For anyone who wants a dessert that breaks the mold and challenges the taste buds with modern flavors and inspired ingredients, The Butch Bakery Cookbook offers cupcakes for the twenty-first century, with imaginative, adult flavors.
Books in the category: Country
11 Mar 2012 – 19:25
Probably the most impressive British post-war cookery compendium is The Constance Spry Cookery Book, first published in 1956. It was reprinted a number of times, and now the publishers Grub Street have produced a handsome metricated version. Nostalgia is fun, but utility is a worthy cause too – this reviewer found the layout difficult and was disappointed that the editors made no effort to lend context to the book and its recipes for a modern audience.
01 Mar 2012 – 22:54
In this classic and much-loved work – shortlisted for the Glenfiddich Cookery Award and the Guild of Food Writers Award—Ghillie Basan presents a unique collection of delicious traditional dishes from the Anatolian heartlands and sophisticated and classical recipes from the palace kitchens of the Ottoman sultans.
21 Dec 2011 – 16:03
Giorgio Locatelli is often referred to as one of the world’s best Italian chefs (or words to that effect) so it goes without saying that he knows a thing or two about Italian food. In this book he takes the reader on a most enjoyable journey around Sicily as he explores and explains the traditions and history of Sicilian food, meeting growers, producers and restaurateurs along the way. Locatelli’s enthusiasm and personality and the collection of recipes which admirably demonstrates the simplicity and strong flavours of Sicilian food make Made in Sicily both a good read and a good resource for anyone wanting to capture a little bit of Sicily for themselves.
20 Dec 2011 – 23:56
Packed with more than 250 imaginative recipes, Short and Sweet encourages bakers of every skill level to explore new ways of approaching baking without spending a lot of time, effort, or special equipment. The instructions are simple but never lacking in necessary detail, and Lepard leaves just enough room in the instructions for your own innovations and variations.
13 Dec 2011 – 21:08
After taking us on journeys into her own kitchen and into kitchens across Italy, Lidia Bastianich now invites us on a road trip into the heart of Italian American cooking today.
26 Nov 2011 – 20:36
Chef Andrew McConnell, one of Australia’s most prominent representatives of high-end relaxed cuisine, has written his first cookbook. It’s attractive, broad in its flavours, and likely to stimulate and puzzle those who aren’t familiar with this type of dining. The book has a strong local feel and will be appreciated by McConnell’s devotees, despite (or because of) the rather demanding shopping list the cookbook requires.
15 Nov 2011 – 21:18
Recipes that are timeless. Recipes that have endured. Recipes that hold enough cultural significance that they’ve adorned the pages of Art of Eating magazine. The Art of Eating Cookbook is a no fuss, no frills anthology of recipes that work, taste great, and are doable by any level of cook.
10 Nov 2011 – 20:50
Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook is the American reader’s chance to jump back to his or her youth with memories of being raised on Cap’n Crunch and Corn Flakes. In a follow-up to David Chang’s best-selling Momofuku Cookbook, his pastry chef, Christina Tosi, presents her most popular recipes including the famed Compost Cookies and Crack Pie. But beware of her overly sweet recipes if you prefer your desserts a bit more subtle and understated.
04 Nov 2011 – 21:15
Bold design, sumptuous photography, genuinely inventive recipes; all have become the hallmarks of any new book by Australian chef Christine Manfield. Exciting stuff for book lovers, especially lovers of cook books, her stunning new Tasting India is no exception.
27 Oct 2011 – 14:56
Vegetables are healthy, cost-effective and, above all, delicious. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall presents an abundance of fantastic recipes in this brilliant new book from the popular River Cottage series.
04 Oct 2011 – 15:15
Taking a gastronomic journey through the seasons, from the Victorian Beeton era to a recent sodden Parisian evening, food writer Sophie Dahl captures the seasons with simple, family-friendly food.
04 Oct 2011 – 15:15
London based cooking instructor, Reiko Hashimoto, guides the reader through a wide range of Japanese cooking, dispelling mysteries and expanding horizons.
23 Sep 2011 – 05:10
Infiniment is a wonderful addition to Pierre Hermé’s growing bibliography, with more than 100 never-before-published recipes of breakfast treats, appetizers, tarts, cakes, sundaes, and plated desserts. However, the art direction takes an approach different from his previous works, with photographs of abstract representations of the desserts instead of helpful images of the desserts themselves. Nevertheless, the sheer breadth and imagination of the recipes is sure to please any fan of modern pastry.
