Moosewood Cookbook

Moosewood Cookbook

Feels Like Home

I have the Sundays at Moosewood Cafe cookbook, so I was looking foward to my copy of the 40th Anniversary edition of the Moosewood Cookbook Collective.  Soon as you open the cover, the handwriting invites you in.  You feel like you're reading a dear friend's or dear relative's secret stash of delicious recipes.

The dishes are not exactly high-end gourmet, the kind of dishes you'd find at French Laundry, Bistro LQ, Melisse -- but they are the foods we eat and can enjoy everyday.  Foods like guacamole, ginger carrot soup, pesto.  This cookbook is great for anyone new to cooking, especially healthy cooking.  I like the updates to lower fat and calorie content.  There are no drop-dead gorgeous photographs, no food porn here.   Homey reminder you it's about the food and sometimes the simpler, the better.

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

Prune

Prune
by Gabrielle Hamilton

There is something very endearing about a seeing a highly-acclaimed, celebrity chef's handwritten notes in a cookbook.  Suddenly, the recipes all seem approachable.  Friendly.  Fun.  Which is exactly what I need during the holiday season where there are so many potluck parties.  Not your grandmother's potluck party where you could bring any dish and your grandmother would still pinch your cheeks!  No, a foodie potluck party!  A dish foodies can or will love!

My brother is taking a leisurely drive cross country to make his way to California, so I have no idea what day he will land on my front door.   I do know that I want to cook something special for my brother, but not spend so much time cooking and shopping that we end up with no quality time together.   Also, several folks have made it known they want to meet my brother, a motorcycle racing champ and former bodybuilder.  Could I really pull together a last minute gourmet dinner and still get all my work done?

That's the other problem us foodies/home chefs have.  No one wants to come to your house and eat takeout.  Talk about mutiny.

For the record, I have eaten at Prune a few times.  I've read Hamilton's articles in The New Yorker, seen her on TV.  And it is for that reason, I bought her cookbook.   I look forward to recreating warm memories and creating new sensory experiences.  There are plenty of photos, though I wish there were more.  Most, not all, of the recipes embody simplicity and elegance.  Grilled head on shrimp with anchovy butter.  Whole grilled fish with toasted fennel oil.  Grilled rib-eye steak with parsley shallot butter.  These recipes enable a hostess spend more time enjoying her guests.

There are some recipes for whole rabbit, suckling pigs -- ingredients not so readily available to the home chef.  I'll have to go back to Prune to sample those dishes.

I received this Book from Blogging for Books for this review.

A Year in France

A Year in France

A Year of Cooking in my Farmhouse

by Mimi Thorisson

Pick this book up at your own risk.  I'm serious, you will want to move to France immediately and recreate this fantasy.  This life of deliciousness where every meal and everyone is beautiful.  The photos are stunning, food porn  -- beautiful food, beautiful people. The recipes are organized by season, beginning with spring.

Are the recipes practical for the home cook?  Yes and no.  Depends who your supplier is.   Calves' Liver a la Bordelaise, Langoustines with Armagnac, Black Pig Pork Roast, Poussins, Quails, Squab, Spider Crabs.  It isn't easy.

The good news is there's plenty of inspiration to be found.  Aunt Francine's Fava Bean Soup, Roast Chicken with Creme Fraiche and Herbs.   Thorisson is half Chinese, half French, so towards the end of the book, she includes a little section devoted to Chinese New Year.   Happy Valley Wonton Soup is one of the six recipes lumped in at the end.  

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

Laurent Quenioux: A Retrospective of a Master Artist/Chef

No question, Chef Laurent Queinoux is a master chef and master artist.  This is less of a review of one meal, and more of a retrospective.

Like so many others, I've been a fan of LQ since his Bistro K days.  His "foodings" are always innovative, artistic, inspiring and of course, scrumptious.  How many Chefs continue to delight their customers dish after dish?  Push, experiment, hunt, gather, procure?  In this brutal economy, so many of us are forced to scrimp and save, hunker down, cut corners someway somehow-- but Chef Laurent does not compromise his craft.  Jamais!  LQ is always cooking.  This commitment to excellence and craft only makes me love LQ more because that is exactly how I feel about my craft (writing).  I only wish I had more loyal paying fans!  :-)

Cassoulet

Go to great lengths to bring you new tastes?  Cheeses?

Eric dazzles us with cheese

Like many others, we followed LQ to Bistro LQ on Melrose in West Hollywood to Starry Kitchen to Vertical Bistro.

His pop-ups often sell out quickly.  You have to reserve fast, and sometimes that makes it challenging to invite others.  The back and forth required to pick a date, time and commit -- well, all the tables could be snapped up before a consensus is reached.  You're also torn.  You want to spread the word to support LQ near and far because he is an international treasure, but you don't want to make it impossible for to get reservations next time.  I have foodie friends who do not share new gems for precisely this reason, they don't want to sabotage their chances of getting a table.

