Book Review: Tender by Nigel Slater

Back in Princeton, Dan and I visited one of the last remaining bookstores on earth. (Ok, that's a bit dramatic.) I think we spent an hour just perusing the shelves, Dan in the photography section, while I buried my nose in cookbooks.

The selection was absolutely overwhelming--hundreds of cookbooks, with thousands of recipes, and so few meals to cook. (We were eating in the dining halls.) I knew I didn't need any of them, but when I pulled this one off of the shelf, I was captivated.

I dragged Dan over to show him the dark, oversaturated photographs, paying homage to fresh, crisp, tender vegetables. Finally, somebody who understood!

The pages of this book are sectioned by vegetable--from your standard broccoli to the more unusual celeriac. Each section has a succulent description of the vegetable, graphic enough to make even the most ardent zucchini-hater reconsider, followed by planting tips for your backyard vegetable patch, and a collection of recipes.

Now, I know the English are famous for crappy cuisine, but I think Nigel Slater may be one of the few with some serious tastebuds. So far, we've made two recipes from the book, both of which were phenomenal. The remaining recipes look equally delicious, and I hope to attempt many soon.

Be warned that these are not recipes for the faint of heart--he is not shy with the heavy cream--or those new to the kitchen, as the instructions can be quite vague.

Pros:
- Amazing photographs and descriptions, all of which make you want to eat more vegetables
- Creative and classic recipes, plus notes on how/when to eat them
- Great organization, and clear layout

Cons:
- Many of the recipes rely on meat and fat, so this is not for strict vegetarians or people on a diet
- The recipes can be a bit vague in places (e.g. "cook as you see fit")

Overall, I'd recommend Tender to any carnivores trying to eat more vegetables, as well as anybody who's serious about growing their own vegetables. If you don't eat meat at least occasionally or garden, it's probably not worth the $25.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or emailing me at piquantprose [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Book Review: The Bread Baker's Apprentice

This was the first cookbook I owned. I think it speaks to my preferences in culinary creations. Because I live in a dorm, and the kitchen is so far away from my room, I prefer baking. When I bake, I mix the batters and the doughs in my room and ferry them to the kitchen all ready to go. It's very rare that I forget something important since usually all I have to bring is a baking vessel and my batter.

Unfortunately for me, I don't have the metabolism of an 18-year-old male. I can't eat a whole pan of brownies and not suffer dire consequences. At some point, I realized I had to stop baking dessert and start baking more wholesome and more savory goods. My sister had recently made bagels, so I gave it a go.

Cinnamon swirl bread, and a glass of milk sitting on BBA.

Now, I don't recommend that anybody start with bagels. However, if you think yeast is scary, making bagels will flush that right out of your system--the shaping, boiling, topping and flipping are all a lot more intimidating than throwing some yeast in with your flour.

After Tastespotting bread recipes for a while, I read about the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, to bake through Peter Reinhardt's entire book in order, and blog about each recipe. No big deal, I thought to myself. I can do that. So I bought it. And I read the first section on the hows and the whats of bread making. And I made the first recipe--Anadama bread.

Book Review: Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies

In high school, I went to one of my teammate's birthday parties and had some of the best chocolate cake I'd ever had in my life. When I got home, my mom informed me that my teammate's mother was Alice Medrich. As it turns out, Berkeley isn't a bad place to grow up.

A number of years later, with that knowledge in hand, I felt confident purchasing her new cookie book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies. I've only made two of the recipes so far, but  my confidence was certainly deserved.

First, I made her whole-wheat biscotti. Last time I made biscotti, I accidentally turned the oven to 450°F instead of 350°F. These clearly turned out better. There wasn't anything particularly mind-blowing about the cookies, but they were really quite good. (They also made great spoons for eating pudding.)

Second, I made her Peanut Butter Clouds (although mine had a twist). This is something I never would have thought to make. So far in my life, I've been very much so a cookie purist--chocolate chip cookies, maybe some oatmeal thrown in. They were divine.When you buy the book, make them, ASAP.

The book also has a few sections on ingredients and prepping your kitchen for cookie madness. They're really helpful, so I suggest reading them. (It's helpful knowledge for more than just cookie baking.)

Ok, so the recipes are delicious, and D is certainly enjoying me owning a cookie cookbook, but a few notes of warning:
1. You will make cookies more often, and you will eat them (because they are delicious).
2. This is not a book full of quick cookie recipes to make on the fly. A lot of them involve interesting and different ingredients that you probably don't have on hand. Many others involve sitting overnight in the refrigerator. There are some quick and easy recipes, but it's not the majority of the book.
3. The book is terribly, horribly, awfully organized. I find that it's impossible to find almost anything in it, so I've taken to using post-it flags every time I find a recipe I like. Pretty soon it's going to be filled with flags. The book has an index, but it's surprisingly difficult to read. The table of contents isn't much help either, especially if you like crunchy, chewy, crispy gooey and melt-in-your-mouth cookies.

Still, all-in-all, this book is a win. I mean, it has upwards of 6 different brownies recipes--what more can a girl ask for in a cookbook???