11 Sep 2011 – 22:35
Together with their Basque-born head chef Nieves Barragan Mohacho, Eddie and Sam Hart are cooking the best Spanish food in London today. In this cookbook they share their secrets and recipes: gutsy, fresh, sometimes delicate, sometimes hearty food, that a home cook can prepare easily.
07 Aug 2011 – 19:42
Using modern French techniques of cooking and presentation, classically-trained Chris Salans incorporates both everyday and exotic Indonesian and Balinese ingredients in his cooking. The resulting flavours are sometimes surprising and titillate the most jaded of palates.
07 Aug 2011 – 19:39
Like the menu at Bocca di Lupo, Jacob Kenedy’s award-winning London restaurant, this book is a thrilling, exotic journey through the true flavours of Italy: the hearty risotti of the north, the fried street food of Rome, and the baroque desserts of Naples.
07 Aug 2011 – 19:31
Ladurée: Sucré is a highly-anticipated collection of more than 100 of the famous patisserie’s desserts under the leadership of Phillipe Andrieu. The variety of recipes ranges from several simple, classic pastries to a few complex signature entremets. The size and format of the book unfortunately limit the content and depth of instruction which might interest more hardcore pastry chefs, but fans of Ladurée and pastry in general will appreciate this first volume from one of the most renowned establishments in Paris.
16 May 2011 – 13:02
Audrey Gordon is a respected and prolific cookery writer. She has also been a long-time contributor to BBC radio, presented numerous television series and been voted ‘Britain’s Sternest Cook’ three times. She and husband Phillip recently closed their restaurant, audrey’s, and headed to Tuscany for a chance to take a break and of course write a book about it. The result is ‘Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan Summer’, a ’sumptuously photographed and lavishly over-designed book’ written for ‘the ordinary cook, stuck at home with insufficient bench space and a set of chipped mixing bowls’.
Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan Summer looks like a regular cookbook and the recipes are certainly workable if not necessarily authentic, but Audrey is not all she seems…
11 Apr 2011 – 19:01
How the British Fell in Love with Food is the sort of book you could either read from cover to cover, or simply pick up casually from time to time to read a chapter or two. The articles from members of the Guild of Food Writers, many award-winners, provide an interesting historical perspective on modern food history in Britain, combined with a fair range of recipes. The book is not without a few quirks, not least of which the choice of period (mid-70s to 2010). The book only includes works by the Guild’s writers, as it was published to celebrate the Guild’s 25th anniversary.
27 Jan 2011 – 13:08
“Thai Street Food” is David Thompson’s homage to the markets, food stands and mobile vendors of Thailand. As with his groundbreaking previous book, “Thai Food”, Thompson explains the evolution of the food, and the systems and culture that sustains it. However, readers should not think of this book as being a street food version of his first book – to do so would only lead to disappointment. Thompson’s aim here is to give the reader an insight into what Thais eat every day and how it fits into their lives. The hour-by-hour changes in the food available to Thais in the street markets is constantly emphasised in the book. The combination of his writing and Earl Carter’s photographs is so seductive that it’s hard to resist the urge to catch the next flight to Bangkok to experience the culture Thompson has adopted as his own.
11 Jan 2011 – 14:31
French-born Australian chef and television star Manu Feildel introduces you to the absolute classics of the French kitchen and to the home-style fare of his childhood in Brittany, from niçoise and bavarois to beef bourguignon and tarte tatin.
11 Jan 2011 – 14:30
Belinda Jeffery is an Australian author who has published other collections of her recipes and contributes regularly to delicious magazine. She has had a long history working in various media and as a chef and teacher.
The Country Cookbook chronicles her move to the country, the hinterland behind Byron Bay in northern New South Wales and, in her words, is both a celebration of and a thank you for the kinder and simpler life she and her husband have found away from the city.
This book demonstrates what is best about cooking in Australia – access to an amazing range of fresh produce and flavour influences from all over the world.
24 Oct 2010 – 15:41
In this collection of new recipes, Madhur Jaffrey shows us that Indian food need not be complicated or involve hours in the kitchen, whether you are cooking curry for the first time or have plenty of culinary experience and are looking for quick and easy ideas.
