cooking

Holy Kitchens: True Business

brittany — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Punjabi chef Vikas Khanna is known for bringing great Indian food to discerning New York City diners. Although he surely has his hands full with his new restaurant Junoon, Khanna is working on an arduous extra-curricular project—a series of short documentary films about the worldwide connection between spirituality and feeding the hungry.

The series, Holy Kitchens, will explore different religions’ beliefs and practices regarding serving the needy through feeding them. The first film, True Business, is about Sikhism, but Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism will all be featured in upcoming films.

True Business follows Khanna as he returns to his childhood home of Amritsar, India. In the film’s brief thirty-seven-minute run time, the chef takes us through a history of the Sikh religion, including the belief behind langar, the practice of serving free food to the public. The first guru, Guru Nanak, started the tradition in sixteenth-century India at a time when people were deeply divided by religion, gender, and caste. The notion of sharing food with people regardless of their beliefs or social position was a radical concept at the time. Arguably, it still is.

Today, langars thrive on several continents. Khanna focuses on the langar in Amritsar at the Golden Temple, but he also showcases langars in the United States and South America. Khanna’s travels show that wherever Sikhs live, they offer langars to bring people together and serve their communities. Langars worldwide serve a staggering amount of people, as many as 50,000 a day in some kitchens, which means huge-scale food production. The best part of True Business is watching the few scenes that show this process—how the meals get to the table. At the langar in Amristar, volunteers pile made-from-scratch flat bread in five-foot-tall stacks, laboring over hot cooking stones to prepare tons of food for strangers.

Between depictions of the international langars, the film shows some grainy but still impressive footage of Gurdwaras (places of worship) and other urban scenery in India. Khanna uses very little narration, but does feature several interviews with scholars and leaders, including Deepak Chopra, reflecting on the history and significance of langars as a practice.

The film could do with a little more organizing to give background and structure for people who aren’t familiar with Khanna’s career as a chef or with langars, but overall True Business does paint a picture of the roots and community mindedness of Sikhism. It will be interesting to see what approach Khanna takes to other religions, with which he might not have a personal history, in the films that have yet to be released.

Written by: Hannah Moulton Belec, February 13th 2011

Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It: The D.I.Y. Guide to the Good Life

mandy — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Billee Sharp

Cleis Press

Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It is packed full of just about as much information as the title suggests. The book is generally a fun and easy read, with crafting suggestions and healthy recipes. It is not, however, the bible I’d hoped it would be. While there are many recipes for making your own toilet bowl cleaner, there’s little helpful advice on things like how to garden. Rather, the focus is simply on the benefits of gardening.

One of the great things about Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It is that Billee Sharp is adept at making things most people would scoff at seem perfectly reasonable. For example, Sharp makes dumpster diving seem as viable an option as buying a chair off Craigslist—and not just for furniture. In the chapter entitled “Freeconomics,” Sharp gives suggestions for dumpster diving for food, organizing community programs that will help neighbors share their unwanted items in lieu of sending them to the dump, and twists on the tried and true clothing swap (which she has renamed “Naked Lady Parties”).

There is one line in the book that tainted the rest of the read for me. In chapter four, “Homely Habits,” Sharp makes it clear that she’s not the best at wielding a wrench, which is fine. But then she writes that when her husband is out of town she keeps a roll of duct tape on hand because, “Even if I can’t fix stuff, I can hold it together with duct tape.” This is one of the least empowering things I’ve ever read, and coming from a book that claims to put power back into my hands, I found it to be pretty jarring.

In addition to a little feminist boost, Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It desperately needs an index. There is so much information about baking, fixing, and growing in order to save money in the chapter about finances, but one may never find some gem they hoped to reference without spending cash on post-its to mark the pages.

If you’re a novice thrifter or a newbie to reducing, reusing, and recycling, Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It will have more helpful hints than you'll know what to do with. But if you’ve fixed a chair or composted recently, there may not be a lot of new information here for you.

Written by: Tatiana Ryckman, September 21st 2010

Soul Kitchen

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Fatih Akın

Corazón International

Soul Kitchen is a lot like cotton candy—sweet but, ultimately, not very satisfying. Like many festival favorites, the plot of this independent German film revolves around a cast of lovably quirky characters who get themselves eye-deep into trouble.

Zinos (Adam Bousdoukos), a German of Greek descent, has a lot of stuff on his plate. He’s the proprietor of Soul Kitchen, a struggling eatery in a rundown section of Hamburg. The tax people, led by Frau Schuster (Catrin Striebeck), are knocking at his door. His ne’er-do-well brother, Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu), seeks employment at the restaurant wanting “to go through the motions” of working so that he can make parole. Neumann (Wotan Wilke Möhring), a shady real estate agent, is sniffing around in hopes of acquiring the property. An uninsured Zinos makes the mistake of trying to move a heavy dishwasher by himself and gets a herniated disk for his trouble. On top of all this, Zinos is pining away for his girlfriend, Nadine (Pheline Roggan), who has hightailed it to Shanghai.

Attempting to revamp the restaurant’s simple cuisine, he hires the temperamental Shayn (Birol Ünel), a culinary snob who lost his last job for pulling a knife on a paying customer who asked for hot gazpacho. Things start looking up for Zinos when Shayn’s gourmet creations take off with the hip crowd. Eager to reunite with Nadine, Zinos makes plans to move to Shanghai, leaving Illias to manage the place. Illias gambles the restaurant away to Neumann. And poor Zinos discovers that Nadine has been cheating on him and aggravates his back injury on the same day. Zinos burns down his apartment in a fit of painkiller-induced pique. Homeless, loveless, jobless, and broke, Zinos has to figure out a way to get his restaurant back.

