Category Archives: Book Reviews

* A Cuisine Created by Slave Women: A Review of Kitty Morse’s Mint Tea and Minarets, and a Brief Word about Dadas**

January 8, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dealing with the death of beloved parents takes a great toll on people, leading them on journeys of self-discovery often not possible while parents still live and breathe and exert influence on their adult child’s life. Rarely does settling up an inheritance take sixteen years of patience and hair-pulling, constantly reminding the bereaved of their loss. But that is exactly what cookbook author Kitty Morse endured as she stayed true to her English father Clive Chandler’s last wishes, to preserve […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Morocco, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Azemmour, Kitty Morse, Leonora Peets, Marrakech, Mint Tea and Minarets, Moroccan cuisine, Morocco, Southern cooking

Julia Child’s “The French Chef, ” by Dana Polan

July 17, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“a history of early American television telescoped through the persona and history of Julia Child. . . . fascinating . . .” When you walk the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, you can’t miss the lingering traces of heroes and history. From the names of the men who brought you the Boston Tea Party to the dead in the Old Burying Ground near Harvard Square, the past perfumes the air. Nearly everywhere you’ll see pictures of a more modern hero, too. […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food News, France, French Cooking, Uncategorized • Tags: Book Reviews, Dana Polan, Dione Lucas, Florence Hanford, Food Television, France, French Chef, French Cooking, Julia Child, Nigella Lawson, Paul Child

Macarons – Food of Dreams and Fairy Tales

July 11, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Macarons. Truly an example of “Don’t try this at home.” But how I longed to recreate the taste and the crunch of the macarons I greedily ate as often as I could, when I passed that fairy-tale bakery on the Rue de Rivoli, close to the Hotel de Ville metro stop: Maison Georges Larnicol. Although they’re kissing cousins of a sorts, modern French macarons don’t much resemble American macaroons. The extra “O” has nothing to do with it. Macarons likely […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cookies, Cooking, Desserts, French Cooking, Uncategorized • Tags: Bérengère Abraham, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Macarons

French Bistro: Seasonal Recipes

July 5, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“A visual feast as well as a gastronomic one . . . Organized by ten essentials that any successful bistro must have, French Bistro almost reads like a graphic novel, thanks to the prolific and colorful photographs.” When you walk into a Paris bistro straight off the street on a cool fall day, the odd leaf rustling at your feet as you cross the threshold, you expect something almost magical to happen, don’t you? And, according to the authors of yet another […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking • Tags: Bertrand Auboyneau, bistronomy movement, Bistros, François Simon, France, French cuisine, Paris, Parisian bistros, Paul Bert, Restaurants

At My French Table

July 2, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If as a child you loved fairy tales and dreamt of being Cinderella, or if you longed to be the handsome prince with a turreted castle, you’re going to adore Jane Webster’s gloriously illustrated At My French Table: Food, Family and Joie de Vivre in a Corner of Normandy. The book imparts the warm feeling you get snuggling up in bed with a magical story and a steaming cup of sweet cocoa. Along with Anne Willan’s From My Chateau Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, 2000), Susan […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Amanda Hesser, Australia, Cookbooks, France, French cuisine, Jane Webster

Cooking Classic French Food, the Easy Way

June 27, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If French cuisine, or at least the cooking of it, intimidates you, you’re not alone. A perception of too many fussy techniques and hard-to-obtain ingredients stops people who might otherwise wield a wooden spoon with Julia Child’s enthusiasm. The great popularity of Italian food testifies to people’s desire to take simple ingredients and transform them into delicious food. Unfortunately, most cooks don’t see French cooking in that light. In French Classics Made Easy, Richard Grausman shatters those preconceived notions about French […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Books, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking • Tags: Elisabeth Brassart, French Classics Made Easy, Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Nora Ephron, Richard Grausman

Cookbooks Tell Many Tales

June 25, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The doorbell rang with that eerie little tinkle, the one you hear when you’re watching a movie and a phone rings somewhere off camera, unseen and slightly unnerving. I jumped up and ran to the door and yanked it open. Tires churning, the UPS truck took off, throwing gravel at a speed that would be criminal, provided a policeman lurked in the bushes, as they are wont to do around here. I glanced down at my feet. The box lying […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Europe, Food writing, France, French Cooking • Tags: Alexander Hamilton Sands, Archie Graham-Palmer, Auguste Escoffier, Charles Herman Senn, Gloucester Road School of Cookery, M. A. Fairclough, The Ideal Cookery Book

Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

June 12, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Rich with the flavor of words . . . a marvelous and kaleidoscopic view of Paris . . .” Gazing on Paris now from the vantage point of the Pont Neuf or the top of the Eiffel Tower or down the Champs Élysées, it’s nearly impossible to grasp the fact that in 1871 Paris lay smoldering, burning in the same way you’d rid yourself of your stinky garbage after a week without trash pickup. The Franco-Prussian War left hundreds of […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Critic's Corner, France • Tags: Alfred Dreyfus, Basilique du Sacré Coeur, Belle Époque, Berthe Morisot, Communards, Dawn of the Belle Epoque, Eiffel Tower, Erik Satie, Eugene Manet, Franco-Prussian War, Mary McAuliffe, Paris, Paris Discovered: Explorations in the City of Light, Paris Notes, Roger Shattuck, Sarah Bernhardt, The Banquet Years, Victor Hugo

Paris to the Past – Traveling Through French History by Train: A Book to Love and Cherish

June 2, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“If you’ve even the slightest interest in France and her history, you will enjoy this highly innovative book. If you love France, and you’re a committed Francophile, you will swoon over Paris to the Past. As Ina Caro writes in her introduction to this delicious book, ‘I charted a route you could follow.’ And indeed she does.” What is it about trains that fascinates people so much? Obsessive collectors stockpile toy trains in their basements, singers like Johnny Cash sing longingly of […]

Categories: Book Reviews, France, French Cooking, Reference • Tags: André Le Nôtre, France, Ina Caro, Paris to the Past, Rail Europe, Robert Caro, Travelogues

Culinary Memoirs: What’s the Point?

May 29, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

They usually start by describing a kitchen from that vast desert common to all of us: memory. Filled with nostalgia, and sometimes not a little anger, culinary memoirs tend to hover around the memoirist’s stomach, in what I would call extreme navel-gazing. What is culinary memoir? And why are there so many of them springing up like mushrooms on a wet spring morning (over 250 published since Ruth Reichl’s 1999 Tender at the Bone)? And – more to the point […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Books, Cooking, Critic's Corner • Tags: Art of Eating, Autobiography, bildungsroman, Cuisine, Culinary memoir, Della Lutes, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Julia Watson, Julie & Julia, M. F. K. Fisher, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Memoir, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, Ruth Reichl, Serve It Forth, Sidonie Smith, St. Augustine, Tender at the Bone, The Country Kitchen, The Feasts of Autolycus, The Physiology of Taste

Recipes from the White Hart Inn: An 18th-Century Cookbook for Today’s Cook

May 18, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The writing of cookbooks often becomes fraught with injured egos and accusations bordering on the libelous. William Verral’s Recipes from the White Hart Inn provides a splendid example of that truism. During the heyday of Whig political power in eighteenth-century England, the Duke of Newcastle enjoyed the services of a chef named M. Pierre de St.-Clouet until that gentleman decided to cut and run to the service of another, William Keppel (Earl of Albemarle), the Duke’s friend and then the British ambassador […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, Critic's Corner, England, English Cooking, Europe, France, French Cooking • Tags: A Complete System of Cookery, Clouet, Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Albemarle, Recipes from the White Hart Inn, Thomas Gray, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Whig Party, White Hart, William Keppel, William Verral

An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826–1831) by Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi, Translated by Daniel L. Newman

May 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“For readers interested in early encounters between European and Arabic culture, An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826–1831) provides an alluring glimpse into the life and thoughts of one man who recorded Parisian life around the time that Orientalism firmly captured the European imagination.” Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Arabs, Daniel L. Newman, Egypt, France, Ottoman Empire, Travel memoirs

La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life: Explaining the French

May 7, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In celebration of the 2012 French elections … “. . . your best bet for understanding the French would be to pick up La Séduction and read it at your leisure, preferably with a glass of wine and Debussy playing on your iPod.” While making coffee one morning in Paris, where she now lives, journalist Elaine Sciolino noticed the slogan on the Carte Noire coffee bag. The company touted its product as “A Coffee Named Desire.” Ms. Sciolino, author ofPersian Mirrors: The […]

Categories: Book Reviews, France • Tags: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Elaine Sciolino, François Hollande, France

War. Cook. Eat. Love.