24 Oct 2010 – 15:41
Kitcho reveals every facet of kaiseki, covering the intricacies of entertaining, food arrangement, and Japanese aesthetics. Step behind the closed doors of this superlative restaurant and share what lures loyal patrons back time and time again.
15 Oct 2010 – 18:04
From Eccles cakes to Cornish pasties, Chelsea buns to Scottish gingerbread, The Great British Book of Baking takes us on a tour of the very best in baking Britain has to offer. Over 120 recipes cover the whole range of baking skills from sweet jam tarts to savoury game pie.
21 Sep 2010 – 10:12
The acclaimed photographer Sephi Bergerson has been tracking down the very best street food in India. The resulting book is a visual celebration of this splendid everyday cuisine and a virtual feast in itself, with nearly 50 authentic and detailed recipes.
22 Aug 2010 – 23:26
Lebanese Australian chef Abla Amad, renowned in Melbourne for her delicious homestyle cooking, this year updated her 2001 book The Lebanese Kitchen. The new edition, renamed to Abla’s Lebanese Kitchen comes on top of the peak of interest in Eastern Mediterranean cuisines. Unlike the first edition, the 2010 version is an attractive hardcover book with numerous photographs to entice the reader, but beyond that there’s barely anything new. The lack of new content is not necessarily a drawback, however, as Abla’s Lebanese Kitchen retains the original simple, personal focus on some delicious food.
14 Aug 2010 – 23:01
Iron Chef Chen’s Knockout Chinese is a charming, lightweight book from a Japanese master of Sichuan cooking, and one of the original Iron Chefs. For better or for worse, this first translated work skips the traditional, authentic fare and goes straight for the innovative and personal recipes (with a few classics thrown in). The organization is strange and some things are lost in translation, but the recipes are often simple and inviting enough for most people to pick up immediately.
16 Jul 2010 – 15:32
Patterned after Mario Batali’s New York pizzeria Otto, Molto Gusto takes the focus away from complicated “meat-and-potatoes” Italian dishes and towards simple, easy-to-prepare everyday fare (or as limited by your budget for the deli). The recipes are all approachable and the photographs are inviting, but some readers might be turned off by some extremely simple recipes and the dependence on a specific brand of tomato product.
06 Jul 2010 – 12:47
For those readers old enough to remember when parental warnings were placed on certain music, you might remember how that music became the ‘must have’ CDs and records for your collection. Vineet Bhatia opens his recently released Rasoi: New Indian Kitchen with “This book is probably not for the novice cook.” Such sweet warnings are rarely uttered in culinary books. In this very attractive volume, Bhatia presents a wide range of impressive, at times labour-intensive (though rarely too complex) dishes that are a pleasure to eat. Along the way you learn about new ingredients, and realise that the common cliché of Indian dishes can easily be surpassed.
23 Jun 2010 – 14:00
Whether you’re hosting a casual get-together with friends or throwing an outdoor shindig, no one can teach you the art of fiesta like Rick Bayless. With 150 recipes, Bayless offers you the key to unforgettable parties that will have guests clamoring for repeat invitations.
13 Jun 2010 – 16:36
Nigel Slater tells the story of his vegetable patch and provides over 400 recipe ideas for using the vegetables he grows. Already well known for seven previous recipe books, his much admired autobiography Toast and his regular columns in The Observer, Slater’s enthusiasm will no doubt tempt some readers to start a vegetable garden of their own, although this is predominantly a book about cooking. As in his previous books, Slater’s recipes are straightforward and unfussy and his approach to using fresh produce should appeal to many home cooks.
06 Jun 2010 – 15:16
I come from the school of thought that says rock bands shouldn’t release their Greatest Hits album until their career is complete. Likewise, chefs should restrain themselves from re-releasing their favorite recipes until their career enters a culminating phase. That said, David Lebovitz’s Ready for Dessert: My Best Recipes will be excused since some of his previous books are no longer in print, and his greatest hits truly are classics worth reprinting.
15 May 2010 – 17:16
Feel like all-chocolate desserts? Have a craving for an ice cream or cake classic? Chocolate, ice cream, cakes: this set features 120 recipes of master patissier Christophe Felder, with 120 recipes that are easy and delicious to share, for moments of pure pleasure.