The script, co-written by the director and the leading man, is chock full of sly jokes and the dialogue is genuinely inspired. The filmmaker wisely decided not to let the food upstage the story. The problem is that the characters, with the exception of Zinos, are mere stereotypical sketches. Too much of the plot rests on contrivance—the romance between Illias and the surly waitress Lucia (Anna Bederke), for example—and things wrap up a little too neatly at the end. I never could root for the burgeoning relationship between Zinos and Anna (Dorka Gryllus), the physiotherapist who treats his back injury; the two don’t spend enough time onscreen together for me to care.

Full of whimsy, Soul Kitchen is definitely a film I would watch again. I can also see how it won the Special Jury Prize and the Young Cinema Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. It should enjoy a respectable run on the art-house circuit when it’s released in the States later this summer; however, the film is much too flawed to ever make any “best of” list, and it definitely isn’t Fatih Akin’s best work.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, July 31st 2010

Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans, the City Where Food Is Almost Everything

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Tom Fitzmorris

Stewart Tabori & Chang

I’ve had a long and passionate love affair with New Orleans, although I’ve never been there. In fifth grade, I did my state report on Louisiana, and as a bored teenager in a Los Angeles suburb where everything was bright, shiny, and new, I’d dream of spending my days in the historic French Quarter, hanging out in smoky jazz bars and eating poor boy sandwiches at cramped lunch counters. I idealized the city even further when a childhood friend became a teenage runaway, hitchhiking her way to New Orleans with her much older boyfriend, both of them squatting in abandoned houses and panhandling in the streets. For some reason, that sounded like a beat novel I wanted to be a part of, as opposed to the nightmare it actually was.

Like everyone else, I watched with a heavy heart as one of our nation’s finest cities, so completely unlike any other place because of its history, demographics, and genetic makeup, disappeared off the face of the map, under sludge and murky water. I knew New Orleans would recover—it had to—but I was worried it would never be what it once was, that it would turn into a sad caricature of itself. If the premise of Tom Fitzmorris’ book Hungry Town is correct, no matter what happens, New Orleans will never be lost as long as its food culture survives and thrives, breathing life into the incessantly struggling city.

Fitzmorris’s thesis is actually quite simple: Food saved New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now, I know many won’t believe that. I also know that recommending this book to lovers of food, regional cooking, or the city of New Orleans itself wouldn’t be fair. Truth be told, there are many who won’t understand the purpose of this book. Many will not like the author’s obsessive details or encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s food and restaurants. They'll think he's pompous, self-important, and crazy to think that it was the poor boy or red beans and rice or simple gumbo that saved the city—and that’s fair. But for those of us who know the power of food, its ability to bring people together, to calm the nerves and the soul, and quiet the hunger, we can believe that Fitzmorris is right in every way.

The author is a lifelong New Orleanian who’s been critiquing the city’s food, writing about it in various formats, and discussing it endlessly on his radio show for over thirty years. It all started in the late 1970s, when he began publishing a newsletter called The New Orleans MENU, which lives on today on his website. It would be an understatement to say that Fitzmorris is a fanatic, a man completely obsessed with his city’s food culture, its Creole and Cajun cuisine, and its restaurants; Hungry Town is the embodiment of this fanaticism.

After Hurricane Katrina, the author was forced to stay away from his beloved city for longer than he ever had before: about two weeks. While away, he received word that some of the city’s restaurants were reopening, using bottled water and small burners to feed the crowds that braved the storm. Fitzmorris began calling chefs and friends in the area, each day adding to a list on his website that featured all the eateries that were opening their doors. Just two weeks after the hurricane blew the lid off of New Orleans, twenty-two restaurants were open for service. It is because of this and similar compelling evidence that Fitzmorris believes that food saved New Orleans and that its slow-coming rebirth is beginning in the kitchen.

Interwoven with recipes for delicious New Orleans treats, menus from some of the city’s oldest restaurants, timelines, and a rundown of every major player in the New Orleans food scene, is the story of how Fitzmorris' love affair with his city’s food began. I thought Hungry Town was a beautiful ode to a great city and its wonderful food, but I know it’s not for everyone. This summer, I will be traveling by train to New Orleans and I’ll be using Hungry Town as my restaurant guide, which I think is a testament to how informative Fitzmorris' book is and how alluring a beignet and a cafe au lait can be.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, July 11th 2010

Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Mark Scarbrough, Bruce Weinstein

Stewart Tabori & Chang

Finally, a cookbook with some pizazz! Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter was written by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, food lovers, life partners, and exactly the kind of people who could breathe life into the sometimes stale world of food writing.

The recipes featured in Ham are solid, easy to follow, and delicious, but I was pleasantly surprised by how witty and well-written the book was. Along with the recipes, readers are treated to informative pig/ham-related tidbits sprinkled throughout, testers’ notes for many of the recipes, and personal stories from the writers. It was this last bit that I was particularly fond of.

I’ve never laughed out loud reading a cookbook, but after following the couple’s attempt to make their own dry-cured ham at home I couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it. If it’s done incorrectly and consumed, it can result in “respiratory failure and paralysis,” but even when the ham is drying properly, it goes through a period where it is regularly “dripping ugly bits of mucousy sludge.” Obviously, dry curing your own ham isn’t a good idea, but checking out this cookbook is. Follow Weinstein and Scarbrough on their endearing journey as they reveal all you ever wanted to know–and in some cases, some things you didn’t want to know–about that porky, fatty thing people all over the world call ham.

