Posted on: Wednesday, November 29, 2006
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Books for every cook on your list
By
Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Columnist
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GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser
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OK, we can talk about Christmas now; it's officially the holiday season. (I am one of those who averts her head when she encounters Christmas decorations and refuses to listen to carols until AFTER Thanksgiving.)
Christmas means gifts, and gifts, to cooks, mean cookbooks. I've got three stacks of new cookbooks, each 3 feet high, so it's going to take a few columns to cover the topic. This week, the "big books," standard reference cookbooks. If you've got a young adult or newlywed on your list, these make great gifts for kitchen newbies. Most of these books should be in local bookstores, but if you can't find one, check online sources.
"Joy of Cooking" by Rombauer and Becker (Scribner, hardback, $30). For many of us, this is the grandma of them all; the book we turn to first when we want to find a standard recipe or brush up on a technique. Many of us have clung to our old editions, however, because the newer ones were a little too slick, lacking the warm, guiding voices of the original author, Irma Rombauer, and her successor and daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker. This new edition, published in the book's 75th year, restores all the old family recipes and their folksy introductions. But it also has been updated — every recipe retested, and many contemporary recipes added (breakfast bars, rolled sushi, flavored vodkas). The entire canning section has been revised and there are more vegetable recipes than before, and more lighter recipes. There are more than 4,500 recipes in all. If your "Joy" is falling apart, you can safely invest in this one.
"The Gourmet Cookbook" by Ruth Reichl (Houghton Mifflin, hardback $40). Some have complained that this revision of the 1973 classic suffers from the same problem that those old "Joy" editions did: Its personality was stripped away. However, these 100 or so recipes, selected from the more than 50,000 recipes in Gourmet's files, have been tested, retested and tested again, and — judging by those I've tried — they really work. As you'd expect from a magazine aimed at high-end eaters, the recipes are challenging, international in scope, involved and, well, gourmet. Give this one to someone you know can handle it — or who enjoys reading recipes they'll never attempt.
"The Bon Appétit Cookbook" by Barbara Fairchild (Wiley, hardback, $34.95). If Bon Appétit is your food magazine of choice, this will be your cookbook of choice. Like the magazine, the book treads a middle path — quality-conscious but not stuffy or snobby, the recipes doable but not always easy or quick. In her introduction, editor Fairchild uses the words "approachable, relevant and fun" and that seems a fair assessment. Like the magazine, the book is instruction-oriented and clearly written; they attempt to make the recipes accessible even to less-experienced cooks. One nice feature: a subject index at the front ("Breakfast and Brunch," "Soups, Stews and Chilis," etc.); alphabetical by recipe name at the back.
"The Good Home Cookbook," by Richard J. Perry (Collectors Press, hardback, $29.95). Richard Perry is a home cook who became a chef who became a publisher and went back to home cooking. Working on a retro cooking book project, he recalls, "I couldn't find a single anthology-type American cookbook that hadn't changed with the times" — the recipes either sped up or were made low-fat or low-carb or otherwise altered from his childhood memories. He decided to write the book he wanted to find, and to add a twist by recruiting more than 700 American families to help test the recipes. Each recipe was evaluated and tested up to 10 times. You'll find most of the recipes here that are associated with the everyday American kitchen of mid-century America, plus more contemporary home favorites.
"The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (Revised Edition)" (America's Test Kitchen, closed spiral, $34.95). Loyal as I am to "Joy of Cooking," I have become a devoted follower of Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen. Their books, magazines and TV shows offer the most detailed instruction of any media. Their testing standards are way, way over the top. They tell you exactly how and, what's more, they tell you why. And this book's design characterizes their commitment to doing things in the best way possible and never cutting corners.
The "Family Cookbook" incorporates every feature that surveys tell us readers want in cookbooks and recipes: It's a three-ring binder that lies flat when you're using it. It's full of illustrations and color photos. It begins with a careful explanation of how to use the book and a Cooking 101 chapter covering equipment and techniques. There are hundreds of breakouts and sidebars that cover the pesky questions home cooks need answered: How to buy crab. The best temperature for deep-frying. How do you flame without burning the house down?
They tell you how long each recipe takes, how many people it serves, what it tastes and looks like and they often offer variations so you can make the recipe do double-duty. The ingredients are given in order of use and, where it's helpful, they offer alternative measurements (1 cup chopped apples; about 3 apples). They offer make-ahead tips when appropriate. And they sprinkle the book with condensed versions of their famous side-by-side product comparisons.
The book contains more than 1,200 recipes, including all the American classics from meat loaf to apple pie, but also more contemporary dishes that reflect our multicultural society (fried tofu fingers, chicken teriyaki, veggie burgers). There are menus, a subject index in front of each chapter as well as an exhaustive index at the back, troubleshooting tips, equivalents and substitution tables.
If I were forced to own but one all-purpose cookbook, this would have to be it, with all apologies to the Rombauers.
Really dedicated food hobbyists might be interested in several weighty tomes released this year:
"The Professional Chef" by the Culinary Institute of America (Wiley, hardback, $70). If you REALLY want to know how the chefs do it, from calculating food portions for large groups to making a gallon of seafood bisque, this is the book. Well-designed and uncharacteristically attractive for what is basically a textbook, the book not only tells how to process ingredients (precision-cutting tomatoes) but offers recipes (most serve 10) for a wide variety of basic dishes, from Irish stew to couscous, Korean chap chae to remoulade sauce. Literally a chef's course in book form, the book begins with a history of the profession and moves on to composing menus and recipes, nutrition and food science, food and kitchen safety, a survey of world cuisines, tools and equipment, before moving to foodstuff, mother techniques (soups, stocks, sauces) and then specific dishes with recipes. But be prepared: It is 1,214 pages and 641 recipes and weighs a ton.
"The Food Encyclopedia" by Jacques L. Rolland and Carol Sherman (Robert Rose, hardback, $49.95). This alphabetical guide to food, dishes, tools, cuisines, techniques and people covers the culinary world from abalone to zymurgy (the chemistry of fermentation, brewing and winemaking, doncha know?). There are more than 8,000 listings and, unlike older English-language encyclopedias, the scope is international, with definitions of food terms from around the world.
"The Food Substitutions Bible" by David Joachim (Robert Rose, paper, $19.95). This is both a food encyclopedia and a guide to substitutions and variations — quite useful if you enjoy altering recipes because it helps you understand which foods have similar properties. It is alphabetical with a definition of the food in question and an "If you don't have THIS, you can use THIS" feature. Many items also suggest how to vary the flavor when using the ingredient.
"The Spice and Herb Bible" by Ian Hemphill (Robert Rose, paper, $24.95). This is an illustrated spice and herb encyclopedia, arranged alphabetically, with recipes. Again, the scope is international and you'll learn about some flavoring agents you've never heard of before.
Send recipes and queries to Wanda A. Adams, Food Editor, Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Fax: 525-8055. E-mail: wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com. For more information about our 150th
anniversary cookbook, call 535-8189 (message phone; your call will be returned). You can order the cookbook online.
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