15 May 2010 – 17:10
Maria Benardis invites you to enjoy food the way the Greeks do. In this collection of recipes handed down through the generations in Maria’s family, she offers the best way to make traditional moussaka and lamb souvlakia, through to her own Greek-inspired modern creations.
10 May 2010 – 20:36
Katie Caldesi’s Italian Cookery Course (published as Cook Italy in the USA) is in equal measure an exceedingly attractive and enjoyable exploration of Italian cooking, and a mild disappointment as a “cookery course”. Caldesi, co-owner of the UK restaurants Caffè Caldesi, Caldesi in Campagna, and an Italian cooking school, seemed to embark on a voyage of discovery in order to find the knowledge to write this book. The result is an enormous range of recipes with many personal preferences, sometimes deviating from what a reader might expect of recipes in a course in Italian cooking. In the end, the book could have been titled “Katie goes to Italy”. Many people will enjoy this attractive, well written book, forgiving or overlooking the weakness of many of the “masterclasses” and occasional gaps in information.
06 May 2010 – 22:30
Alison Thompson’s Macaron is a nicely presented book that offers 35 flavors ranging from classic to creative. However, for such a notoriously difficult petit four to make, the recipe presented is too temperamental and the information too lightweight, with little to offer in terms of troubleshooting and technique.
03 May 2010 – 08:00
Ad Hoc at Home is the latest cookbook from award-winning chef Thomas Keller of The French Laundry and Per Se, featuring casual family-style dishes. Compared to his previous works, the book is charmingly earnest and the recipes approachable, consisting of mostly American dishes with a touch of French influence, and plenty of helpful hints from Keller. However, Keller’s meticulous nature still comes through, elevating the dishes in terms of flavor and presentation, but at the same time making them time-intensive and at times expensive and unfamiliar. Even with its lavish production, the book still has relatively few illustrations.
28 Apr 2010 – 02:23
Jacques Reymond and his restaurant are institutions in Melbourne, Australia. Over the years, the French-born chef has gradually introduced Asian elements into his cuisine. In some respects, he is the other side of the coin to Sydney’s Tetsuya Wakuda, who gradually fused French methods into his Japanese cuisine.
Cuisine du Temps is a book reflecting on Reymond’s career in the kitchen. Many recipes that people will recognise from his restaurant appear in this book, as do dishes that he learned during his time working in South America and the South Pacific. The recipes and photography speak for Reymond, but there’s a part of me that would have liked to read about the man himself and what motivates him.
22 Apr 2010 – 17:23
Mario Batali’s zest for life infuses the casual Italian fare that has made his restaurant Otto Enoteca Pizzeria a popular New York City destination. Now you can have the flavors of Otto at home, with this collection of recipes for everyone’s favorites.
18 Apr 2010 – 19:29
The Book of Tapas presents a complete guide to this convivial way of eating with over 250 easy-to-follow recipes that can be combined to create a feast. Also included in this book are modern tapas recipes from some of the world’s best-known tapas chefs.
18 Apr 2010 – 19:26
Marcus Samuelsson’s New American Table is perfect for the aspiring foodie with its vast array of cuisines. Although you’ll find nothing ground-breaking or especially innovative, adventurous cooks will enjoy the challenge of cooking across the globe and, ultimately, a modern definition of American Cuisine will appear right on their own dinner table.
12 Apr 2010 – 16:58
At first glance, you may wonder what the fuss over Okashi is all about. A fairly simple book with attractive photographs, it presents appealing recipes that showcase author Ishida’s particular style, incorporating numerous Japanese flavours into many familiar baked goods and dessert items. Creative and suitable for a broad audience, this book should delight many bakers.
04 Apr 2010 – 14:53
Turkish Bakery Delight unveils the art of Turkish baking, desserts and sweet making. Feast on a range of delightful Turkish goodies including breads, cookies and pastries, desserts and sweets, with notes explaining how to serve each delightful dish.
30 Mar 2010 – 16:44
Recipes from an Italian Summer presents a range of easy-to-follow, authentic Italian recipes using the most delicious seasonal ingredients. From informal picnics to family barbecues and entertaining outdoors, this book has the perfect dish for every day of summer.
26 Mar 2010 – 18:27
Tagines form the basis of traditional Moroccan cooking. In this collection of recipes you will find some of the best-loved classics, with recipes for lamb, beef, sausage, seafood, chicken, and vegetarian tagines, as well as a chapter devoted to couscous.
