Cookbooks 2018

[Anna N]

4 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I wonder what would happen if you put the Japanese name into google?

 

 Believe it or not I made an attempt at this. I installed a Japanese keyboard on my iPhone.   It was far more painful than my last two root canals so I gave it up. 

[Anna N]

3 hours ago, rotuts said:

I just got the book from the library

 

its an interesting book.

 

not having the english transliteration seems like a serious omission to me.

Hachisu Is very much involved in the effort to preserve Japanese traditions in cuisine and also in other areas.   She can be quite rigid at times which as a non-Japanese living in another country I find very irritating.  She writes in English for a non-Japanese audience and I think such rigidity is unwarranted. But that’s just my opinion.  

 

Also, and this is directed more at the publisher than the author, when you are presenting a cuisine  to an audience that is quite unfamiliar with it,  and where presentation is so crucial to the cuisine, then you need photographs. You need many, many photographs.   You need at least as many photographs as are found in Tokiko Suzuki‘s Japanese Homestyle Cooking. 😊

[MelissaH]

18 hours ago, Anna N said:

 Believe it or not I made an attempt at this. I installed a Japanese keyboard on my iPhone.   It was far more painful than my last two root canals so I gave it up. 

Is Japanese one of the languages that works with the Google Translate app's photo capabilities?

[Anna N]

Just now, MelissaH said:

Is Japanese one of the languages that works with the Google Translate app's photo capabilities?

 It might. But if you wanted to look up very many recipes I’m sure it would be painful. It seems somebody made a very arbitrary decision. I have a lot of Japanese cookbooks in English and not one of them fails to give a transliteration of the recipe title.  

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On the subject of Japanese cookbooks:  Mukoita II, thanks to amazon release day delivery!  (I preordered my copy a year and a half ago.)

[heidih]

New York Times just put out a best of list but it is behind paywall. If you have access - maybe worth looking at

[blue_dolphin]

21 minutes ago, heidih said:

New York Times just put out a best of list but it is behind paywall. If you have access - maybe worth looking at

Do you have a link?

Are you referring to this piece from a few weeks ago, The 19 BestCookbooks of Fall 2018, or is there a new list out?

[heidih]

Time flies! It is that list I saw on a site just the other day.. Oops...

Edited October 30, 2018 by heidih (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

9 hours ago, heidih said:

New York Times just put out a best of list but it is behind paywall. If you have access - maybe worth looking at

 

Thanks @heidih I had missed that list.  Several titles appeal and the library is buying The Nordic Baking Book for me.  However I must resist as I've already purchased five cookbook titles this week.

 

[Robenco15]

21 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

On the subject of Japanese cookbooks:  Mukoita II, thanks to amazon release day delivery!  (I preordered my copy a year and a half ago.)

I can’t wait to hear how this is!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On ‎10‎/‎31‎/‎2018 at 9:33 AM, Robenco15 said:

I can’t wait to hear how this is!

 

Mukoita is the first of the five techniques.

 

@Anna N may be assured that each potential viand (at least those of the animal kingdom) is identified by gorgeous photographs, transliteration, common English name, and Linnaean taxonomy.  Hence:  Sazae, Horned Turban, Batillus cornutus.  (Should you need one from your local Shoprite.)

 

In truth I question the practicality of this volume for the average North American homemaker.  I regret I shall never see, let alone cut and cook the majority of these creatures.  But if I do I shall be prepared!  Particularly when dinner is carved alive, has "dagger-like teeth, which can inflict serious injury", and strenuously objects to being eaten.

 

More scary are the vegetarian cuts -- speaking as someone who once Modernistly butchered her left thumb.

 

The techniques leave nothing to imagination.  Every step is photographed and explained down to proper knife choice,  sharpening, and grip.  The recipes are inclusive.  Including bits that one is advised not to eat.

 

I thought of @rotuts while reading the technique of removing tendons from chicken breast.

 

The previous volume, Mukoita I from The Japanese Culinary Academy's Complete Japanese Cuisine, deals with butchering large fish.

 

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

In truth I question the practicality of this volume for the average North American homemaker. 

In truth and uncharacteristically I have no interest in this series of books except for the very first volume which deals with the history and the culture. 

 

 Canned sardines do not lend themselves easily to elaborate slicing techniques.

 

 Still I am glad to hear that there is such precision in the naming of creatures and vegetation that live and thrive in an alternate universe.

 

 Thank you @JoNorvelleWalker.

 

 

[FauxPas]

I was just perusing this thread and see a few of the Kindle versions of the books mentioned seemed to priced quite well right now at Amazon. Of course, the prices could change at any time. 

 

Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food by Nik Sharma is $9.43. 

 

Saladish by Ilene Rosen is only $2.99. 

 

How to Eat a Peach by Diana Henry is $7.99

[oferl]

Any impressions on the newer chefs books ? Hunting for more to the collection but it seems difficult to find reviews and info about the books i'm looking at, 

like Aska, tickets, room for dessert.. Any other interesting chefs books to check, that came out in last year or two ? Looking for books that have many recipes,

practical and not too "philosophic"/personal stories :-) Maybe wait for 2019 publications ?  

[Robenco15]

Anyone here check out Bo Bech’s “In My Blood”? Based on the three recipes I’ve seen, I’m blown away by the techniques used with such few ingredients. I can’t see why I won’t be buying this. 