I already know this is one of those cookbooks I will go back to time and time again for family get-togethers, dinner parties, and plain ol’ good eatin’. I’m not one to spend a tremendous amount of money on meat when grocery shopping, but I couldn’t have done this book justice without trying one of the duo’s recipes for fresh ham. Thankfully, the book appeared on my doorstep just around Easter, which provided good reason to schlep a massive ham home from the local Mexican market. Which, by the way, was the only non-Whole Foods-like market around to have fresh ham; different than the variety you see at grocery stores around April that are pre-cooked. The recipe called for a ten pounder, which would reportedly feed “six teenage boys, sixteen adults, or twenty-six ‘twentysomething’ models,” so I knew my bone-in twelve pounder would be enough for my voracious family.

The roasted fresh ham with a maple-spice glaze was ridiculously delicious and so unlike the bizarre, overly sweet orange juice-glazed and pineapple-ringed monstrosity I grew up eating when my grandpa did all of the holiday cooking. No, this was crispy-skinned, moist, and had the perfect amount of sweetness thanks to a sugar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, and nutmeg rub down and a good basting of Grade A maple syrup.

All of the other recipes I tested revolved around prosciutto, that salty, fatty, delicious Italian ham that Weinstein and Scarbrough managed to work into everything from pizza to quesadillas–and I loved it all. Some of my favorites were the pizza with dry-cured ham and artichokes. Stubborn as I am, I refused to use store-bought dough as the recipe called for, but I think the dish was better for it because good lord, everyone needs to eat a homemade pizza laced with fatty Italian ham and artichokes.

When testing recipes on my parents, as I often do, my mom would always complain that I never used enough meat; the woman loved her some meat. She seemed excited to hear that I was testing recipes from a book devoted to pork, one of her favorite animals (to eat). One of the last meals I ever cooked for my mom before she died unexpectedly in early May was Ham's recipe for chive and cheddar ham biscuits with honey mustard. I threw some cheese on her biscuit for good measure because if there’s anything she loved more than meat, it was cheese. Needless to say she loved it and I love that a silly cookbook provided one of our last moments together as mother and daughter. Life–and food–is funny like that sometimes.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, June 29th 2010

Cook the Books

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant

Berkley Publishing Group

Cook the Books is part of a series of mystery books (Gourmet Girl Mysteries) by mother-daughter writing team Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant.

Chloe is a graduate student in her mid twenties, who lives by herself and has a passion for food. She has an incredibly gorgeous best friend named Adrianna, who is married to a goofy but honest and lovable free-spirited (broke) man named Owen. They have a delightful little bundle of joy named Patrick, who happens to melt Chloe’s heart so much that she overspends and ends up in debt because she just can’t resist buying him all the expensive toys and clothes she sets her eyes on; he’s that adorable. Then there’s Josh, her ex-boyfriend, a chef, who left a year before for a better job in Hawaii and left her behind.

Did you get all this? If you didn’t it’s okay because once you start reading the novel, this will be retold in pretty much every chapter. Do you want to know what else is constantly repeated? The word “Josh.” It comes up in every other sentence. Of course there’s more to the novel: there’s murder, there’s cooking, and there’s a villain (or many?). More importantly, at the end Josh returns to make everything alright (because he’s perfect). But don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled the end; you can guess that one by the end of the fourth chapter.

The story itself is pretty bland but its biggest sin is mainly that it’s not very relatable. Chloe is supposed to be young, bright and independent, and yet she appears to be everything but. Why am I supposed to care about this character? She has no true interests other than her godson, the lives of other cooks and her ex-boyfriend. It probably doesn’t help that the novel is written with a significant amount of dialogue, which, for the most part, is heavily contrived. For example, Chloe’s employer, a serious man in his mid-thirties has just met new mommy Adrianna and all three of them are sitting down for dinner, his treat:

“And Adrianna,“ he said to my friend, “you especially should eat a lot, since you probably have no time to eat while taking care of a tiny baby, huh?”

This was not meant to be funny, or sarcastic (or creepy) but rather to portray what a great guy Chloe’s employer is! The entire novel is written in this type of dialogue, which aside from being annoyingly predictable, becomes overly repetitive.

Cook the Books is filled with bad cliches and references. The murder that sets motion to the core of the storyline leads to Chloe’s view to the “dark” side of cooking, the cutthroat competitive world of chefs. It’s in fact the same world described by so many other chefs, except that in this case, it’s overly dramatic.

The book cover includes a review blurb promising "snappy dialogue, puzzling murder and mouthwatering menus," which I guess is what fueled my disappointment, as I did believe it. In contrast to other mystery novels that portray unlikely heroines, Cook the Books didn’t hit the mark, It has no sparkle and the heroine lacks a sense of self and definition. It was difficult to really care. It could have been light, fun reading, if only it had been half as long. If I was to recommend the book, it I would assume pre-teens might not mind it, but I don’t know how memorable it would be.

There are some recipes added at the end of the book, which only adds to my confusion as to who the target group for this book is supposed to be. The recipes are courtesy of other authors and chefs. Some are easy enough to follow and make (the Baked Tomato Nests), and some (like the Grilled Ohio Lamb Steak) are meant for the serious cooks who strives to entertain. The Baked Tomato Nests are a cute and fast idea, and in fact, the recipe jumped out at me from one of the actual chapters of the novel, so there was a nice connection there. However, overall the recipes were not very innovative, and in a way, that echoes my overall impression of the book.

To put it simply: it didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth, it needed spice (cayenne, Habanero, or even just plain old pepper)—it was just too bland.

