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What food-related books are you reading? (2016 -)

suzilightning

By suzilightning
in Food Media & Arts

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Alex

Alex

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Posted (edited)

I just started Ingredienti: Marcella's Guide to the Market. Such a wonderful voice. She is missed.

Edited by Alex (log)
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"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

A king can stand people's fighting, but he can't last long if people start thinking. -Will Rogers, humorist

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JoNorvelleWalker

JoNorvelleWalker

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Herve This, Molecular Gastronomy.  From the preface:  "We worry about making good French fries:  here we read that there is laboratory predictability in the choice of potato variety, the slicing technique, and the discoloration that occurs when enzymes in the air hit the uncooked spud."

 

This may be a long slog.  Excuse me while I go change the filter on the air conditioner.

 

Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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Anna N

Anna N

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2 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Herve This, Molecular Gastronomy.  From the preface:  "We worry about making good French fries:  here we read that there is laboratory predictability in the choice of potato variety, the slicing technique, and the discoloration that occurs when enzymes in the air hit the uncooked spud."

 

This may be a long slog.  Excuse me while I go change the filter on the air conditioner.

 

Hmmm. You might need a good supply of MR to wash it down.   On the other hand you have a very solid science background and might do better with this than I would likely do.  

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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JoNorvelleWalker

JoNorvelleWalker

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8 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Hmmm. You might need a good supply of MR to wash it down.   On the other hand you have a very solid science background and might do better with this than I would likely do.  

 

Now that I've gotten rid of the plague of flies, there are very few enzymes in the air to be attacking my potatoes.

 

It would seem the person who wrote the preface does not have a solid grasp of something.

 

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Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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JoNorvelleWalker

JoNorvelleWalker

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1 hour ago, FrogPrincesse said:

@JoNorvelleWalkerWhat is the original French title of the book? I have a bunch of his books, and was wondering which one that might be. Thanks! 

 

 

Caldrons and Test Tubes I think he said.

 

Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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rustwood

rustwood

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I just finished Pig Perfect by Peter Kaminsky, which made me want to buy expensive ham and Ossabaw pork.  Then I started Meathooked by Marta Zaraska, which has me reconsidering - or at least feeling a little guilty.  I was surprised to find a local source for Ossabaw but they won't be available for at least a month.  Maybe if I hurry up and finish Meathooked I'll be over it in time.

 

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Naftal

Naftal

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I've just started Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery.

"As life's pleasures go, food is second only to sex.Except for salami and eggs...Now that's better than sex, but only if the salami is thickly sliced"--Alan King (1927-2004)

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Katie Meadow

Katie Meadow

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Ronni Lundy's "Butterbeans to Blackberries, Recipes from the Southern Garden."  Southerners seem more attached to the foods of their childhoods than just about anyone. No one but a Southerner would rhapsodize so about string beans, and no one else could convince me that cooking them for an hour and a half until they pretty much dissolve in bacon grease would be a truly great treat. But I believe her! I'm ready to make them.

 

Really entertaining read, with lots of asides, stories, historical tidbits and personal reflections. Also the chapters are hilarious. Okra is so beloved that despite only starring in three or four recipes it gets its own chapter. So does corn. This is a really sweet book, and I'm marking more recipes than I thought I would. Ready to order Sorghum on Amazon!

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chromedome

chromedome

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On 20/08/2016 at 9:57 AM, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

For those of us who might not be able to find the actual print copy, here is a very amusing website: The Gallery of Regrettable Foods. I believe it is by the author of ElainaA's book. Here is a sample page. Certainly not high-brow, like many of you have posted, but I can guarantee it's interesting, revolting, and you will get a laugh out of it. :D

 

 

I love that site. I first tripped across it years ago when I lived in Edmonton, and wound up spending four of my only six potential sleeping hours there that night (never a good idea to "poke around on the internet while I wind down"). The related fashion and decor pages are equally fun -- I remember some of those ghastly combinations from my 70s childhood -- but the funniest of all was his tribute to The Gobbler, "the grooviest hotel in Wisconsin."

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“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

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MelissaH

MelissaH

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On 12/16/2016 at 0:09 PM, Smokeydoke said:

Just finished Hot Bread Kitchen and Polpo. I wasn't as impressed as others. I can't believe Hot Bread Kitchen won Food52's cookbook of the year.

 

My next cookbook will be The London Cookbook. I'm looking forward to it.

I, too, was unimpressed with Hot Bread Kitchen, especially after neither of the recipes that I tried worked well. And I wondered what the Food52 judges had been smoking when they kept pushing it through their contest. It was great fun to read, but that's only half of what makes a cookbook good, IMHO.

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MelissaH

Oswego, NY

Chemist, writer, hired gun

Say this five times fast: "A big blue bucket of blue blueberries."

foodblog1 | kitchen reno | foodblog2

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Anna N

Anna N

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1 hour ago, MelissaH said:

I, too, was unimpressed with Hot Bread Kitchen, especially after neither of the recipes that I tried worked well. And I wondered what the Food52 judges had been smoking when they kept pushing it through their contest. It was great fun to read, but that's only half of what makes a cookbook good, IMHO.

 The book Hot Bread Kitchen has a number of serious errata which will apparently be fixed with the next printing. Doesn't help you at all, I realize. But I made two breads from the book and both of them were amazing.  Too bad they didn't print an errata as soon as they were made aware of the errors. 

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Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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MelissaH

MelissaH

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1 hour ago, Anna N said:

 The book Hot Bread Kitchen has a number of serious errata which will apparently be fixed with the next printing. Doesn't help you at all, I realize. But I made two breads from the book and both of them were amazing.  Too bad they didn't print an errata as soon as they were made aware of the errors. 

In this day and age, there's no excuse to at least make the errata available on the web, both on your own website and on the pages for major online sellers such as Amazon.

 

As an editor, I'd like to know where things went wrong!

MelissaH

Oswego, NY

Chemist, writer, hired gun

Say this five times fast: "A big blue bucket of blue blueberries."

foodblog1 | kitchen reno | foodblog2

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Anna N

Anna N

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29 minutes ago, MelissaH said:

In this day and age, there's no excuse to at least make the errata available on the web, both on your own website and on the pages for major online sellers such as Amazon.

 

As an editor, I'd like to know where things went wrong!

It was apparently a math problem!  Converting between volume and mass. The same problem that doomed Ferran Adrià's The Family Meal.  

Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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