Book Review: The Curious Cook by Harold McGee

Another book I found hiding in the university's chemistry library, this was a fairly fun and entertaining read. You may have heard of Harold McGee—he writes for the New York Times and has written a couple of other books (one of which I'm currently reading!).

The Curious Cook is basically a book about playing with food. By playing, I really mean performing pseudo-scientific experiments. The first part of the book reads like a series of lab reports, just lab reports from the best lab course you could ever take.

McGee talks about searing meat, sous vide cooking, beurre blanc and persimmons from an objective and scientific standpoint, creating experiments to explain the chemistry behind the concepts. While the chapters aren't as in depth as his tome On Food and Cooking, they're a lot more fun and accessible. Plus, I'm game to read any book that has a whole chapter on sorbet, particularly if that chapter has recipes and instructions for making your own.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't really go out with a bang. The second part of the book is about food and our health, including heart disease and cancer. Although his explanations of how food might affect our health did give me more information, they weren't as accessible as the first few chapters.

The highlights
- It's a fun, light, easy read.
- It piqued my scientific curiosity about food, and made me think about ways to ask and answer my own questions.
- The last few chapters were really a lot less fun to read.

The verdict:
This book would make the perfect present for a teenager who likes both science and food (but maybe doesn't have a huge background in either). It also has a few pretty handy reference tables scattered throughout the book. It's a cheap enough book that I would consider purchasing it as a reference book, especially if I made a lot of fruit ices/sorbets or cooked a lot of meat.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread/Homemade Bagels

Cinnamon Swirl Bread with the Bread Baker's Apprentice open in the background.

I've been slowly working on baking my way through Peter Reinhardt's Bread Baker's Apprentice. I definitely haven't been going in order, nor have I made much progress, but the recipes I have made have been delicious.

Since Valentine's day is coming up, I decided I better make some of D's favorite foods. I'd say his two favorite ingredients are probably garlic and cinnamon, so I decided to make one goodie with each.

He recently bought me two brand spanking new loaf pans, so those were obviously going to factor into the equation. Since cinnamon + loaf pan = cinnamon bread, I knew exactly where to start. I don't want to reprint the recipe, because you should really check out the book but here are the basics:
1. Make a lightly enriched white bread dough (some eggs, sugar, fat, etc. but not a lot), with about a teaspoon of cinnamon in the dough. (Too much cinnamon will slow down the yeast. Don't worry, there's plenty more in this recipe.) Knead in chopped nuts in the last two minutes if you want. (Reinhardt's recipe calls for raisins, but really, who likes raisins???)
2. To form the loaf, roll the dough into a rectangle a few inches narrower than your loaf pans and fairly long (12-16 inches long). Sprinkle the topside with cinnamon sugar and then roll the dough tightly, pinching the end shut to create a seal.
3. Bake as instructed. When the loaves come out of the oven, brush the tops with about 1T melted butter per 2 loaves, and sprinkle with any leftover cinnamon sugar to make a nice delicious crust.

That's an awesome bread knife in the foreground. I'll post on knives soon.

Yum!! We finished about a third of a loaf as an evening snack.

Yes, all of those slices (and more) went into our belly immediately after this photo was taken.

Next task: garlic.

Book Review: Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter

This book is perhaps the polar opposite of the last book I read, Culinary Artistry. It wasn't quite as jaw dropping or awe inspiring, but I think I probably learned more from it. Cooking for Geeks is all about food science. The book explains why some dishes are cooked at 325°F, and others at 375°F; it teaches you why beef stew is better with cheap meat; and it delves into the insane world of sous vide cooking, among other scientific cooking techniques.

I'll start with the good. The main portion of the book is very well written, and to somebody with a basic or even rudimentary knowledge of the sciences, Potter makes all of the food science concepts incredibly clear. I learned a lot about cooking, baking and recipe selection (especially important with the huge range of recipes available on the internet). More importantly, I didn't forget it all once I put the book down. Potter has a way of making it so intuitive that it actually sticks. So while I've read at least 20 times before that baking soda is basic and baking powder is neutral, this is the first time I've been sure I've got those the right way around.

Still, the book isn't perfect. Personally, I found the first two chapters, basically an introduction to the kitchen and cooking, to be somewhat patronizing. Of course, Potter recommends that those of us who have some practical kitchen experience skip the first chapters—but why would you buy a book to not read a third of it?!

Also, by the time I got to the chapters on sous vide cooking and cooking with chemicals/additives, I had lost interest. Perhaps these chapters were too irrelevant to my life right now (my pantry barely has room for whole wheat flour, let alone ordering liquid nitrogen!), or perhaps it was because I read the book in about 3 days, but they just weren't that interesting.

Finally, unless you've taken some computer science, expect to miss some of the humor. In fact, I've taken computer science and I STILL missed some of the humor.

The highlights:
- a very clear presentation of basic food science
- lots of cool, easy experiments to try at home
- witty humor and funny interviews with chefs

The verdict:
This would be a perfect book to check out from your local library. It's an easy read, so you should be able to finish it in the typical two week loan period. If your library doesn't have it, it's a good enough read to buy, especially if your bookshelf is lacking in food science books. Still, it's not really a reference book, and is well enough presented that you don't need to keep it, you just need to read it.