April 10, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey* (Free Press, 2011) , isn’t the first person to cook her way through trying times. Nor will she be the last. But the makeshift kitchens where Ms. Ciezadlo peeled purple eggplant or stirred onions caramelizing for Mjadara Hamra (Lentils with Bulgur Wheat) happened to be in a couple of war zones, neither one in a New York high-rise or a Tuscan olive grove. No, unlike the heartbroken cook in Lily Prior’s La Cucina […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Book Reviews, Food News, Food writing, Garlic, Iran, Middle East • Tags: Annia Ciezadlo, Baghdad, Christian Science Monitor, Day of Honey, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Mohamad Bazzi, New York Times

Assimilating “The Other”

March 15, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Leslie Page Moch, author of Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650 (1992, Indiana U. Press), has written another book, Pariahs of Yesterday: Breton Migrants in Paris (Duke University Press, 2012). Her book promises insights into the process of integration, a very useful understanding of present-day migrants in France, people from France’s former colonies: Beginning in the 1870s, a great many Bretons—men and women from Brittany, a region in western France—began arriving in Paris. Every age has its pariahs, […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Europe, France, Reference • Tags: Bretons, Brittany, France, Integration, Leslie Page Moch, Migration, Paris, The Other

Complete-Indian-Housekeeper and Cook cover

Heat and Dust and Cooks: The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook

February 10, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“The tale of the British in India holds keys to the universal story of colonization. A no-nonsense book, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook provides a very engrossing narrative and amplifies the story of how a small island off the coast of Europe managed to run an empire of millions of souls. It can be said that it all began in the kitchen. . . .” European women who lived in 19th and 20th century foreign outposts sought authoritative voices to guide […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, English Cooking, India, Reference • Tags: Culinary History, Flora Annie Steel, Food History, Grace Gardiner

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Arabs in France: An Early Account by an Egyptian Imam

January 20, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking world. Because there is this hole in the material available to scholars and others, the scholarship of much of Europe’s past likely could be construed as being incomplete or even erroneous. That’s why it’s necessary to herald the appearance of works like An […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking, Middle East • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Culinary History, Egypt, Food History, France, Imam in Paris, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, Paris

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The Expert (French) Cook in Enlightenment France: A Review

January 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If you scrutinize sixteenth-century Dutch artist Pieter Aertsen’s painting, “The Cook in Front of the Stove,” you will see a rather stereotypical image of servant cooks, one that persisted in popular memory in Europe until well into the nineteenth century. Sean Takats, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and codirector of Zotero, attempts to get beyond that image in his thought-provoking new book, The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France. Beginning with the premise that much what passes for fact […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cooking, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Methods, Paintings • Tags: Chefs, Cooks, Culinary History, Food History, France, French cuisine, Pieter Aertsen, Sean Takats

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A Long Tradition: French Chefs in Britain, or, Daniel Galmiche’s French Brasserie Cookbook: The Heart of French Home Cooking

December 12, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Britain, much to the chagrin of her more patriotic sorts, has long enjoyed the the food of France. In The British Housewife (Prospect Books, 2003), Gilly Lehmann explains this by pointing out that French haute cuisine dominated upper-class British kitchens in the early eighteenth century. She points to Massialot (Cuisimier Roïal et bourgeois, 1691; translated as The Court and Country Cook, 1702) as one of the more obvious sources of this trend, but she also makes it clear that Robert […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Daniel Galmiche, Food History, French Brasserie Cookbook, French cuisine

Give the Gift of Cooking French Food at Home: Some Cookbooks That Make a Seemingly Impossible Task Possible

December 8, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I have to tell you that the cookbook lists that come out every year around Christmas time drive me crazy. Like you’re really going to savor, say, 101 Recipes Using ___________? (Fill in the blank.) Or you’re going to run out and buy another Italian cookbook when you already own somewhere in the neighborhood of 225? (I do. Really.) And since I am an unabashed Francophile, I cringe over the lack of French cookbooks on these lists. So I decided […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Coco Jobard, Cuisine grand-mère, Culinary History, Food History, French cuisine, Georges Blanc, Giada de Laurentiis, Julia Child, Laura Calder, Lydie Marshall, Marie-Pierre Moine, Mario Batali, Stéphane Reynaud, Wini Maranville