Written by: Jessica Sánchez, May 27th 2010

Amor y Tacos: Modern Mexican Tacos, Margaritas, and Antojitos

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Deborah Schneider

Stewart, Tabori & Chang

I have an exciting announcement to make: I’ve never enjoyed a cookbook as thoroughly as I have Deborah Schneider’s Amor y Tacos. I grew up eating Mexican food nearly every day, and as an adult, I still make homemade Mexican food the way my father taught me at least two times a week—not the gloppy, heavy Americanized stuff full of cheddar cheese and sour cream, but simple, hearty, good-for-you-food that’s easy to make and even easier on your budget. This is exactly why I’ve fallen madly in love with Schneider’s cookbook; though a majority of the dishes require a bit of prep work, the meals come together quickly in the end and she effortlessly showcases affordable, accessible, and delicious modern Mexican food.

Another reason to love Amor y Tacos: Schneider focuses heavily on Mexican street food, which is the best food Mexico has to offer and just so happens to be a personal obsession of mine. I went crazy testing recipes from this book; I wanted to make everything in it, but I’m going to try to show some restraint and just talk about a few of the dishes, all of which were from the Antojitos (think appetizers), Tacos, and Salsa chapters.

Generally, I try to stay away from fast food, but I’ve somehow convinced myself that eating outrageously unhealthy food is okay—as long as I’ve made it in my own kitchen and kept a close eye on the amount of salt, fat, and other worrisome cooking essentials that quickly make "good" food “bad.” Admittedly, not all of the street food featured in the book is good for you or what some would refer to as “authentic Mexican.” This is because, like all culinary cultures, there’s a lot of borrowing, and if it’s a dish genuinely served on the streets of Mexico, it’s good (and authentic) enough for me.

All of this is just to say that the first recipe I tackled was for something seemingly American and ridiculously bad for you: Schneider’s Mexican Hot Dog with Chipotle Ketchup, otherwise known as the Perro Caliente. In short: a bacon wrapped hot dog encased in a bun that’s been slathered with garlic mayo and griddled. All of this fatty goodness gets topped with pickled jalapenos, pico de gallo salsa (diced Roma tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and lime juice), and a tart, spicy ketchup spiked with chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. I feel the need to point out that I will never again be able to eat a hot dog unless it’s topped with pico de gallo; it’s a marriage made in heaven. It’s that little bit of crunchy, juicy freshness that cuts through the fat and makes a hot dog more than just a hot dog.

Another standout was the Shrimp Taco Dorado, and like all of the tacos in Schneider’s book, what really makes them pop are the interesting salsas she chooses to accompany them. Pico de gallo is pretty customary for tacos, but Schneider’s shrimp tacos also get topped with guacamole that’s spiked with mangoes, tequila, and goat cheese, as well as mango habanero salsa, chipotle salsa, and a few cilantro sprigs. To me, it’s these simple, easy, yet slightly labor intensive accompaniments that really elevate the tacos to something special.

I wouldn’t be doing the book justice if I didn’t mention the Carne Asada Taco Vampiro. It’s never really explained why this super taco gets called a vampire, but who cares when you’re sinking your teeth into what is essentially a quesadilla wrapped around juicy grilled carne asada and topped with guacamole, chipotle salsa, pico de gallo, cotixa cheese, and a sprinkling of the ever ubiquitous cilantro? Seriously, life doesn’t get any better than that.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, May 25th 2010

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Elizabeth Bard

Little, Brown and Company

While the memoir fad is nothing new, Elizabeth Bard’s new book confirms the emergence of a memoir subgenre to contend with: the memoir with recipes. In May 2009, the New York Times proclaimed these books as the brainchild of the “money-making imagination of the publishing industry.” Certainly, a spate of globe-spanning titles have followed, many born from blogs. However, the story of the American in Paris has long been a favored literary subject. It has sparked writers’ imaginations from Henry James to Anais Nin to Elaine Dundy to David Sedaris. Elizabeth Bard’s adventures in Paris have a more chick-lit feel to them than even Nin or Dundy, and have a liberal sprinkling of Julia Child and Peter Mayle throughout. In this recipe-infused book, Bard navigates a long-distance relationship with a French archivist, decides to move to Paris, and eventually gets married and builds her writing career.

At first, Elizabeth Bard’s life seems impossibly charmed, complete with buying the perfect apartment on the increasingly trendy Rue Oberkampf and negotiating cultural differences that seem more endearing and eye-opening than frustrating. However, what sets Bard’s writing apart from others of her nascent genre is her thoughtfulness and realism. She paints a very true and convincing portrait of herself as a driven, New York striver, bent on academic, artistic, and financial success at an early age and agonizing over why it has not yet arrived. While she is highly educated, she does not come from a place of easy breezy privilege, and in between recipes inspired by fresh finds at her Parisian market, Bard contemplates her family and personal history.

As much as it documents her courtship, relationship, and marriage to Gwendal, a digital archivist and entrepreneur, Lunch in Paris is about Bard’s acclimatization to a Parisian pace of life and ultimately, self-acceptance. Bard finds her stride by finally finding a peaceful balance between her Parisian and New York lives and selves. While this revelation is not particularly groundbreaking and her feminist-tinged reflections stay in safe mainstream territory, Lunch in Paris satisfies readers with a good story, intelligent and heartfelt reflections, and mouth-watering recipes. It’s not clear if these recipes have been kitchen tested the way one would for a professional cookbook, but they serve as solid guidelines for readers interested to add a French twist to their cooking.

While it may not become part of the Americans in Paris literary cannon, Lunch in Paris is a satisfying, straightforward read that feels like a good friend telling you a particularly tasty—and truthful—story.

