helenas

another discussion of the subject

Viana La Place; Erica De Mane; Judy Rogers;

I was pleasantly surprised by the latest issue of Intermezzo: very nice articles and recipes.

It just happened that your Mediterranean Greens and Grains was one of two cookbooks that enticed me into cooking (the other one was Vongericthen's Cooking at Home With a Four-Star Chef - both appeared at the same time in my local bookstore). Among your books, which one is your favorite, or the one you still can't believe you actually did it Also, out of your vast cookbook collection, what books really stand out, especially recent ones? Thank you , Helena

Thank you so much for the Q&A and your participation on egullet: i often repeat one of your first posts here: "And then there's the adventure of the ingredient, the new spice, the new grain. There's the adventure of the new pot..." I would like to ask for your help in selecting the right tagine. What is best distributor here in US? What size to choose if cooking for 4 people mostly? BTW, we had a thread on Cooking in Tagine previously. Thank you, Helena

Here is the bible of Real Fast Food, as told by Nigel Slater

Another version of Toby's recipe: this time the paste was a mix of garlic/sage/thyme/rosemary/aleppo pepper; half an hour on max oven setting, three hours in 300F covered with foil, at the end brushed with pan juces&honey(Zingerman's lemon in my case). So versatile: pretty good as cold cut for breakfast, thinly sliced, and even better, thickly sliced, brushed with olive oil, heavily sprinkled with aleppo pepper and put in hot oven for ten minutes.

Ropa Viejo is a great idea, and you can choose between at least two recipes: in Saveur and in F&W, both available online. Are cuban empanadas similar to spanish?

cwyc, could you please describe how this fish looks like? I'd like to try your recipe. thank you.

scallops dumplings in asian-flavored broth:

Check this site Georgian Cuisine . Most of the recipes are from Darra Goldstein's "The Georgian Feast" book, so they're pretty good and close to authentic.

Because, 1. at least in my area, only Wegmans supermarket carries duck breast and legs individually packaged, as well as magrets and ducks from d'Artagnan. 2. there were no that many good recipes, untill now: Jaymes Peterson's Duck Cookbook just got published

It's not a cookbook, it's a biography.

Ducasse's Olive Mill Pasta with dashi broth and mussels:

Interesting, my husband is from Lithuania, and a similar cake (both in appearance and preparation) was brought by his parents to our wedding. I remember they told it's a traditional lithuanian wedding cake.

He does... in the sequel.

Well, I've heard that some of the more remote highways can be a little dangerous, but I'm not sure THAT'S necessary. Hey, if you continue to develop this subject, there will be eventually spot for sandra

For those Dahlia Bakery corn bread deprived, could you explain it in more details? Is it yeasted? Thank you.

Japanese, yes. One more reason to get this beautiful book: The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen

You're too modest: the person whose only goal is to cook simple home food won't read the cookbooks you're reading. I know: happens to me quite often. But i almost never shop for dinner without the laptop in my car. There i keep Word documents in which, while going through cookbooks, i write down the list of the important ingredients for most enticing/complicated dishes.

Matthew, great point - this is my ultimate goal as well, but for myself i don't call it cooking without a recipe: what i'm trying to achieve is to build a memory of different ideas, coming in my case from reading a lot of, yes, recipes. I can probably cook without a recipe, and produce something quite decent, but why should i do it? Example: i'm reading through Gayler's "Passion For Vegetables". Great idea/recipes are on every page. So i'd like to try them all - maybe because i cook to eat the ecxciting food every night, not to prove to myself that i can become next Keller.

Another great read for cooking without a recipe, is Nigel Slater's Appetite.

I vote for Charcuterie. Have you seen Bertolli's Cooking By Hand? Nice chapter on salumi.

Thanks much Monica! We're bringing the camera.

Possible interesting food/wine stops/detours on our trip Freehold/Bobolink Dairy this Sunday. Thank you so much for your help