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Memoirs of a Breton Peasant: Sifting Through the Nostalgia

November 21, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s not often that the words of poor peasants appear in print. And when they do, it’s a cause for rejoicing, especially for scholars pertaining to the Braudel/Certeau school of the history of daily life. What’s more, our current nostalgic longings for a more paradisiacal past evaporate quickly in the light of these often ruthlessly real portrayals of life. Even though he’s been dead for over 100 years, nineteenth-century Breton peasant Jean-Marie Déguignet would be rubbing his hands together in glee […]

Categories: Book Reviews, France, French Cooking, Reference • Tags: France, French Cooking, Jean-Marie Déguignet, Memoirs, Memoirs of a Breton Peasant, Peasants

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Who was Ginette Mathiot? And Why Should You Care?

November 15, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Ginette Mathiot wrote books that bring up long-lost taste memories in France, much as Marcel Proust’s oft-quoted prattle about about madeleines. Only her work proves infinitely more readable and enjoyable. She also basically sticks it to Julia and makes French cooking seem less like a prolonged session at the dentist’s. One of her books, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie, appeared in an English translation on bookshelves on November 5, 2011. It’s a book that just might crack open the mysteries […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Butter, Cookbooks, Cookies, France, French Cooking • Tags: Book Reviews, Chocolate & Zucchini, Clotilde Dusoulier, Cookbooks, Cookies, Dorie Greenspan, France, French cuisine, Ginette Mathiot, Je Sais Cuisiner, Je Sais Faire la Patisserie

1

Unquenchable: Natalie MacLean’s Terrific New Book on Wine

November 7, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If, like me – overwhelmed by the hundreds of possible choices in front of you at the grocery store or local wine shop – you’ve ever stood in front of the endless shelves of stunning wine bottles and felt like just closing your eyes and grabbing a bottle, any bottle (preferably one on the lower shelves where the price stickers read below $10 a bottle), then, you’re going to just love Canadian wine writer Natalie Maclean’s new book, Unquenchable: A […]

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Germany, Italian Cooking, Italy, Wine • Tags: Book Reviews, Château de Roquefort, M.F.K. Fisher Award, M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, Natalie MacLean, Peter Mayle, Provence, Rosé, Unquenchable, Wine

Chartreuse and the Vallée du Désert: The Elixir of Life

February 16, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

While writing my brief “Gherkins & Tomatoes” blog post, “Cookbooks for a Desert Island, or an Autumn Afternoon,” I thumbed through de Groot’s book once more, swearing I would cook “Green Beans Sautéed in Cream” and “Potato Pancakes of the Mountains.” The price of peace and solitude has been unending struggle. ~~Roy Andries de Groot, The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth Every once in a while, a book speaks to my soul, over and over again. Roy Andries de Groot’s […]

Categories: Book Reviews, French Cooking, Recipes • Tags: Chartreuse, Cooking, Cooks, Cuisine Francaise, Food, France, French Cooking, Recipes, Roy Andries de Groot

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Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Patience Gray

September 6, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

HONEY FROM A WEED: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia, by Patience Gary (Harper & Row, 1987) Although Elizabeth David published the first truly popular English book on Mediterranean Food (1950), another author, the lesser- known English food writer and free-spirit, Patience Gray, wrote the more poetic works. Her Plats du Jour (1957), despite its French title, netted recipes from all the lands of the Mediterranean, mostly gleaned from books and such. Years later, she followed […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Mushrooms, Recipes • Tags: Cookbooks, Cooking, Cooks, Food, Mediterranean Cooking, Patience Gray

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Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Isabella Beeton (Part II)

August 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(Continued from August 23, 2010): Brillat-Savarin’s comments about the English being the worst cooks in the world drew a sniff from the proper Isabella, sure that her book would right that situation. In spite of the moralizing tone, and the plagiarism, BOHM became a runaway bestseller. Readers and critics considered the soup, fish, sauce chapters the best. Quantities of food served at dinner now seem phenomenal. But Isabella emphasized strict economy, sometimes distressingly so, especially with family meals. She tackled […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking • Tags: Book of Household Management, Cookbooks, Cooks, English cookery, Food, Isabella Beeton, Rare Books

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Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Isabella Beeton (Part I)

August 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Today in Britain, “Mrs. Beeton” is a culinary trademark not unlike “Betty Crocker,” whom General Mills created in a Frankensteinian moment to boost sales by appealing to Every Housewife.

