

March 31, 2012 by
 |  2 Comments  |  Leave Comment
As the seasons change it's high time for a peek ahead to the cookbooks coming round the corner, including a veritable parade of big titles. These are some of ones Susie has spotted that are coming out shortly in North America, the UK and Australia, including a few interesting non-cookbooks. North America Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel… read more

The selling of style

March 22, 2012 by
 |  3 Comments  |  Leave Comment
Something odd is going on in cookbook merchandising, and I'm trying to understand it. We're all familiar with the explosion of food websites and food blogs in the last 10 years and their inevitable transition into print. From Heidi Swanson and the Tipsy Baker to Food52 and Serious Eats, there's an abundance of popular online hosts who've turned author, and… read more

Matters of taste

March 12, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
Strangely enough, in just this past week I've seen two very different books on the scientific basis of taste. One looks at taste from a human-centered point of view. Barb Stuckey's a professional food developer.  Taste What You're Missing is a popular-science romp through the five senses, with lots of fun experiments to try at home (dye your tongue blue and… read more

One recipe cookbooks

March 5, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
When you bought the cookbook, you were sure it was forever.  You browsed through it on the first day, turning down pages or maybe sticking post-its on the pages.  Within a week you had tried a couple of the recipes and while they weren't all great, one of them knocked your socks off.  I'll have to remember that, you said… read more

Health food, then and now

February 27, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
In the mail the other day came a book whose title struck me as odd:  500 of the Healthiest Recipes and Health Tips You'll Ever Need.  I wasn't sure, for a moment, what made it so odd.  But then I realized it was that "health food," as a term, isn't something we hear about so much these days.  Sure, we… read more

Have airplane food, will travel

February 17, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
It's midwinter break, and every other year that means a trip to Arizona to see my favorite in-laws, Grandma and Grandpa B. Unfortunately, it also means a long, cramped, economy flight with only two prospects: overpriced, mediocre snacks in the cabin, or overpriced, mediocre meals in the terminal.  Although there is decent food in Dallas/Ft Worth terminal, where we'll be… read more

Labors of love

February 14, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
Along with our own Jane Kelly and 248 others, I attended the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference over the weekend. It was just as I'd hoped--good company, stimulating panel discussions, excellent food. Among the panelists was my provocateuse du jour, Julia Usher--the author responsible for last week's Valentine's pledge, in which I promised to make fancy little heart-shaped cookies come hell or high water.… read more

Fancy cookies for Valentines big and small.

February 6, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
I have to confess I'm not really that great at holiday food projects.  Every year I want to make an Epiphany cake, but never do since we don't follow any ecclesiastical calendar here and I never know when to do it.  I sort of wanted to make wings for the Superbowl, but one kid had an ear infection and I… read more

Just for show

January 31, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
When you have several hundred cookbooks (or even over a thousand, as I know some of you EYBers do!), it's hard to admit that some of your books aren't for actual cooking. But it's true, isn't it?  There's at least a half-dozen books on my shelf that are strictly for looking at.  I've never even contemplated attacking one of the… read more

The matter of exotics

January 23, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
Happy Year of the Dragon, everybody!  Today, there are dragons in every Chinatown and every Chinese storefront.  There are even dragons in every Chinese restaurant, in the form of xiao long bao ("little dragon buns" or Shanghai soup dumplings.  Actually pork.)  or maybe "Dragon Meets Phoenix" (Actually shrimp and chicken).  I think this betrays a certain fascination with exotica, or at least… read more

An ode to culinary bookstores

January 17, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
My son and I spent the last few days in San Francisco, that gastronomic paradise, because I had a couple of book readings and a companion ticket burning a hole in my pocket.  What a splendid town for a pair of adventurous eaters!  We stuffed ourselves with tacos and dim sum and Bi-Rite ice cream, sushi and banh mi and… read more

6:00 timesavers, am and pm.

January 9, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
I'm testing a slow cooker cookbook this week, and it's making me consider (or re-consider) the ways we try to conserve time as cooks.  It was only last year that I came to slow cookery, and I instantly loved the convenience.  Strictly speaking, a slow cooker isn't a time-saving device so much as a time-banking one.  You still have to invest a… read more

The winnowing

January 3, 2012 by
 |  Leave Comment
The first week of January: holiday roundups are over, and after a week of bingeing on festive food I need to get back on my treadmill, which kept getting covered in books throughout December.  Time for cookbook cleanup!   Only problem is, somewhere between 200 and 300 books came in over the fall, I want to keep them ALL, and… read more

2011: The missing cuisine

December 27, 2011 by
 |  Leave Comment
The last week of the year has a special gift for the cookbook-obsessed: perspective. From our vantage point at the very end of a long, busy year of food publishing, we can see trends that weren't so obvious before.  There was a great swell of Mediterranean cookbooks, including a sudden spate of rustic Italian.   There were long, loving glimpses… read more

Holiday food traditions

December 19, 2011 by
 |  Leave Comment
Just for fun this morning, I ran a little EYB search (Occasion: Christmas; Course: Main Course)  to see what holiday proteins our cookbooks feature.  The results read like some kind of crazy, carnivorous 12 Days of Christmas (I know I'm leaving out our vegetarian friends here):  85 beef joints82 whole turkeys81 pork joint77 whole ducks or geese62 hams, cooked or… read more

Threshold ingredients

December 12, 2011 by
 |  Leave Comment
We all love "usable" cookbooks, but "usable" is different for everybody.  And one big part of "usable," I've come to realize, is the availability of specific ingredients.  Each of us carries with us an internal dictionary of the ingredients we consider normal--the ones we know how to get without thinking about it--and a sort of anti-dictionary consisting of the ones… read more

3 ways with ground beef

December 5, 2011 by
 |  Leave Comment
Over the weekend, we got the yearly beefer delivery--1/4 of a steer, or approximately 125 pounds.  Some 25 or 30 pounds of that is ground beef, which I *could* just turn into hamburgers or chili.  Or, I could hit the new cookbooks with my pal EYB! and see what insights they have to offer. Spicy Glazed Mini Meatloaf, from Serve Yourself by… read more

Thanksgiving sides–some better ones.

November 22, 2011 by
 |  Leave Comment
If you haven't yet drawn up your menu for Thursday, you've still probably made it as far as pinning down which turkey recipe you're going to use.  A lot of us, though, don't bother worrying about the vegetables because...they're vegetables!  It's enough work dealing with the bird, the stuffing, the pies.  The same goes for starchy sides. But with so… read more
« Older posts
Newer posts »
Seen anything interesting? Let us know & we'll share it!

Categories

Archives