More Books

This is where I archive books previously reviewed or included in What I'm Reading and What I'm Cooking From.

Epicure: Spring, edited by Kylie Walker, ISBN 1-921190-13-2, Fairfax Books.  $34.95

Spring features recipes from the well-loved columnists Stephanie Alexander, Brigitte Hafner and Jill Dupleix.

As Stephanie Alexander points out, with so much produce available in Australia all year round, the seasons can get a little blurred. A trip to a local farmers’ market, however, will soon put you right. Just-picked globe artichokes,  baby zucchini, spring beetroot.

How about some broad beans for Alexander’s delicious dip, spiced up with roasted cumin seeds and smoky paprika? Or Hafner’s Barbecue duck rice paper rolls, bursting with fresh herbs and snowpea sprouts. Check out your local Thai supermarket for wild betel leaves and try them as a wrap for Dupliex’s delicious smoked trout appetiser with a zingy hot-sweet-sour sauce. And those are just some of their entertaining ideas.

The salads and starters are brimming with spring bounty. Tiny calamari zapped on a hot grill,  a grilled lamb salad with fresh mint, feta and peas,  a juicy little quail salad, fresh noodle dishes, an inviting spring minestrone.

On to the mains. Blue swimmer crab with fennel and herb salad,  chicken with a cumquat marinade,  classic corned beef in a hearty sandwich with chunks of dill pickle. A sumptuous red onion and rosemary tart looks just the thing for a spring lunch in the garden. Lobster rolls with chive mayo would be an excellent picnic choice.

Hafner has a knack with the roasting pan and spring sees her producing slow-cooked Greek lamb. Skate wings are not cooked often enough. Dupleix gives a new twist, serving them with a crushed cherry tomato sauce spiced up with a caper dressing. Alexander reprises her famous steak sandwich with its caramelised onions, mushrooms and spinach.

Fruit is scattered through the dessert section – strawberries, blueberries, lemons, blood oranges. There are chilled delights like almond pudding with honey syrup, lemon posset.

The photography is splendid – everything looks new, fresh and inviting. This is just the book to get the creative juices flowing after the heavy fare of winter.

Cooking with Zest, edited by Kate Fraser (ISBN 0-473-10973-5, Fairfax New Zealand Ltd)

Zest is the food section of The Press newspaper in Christchurch, one I am fortunate to write for. And a grand food section it is too, regularly winning prizes for the best newspaper food section. The section is ably edited by Kate Fraser and this book is a seasonal collection of her favourites, plus those readers most request Zest to repeat.

The book has a seasonal approach with eight recipes for each season. I started on the autumn pages and found a grand recipe for Mussels with Spiked Coconut - a dish with a disctinctly Thai feel. The winter selection includes an interesting leek and potato soup garnished with "cabbage seaweed" - flash fried savoy cabbage chiffonade.

The book is available through The Press website for $NZ9.95 + postage.

Fish Food: Great Ideas for Cooking Your Catch ISBN 1740453484, Murdoch Books, RRP $22.95

We like to eat fish at least once a week, often twice. Because I live close to a good market, it's a pleasure to shop for our "catch" and see what the fishmonger has on sale this week. I usually buy one variety to pan fry in the usual way and another to experiment with. It could be sardines, calamari, smoked trout, Moreton Bay bugs.

This well-priced (AUD$22.95) book is a good resource because it deals with fish available in New Zealand and Australia, covers winter and summer, starters, everyday dishes, fish plus (the "plus" including pasta, risotto and similar ingredients). And there is "flash" fish for special occasions - teppan yaki, sushi, sole Normande, whole fish, fritto misto, Greek-style calamari, you get the picture. Fish substitutions are suggested, a useful addition.

Family Circle Thai Cooking - ISBN 0864114680, Murdoch Books

Thai food has long been a favourite of mine. I enjoy the fresh flavours, the combination of sweet, sour, spicey and salty. Many of the dishes fall quite happily into our diet regime so there's no excuse to have boring meals. Lately we've been eating Thai fish cakes, calamari salad, chicken stir fries and minced pork salad.