The past two pop-ups, however, I did invite some newbies to join in the culinary experience.  Oh my, what an incredible joy it was to see their eyes light up, to remember what it was like to taste LQ's cuisine for the very first time.  Yes.  You always remember your first.

My first egg meurette

As folks enter the dining room, many came over to say hello or waved.  One guest in our party was so impressed, he asked me I knew everyone.  The host recognizes me from Vermont and walks over to say hello.   Friends from Pleasure Palate could fill the room.   I had to laugh as my eyes scanned the room.  I guess after all these years, you do begin to recognize people, make friends, exchange hugs and bisous, and share.  Delicious joy has a way of bonding you to each other, organically.  After several wonderful meals, you feel like family.  LQ's extended family.  I've always wanted to be French!   If you are what you eat, I'm getting there one dish at a time.

Some other fine LQ dishes.

Frog legs

You're drooling, aren't you?

Hope to see you at the next LQ Fooding.  Don't forget to say hello :-)

Relae

The cover alone informs you that Relae is no ordinary cookbook.  A Book of Ideas.  A wealth of information.  Christian F. Puglisi has an encyclopedia knowledge that, at first, can overwhelm most home chefs.  Most home chefs, myself included, lack the time and resources to create these exquisite dishes.  

This book is really dense, best devoured in small bites to really savor what Puglisi has to share.  I love his philosophy of Locavorism, how he includes his roots, ancestry and declares that it is his mixed background, not the color of his passport, that defines him as a person.  Wholeheartedly agree.

Each dish is a work of art.   Relae makes an excellent book for your coffee table.

Relae inspires me to plate better and think of food in new ways.  I love charred romaine lettuce, but never thought to char cucumber.  I've charred romaine, and he poaches it in butter.  I often add nasturtiums to my dishes, he adds the leaves.  Relae helps me re-think ingredients.

You will want to spend hours with this book, and then book a flight to Copenhagen.  One flaw:  the half-page dust jacket falls off every you open and close the book.

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

 

Sunday Suppers

Summer afternoon -- to Henry James, the two most beautiful words in the English language.

And yes, it's hard to best summer afternoon, but Sunday Suppers comes awfully close.

It's a fantasy of mine to have a Sunday Suppers Chez Lucie -- but I've dismissed it for various reasons.  Cost is foremost.  I can't afford it without everyone pitching in.  Two, time.   Three, my kitchen is tiny, Manhattan galley style.  Even my chef friends have shaken their heads, Impossible!  I didn't want to start something I couldn't finish.  As Mordechai points out, word about her first supper spread quickly.

But still, fantasies live on, persist so I was thrilled to read Karen Mordechai's Sunday Suppers.  She makes the fantasy seem possible.  Food does not have to be overly demanding, you can vary the locales.  Her recipes reflect her philosophy that stresses less is more.   Atmosphere, quality of ingredients and people matter most.

Most of the recipes are simple and call for easily found ingredients.  Her apple and olive cake looks great except that it takes 2 C of sugar, 3 C of extra virgin olive oil, and 3 C of milk.  I remember this recipe was distributed via NY Times or Epicurious and brought a lot of outcry over the amount of sugar and olive oil combined.  I wish there were a lower calorie version.

The joy in this book comes from the well-thought out menus which are easy to mix and match, and substitute out.  By showing you what worked communally, Mordechai helps free your creativity.

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

Vive La Difference!

As a lifetime Francophile who lives in California, and has the joy of dining at Chez Panisse a few times, I knew I had to add French Roots to my cookbook collection.

French Roots chronicles the romance and careers of married chefs Jean-Pierre Moulle and Denise Lurton Moulee as well as the evolution of food.   How the focus on fresh, local, sustainable has evolved from the seventies.   Yes, there's quite a bit of narrative for your "typical" cookbook, but this is no typical cookbook, and the writing inspires as much as the recipes.  

The Moulles say it is very French not to waste things -- but it's also very Chinese!  Perhaps I actually am Chinese French American.  I, too, garden on a much smaller scale (Can't afford a ranch in Sonoma) and do my best to use what I grow, and what I grow often guides my culinary creativity.  

A wonderful variety of recipes, ranging from quick and easy to slow and steady.   The photographs are gorgeous.  Some recipes that I cannot wait to try include leek salad with mustard vinaigrette and egg, marinated sardines, grilled eel skewers with pancetta and possibly the prunes armagnac ice cream.  The section on the wines of Bordeaux is an added bonus.  

French Roots reminds you how important food is, and how the art of the menu comes down to the ingredients and the people.  Simplicity reigns supreme.   A votre sante, France et California!

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."