Written by: Eleanor Whitney, March 31st 2010

French Feasts: 299 Traditional Recipes for Family Meals & Gatherings

admin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Stéphane Reynaud

Stewart Tabori & Chang

In my humble opinion, French food is where it’s at. This is a cuisine responsible for the five mother sauces, a cuisine that wholeheartedly embraces flaky pastry, a cuisine that loves cream, cheese, and butter! Needless to say, I was incredibly excited to review French Feasts, and when it arrived, I was shocked to find a massive tome of a cookbook on my front porch. This is a serious book, so large it comes with a built-in bookmark. I’m happy to report that the recipes didn’t disappoint, and that the book itself is perhaps the most charming cookbook I’ve ever encountered.

Thumbing through a French cookbook that includes 299 recipes laid out over 400 pages is no easy feat. I didn’t know where to start, so I started at the most obvious place: the beginning. I curled up in bed with a highlighter and post-its and got to work looking over the book’s ten core sections: Charcuterie Anything Goes; Long Live Offal; A Dozen Eggs; What Lovely Vegetables; Moo, Bah, Oink; Poultry; Game Galore; Fish & Shellfish; A Bit of Cheese to Finish my Bread; and Sweet, Sweeter, Saccharine.

This loving opus to French food details the types of elaborate meals many French families share around their table; it even speaks fondly of what I like to refer to as “the nasty bits.” The first few chapters piqued my morbid curiosity. As an omnivore, I appreciate cultures that respect the animals they slaughter enough to make use of all their parts. That being said, I can’t bring myself to eat many of these slippery, slimy things. Perhaps I’m not very adventurous, but offal (entrails and internal organs) will never be my thing. So, as much fun as it was to read about making pig's head sausage in red wine, calf’s liver with lemon, and beef tongue in medeira sauce, I don’t think I’ll be feasting on any of those things anytime soon.

I knew I couldn’t test every recipe, so instead I focused on those that had ingredients that were affordable and easy to come by, as well as dishes that could seamlessly fit into my regular rotation of meals. I can’t recommend any dessert recipes quite yet, as I haven’t had the nerve to tackle them—not because they seem difficult, but because I’m afraid of what I might do if left alone with dozens of Chantilly cream pastries.

French Feasts takes a pretty straightforward, almost comically simple approach to food that we’ve all been told is difficult to prepare. I can clearly picture movie scenes where someone is anxiously checking their soufflé, only to find that it’s deflated in the oven. My cheese soufflé, as instructed by French Feasts, turned out perfectly. It really was like digging into a cheesy, ethereal cloud.

Next up, and one of my all time favorites, French onion soup. Despite my long-standing love of onions, I’d actually never made this soup at home. French Feasts’ version was ridiculously simple, though it was actually called “onion soup for digestion.” It only called for seven ingredients, including olive oil, salt, and pepper. Though it pained me to purchase Gruyere cheese at fifteen bucks a pound, I found a lovely woman at the farmer’s market who cut me a deal on a decent sized hunk. The soup was earthy and cheesy, and the caramelized onions were out of this world; it was basically heaven in a bowl.

Other standouts included hard-boiled eggs topped with homemade mayo all atop mixed greens, my first ever Niçoise salad (so briny, so salty, so complex, so delicious), and emulsion of creamed cauliflower that I now use in place of mashed potatoes.

Aside from the killer recipes, I have to take a second to gush about how charming this cookbook is. It’s in French and English and features drool-worthy color photographs and profiles of French food figures, such as butchers and bakers (no candlestick makers). There are also endearing illustrations and ingredient lists that include things like Basque country fandango CDs. This really is a cookbook that I will go back to over the years and explore over and over again… if all the butter doesn’t kill me first.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, March 24th 2010

Vegetarian Dishes from Across the Middle East

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Arto der Haroutunian

The Experiment

The late Arto der Haroutunian first published this book in 1983 when how-to's for vegetarian cooking—let alone for Middle Eastern vegetarian cooking—were relatively rare in the U.S. Ahead of his time, der Haroutunian's tome of some 250 recipes laid dormant and out of print for 20 years. This new reissue is the first time the book has been available in North America.

As a vegetarian, lover of Middle Eastern food, and cooking newbie, I was thrilled to get my hands on this book. As an added bonus, many of the recipes are vegan, or can be easily tailored to be vegan. I resolved to make half a dozen recipes before reviewing this book, some more than once. After doing so, I've decided that I have a love/hate relationship with said book. My partner, who is an engineer, put it this way: “There is so little instruction that if this was a booklet that came with something you bought at IKEA, it would say, 'Assemble your furniture.'”

Translation: it's assumed that you have as much culinary knowledge as the author. For someone like me—who did not own a set of pots and pans until receiving them as a wedding gift—this made crafting recipes a bit difficult. The recipes don't make any mention of this when referring to the type tools needed—“place mixture in a baking dish”—you're left light on specifics. What kind of baking dish? Pyrex? Stainless? Deep? Shallow?

Some of the baking times were also way off; had I not checked on the potato eggeh, for instance, we might have had a fire in the oven. Ditto with my first try at pita bread: the book forbids you to open the oven before the rounds have baked for 10 minutes, but in my oven that made them a bit tough and crunchy on top. (On my second attempt, baking them for seven minutes, they turned out soft, yummy, and addictive.)

That said, many of the difficulties I encountered could be placed squarely on the shoulders of the American publisher. They failed to take into consideration the fact that flour available for purchase in the U.S. (the cook is simply instructed to use “all-purpose flour”) varies from flour available in the Middle East and the U.K. (the author lived in both places during his lifetime). I seriously doubt the rishta (homemade pasta) was supposed to have the doughy taste that it did; coming up with pasta that tasted like pasta required some research on my part, and the use of semolina flour.

