2008 Cookbooks & References

[mukki]

A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes by David Tanis -- From the cover:

"There are many chefs in America more famous than David Tanis, but there are few, if any, who are more gifted." (Michael Pollan)

Jamie At Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life by Jamie Oliver -- I've enjoyed his new show so much and luckily all the recipes that I failed to write down are in here.

[prasantrin]

The original date was 9/1. Even though the book is in warehouses ready to ship, they changed the date to 9/17. Growing and cooking beans makes much more sense than the publishing industry.

←

Maybe they're waiting for some free samples?

I'm waiting for it to show up on amazon.co.jp. Tick...tock...

[rancho_gordo]

The original date was 9/1. Even though the book is in warehouses ready to ship, they changed the date to 9/17. Growing and cooking beans makes much more sense than the publishing industry.

←

Maybe they're waiting for some free samples?

I'm waiting for it to show up on amazon.co.jp. Tick...tock...

←

I think it's here!

[dougal]

Looking forward to Ottolenghi -- I really enjoyed what I ate at their London food shops.

...

←

Its ever so pretty.

Not really difficult cooking.

100 pages on bakery stuff, 80-ish on veg, grains and pulses, 50-ish on meat, poultry and fish.

Most recipes get a whole page to themselves. And another one for a photo.

Within the baking section, the nearest we get to 'patisserie' is brownies, muffins, filled (sweet and savoury) tarts and the like. Absolutely nothing scary! But do we really need a cheese straw recipe? (Even with caraway seeds...)

Eastern Med meets European. With a few, but not too many, hard-to-find and limited use ingredients.

Almost all dishes are photographed. Beautifully. Either complete or near as dammit.

The food is presented extremely simply. Yet it nevertheless manages to look quite classy.

The sans-serif typeface, though undoubtedly stylish, makes it difficult to spot details like marinade delays buried in the text.

To keep the pages looking kuhl, there's lots and lots of white space, but no call-out of cooking, prep or even the total time requirement.

All time requirements are buried in those blocks of sans-serif method description text.

Which makes simple domestic cooking less easy to schedule, than it could/should be.

That quibble apart, at the very least this is a tasty book for a chic/trendy gift ...

[kristin_71]

The Complete Robuchon. Amazon has it listed as being released November 4th.

I picked up The Spice Bible by Jane Lawson. I really like it alot. There are some spices that I have heard of but never have actually used like galangal. Luckily there is a good Asian market right near me and I am hoping that it will be carried there.

The recipes though are really good and there is always some history about each of the spices. Makes for good reading.

Edited September 15, 2008 by kristin_71 (log)