The difference between the two ladies is that Mrs. Beeton was a real, breathing, living personage who wrote a monster of a book with a monster of a title: The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.—also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort, BOHM for short.

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, England, English Cooking • Tags: Book of Household Management, Cookbooks, Cooks, English cookery, Food, Isabella Beeton, Rare Books

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Culinaria Russia: A Picture Cookbook for Grownups

April 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I’ve only known two Russian cooks in my life. First there was Olga, the cook who sustained me during my Peace Corps years, whose Russian roots rarely extended to the table of her Paraguayan pension. Always tripe and manioc and beef à caballo, never borscht or blini or piroshki. Sometimes meat laced with chimichurri, a green sauce from Argentina, which reminded Olga of home, as we shall see. And then there was Marina, who only cooked for me once. She […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Russia • Tags: A Gift to Young Housewives, Cookbooks, Culinaria Russia, Culinaria series, Elena Molokhovets, Green sauce, Russia

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The British Melting Pot

March 13, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I recently ran across these books, mentioned on an interesting British Web site providing glimpses and glances at cookbooks published in Britain, cookbooks that we here in the US of A rarely see. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems that the British cookbook market features more books concerned with other cultures and not so much with “slimming,” as our friends across the pond call dieting. So here they are, some books to fascinate you on a rainy day in […]

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, India • Tags: Africa, Cookbooks, Cooking, India, Middle East, Peru

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Food Studies: A How-To Guidebook, a Bit Underdone

February 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Since one of my primary interests is methodology for studying food in history, when I learned that Berg Publishers recently came out with Food Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods (2009), you can imagine how quickly I got my hands on a copy of this book written by Jeff Miller, a sociologist, and Jonathan Deutsch, an expert on hospitality management with an interest in nutrition. My hopes towered as high as a golden soufflé. But, to paraphrase what Forrest Gump […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Books, Reference • Tags: Carol Counihan, Food Studies, Jeff Miller, Jeffrey Sobal, Jonathan Deutsch, Ken Albala, Methods, Psyche Williams-Forson, Research methodology

2

A Russian Cook

December 18, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Another good appetizer is stewed white mushrooms, with onion, you know, and bay leaf and other spices. You lift the lid off the dish, and the steam rises, a smell of mushrooms … sometimes it really brings tears to my eyes! ~~Anton Chekov, “The Siren” With the publication of Gourmet magazine beginning in 1941, stories about cooks appeared sporadically, including a series on Katish, a Russian cook from the childhood one of Gourmet’s writers. Wanda L. Frolov compiled the articles […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Food writing, Mushrooms • Tags: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooks, Katish, Mushrooms in Sour Cream, Russia, Russian cuisine, Wanda Frolov

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In the Kitchen with Barbara Kingsolver: I

December 8, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I’m going to bed every night now with Barbara Kingsolver’s latest book, The Lacuna: A Novel, about Mexico, politics, art, El Norte, and — best of all — cooks. After her last book (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life), Kingsolver still finds food a fascinating part of life. In The Lacuna, here’s how she describes the cook who works for the chief protagonist’s family: When Leandro came he would push the fire to the sides, keeping the heat […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Books, Cooking, Latin America, Lit & Food, Mexico, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Cooking, Cooks, Mexico, The Lacuna

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Jane Carson’s Colonial Virginia Cookery: Procedures, Equipment, and Ingredients in Colonial Cooking

December 4, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Colonial Virginia Cookery: Procedures, Equipment, and Ingredients in Colonial Cooking, by Jane Carson (1968, reprinted 1985). Filled with the kind of details that come only from wallowing in primary sources, Jane Carson’s synthesis of several cookbooks written by a number of seventeenth- and and eighteenth-century English cookery authors offers modern readers an interpretation of how daily cooking took place in colonial Virginia. The most popular English cookbooks of the times, according to Carson, were Mrs. Smith’s (The Compleat Housewife, 1727), […]

Categories: American Cooking, Book Reviews, Cooking, Reference, Southern Food • Tags: Colonial Virginia, Cooking equipment, Cooking Techniques, Hearth cooking, Jane Carson, Southern cooking

