Tomorrow begins the year of the snake on the Chinese lunar calendar. The Chinese New Year’s celebration lasts fifteen days, giving DCCC members and all Chinese food fans lots of time to prepare and eat traditional New Year’s foods.

By wonderful happenstance, DCCC members are currently cooking from The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young. In this single volume, you’ll find plenty of New Year’s food suggestions to carry you through the festivities. On pages 194−95 Grace has included a useful sidebar called “Recipes to Celebrate the New Year,” and on page 218 there are four New Year’s menus.

Per Grace’s suggestion for something very simple but very New Year’s appropriate, I made David Camacho’s Stir-Fried Shiitake Mushrooms (page 144 in the book). Mushrooms, Grace said, portend rising fortunes because they grow quickly. I used crimini mushrooms because the shiitake did not look too hot at my local market. The stir-fry’s pleasant peppery bite was a reminder that ginger alone, sans chili, can supply plenty of subtle heat. Simple, delicious, and fast to prepare, it was the perfect dish to re-awaken the spirit of my old wok that’s been sitting tucked away for too long.

SECRETS OF A JEWISH BAKER
Recipes for 125 Breads from Around the World
by George Greenstein
Ten Speed Press
328 pp. $29.99

It has been my experience that many excellent cooks and bakers are intimated by the thought of making bread at home. Yet bread baking can be made simple to understand for the both the novice and the experienced baker.

—George Greenstein

Truer words were never said. And they are exactly the sentiments of Sam Heffernan, the member of this club who suggested we do a baking book. She wanted not only to share her love of bread, but also to encourage

Read the rest of this entry →

I once dated a Palestinian man. He taught me how to make a proper plate of hummus, and he introduced me to za’atar, which turned into a life-long love affair.

Za’atar is a Middle Eastern spice blend made with the herb za’atar, sumac, sesame seeds, and salt (and sometimes

Read the rest of this entry →

Introducing Guest Blogger Bhakti Ziek

I’m very happy to be introducing Bhakti Ziek to you. If you read my previous posting about Jewish Corn Bread, her name will be familiar to you.

Bhakti has her own blog (click here to go to it) where she writes about textiles, life, food, and more. More importantly, to this blog anyway, Bhakti is a member of the Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club. To accompany the authentic sour rye breads she planned to make for the latest DCCC potluck (for Secrets of a Jewish Baker), she honed and re-honed a delicious recipe for chopped liver. I asked if she’d be willing to share the recipe with DCCC readers. She said yes, and here it is. Thank you Bhakti. HJ

A Recipe for Chopped Liver

By Bhakti Ziek

We all have foods that we detested as children and love as adults—avocados top the list for me. For many people, liver fits the bill, though

Read the rest of this entry →

Has a memory of a food ever made you crazy with longing for it? If yes, then you’re a living, breathing human. But what if a memory of a food, so real you can feel, taste, smell, and see it, cannot be substantiated on this planet Earth, making you feel like you might be crazy. Did you imagine that childhood food that no one other than your brothers and sisters, and I mean no one, has heard of? Did you dream it?

It took the current DCCC pick, Secrets of a Jewish Baker, to make Bhakti Ziek, a DCCC club member, realize that in fact her adolescent memory of an unusual rye bread known to her family as

Read the rest of this entry →

My friend Debra Samuels is a food writer, cookbook author, world traveler, and a member of this cookbook club. I was thrilled when she told me that she planned to pick up a copy of our current club pick—Secrets of a Jewish Baker.

In fact, Deb helped me get a jump-start on the book when I visited her in Boston early last month. We started the sour rye starter and made bagels together. Bagels are great fun to make and surprisingly easy! Deb did have one advantage over me, I realized, as we wrapped the ropes of bagel dough around the palms of our hands: she has petite hands, matching her petite frame, compared to my large hands, matching my 5’10” height. It took extra work for this beginner to

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s the height of the holiday baking season. That usually means sweet indulgences. No complaints there, but sometimes not everything should be sweet. Take the American muffin. It’s gone on a sugar binge that mirrors the American waistline.

After wondering what happened to the muffin of not THAT long ago, the muffin of the last century, actually, I did some research and wrote this story, which was published in the Boston Globe today: “Whatever Happened to the Great American Muffin?”

And here, available to DCCC readers only, are two supplements to the story: 1) The Muffin Timeline and 2) an insider look at

Read the rest of this entry →

THE NEW PORTUGUESE TABLE
Exciting Flavors from Europe’s Western Coast
by David Leite
Clarkson Potter
256 pp. $32.50

It’s difficult to please everyone equally in a cookbook club with every cookbook we choose. Each of us has favorite ingredients and flavor combinations, and even cooking techniques that we’re drawn to. But The New Portuguese Table came pretty darn close.

Several members appreciated the fact that the ingredients weren’t too difficult to gather, which hasn’t been true of all of the books we’ve done, and almost everyone enjoyed the meals they made from the book. Several members, myself included, who wrote to the author on his site (Leite’s Culinaria) with questions about this or that appreciated the author’s accessibility and responsiveness.

For myself, I loved the

Read the rest of this entry →

This posting includes clear instructions for roasting a fine turkey for your Thanksgiving table, courtesy of David Leite. What it’s really about, though, is the stuffing. Because that is what everyone really wants, isn’t it?

Now that I’ve lured you in with the word stuffing, a word that always elicits anticipation among my family members and is the side dish that, no matter how much extra is made, always, sadly, seems to be depleted first, I should say that, technically, what follows are recipes for dressings, in that the turkey isn’t stuffed with them.

From Leite’s cookbook The New Portuguese Table, I’ve learned that the only thing better than one dressing is

Read the rest of this entry →

This cocktail packs a double dose of fortified wines: vermouth and port. The port, added at the last directly to the cocktail glass, descends in a gorgeous red cloud before settling in the bottom of the glass.

A rough draft of this drink has been kicking around in my little black book of

Read the rest of this entry →