Book Review: Culinary Artistry by A. Dornenburg and K. Page

I picked this book up the day I got it from the library and have had trouble putting it down since. I put off school work and (yes) sleep, just so I could tuck into its pages. This book is for the food lover—for the person who wants to think about food all the time, who wants to rethink the way they cook, the way they eat, the way they order at a restaurant. This is a book about beautiful food.

Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page work systematically through the creation of food. They begin with a brief introduction to food—why cooking is an art and all the things that make it special and different. They then slowly work their way up from composing flavors to creating a cuisine, and each step is tantalizing and mouthwatering.

By the chapter on composing a menu, I was mildly overwhelmed by all of the possibilities. I had no idea how much went into the planning of a menu, let alone the development of a 'signature' cuisine. Hungry for knowledge, I literally devoured this book and all of its wonderful insights.

The highlights:
- Lots of inspirational, insightful and just plain witty quotes from world-renowned chefs
- Illustrative recipes, that have the why explained as much as the how
- A comprehensive list of flavor pals and ingredient matches
- The 'desert island lists', where numerous chefs make a list of the 10 foods they would take with them to a desert island, and why

The verdict:
Get this book! It's a little bit obvious that it was written in the 1990s, so if you're up-to-date on your food trends, it will seem behind the times. Still, it's a beautiful book about beautiful food, all about the why and the how of food as an art, not a science.

Book Review: Architect's Pocket Book of Kitchen Design, Charlotte Baden-Powell

If you’ve ever dreamed about designing your own kitchen, reading this book will make your imagination run wild. Although it’s really a practical handbook for practicing architects, detailing things such as the amount of ventilation needed in a kitchen, it also discusses the work triangle and ideal kitchen layouts. For the experienced cooks, much of this will seem obvious.

Still, there were things that I hadn’t thought about, such as the ideal distance from sink to stovetop. The book also showed examples of ready-to-install appliances like sinks, dishwashers, cabinets and fridges, all in various style and set ups. Having used two kitchens my whole life, I never realized that dishwashers came in drawers or that sinks could have draining boards attached.

After reading this book, my dream kitchen got even better, and even more fun to use. I had hoped to get more out of this book, though. The short section on kitchen layout presented very little new material and showed very little thinking outside the box. I have seen other books that ventured to break the kitchen triangle, a more interesting concept to consider.

Baden-Powell also completely omits a discussion of kitchen styles, such as modern, rustic or industrial. Although many other books about kitchen design focus heavily on this distinction, I would have like to hear Baden-Powell’s clear, succinct description of the various stylistic possibilities and how they might affect things such as kitchen layout and appliance selection.

This book is probably not worth buying unless you actually plan to design your own kitchen. If your local library happens to have a copy, though, it’s a quick, fun read that will set your mind wandering amongst the possibilities.

Book Review: Season to Taste by Colin Dence

I found this book in the dark depths of the university chemistry library. I doubt you'll find a copy of it anywhere, and I think that's ok. Colin Dence tries to present a pseudo-scientific text on the art of seasoning food. Unfortunately, his presentation doesn’t clearly cover the topic as a science or as an art.

The book begins with a presentation of the various types of spices and the various tastes available to the human palette. Unfortunately, the poor organization of the various sections and what should have been subsections makes the material difficult to slog through.

Otherwise, the material in this section is quite useful. Dence makes two clear distinctions. First, he distinguishes between taste and aroma, and uses vague scientific explanations to categorize herbs, spices and seeds as aromatics or flavorings. Second, he distinguishes between two categories of dish—sweet and sour dishes and savory dishes.

This second distinction segues into part two of his book, where he goes into a rather lengthy discussion of the history of seasoning. This entire middle third of the book could be left out. Although some of the recipes are interesting, and well-presented, his argument that sweet and sour cookery gave way to savory cookery was not very well presented nor particularly relevant to the rest of the text. I found that the history did very little to improve my understanding of seasoning. Dence would have done better to use science, rather than history, to back his claims about the seasoning combinations. All of his digging into historic cookbooks also seems to have affected his style of writing, making it somewhat more difficult to read.

Based on the section titles, it appears the Dence will finally cover the scientific portion of the presentation, and maybe cover the chemistry behind flavour harmony and flavour balance. Instead he does nothing of the sort.

In his explanation of flavour harmony, he provides a very brief list of example flavour harmonies, such as tomato, sugar, onion and cinnamon as can be found in tomato ketchup, describing this harmony as very important. However, the section doesn’t cover why these ingredients are harmonious in any particular detail, or how to achieve other harmonious combinations. The section on flavour balance is similar, telling the reader to make sure no one flavour is out of proportion with the others, unless of course that’s the point.

Overall, I found the book to be a significant letdown. I had hoped for a scientific presentation of seasoning, and got a historical treatise on seasoning. Still I did learn a few things from the book. Most strikingly, I learned the difference between aroma and taste, and how the spices, seeds and herbs can help to balance the senses. I also learned to consider sweetness, sourness/acidity and savoury as distinct flavors that need balance first. Any more experienced cook probably already knew that.