The publisher also did not think to include metric conversion for those of us on this side of the Atlantic; my partner was standing by with a calculator and table, lest I guess wrong and blow up the bread. Lastly, with no photographs—other than the very phallic-looking eggplants on the cover—it was visually disappointing and looked like a textbook.

Despite these disappointments, with a little tinkering, we came up with some delicious homemade food. Other points in the book's favor: all of the ingredients are relatively easy to come by, and don't require a chef's talent to make. Just some patience and experimentation is required.

Written by: M.L. Madison, February 4th 2010

Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:59:00 +0000

By Jamie Oliver

Hyperion

In the introduction to Jamie Oliver’s latest cookbook Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals, Oliver lays out his plan to get people cooking again by having them master at least one recipe from each of the fourteen chapters in the book. This is being called the “Pass it on Movement,” and it is the young chef’s hope that it will get Americans back in the kitchen and cooking healthy food. The introduction even ends with a pledge that Oliver encourages his readers to sign; it’s sort of a promissory note intended to guilt budding cooks into actually passing on their new culinary knowledge to the uninitiated.

Jamie's Food Revolution begins with a chapter on “Essentials,” which is basically a list of kitchen equipment and pantry items recommended by Oliver for aspiring cooks. I’m a serious home cook; I cook dinner at least six times a week and make most things from scratch, but Oliver’s lists intimidated the hell out of me. The chef’s intended audience for this book is the culinary challenged, those who’ve been relying on fast and/or convenient foods to get them through their days. Recommending that these people invest in over thirty kitchen tools and gadgets in order to be “well-rounded, efficient cooks” can make them feel overwhelmed. Admittedly, many people have cutting boards, can openers, and box graters, but asking a new cook to invest in a food processor, food scales, chef’s knives, and other tools may be asking too much. The list of pantry items is also large; it features seventy-five items. Though I can attest to the usefulness of having these ingredients on hand for quick and delicious meals, it may alienate his core audience. Trying to convince an inexperienced cook they need five different oils is crazy, but I almost have to commend Oliver for trying.

One of the biggest selling points of Jamie's Food Revolution is its affordable meals, but many of the recipes included feature expensive ingredients. For example, the first recipe calls for two filet mignon steaks, while others require leg of lamb, salmon, fresh tuna, and other meats and seafood. To me, this is just another example of a celebrity chef being out of touch with reality. This is only compounded by the fact that Oliver requests that everything be market fresh, organic, and free-range. The book includes photos and quotes by blue collar folks; all of them attesting to how these recipes changed their way of eating. Truth be told, teachers, single moms, and doormen can’t afford to feast on filet mignon, seafood paella, and roast lamb. I’d love it if everyone could eat organically and purchase produce directly from farmers, but it’s not realistic given the price range and availability of these items in most areas.

One chapter that really fits the bill for affordable cuisine is “Homely Ground Beef.” Here we learn to make meatballs (moist and delicious), Bolognese sauce (rich and comforting), and chili con carne, which wasn’t authentic, but quick, simple, and tasty nonetheless.

Enough with the criticism, let’s get to the good stuff: the food. Oliver, a recent recipient of the 2010 Technology, Entertainment, Design foundation prize, knows his stuff. Indian food has always been a mystery to me; it’s something I’ve always been intimidated by and terrified to cook. Thanks to Oliver, that’s no longer the case. The chef provides recipes for five different curry pastes, revealing the secrets behind korma, jalfrezi, Rogan josh, tikka masala, and vindaloo. The first things I tackled were Oliver’s recipes for chicken tikka masala (spicy, curried chicken), aloo gobhi (curried potato and cauliflower), and light and fluffy cilantro lime rice. Except for a substitution for the chicken tikka (I didn’t have boneless, skinless chicken, so I used chicken legs), everything turned out beautifully and at the end of the meal I truly felt as if I’d conquered a fear.

I owe a lot to Jamie Oliver. When I dropped out of college, I’d spend my days babysitting and watching his BBC show The Naked Chef, which I credit to helping me learn how to cook. Now that he’s revealed the secrets of Indian curry pastes to me, I’m forever grateful. I’m sure other home cooks will be just as thrilled with what the British chef has to offer.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, January 26th 2010

Another Dinner is Possible: Recipes and Food For Thought

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Mike and Isy

AK Press

My interest in vegetables is quite young; around a year and half. Since this new found vegetarian interest, I’ve been looking out for recipes which are quick and involve simple ingredients so that I don’t have to run around super-market looking for all those hard to pronounce spices.

At first glance, I must confess that I was disappointed with Mike and Isy’s Another Dinner Is Possible. This spiral bound, black and white printed pages, with articles on food fights and how peak oil affects our food culture, was offbeat to the conventional cookbook where one would find glossy pages with colorful pictures of dishes which tempt you to eat off from the pages. But as I browsed through it, I was enticed by “encyclopedia” of recipes—simple and quick. Exactly what I was looking for.

Another Dinner is Possible is not just a cook book. It’s the style of living for Mike and Isy who volunteer with the Anarchist Teapot Mobile Kitchen, which has cooked for various events including the Earth First Summit gatherings. They cook organic GM-free food and also run a vegan Crowley café. Any surplus money from sales of this book will be donated to Brighton Anarchist Black Cross Prisoner Support.

With more than 250 recipes, this book is divided into chapters on soups, main courses, side dishes, salads, sauces, snacks, sweets, bread, and preserving. This includes a variety of vegetable burgers and recipes for international cuisines. For instance, a chapter is dedicated for Korean dishes with notes on Korean cooking and ingredients. It was interesting to know that Korean food has such versatile vegetarian options. There is also a chapter explaining procedures of brewing beers, wines, and ciders at home.