We've passed on the coconut milk-based dishes and the rice for the present but there are plenty of other easy-to-follow recipes, all well-illustrated.

Jamie's Italy Jamie Oliver, ISBN 0-718-14770-7 Penguin, RRP $59.99

When the sons are lost for a gift to buy me for Christmas, I always suggest a book token. Then I can go to the post-Christmas sales and snap up a bargain - in this case $20 off regular retail price. I like Oliver's recipes because they're usually straighforward, and they work.

Our most recent dish from this book was Insalata de Gennaro, his mate Gennaro's version of Italian-style Nicoise. No olives or French beans, but a grand blend of potatoes, soft-boiled eggs, tuna, lemon, rocket, red onion, capers and mmmmmmm anchovies.

If you can eat meat but don't like to think about the animals being slaughtered, you may want to skip over the occasional photograph. Unfortunately good rustic fare means the reality of a few casualties, be they birds, bunnies or baa-lambs.

A good book to browse with your shopping list at hand as I am sure you'll want to start cooking from it straight away.

The Diner's Dictionary: Food and Drink From A to Z ISBN 0-19-866193-2, Oxford University Press, 1993

My local market has everything including a great little secondhand books business. And it has a pretty good book turnover - at least in the cookery section. I am always on the lookout for reference books when I am focusing on particular ingredients or dishes. This authoritative guide to more than 1200 food and drink terms was the latest to join my library.

While the book was published in 1993 and there isn’t a panini in sight, and a “melt” is defined as an animal’s spleen, there’s still a grand smorgasbord of food and drink terms, along with their meanings, origin and development.

The gastronomic red herrings are included, such as Bombay duck, prairie oysters and Alaska strawberries. The strawberries? Seems that’s a 19th century euphemism for “dried beans”.

One that had resonance for me was the Scots and Irish term “deoch an doris” which means a parting drinking, and particularly a parting dram. “It is traditionally taken standing up (if possible),” says Ayto. And a bloomer is a long round white loaf of bread with diagonalslashes across the top. Maybe two would constitute a pair of bloomers?

I’d often wondered where the word “junket” same from. Seems its from the old French jonquette, a derivative of jonq, “rush”, which originally meant basket. Junkets made in medieval times were often broken up and laid in rush baskets to drain before being served. Funnily enough I came across a junket recipe in The Virginia Housewife, also mentioned on this page, and it was called “slip”.

As for the A to Z – the book travels the culinary road from “abondance” (a firm cheese from Savoie) to zwieback (a twice-baked rusk).

While pomegranate molasses and balsamic vinegar aren’t included, the next trendy ingredient is probably sitting somewhere in the alphabet waiting to be rediscovered. Fermented mare’s milk maybe. Or red herrings…

Julie and Julia Julie Powell, ISBN 0670915262 Penguin, RRP 29.99

New Yorker Julia Powell needs a bit of excitement in her life. The 30-year-old decides to work her way through the 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.

Naturally it's not all plain sailing as she kills lobsters, grapples with aspic and wallows in butter and cream. She has stamina for someone who frequently doesn't sit down to dinner till 11pm. But she plods doggedly on to the end. There are successes and failures, triumphs and days of desperation. But Julie is a gritty girl with a mission.

Julia Powell recorded her efforts in a blog, The Julie/Julia Project that brought her fame - and a commission for this book. She writes with fresh humour and I found myself cheering her along as she reached the last recipes.

Along the way she reconstructs episodes from Julia Child's life so the noted chef becomes more than a shadowy figure in the plot.

Having cooked fairly extensively from Julia Child's books myself, I think Julie was in good hands. Child's recipes can traverse several pages as she ensures the cook has every bit of information needed. But as for cooking every recipe in one of her books... not me!

[Powell recently won the Lulu Blooker Prize, the world's first literary prize for books based on blogs, or blooks. Read more... ]

The Virginia Housewife: Or Methodical Cook: A Facsimile of an Authentic Early American Cookbook, by Mary Randolph ISBN 0-486-27772-0, Dover, 1993, $RRP20.99.

