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9 hours ago, Smithy said:

The other thing I'm noticing about the Piglet reviews is that it exposes me to writers I haven't necessarily encountered before. It's great fun. Thanks for pointing it out!

The writing in the reviews has been the big draw of the Piglet for me.  I probably have a selective memory for some gems but I haven't seen quite the same sparkle this year.  

Like Susan Orlean's 2011 review of The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual vs Ottolenghi's Plenty, in which she says this about Plenty: 

Quote

First up, Chickpea, tomato and bread soup. Oh, yes, indeed! And then Egg, spinach and pecorino pizza! Carmelized endive with Gruyere! I am smitten. I’m also in love with the name of the writer -- Yotam Ottolenghi -- a mellifluous vowel parade which I am sure is an anagram for something.  I am scaring Husband with my sudden zeal for eggplants -- excuse me, aubergines -- and lentils. But really, I haven’t been this excited by a cookbook in quite a while. 

The phrase, "Yotam Ottolenghi -- a mellifluous vowel parade which I'm sure is an anagram for something," delights me!
 

And Gabrielle Hamilton's earlier round review in the same year where she frames the match up of Plenty vs Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table as a horse race and takes particular exception with the photography in Greenspan's book:

Quote

There's a shot of a cracker that's supposed to look like someone's just taken a bite out of it. No one has been near that cracker. In another, there are crumbs carefully arranged to look not carefully arranged....

There is almost no sense in my trying to persuade you to my opinion about the photography and styling. This is distinctly an "a chacque un son gout" story. Dorie LOVES these photos, this styling, this strangely retro era of heavily-propped and aggressively-lit cookbook design. She effuses about it in her acknowledgements and said she burst into tears of joy when she learned she could work with this team on this book. Me, they killed the food. By the time they got it in the right tableau, the right crock, the just-so schmear and crumb and the light meter checked and the silver umbrella tilted another hair to the left, the food had long ago died. I wanted to cook exactly nothing from the book based on the photography.

9 hours ago, Smithy said:

The other thing I'm noticing about the Piglet reviews is that it exposes me to writers I haven't necessarily encountered before. It's great fun. Thanks for pointing it out!

The writing in the reviews has been the big draw of the Piglet for me.  I probably have a selective memory for some gems but I haven't seen quite the same sparkle this year.  

Like Susan Orlean's 2011 review of The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual vs Ottolenghi's Plenty, in which she says this about Plenty: 

Quote

First up, Chickpea, tomato and bread soup. Oh, yes, indeed! And then Egg, spinach and pecorino pizza! Carmelized endive with Gruyere! I am smitten. I’m also in love with the name of the writer -- Yotam Ottolenghi -- a mellifluous vowel parade which I am sure is an anagram for something.  I am scaring Husband with my sudden zeal for eggplants -- excuse me, aubergines -- and lentils. But really, I haven’t been this excited by a cookbook in quite a while. 

The phrase, "Yotam Ottolenghi -- a mellifluous vowel parade which I'm sure is an anagram for something," delights me!
 

And Gabrielle Hamilton's earlier round review in the same year where she frames the match up of Plenty vs Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table as a horse race and takes particular exception with the photography in Greenspan's book:

Quote

There's a shot of a cracker that's supposed to look like someone's just taken a bite out of it. No one has been near that cracker. In another, there are crumbs carefully arranged to look not carefully arranged....

There is almost no sense in my trying to persuade you to my opinion about the photography and styling. This is distinctly an "a chacque un son gout" story. Dorie LOVES these photos, this styling, this strangely retro era of heavily-propped and aggressively-lit cookbook design. She effuses about it in her acknowledgements and said she burst into tears of joy when she learned she could work with this team on this book. Me, they killed the food. By the time they got it in the right tableau, the right crock, the just-so schmear and crumb and the light meter checked and the silver umbrella tilted another hair to the left, the food had long ago died. I wanted to cook exactly nothing from the book based on the photography.