This is a no-frill book, recipes are easy to cook with minimum ingredients, the directions are straight forward, measurements are exact, and yet flexible enough to tweak in your favorite ingredients. Since most of the recipes do not ask for elaborate cooking, the taste of vegetables and its texture is retained, which I consider to be justice to the dish and to our stomach. Recipes in this book are intended to serve six unlike four in most of the cook book so as to emphasize on the more economical way of cooking.

In short, Another Dinner Is Possible is cooking simplified. Towards the end of the book, there are articles on seasonal foods, how to reduce food wastage, tips on cooking for 100 plus people. Yes, it is a practical cookbook by practical people who are not dazzled by global capitalism and connect with the food they cook and eat. I have tried a few recipes from the book like fridge cake, potato stir fry, Borscht, and found it excellent. If you love to cook good food, this book is a keeper. It will be the cookbook I will be using over and over.

Review by Sunitha Jayan

Written by: Sunitha Jayan, January 25th 2010

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar: 100 Dairy-Free Recipes for Everyone's Favorite Treats

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Terry Hope Romero

Da Capo Press

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar is a tasty new book by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. It looks so good I’m tempted to eat it, Cookie Monster-style, but then I wouldn’t be able to follow the recipes. I felt the same way about the authors’ earlier book, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World when we received it as a wedding present. I was pretty sure their cookies would be as amazingly delicious as their cupcakes had been, and I was right.

Now, a short side note here, for transparency: As far as my cooking expertise goes, I can make salad, and I can make sandwiches. (I’m particularly good at slicing sandwiches into triangles.) Whenever I try anything more complex, I tend to either get carried away with details (gingerbread mansion of December 2003 rings a bell) or simply wander away and let pots boil over or toasters go up in flames. (Yes, I consider making toast cooking...) So when it came time to try out these cookie recipes, I asked my wife Sarah Thomasin, baker to the stars (well, the stars of the zine-writing, Ladyfest gigging, performance poet scene, anyway) to do the honors.

This book has a great introductory chapter that even I understood, with basics like the difference between regular and all-purpose flour (which I’d always wondered about) plus more specific stuff (like the tools they use to make those cool star-shaped cookies at the bakery). A list of vegan ingredients and where to find them is helpful, and there’s a handy food substitutions section for people who haven’t got the time, money, or inclination to get the specialty stuff. The recipes themselves are very clearly explained and illustrated in full color with what I can only call… cookie porn.

Feminist? Much mainstream media urges women to be skinny at any cost, so it’s pleasing to see a book on the shelves that role-models cooking and eating for pleasure (albeit sensibly, with healthy options throughout the book, and warnings about hydrogenated oils and trans-fats).

Now, to the cookies. Sarah jumped right in to the Fancy Cookies section at the back, and made Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows. Her version didn’t look like the cute, fluffy Cinderella’s-glass-slipper style cushion in the book, but wow did they taste like a fairytale with a chocolate outer layer and a mouthful of melted, sweetened peanut butter inside. While visiting New York for the holidays, we took the cookies to my sister’s boyfriend’s house on Christmas Eve, and another batch to my cousins’ for Christmas Day. For the uninitiated, New York Italian Christmas dessert spreads are heart-stoppingly indulgent, and these friends and relatives were, um, not vegan, so this is major deep-end road-testing here. The verdict? Awesome and fought-over by hardcore carnivores who held them on a par with the coveted home-made struffoli.

One success behind us, we tried an easier recipe: Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles. (Okay, we’ll admit it—we wanted to make these because the word snickerdoodle sounded like a silly innuendo.) The cookies were fantastic, and they looked exactly like the ones in the picture on Moskowitz’s and Romero’s website and in their book. They were easy to make and included the palate-friendly contrasting flavors of chocolate and chilli. We took some as holiday gifts later on in our trip, and, again, our non-vegan friends were shocked there weren’t any animals in there. Even a friend's older brother, a former marine-turned-butcher, has been turned onto these vegan delights.

So the taste tests were deemed a success. We can’t wait to try Moskowitz’s and Romero’s other recipes, like their take on the traditional NYC Black and White Cookies and the Ooh La Las (vegan sandwich cookies). I’m not vegan, but I don’t eat milk products, so this book is excellent for me. The cookies were much better than store-bought vegan cookies, and tasted better, too. I totally recommend it.

Written by: Chella Quint, January 21st 2010

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Julie Powell

Little Brown and Company

Julie Powell wrote a blog called the Julie/Julia Project, which was turned into a book entitled Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and last summer Julie & Julia hit the big screen as a movie featuring Meryl Streep. Admittedly, Julie & Julia was a heartwarming, sticky sweet account of Powell’s mission to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The blog/book/movie led us to believe that Powell was a somewhat quirky woman who loved to cook, occasionally cursed, and had a ridiculously lovely marriage.

In Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, we learn that the public image Powell carefully crafted wasn’t true to form. Cleaving will surely smash any goody two shoes image fans may have had of Julie Powell. Though it does feature a few recipes and go into great detail about butchery, these things are more of an afterthought; Powell’s fucked up marriage and obsessive extramarital affair take center stage.

Out of the blue Powell decides to take up butchering and because she’s a go-getter, she sets out to obtain an apprenticeship at a butcher shop to the great confusion of her husband. Apparently it’s just a strong compulsion she feels. I call bullshit on that. It’s obvious to me that this would make an unlikely, though interesting second book idea. Perhaps her editors were breathing down her neck, or maybe Powell needed some kind of food-related slant to pacify her foodie fans while still being able to dissect her marriage in print. But it seems unlikely that it doesn’t just suddenly occur to a thirty-three-year-old to be a butcher. This is the same woman who famously dreaded boning a duck for months, after all.

