Below are questions for individual pondering or group discussion, and for anyone or any club that’s been cooking and reading the Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club’s most recent pick, 70 Traditional African Recipes by Rosamund Grant.
If you have read and/or cooked from 70 Traditional African Recipes, I’d love to hear what you think of the book.
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This book takes a wide view of African cooking, jumping from (more…)
GLOBAL GRILLING
Sizzling Recipes from Around the World
By Jay Solomon
The Crossing Press
116 pp. $10.95
Cookbooks with an international recipe collection are not as popular as they once were. Today Americans are ever more educated about global tastes and seem ready to delve into books devoted to a single foreign cuisine, and to go the extra mile to get authentic ingredients.
Yet unlike when Global Grilling was published, nearly two decades ago, going that “extra mile” is likely to be just that—driving one additional mile to your local Asian or Hispanic market. Reflecting the difference between then and now, some recipes in the book give the choice between more or less authentic ingredients, such as fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce, making them incredibly flexible templates, (more…)
THE ART OF MEXICAN COOKING:
Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados
By Diana Kennedy
Clarkson Potter
496 pp. $30.00
Except for me, Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club members have put Mexican cooking behind them and have moved on to cooking soups, salads, and breads from our current cookbook. Everyone in the club loved The Art of Mexican Cooking, as you’ll read below in my review, but sentimental attachment is not the reason I haven’t yet let go. It’s the review—the task for each cookbook that I always save for last for reasons of objective synthesis (I need to wait until I hear what each member thought of the book), but also because review writing stirs a youthful condition I thought I’d long beaten into submission: procrastination. Perhaps that’s because when in school book reviews were one of many writing assignments that were generally dreaded, and because the activities of cooking, eating, and drinking Margaritas with club members are free of school days association. (If anyone has any book review writing tips to help me oust those “school assignment” feelings, please bring them on.)
In the meantime, while I work on casting out procrastination once and for all, here is my review of the third Dowdy Corners’ cookbook, starting with the food, the reason why we cook:
One of our members was initially lukewarm about the club’s choice of a Mexican cookbook; prior to cooking from The Art of Mexican Cooking, her only reference for Mexican cooking was Americanized food served in average Mexican restaurants, and she was not impressed. Now she is completely hooked.
This past fall I took a trip down to New York City to visit friends, have design talks with Noboru (the designer of this blog), eat some good food, and poke around the city.
The eating highlight was the pork buns at Momofuku in the East Village. They live up to their reputation. Eating them was a sacred experience—the buns call upon one to slow down and be mindful, with each bite, of their nuanced flavor and texture. (I mean it, man.) I found them—and the passion for quality that they represent—inspiring. (FYI, there is a recipe for them in David Chang’s book Momofuku.)
The poking highlight was visiting two niche bookstores devoted entirely to selling cookbooks and books on food: Kitchen Arts & Letters, located in the Upper East Side, and Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, in Greenwich Village. I’d been to Kitchen Arts & Letters, owned by Nach Waxman, but had never ventured into Bonnie Slotnick’s store. Both shops are wonderful, each having its own focus and flavor.
Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks (left) and Kitchen Arts & Letters (right)
Nach Waxman and Bonnie Slotnick spent a generous amount of time talking with me about their bookstores and the business of selling books. A shared theme in my conversations with both Nach and Bonnie is the important role the brick-and-mortar bookshop plays in building relationships between booksellers and shoppers, and even among shoppers—what some might call “good customer service” and “building community.” (more…)
ENTICE WITH SPICE:
Easy Indian Recipes for Busy People
By Shubhra Ramineni
Tuttle Publishing
160 pp. $27.95
Like most useful things, the Indian cookbook Entice with Spice was born out of a personal need. Having grown tired of eating take-out and frozen dinners after a long day of work at the office, author Shubhra Ramineni resolved to develop simplified recipes that would allow her to cook delicious homemade Indian meals as quickly and as effortlessly as possible—all without sacrificing flavor. The result is a comprehensive collection of one hundred easy-to-make recipes from both the north and south of India. (Most recipes can be made within a half-hour or less; Chicken Biryani and Chicken Tikka Masala are exceptions, requiring about one hour from start to finish.)
In Entice with Spice, you will find a wide range of recipes, including everything from condiments, like yogurt and chutneys, to appetizers, main dishes and sides, breads and rice, and desserts and beverages. (more…)
The Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club has finally begun, after thinking about it for more than a couple of years. Actually, a small group of interested friends, neighbors, and friends of friends, has already been reading and cooking from the club’s first cookbook Entice with Spice, a very accessible introduction to Indian home cooking. The launch of the DCCC blog has been a bit slower going, plagued, as I am, by a double handicap of technophobia and perfectionism. (I’m used to working on printed books, and so I have to remind myself that blogs are loops of on-going adjustment, feedback, adjustment, feedback . . . .) Plus there is a heck of a lot of difference between being a content provider and reacting to something that’s already out there. (I’m a book editor by trade, and I’ve always been sympathetic to authors when they say they’re stuck with a certain passage of text or section of a book—and the blank screen is facing them.)
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