20 Mar 2010 – 21:58
Giada at Home presents recipes from Giada’s Italian and American traditions, all with her signature style. She shares classic Italian recipes passed down through the years and new family favorites, all bursting with fresh, vibrant flavors.
07 Mar 2010 – 17:33
Over the past few years publishers Phaidon have been establishing a presence in the cookbook market. “The Silver Spoon For Children” is their first move into the area of cooking with children. Often, books in this area of cooking, like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “The River Cottage Family Cookbook”, are written for adults as a guide to teaching children how to cook. This book’s approach involves having a child read it, and then prepare the recipes with the aid of an adult. By simplifying the recipes to their essence, and using large pictures and bright colours to grab attention, this book is one that has a great chance of engaging young minds.
The book takes its recipes from “The Silver Spoon”, and is aimed at children aged at least nine years old. The recipes have been tested by children, so parents can be reasonably confident that the recipes will work. As someone who has not been impressed by Phaidon’s cookbooks, this one has been surprisingly good.
18 Feb 2010 – 14:06
Cocktail expert Yuri Kato collects more than 60 recipes for cocktail classics (such as the Hinomaru, the Yuzu Bath, and the Echo Julep) as well as original creations that infuse such non-Japanese spirits as vodka, rum, and tequila.
18 Feb 2010 – 14:05
Food historian Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra takes us on a gastronomic journey to more than twenty countries with the recipes she’s collected from her friends and artisan bakers around the world during her colorful life. For many of the recipes, she provides the history and shares the experience of tasting the authentic article. With plenty of beautiful photographs, the book will transport you out of the rut of your usual French and American breads and pastries and take you to less familiar locales.
06 Jan 2010 – 16:05
From guacamole, gazpacho soup, quesadillas and enchiladas to regional specialties like burrito marimba and Veracruz style snapper, you can create restaurant quality Mexican food, with recipes from the Melbourne cantina.
29 Dec 2009 – 05:58
Based on the food served at Edinburgh’s best-known Italian deli-cafe, Valvona and Crolla, this new recipe book makes for an evocative and mouth-watering read. Organised around the four seasons, there are recipes, personal stories and mini-travelogues, hints and tips, and detailed ingredient information specific to each time of year. Inspiration abounds throughout, supported by recipes which are as reliable as they are tempting. All in all, ‘Valvona and Crolla: A Year at an Italian Table’ is a veritable feast for foodlovers.
07 Dec 2009 – 13:37
Life is Sweet is about making various types of confectionery at home, traditional and modern. The authors are the owners of the Hope and Greenwood confectionery shops in London and are experienced sweet makers. The recipes include a wide range of cooked and uncooked sweets, from rich dark truffles and chocolate with chilli and lime to marshmallows, nougat, toffee apples, old fashioned ‘pulled’ toffees and salt licorice. If you enjoy astonishing your friends with new home cooked goodies, this is a book to add to your bookshelf.
30 Nov 2009 – 18:26
We’re continuing our year-end countdown this week with cuisine-focused cookbooks. This journey will take you from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, to Southeast Asia, East Asia, and India, France, Italy, Ireland, Ukraine, Greece, and northern and southern Africa. Hopefully you’ll find something of interest in the great variety of books for yourself, or to give as gifts.
24 Nov 2009 – 16:16
Heston Blumenthal is known as a gastro-wizard. Not only does he helm the Fat Duck, once considered the top restaurant in the world, but he also has popular notoriety through his In Search of Perfection television series on the BBC. In Search of Total Perfection is the culmination of the TV series put in print (combining his two previous books from the series into one volume), and offers not only the recipes and exploratory work leading to the recipes, but also the behind-the-scenes tales from the studio. And whereas a movie can drop a book’s plot, story lines and even characters to help the story fit into a two-hour reel, this book flips a page and gathers all of the information presented in the series and expands on the shows with useful and fun details. The reader is left as plump and saturated as Blumenthal’s roast chicken. And that’s where we’ll peck away at this book – roast chicken.
22 Nov 2009 – 04:30
From the Italian Academy of Cuisine’s exhaustive research throughout the homes of Italy comes the most complete and authentic Italian cookbook ever published in the English language, featuring more than 2,000 recipes by home cooks, for home cooks.