Christmas Cheer, or, Fire Up the Reindeer

November 27, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Black Friday marks the first “official” day of Christmas, er, shopping, that is. (You know it’s almost Christmas when the day after Halloween, the grocery stores start hauling out the red ribbon and fake mistletoe.) A bit premature, but that’s cultural change for you. Used to be that you couldn’t find a bit of tinsel or a reindeer before Thanksgiving was over. But Advent and Christmas will soon be upon us, along with visions of sugarplums and plenty of reindeer. […]

Categories: American Cooking, Book Reviews, Christmas, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, United States • Tags: Black Friday, Book Reviews, Christmas, Christmas Cookbook, Cookbooks, John Clancy, Mimi Sheraton, Reindeer

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No Thanks to Marco Polo: An Encyclopedia of Italy’s Pasta Shapes

November 6, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Marco Polo returned to Italy from his Chinese travels in 1296. The myth, legend, what have you, credits him with introducing pasta into Italy’s culinary repertoire. But Marco Polo did NOT bring pasta to Italy. And 73-year-old Italian author Oretta Zanini de Vita wants you to know that, immediately, upfront and center. Zanini de Vita says, Dried pasta, the kind made with durum wheat, is found in Italy from about A.D. 800. It was in fact the Muslim occupiers of […]

Categories: Archaeology, Book Reviews, China, Italian Cooking, Italy, Local foods, Pasta, Reference • Tags: Archaeology, China, Encyclopedia of Pasta, Italian Cooking, Italy, Marco Polo, Oretta Zanini de Vita, Pasta

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La Toussaint:* The Saints and Souls Who Preserve Us

November 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A novel about an arrogant food critic could only happen in France. Bien sûr! Some time ago, I set myself the challenging and Sisyphean task of reading Muriel Barbery’s first novel, Une gourmandise, in French. (Barbery’s reputation rests on her extremely philosophical second novel — The Elegance of the Hedgehog [what a title!], which took France by storm. The heavy larding of the text with academic philosophical bits proved to be the downfall of many American readers. But not all.) […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Food writing, French Cooking, Lit & Food • Tags: All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day, Book Reviews, France, French Cooking, Gourmet Rhapsody, Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

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Saints, Souls, and Haints: Ghoulish Goodies

October 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Check this out — a recent cookbook all about Halloween, for kids young and old: Ghoulish Goodies: Creature Feature Cupcakes, Monster Eyeballs, Bat Wings, Funny Bones, Witches’ Knuckles, and Much More! (Frightful Cookbook), by Sharon Bowers (2009). Eat, drink, and enjoy the creepy yuckiness of Monster Eyeballs, Chocolate Spider Clusters, Buried Alive Cupcakes, and Screaming Red Punch. In her colorful collection of frightful foods, Sharon Parrish Bowers shares the fun of baking, decorating, and indulging in delicious treats that celebrate […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Food News, Halloween • Tags: All Souls' Day, Book Reviews, Day of the Dead, Ghoulish Goodies, Halloween, Sharon Bowers

The Chicken or the Egg? 4. Egging Us On

October 15, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A few days ago, I thumbed through the brand-new, hot-off-the-press version of Larousse Gastronomique. You know, Julia Child’s bedtime reading. At least according to the movie, “Julie & Julia.” After all, Julia once remarked that, “If I were allowed only one reference book in my library, Larousse Gastronomique would be it, without question.” First written in French by Prosper Montagné in 1938, it wasn’t until 1961 that English speakers could savor Larousse, edited by Charlotte Turgeon and Nina Froud. Since […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cooking, Eggs, Food News, France, French Cooking • Tags: Cookbooks, Eggs, French Cooking, Larousse Gastronomique

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The Backyard Beekeeper’s Honey Handbook

October 3, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Many, many cookbooks focus on cooking with honey. The Backyard Beekeeper’s Honey Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Harvesting, and Cooking with Natural Honeys, by Kim Flottum (2005, reprint 2009) goes a step farther. Flottum takes readers on a journey into the production side of honey as well as the cooking and eating side. According to the blurb on the book, After receiving a degree in horticulture from UW-Madison, Kim Flottum worked four years in the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab, […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks • Tags: Backyard Beekeeper, Beekeeping, Cooking, Honey, Kim Flottum

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