During the months leading up to her apprenticeship, Powell’s marriage to her long-time husband Eric is falling apart thanks to a torrid love affair with a man she calls D. She cheated on Eric once before with D. while in college and when he calls her sometime after her Julie & Julia fame, the two pick up where they left and thus begin the meat metaphors. While hacking away at some animal, Powell will force a metaphor out of the skin and bones and sinew. Did you know that when “one has eaten a beautiful dry-aged steak, one remembers it, longs for it? That longing doesn’t stop. At least, it hasn’t yet and it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere.” Is she talking about the steak or D.? Oh Julie Powell, you’re clever.

In certain areas of her life Powell boasts that she’s tough as nails; she’s just “one of the guys.” She won’t ask for help in the butcher shop, won’t admit she’s afraid of using tools that could slice off arms or decapitate her. Julie Powell is a warrior, except when it comes to D. If he doesn’t respond to a text or e-mail, Powell goes off the deep end; sobbing, going through two bottles of wine a night, writing and calling him obsessively, even stalking him. These situations don’t illustrate the fragility of Powell, but rather her need for serious medication and therapy.

Powell’s portrayal of herself and her marriage aims to be complex, but it’s just perplexing. Her husband knows of her affair, but it’s never really discussed. She never really expresses guilt; she actually rubs her husband’s nose in it; bruises from D. cover her body and e-mails and “sexts” are left in plain view. When Eric begins an affair of his own, Powell seems happy for him. Despite all of this neither considers divorce. A divorce, Powell explains, is not a “clean break” like cracking open a joint with one “delicious pop.” It’s more like snapping a bone, which requires hacking, sawing, and destroying. I’d argue that a divorce couldn’t be any worse than what she’s already done to her marriage, but that’s just my opinion.

Powell is defined by the men in her life; she lets them shape and mold her into different women, whichever fits their needs. With Eric she is the asexual wife; cuddling, drinking wine in front of the television and making dinner together is enough and supposedly illustrates their intimacy. With D., she is the sex kitten, wanting to be taken, more than happy to submit to him and his every whim.

Powell wants to have her meat and eat it too, and for some reason, the people in her world allow her to carry on like this while remaining in her life. I’ll never know who the real Julie Powell is, but if she’s anything like the character in Cleaving, I wish her luck and something in the way of self-esteem.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, January 20th 2010

Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food: 65 Everyday Meal Ideas for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner with Over 150 Great-tasting, Down-home Recipes

admin — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:00:00 +0000

By Alicia C. Simpson

The Experiment Publishing

As someone who has been cooking far less time than I’d like to admit, I should explain that I’ve gotten quite skilled in the arts of chopping, mincing, and sautéing in a very short time, and I enjoy my kitchen prep time far more than I ever expected. I’m a vegan in a decidedly un-vegan land, so I had little choice when it came to learning to cook. After going vegan, the options were eat junk or go hungry.

Alicia C. Simpson, known to some as Vegan Guinea Pig, a writer for the Vegans of Color blog, and founder of Lici’s Sweet Treats Organic Bakery, found herself in a similar predicament. A native Californian living in Atlanta, she had a tough time locating simple, healthy vegan food in her community. Raised on a combination of soul food from her Southern father and veg-friendly Cali fare from her mother, Simpson’s journey to veganism began several years ago and accidentally (if fortuitously) produced a cookbook. After making her own booklet of instructions, she realized that her creations had become a full-fledged publication. Brand new publisher The Experiment believed in her work, and the result of their collaboration is stunning.

Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food is filled with accessible, invigorating recipes. Alongside simple preparation instructions are cooking tips and suggestions for pairings with other dishes in the book. Several pages are devoted to whole foods green smoothies and, for vegan newbies, how to ease into drinking them so you body doesn’t go into some sort of detox shock that leaves you stuck in the water closet for a day.

Beautiful full-page color photos illustrate delectable combinations, like sweet potato waffles with a spinach omelet, Fool Your Friends Tacos, and Sloppy Josephs. I think meaty Sloppy Joes are one of the most disgusting foods invented, and a vegan version hardly sounded appealing. But the photo of the TVP (textured vegetable protein) mixture on whole-wheat buns made my mouth water. With a sauce made from scratch, you avoid all the preservatives and high fructose corn syrup. That’s a re-appropriated comfort I can get behind.

Cookbooks can do more than instruct. They can also inspire and validate. Simpson’s unpretentious recipes provide vegan simplicity, and her enthusiasm for cooking is infectious. She offers basic tips for stocking a low-cost vegan pantry. When she writes, “Trying oat milk for the first time is a life-changing experience,” I truly believe her—and not just because I happened to have tried oat milk less than a week before receiving her book in the mail. Indeed, had I carried her supportive words with me to the grocery, I would have spent far less time debating which carton of dairy alternative to purchase.

The only other decision I faced recently when selecting food was which of Simpson’s enticing creations to try first. In my home, we are vegans who admittedly miss cheese (and my partner is only vegan at home, for what it’s worth). For that reason, the Dilla recipe—that’s sans queso, you see—was a perfect choice. A lightly fried tortilla filled with a hummus and veggie concoction, we ate too much and didn’t think twice about missing cheddar. But then, I don’t expect vegan ingredients to replicate—only to replace—animal products.

Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food delivers on all counts. A food preparation manual has rarely been so appropriately named.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, December 5th 2009