01 Nov 2009 – 18:29
The culinary literature in English about Portugal is a bit patchy, often the work of emigrés reproducing the recipes of family and friends. The latest contribution about Portuguese cuisine is David Leite’s The New Portuguese Table. Unlike all previous books, this one sets out to innovate and modernise. Why this is the goal isn’t entirely clear, but it’s an interesting work containing tasty recipes and useful additional information from this Portuguese-American food writer.
29 Oct 2009 – 16:04
Diana Kennedy has combined her three classic books in one volume, refining recipes when possible, bringing them up to date without losing the spirit of their generation. Old friends will be delighted to revisit these classics and to find more than 30 new recipes from different regions of Mexico.
29 Oct 2009 – 16:04
The most renowned encyclopedia of food, the Larousse Gastronomique, has just appeared in its fourth English edition. Attractively presented with a bronze cover and black slipcase, it’s the latest in a series of impressive, fascinating and somewhat quirky editions in both French and English. Each edition is a translation and adaptation of a preceding French edition, and the fifth French edition was published almost exactly two years ago, in mid-October 2007. This feature provides an overview of the various editions and some of the interesting issues and changes over the years.
25 Oct 2009 – 19:02
This new masterwork of Chinese cuisine showcases acclaimed chef Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s decades of culinary virtuosity. A series of lessons build skill, and knowledge as Lo guides the home cook step by step through the techniques and ingredients that define Chinese cuisine.
23 Oct 2009 – 02:39
Lidia Bastianich awakens in us a new respect for food and for the people who produce it in the little-known parts of Italy that she explores. She passes on time-honored techniques and wonderful recipes for dishes bursting with different regional flavors.
23 Oct 2009 – 02:39
Join internationally renowned chef and Thai food expert David Thompson on a whirlwind tour of the curry shops and stir-fry stalls of Thailand, then try your hand at cooking the fast, fresh, and irresistible food that sustains a nation.
17 Oct 2009 – 17:09
Spring in Sicily, the fourth book in Manuela Darling-Gansser’s series of seasonal recipe books, is a medium-sized hardback book of 260 pages filled with recipes, photographs, commentary, brief chats with chefs, market stall holders, bakers and café owners, fishermen, artisan makers of cheese and wine, and a brief overview of the rich history of Sicily and some of the nearby islands.
The text is brief, informative and a pleasure to read, while the recipes are simple but different enough from the more usual regional Southern/Northern Italian cooking of mainland Italy to be interesting.
17 Oct 2009 – 16:51
Japanese Kitchen Knives is a beautifully photographed guide to the three main knives (Usuba, Deba, Yanagiba) and the various cutting and filleting techniques specific to each knife. Aimed towards those interested in advanced Japanese cuisine and admirers of a traditional Japanese art, the book is one-of-a-kind. However, some steps of the techniques may be too difficult to be constrained within the smallish photographs and even with the flawless photography, diagrams are still needed for clarity.
08 Oct 2009 – 23:04
Lobel’s Meat Bible from the eponymous butchery in New York promises “All you need to know about meat and poultry”. It’s a bold promise and the book doesn’t deliver. This visually attractive “bible” is both very informative and incredibly disappointing.
25 Sep 2009 – 17:05
A buzz of joy courses through some readers when they discover certain books of special note. Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti had this effect on me. The author’s prose has that rather stiff, knowledgeable and cheekily irreverent prose familiar in parts from writers like Elizabeth David or MFK Fisher. From discussion of the probable diets of different classes of people in classical times to descriptions of contemporary foodsellers to notes about making your own tomato extract, Simeti captures the culinary atmosphere, context, attitudes and flavours of deepest, hottest Sicily.
19 Sep 2009 – 13:50
“(T)he book vividly evokes the country households of two generations ago. It includes personal opinion, trucs and tours de main (personal tricks), even alternative versions of the same dish, all offered in a warm, practical and personal voice.”
That was Australian chef and food icon Stephanie Alexander on La Mazille’s La Bonne Cuisine du Périgord, but I would say much the same of Alexander’s own work, Cooking & Travelling in South-West France, published in 2002. A record of Alexander’s visits to the region between July 1999 and November 2000, this is part travel diary, part cookbook and 100% addictive.
