Last night, I stayed awake far longer than I normally do, reading Gayle Forman’s new novel, Leave Me. The hook for me was “Every woman who has ever fantasized about driving past her exit on the highway instead of going home to make dinner, and every woman who has ever dreamed of boarding a train…
Tag: Book Reviews
Madhur Jaffrey’s “Vegetarian India”: My Review on the”Modern Salt” Site
I love food from India, I mean, I really, really do. And so when I had a chance to review Madhur Jaffrey’s latest, well, what could I say??? Heck, YES! Here’s my review, of a marvelous book, on that wonderful new magazine from the U.K. – Modern Salt: MADHUR JAFFREY’S “VEGETARIAN INDIA: A JOURNEY THROUGH…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #13
Throughout history, cooking shows up again and again as primarily women’s work. As a reviewer of Richard Wrangham’s thought-provoking Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (2009) summarizes, “Here, too, Wrangham apologetically explains, is probably where the global subjugation of women began. Women, he observes, do most of the cooking in most societies (he describes…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #12
When I first propped open this massive, and glorious, paean to the history of British food, I came upon “Ryse Of Flessh” (Rice of Flesh). Blumenthal remarks that he had no clue “how early rice had become a part of the English diet. More than a hundred before The Forme of Cury was written, rice was already…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #11
Mary-Anne Boermans stood out as a finalist on the British TV program, “The Great British Bake-Off,” in 2011. Since then, she’s shot to the top of culinary success with her stellar Great British Bakes: Forgotten Treasures for Modern Bakers, the heart-warming (and stomach-stuffing) product of years of research. And she is the real deal, a person with…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #10
Brian Yarvin, an American author, stands out here as the only Yank on this list. And he’s writing about pub food, a very British institution. He aims his book at Americans and could perhaps be accused of dreaming the dream, or interpreting the pub through a lens of nostalgia. Or not? Up comes book #10: 2012 10. The…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #8
There is, as you may have noticed, a huge gap time-wise between the first seven books on this list and the last six. That’s because there’s a time period where you see the beginning of the cult of the modern celebrity chef/cook, with a tremendous focus on innovations and experimentation in recipes and, well, celebrity. Television. Italian food….
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #7
Today you have Jane Grigson again, this time in full force behind the idea that British food is good and worthy of respect. History plays a larger role in this book than in Good Things, making it a delightful read as well as a valuable resource for study. It is one of several books worth looking at…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #6
With Katie Stewart’s book, you begin to see a swing toward the time-saving, home-economist tone so prominent in much food writing that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century, aimed at housewives. I’ll be honest here, and you can probably tell before you even read this: Ms. Stewart’s book doesn’t really propel me into…