[rotuts]

@Robenco15

 

I found this , 

 

https://chefbobech.com

 

but no book on Amazon nor my library

[Anna N]

4 minutes ago, rotuts said:

@Robenco15

 

I found this , 

 

https://chefbobech.com

 

but no book on Amazon nor my library

 It is on the Amazon.UK site  

[Robenco15]

Oh I know where to buy it. I'm saying I'm surprised this is the first mention of it on eGullet (that I could find) considering it looks to be one of the best cook books released this year in the Restaurant Chef category. I mean, check out the recipes on his site (https://chefbobech.com/). The Turbot with Fennel Ravioli and Gruyere is unbelievably simple in its ingredients and uses such a creative technique. I already know I'll be making that come January (with a substitute for the Turbot unless I'm feeling $$). Same with the Raw Langoustine, Hibiscus, and Yuzu. It is refreshing to see dishes made with only such a few ingredients elevated to such heights with such creative techniques.

[chefmd]

12 hours ago, rotuts said:

@Robenco15

 

I found this , 

 

https://chefbobech.com

 

but no book on Amazon nor my library

Thank you for the link.  Brown butter, espresso, maple syrup sauce that he serves with the duck sounds delicious.

[Robenco15]

1 hour ago, chefmd said:

Thank you for the link.  Brown butter, espresso, maple syrup sauce that he serves with the duck sounds delicious.

 

Right?

[blue_dolphin]

Before 2018 is over, I want to give a shout-out to Alon Shaya's book, Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel.  It's as much a memoir as a cookbook so it's very much worth a read even if you don't plan to cook from it.  

The recipes  I've cooked, quite a few now, have all worked well.  They are clearly written and offer substitutions for unusual ingredients.  Because it's written as a narrative, recipes don't appear by type. I noticed at least one Amazon reviewer complaining about this but there is a category listing in the back of the book and I didn't have a problem with unconventional organization. There are color photos of every dish while watercolor sketches and photographs illustrate the stories.  

Weights are given for the baking recipes but most of the book uses conventional US volumetric measures, my only nit to pick with the book.

 

Each of the 26 chapters begins with a personal essay, beginning with a difficult childhood in Philadelphia punctuated with sweet memories of cooking with his visiting Safta (grandmother), rebellious and delinquent teenage years where he was rescued by a committed Home Ec teacher, culinary school and time as a rather obnoxious young chef before moving on to New Orleans and Katrina recovery, a sojourn in Italy, opening the modern Israeli restaurant Shaya and closing the loop with hosting his parents at the restaurant.  All the stories are woven together through food memories and the recipe headers often continue the stories and weave the recipes into the narrative.

In the acknowledgments, Shaya credits co-writer Tina Antolini with suggesting he read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking when he was struggling with how to make the stories he had written flow together with the recipes and he says that suggestion greatly helped him with the book.  I don't know whether he went to therapy or whether writing these stories WAS therapy but his descriptions of his (occasionally unpleasant) past selves are personal, insightful and honest. 

 

The book was written prior to Shaya's split from the Besh group which owned the restaurants, Shaya, Dominica and Pizza Dominica, where he was executive chef and it was published while Shaya and Besh were in the midst of their complicated corporate divorce. He seems to have landed on his feet, forming his own restaurant group and opening his own modern Israeli restaurant, Saba (grandfather) just down the street from Shaya and a second restaurant, Safta, in Denver.

 

I borrowed Shaya from the library when it was first published in March or April of this year.  Flipping through the book, one of the first chapters I read was titled "Family Meal." It describes a Thanksgiving dinner Shaya cooks with and for his family after a family tragedy and it touched me deeply. I knew that I wouldn't be able to part with the book in just 2 weeks.  I quickly tried a couple of recipes to make sure they worked and ordered the book.  No regrets on that purchase and I'd encourage you to give it a look if it's at your library. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Our library is still buying me Magnus Nilsson's The Nordic Baking Book.  Really.  But they are doing so at the rate of a snail trapped under a Greenland glacier pre global warming.  I broke down and ordered a copy from a bookstore in Seattle that shipped faster than the littoral sands are disappearing.

 

Recently I finished reading Nilsson's The Nordic Cook Book.  A beautiful tome.  I'm just not sure when I'll have occasion to ferment a shark.  Or fry blood pancakes in reindeer fat.  Don't mention fish parasites deep fried.  And it may just be my generation but my evening mai tai will never be replaced by salty licorice in vodka.  Never.  A kind friend from Finland once sent me salty licorice.  Salty licorice tastes like ammonia...because, ahem, it's made from ammonia.  However ammonia and vodka will probably get most surfaces clean, if not spotlessly as clean as Coca Cola.

 

The recipes in The Nordic Baking Book are more accessible for this Mid-Atlantic Yankee (except for those blood pancakes repeated here -- once was enough).  Even so the breads are so far beyond my experience that I can't envision the outcome from the recipe.  Strangely, Modernist Bread has no recipes for lichens.*

 

My reading of The Nordic Baking Book is about one third complete.

 

 

 

*though lichens are discussed (p 1-166)

 

 

[nickrey]

Joan Roca has just released a low temperature cookbook called Cooking with Joan Roca at Low Temperatures. It's written with the home cook in mind. On Amazon, it seems only to be available in Kindle format. Not all sous vide cooking but much is.

[Anna N]

3 hours ago, nickrey said:

Joan Roca has just released a low temperature cookbook called Cooking with Joan Roca at Low Temperatures. It's written with the home cook in mind. On Amazon, it seems only to be available in Kindle format. Not all sous vide cooking but much is.

 Strangely, it appears to be available only in hardcover on the .ca site. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

If anyone is interested amazon currently has Ottolenghi Simple for $13.90.  (The Kindle version is rather more expensive.)