17 Sep 2009 – 02:55
Brazilian master chef Yara Roberts takes an intimate look at the regions of Minas Gerais, the Amazon, the Cerado, and the Bahías and introduces 100 delicious recipes with an in-depth cultural lesson on the regions and their unique foods.
04 Sep 2009 – 08:01
Easy Japanese Cooking: Bento Love features a collection of more than 60 mouth-watering, easy-to-make recipes designed to go. There are also columns on “Spices, Seasoning and Tupperware for Making Bento,” “Bento I’ve Eaten,” and “White Rice Is Good.”
21 Aug 2009 – 15:02
Chef Gerald Hirigoyen and writer Lisa Weiss have produced an enjoyable, tasty book of Basque tapas — Pintxos. Every time a cuisine becomes popular, booklovers see too many poorly done chefs’ books land on the shelves. Pintxos shows how a book can capture a chef’s style and cuisine traditions without feeling forced, pretentious or too much like a self-promotional device. Pintxos is an enjoyable book to cook, eat and entertain from.
21 Aug 2009 – 15:01
In The New Portuguese Table, David Leite takes you on a culinary journey into the soul of this fascinating nation and shares both the beloved classics he remembers from cooking at his grandmother’s side, as well as modern dishes defining the country today.
09 Aug 2009 – 22:38
Hilary McNevin’s Guide to Fish is a handy, modern reference for Australian consumers. Not only does it provide helpful information about sustainable species, buying and cooking tips, but also a great range of interesting, tasty recipes for each of the fish presented. Although you could always wish for more detail, this book achieves what it needs to within its clean, compact format.
04 Aug 2009 – 00:42
This beautiful book reveals the history and distinctive characteristics of the wines of Bordeaux’s Graves region. With individual chapters on each of the châteaux, the book describes in detail the history of the estate and its wine production.
03 Aug 2009 – 23:06
Winner of the “Gourmand World Cookbook Award 2007″ as the best cookbook in the world, In.gredienti summarizes the gastronomic philosophy that has put Le Calandre in the forefront of modern cuisine in Italy and the world.
30 Jul 2009 – 15:58
An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, a collection skillfully pieced together by Elizabeth David herself, is the perfect introduction to the breadth and depth of her writing. First published in 1984, this collection of articles spanning many decades was inexplicably out of print in Britain for some years (but still available in the US). Here you will find remarkably candid – often hilarious – reviews of books and restaurants; historical essays sit comfortably with the well-loved romance of markets in rural France. Culinary gems are peppered throughout.
30 Jul 2009 – 15:56
This anthology of writings on food brings together a wide range of literary and non-literary texts from South Asia. It covers a broad range of areas of interest: scholarly, narrative, philosophical, literary, anthropological, and cultural.
25 Jul 2009 – 23:42
A collection of cakes, cookies and pastries that represent the intricacy of French-style baking, and the delicate simplicity of Japanese flavors from Keiko Ishida, the French-trained founder of Atelier K in Tokyo.
25 Jul 2009 – 23:38
From the national Country Women’s Association branches around Australia comes a collection of cake recipes, published by Penguin. This is one of a few CWA books to be released in 2009. The photos are attractive, despite the range of cakes being far from fancy, and there are many familiar classics alongside some novel twists. The personal touch saves the book from being just an idiosyncratic catalogue of recipes (not least fruitcakes!) and with a little care most readers would enjoy baking from it, despite a few recipe problems.
25 Jul 2009 – 23:37
Along with Heston Blumenthal’s “The Big Fat Duck Cookbook” and Ferran Adria’s “A Day at elBulli”, Grant Achatz’s “Alinea” was one of three highly anticipated books on molecular gastronomy released in 2008. The merits of molecular gastronomy have been argued in many forums and over countless dinners. While Blumenthal’s book provides a strong case that there is substance behind the hype, Achatz’s book may provide ammunition for those who don’t support the culinary revolutionaries. The recipes in the book are visually stunning and the techniques can leave you in wide eyed awe, but there is a gaping hole in that there are too few words from Achatz about his creations. It is also noticeable that the most satisfying writing in the book was by other contributors. It is these weaknesses that left me disappointed in the Alinea cookbook. Remove the essays, especially the one by Jeffrey Steingarten, and you may feel that the emperor has no clothes.
17 Jul 2009 – 00:20
