The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a fantastic book. Not many people could write down a years worth of eating and transform it into a highly entertaining and addictive book. Nigel Slater's writing wants you to start cooking -- and the best thing about it is that many of the recipes are very approachable and highly successful. Within a week of finishing the book I had made his Pumpkin Soup twice for very appreciative eaters. The best thing about this book, and his other books is that Nigel takes a few ingredients or some left overs and transforms them into something that you wish you'd been invited over to share with him. Nigel Slater is a great voice in today's food writing.

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The Ethnic Food Lover's Companion: A Sourcebook for Understanding the Cuisines of the World Review

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(More customer reviews)"The Ethnic Food Lover's Companion" is a great book if you like to go out to "ethnic" restaurants. ("Ethnic", i.e., "foreign food" restaurants). In easy-to-read chapters it gives you information about culture, gastronomy, and history for most of the world's great cuisines: Europe (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Russia, etc.); Africa (North Africa, Ethiopia, West Africa); Middle East; Greece and Turkey; India; Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.) Asia (China, Japan, Korea); Americas (Mexico, Caribbean, Brazil, Peru, etc.). There are descriptions of typical flavorings, cooking methods, and dishes. Highly interesting and recommended.

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Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean Review

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(More customer reviews)What an amazing, generous book. This is a text dense book that manages to be clear and informative but never boring. I had heard that the recipes were complicated, but this is not true unless you are very new to cooking or don't want to purchase a few simple spices. There are many, many great vegetarian recipes to go along with a fine and unusual variety of meat and seafood ones. I love the spice mixtures, they are perfectly balanced, immensely flavorful and come with many helpful suggestions for their use. I haven't tried to make my own string cheese - yet - but I'm grateful for the recipe. I can't recommend this book highly enough, it is one of those rare cook books that's great to read and great to work with.

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On a trip to Turkey as a young woman, chef Ana Sortun fell in love with the food and learned the traditions of Turkish cooking from local women. Inspired beyond measure, Sortun opened her own restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the award-winning Oleana, where she creates her own interpretations of dishes incorporating the incredible array of delicious spices and herbs used in eastern regions of the Mediterranean.

In this gorgeously photographed book, Sortun shows readers how to use this philosophy of spice to create wonderful dishes in their own homes. She reveals how the artful use of spices and herbs rather than fat and cream is key to the full, rich flavors of Mediterranean cuisine -- and the way it leaves you feeling satisfied afterward. The book is organized by spice, detailing the ways certain spices complement one another and how they flavor other foods and creating in home cooks a kind of sense-memory that allows for a more intuitive use of spice in their own dishes. The more than one hundred tantalizing spice categories and recipes include: 
Beef Shish Kabobs with Sumac Onions and Parsley Butter
Chickpea and Potato Terrine Stuffed with Pine Nuts, Spinach, Onion, and Tahini
Crispy Lemon Chicken with Za’atar
Golden Gazpacho with Condiments
Fried Haloumi Cheese with Pear and Spiced Dates


Absolutely alive with spices and herbs, Ana Sortun’s recipes will intrigue and inspire readers everywhere.

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Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is more than a history of Indian cuisine. It is a history of India as reflected in its food. Each chapter is ostensibly the history of a certain dish (biryani, vindaloo, korma, curry), but it is also a history of a certain era in Indian history and how Indian food changed in that era.
Collingham argues that there is no such thing as "authentic" Indian cooking. Indian cooking has developed largely through the influence of outside powers invading the subcontinent and bringing a new set of ingredients or tastebuds with it. These new ingredients and tastes mixed with what was already there, adding a new layer to Indian cookery. Mughal tastes led to the invention of biryani. The Portuguese brought peppers from the New World and their Indian chefs created vindaloo. Cooks for the British essentially invented curry to suit British tastes.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book--and one overlooked by most reviewers--is its sources. Collingham has read dozens of historic accounts of travel through India. Some Mughal, some British, some French. These travelogues from the Middle Ages through the 19th century provide a fascinating window into Indian life and food at the time. These are complemented by contemporaneous recipes (and modern ones) for dishes from a given era.
You will learn how Indian cuisine developed and you will learn how India developed, and you will discover that both were the result of new influences meeting with the old India over centuries.

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Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia Review

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(More customer reviews)I am, admittedly, a coockbook hoarder. I have them everywhere -- even in the drawers of my nightstand and tucked under the bed. I read them cover-to-cover like other people read novels.
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet is, without a doubt, the best cookbook I have ever read. It is part travel novel, part anthropology lesson, and -- in large part -- a primer for westerners in Southeast Asian cuisine.
Easy to read, straightforward in instruction, its' only flaw is that -- in rare instances -- recipes may include items not available in even a metropolitan Asian market. (I have been to all of the Asian markets in Little Chinatown in Chicago and have yet to find coriander root!) But the ingredients are largely available at most Asian markets and even some larger supermarkets, and substitutions are often recommended.
The grilled chicken with hot and sweet dipping sauce has become a family favorite. The dipping sauce was so flavorful, so simple yet so complex in flavor -- I was surprised that I had made something so delicious.
Buy the book -- you won't be sorry!

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Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent Review

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(More customer reviews)One of the joys, perhaps even a requirement of a good cookbook is for it to give you more than an endless list of recipies. It should teach you something about the country or region of the origin of the recipies. It might give you some ideas about the culture, the history, the whys and wherefores of the spices, perhaps the religious aspects.
And in this ares these authors excell. As the sub-title says, this book is about their travels throughout the Indian sub-continent. It shows something of the people, the way they live, the equipment they use to prepare the foods being cooked.
Then there are the recipies:
There are nine recipies for rice alone, one of the staples of my diet. I had shrimp with rice last night. But now I find myself looking at the beautiful color photograph of the Chile Shrimp Stir-Fry on page 216. It also has curry, cinnamon, lime juice, and more.
Any reason you can think of for not having shrimp two days in a row?
Well, one reason might be the pork curry in aromatic broth from page 279.
And to go with either one of these, cucumber salad with hot spiced mustard dressing from pages 61 & 62.
Banana-Pepper Rounds which seem to have a crisp caramelized skin over the cooked banana. Maybe serve this over ice cream for a combination of flavor and temperature.
Well, I'm stopping this writing and starting on a list to take to the supermarket. Thankfully they've made suggestions on alternates for some of the spices that I am unlikely to find in the small Nevada town in which I live.
Very well done guys!

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