Unfortunately some of the great cookbooks of the past are long out of print. But some have been reproduced in recent years and my copy is a 1993 facsimile of an authentic early American cookbook, originally published in 1824 and widely regarded as the first truly Southern cookbook. It was compiled and written by Randolph, reputedly the best cook in Richmond, Virginia.. The book was an immediate success, quite probably as so few cookbooks had been printed in America. It went through 19 editions before the outbreak of the Civil War.

The introduction to this facsimile edition by Jan Longone, a specialist in antiquarian win and food books says Reynolds obviously had a fine palate and was a sophisticated cook.

The recipes include some that sound as though they might have been plucked from a 21st century chef’s repertoire. Among the ice creams is Oyster Cream made from a rich oyster soup, strained to remove the oysters, then frozen.

The alcohol flowed fairly freely in Mary’s kitchen and was frequently sloshed into and over various dishes. Mary also had a comprehensive herb and spice collection and was not reluctant to use anchovies, capers, horseradish, vinegars and other flavourings. And she made her own. There’s oyster catsup, the oysters pounded in a mortar with salt, cayenne pepper, mace then boiled with wine, sieved, boiled again, skimmed and bottled. “This composition gives a fine flavour to white sauces and if a glass of brandy be added, it will keep good for a considerable time.” Pity about the price of oysters these days…

Mary’s brandy supply must have been fairly generous. Apricots in brandy, cherries in brandy, peaches in brandy, plums in brandy.

Life wasn’t all meat, poultry and game either. Vegetables included Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus, sea-kale, cauliflower, beetroot, carrots, parsnips, artichokes, broccoli, Lima beans, spinach, sorrel, okra, eggplant.

A “Nice Twelve O’Clock Luncheon” is made of “tolerably thick” toasted bread, topped with half an anchovy, grated cheese and chopped parsley mixed and some melted butter and then browned under the salamander.

Like to read it yourself? You can download a zipped html version of the book from my site. Just click here for the 97kb file which was obtained from Project Gutenburg.

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Restaurant Critic in Disguise Ruth Reichl ISBN 1-74114-644-5 Allen & Unwin, RRP $32.99

Reichl was head-hunted to be the restaurant critic of The New York Times.

En route to take up the job, she discovered restaurants were already posting her photograph in their kitchens so staff would recognise her if she came in.

She adopted a series of disguises so she could experience meals and service as they came and not the special production often afforded the critic. Her reviews were the result of several visits (never fewer than three) to each restaurant and there's no doubt some of her dowdier disguises led to her being poked in a corner table well away from the action, and often 'invisible' to the service crew.

We've all been to restaurants where staff treat some customers with downright disdain and fawn all over the famous. Reichl is one critic who has experienced both sides of the menu.

An excellent read and interesting to see the reviews she subsequently wrote of dining experiences that ranged from the abysmal to the dizzyingly gorgeous.

Endless Feasts, edited by Ruth Reichl ISBN 1865087777, Allen & Unwin RRP $

I loaned this to a work colleague who was embarking on an out-of-town assignment that promised to have its definite downside. She swears the book helped see her through some solitary evenings.

It's a celebration of 60 years of writing from Gourmet magazine by such luminaries as MFK Fisher, Claudia Roden, Elizabeth David, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna O'Brien, Ray Bradbury, Annie Proulx and George Plimpton, to name a few. This is a book to dip into, one satisfying bite at a time. Certainly some ofthe stories warranted re-reading, they were so elegantly strung together.

A highlight for me was a piece by Robert P Coffin who went deer hunting on the coast of Maine. While one of the party stayed on shore to cook the venison, the rest were dispatched in the moonlight, across the frozen low-tide swamps to shoot some ducks. The ducks were too high, well out of range. But "to run wild under a wild full moon in a night far, far below zero - this was a thing once in a lifetime, a once-and-for-all joy. So run we did and fired, fired and ran, through this unreal, silvered world...The ducks quacked quick and loud overhead and laced the sky with excitement. We were like boys in a world no boys ever knew".

This is a delightful menu to choose from. Grazing at its best.

More from my library >>