Tag Archive: cookbooks

Some “Light” Reading?

Cooking Light is America’s recipe for healthy living, dedicated to helping readers eat better, feel better and look their best. Each issue celebrates light cuisine via more than 75 kitchen tested, beautifully photographed recipes. Our editorial focus is to provide fitness from a common sense angle as well as a reachable/user friendly exploration of delicious better-for-you food. Our mission is to be embraced by readers as a part of their daily rhythm; our goal is to help each individual reader keep a better lifestyle balance. (Eat smart. Be fit. Live well.)”

– Mission Statement from Cooking Light magazine

Through a very round-a-bout process (which took them from Alabama to New York to Oregon to California to Uruguay and then I picked them up there while visiting the friend who’d snagged them in California), I recently received a couple of cookbooks from the publishers of Cooking Light magazine with the intent on their and my part to give them a test drive and review. The two books are, I gather, collections of recipes that have been published over the years in the magazine, plus, perhaps some additional ones specifically for the books – I’m not sure, there’s no indication in either book one way or the other on the latter.

Let’s start with my “problem” with Cooking Light and just get it out of the way with, because on a practical level, it’s irrelevant. The recipes that the magazine and books offer up have always relied much more heavily than I would like on canned and jarred goods – particularly sauces – and frozen vegetables. That’s it. The reality of daily life, however, is that that’s a step up from how most people cook – which consists of mixing prepackaged ingredients together or heating up something premade and frozen, or more likely, giving it up as a bad move anyway and ordering out Chinese or picking up fast food drive-through. I realize Cooking Light is focused on the food aspects of things, but really, “cooking spray” instead of just a little rub of oil on something? Part of living healthy is keeping the environment healthy too.

While from my personal perspective, I’d much rather have a stalk of fresh broccoli sitting in my kitchen than a bag of cut, blanched and shocked florets sitting in the freezer, I have the skewed viewpoint of someone whose workplace is in the kitchen. It’s not the place I’m forced to head to after putting in an 8 hour day at the office, or running kids around to all their after school events, or whatever it is that takes up the majority of people’s lives day in and day out. I actually enjoy cutting up the broccoli and doing the whole process to get it ready. And, it doesn’t cut into my day.

Nine times out of ten I’d rather chop up tomatoes and onions and garlic and peppers and all the rest to make myself some salsa that will only keep in the refrigerator for a few days instead of a jarred one that is preservative laden and will last for months, or even, buying a fresh one made by someone else. But that’s my passion – most people just want to get dinner on the table without exhausting themselves. So in the end, on a practical level, I am content that the books and magazine push people to use some fresh ingredients and actually spend time learning how they go together.

Cooking Light: Complete Meals in MinutesI don’t use cookbooks as recipe books directly in the kitchen. By that I mean that it’s rare that I would ever have a cookbook sitting on the kitchen counter, open to a page, with, likely, something holding down each side of the book so it stayed open while I refer to it back and forth. It’s just not the way I cook, but that gets back to what I do for a living and how I approach it. So it took me a moment to realize that the design of this book as a ring binder had multiple positive things about it as opposed to just taking up extra space over a normally bound book. You can open it and the pages lay flat, you can remove a single page and just have that in the kitchen with you, you can add to it with additional pages if you want, though the last, with 700+ recipes already in the binder, might be a bit of overstuffing. It’s eminently practical.

Cooking Light: complete meals in minutes is a straightforward recipe book. There’s no text, no prose, no reasons given for any of the recipes. In the context of the magazine there would be reasons given for certain choices, here the assumption is, just trust us, we’ve done the work. And that’s fine. It’s like the laboratory workbook that accompanies the textbook – when you’re in the lab, in this case the kitchen, you don’t need all the extraneous detail. A bit is provided – at the bottom of each recipe is a nutritional analysis of the key things people on a healthy eating kick might be concerned about – calories, fat, protein and carbohydrate content, cholesterol, iron, sodium….

As to the implied purpose of the book, it’s hard to say – “complete meals” are certainly possible out of this book, it covers everything from appetizers to desserts – but what was missing for me were any kind of suggestions like “hey, if you’re making this here on page 273, it goes really well with such and such on page 419.” (Those are random numbers, I don’t necessarily think that you should pair Country Captain Chicken and Grilled Nectarines with Blue Cheese.) You still have to do the menu planning yourself and figure out what you already have around the house and what you need to buy. The recipes are well thought out, easy to follow, and each includes an estimation of how much time it will take to complete them, the “in minutes” part of the subtitle, and they’re pretty accurate – if you decide to go the route of fresh vegetables rather than frozen in some, you’ll add in the few minutes to prepare them, that’s about it.

I tried out a good handful of the recipes, more or less selected at random and all turned out tasty. None was complicated to make. Here and there I have some quibbles about the choices of ingredients – for example, Chicken Paprikash, a favorite dish, is traditionally made with sour cream – what was behind the decision to use whipping cream in the recipe which not only takes away that nice tartness, but doesn’t lower the calories, fat or cholesterol in the dish? Why not light cream, or half and half, or better yet, yogurt? No doubt there was some sort of explanation in the original magazine article, but it isn’t here in the book. And a few things are probably well-known to the average norteamericano homemaker but that I haven’t a clue what they contain – “1 16-ounce package frozen bell pepper stir-fry” – is that just bell peppers? Does that have other stuff in the mix? What is actually in a “24-ounce package refrigerated sour cream and chives mashed potatoes”? I didn’t even know they made such a thing and really wish I didn’t now – and of course, the pushing of particular brands – I assume they’re advertisers – is a little annoying, and probably irrelevant to anyone outside of the U.S.

Overall, if you’re looking for a good, solid recipe book with lots of quick (I think every dish is 30 minutes or less) and easy to make dishes that are healthier than that frozen pizza (really? you have one of those in your freezer?) or snagging takeout from some fast food joint, this is a great choice.

Cooking Light: VegetarianThe second book from the same publishers I both like more and less than the first. The book itself – Cooking Light: way to cook vegetarian is a straightforward hardcover. Now that I’m enamored of the ring binder that is the first book, this one loses points, but only in comparison. On the other hand, it’s not just a recipe book. It’s a book to sit down and read, because it’s got some good material in there – so it gets those points back.

Many of the same things could be said about the recipes that are in the book – the ease, the frozen, canned and jarred thing, the advertiser pimping (do I really want to know what “1 12-ounce package meatless fat-free crumbles” are?). The recipes here are more of a mix, some simple and some more complicated, and they don’t have that helpful “in minutes” part for the harried homemaker. Many of them require a bit more planning, but it’s all well spelled out. Visually, it’s a quite beautiful book, with not just great photos of the dishes, but also step-by-step how to sections on various topics like making ricotta, preparing certain specialty vegetables and making omelets; sidebars that explain the differences between grains, tofus, tempehs, and many of the other things that a budding vegetarian might want to read about. It’s like a really cool, well illustrated “for Dummies” book. But better.

It falls down in a couple of places. I found myself searching the index with no luck for many of our current fall vegetables – cauliflower, brussels sprouts, parsnips and cabbage, somehow or other not one of these make it into the book, or at least aren’t listed – yet at the same time, it delves into things like celeriac, lemongrass, jicama and quinoa, with gusto. Even broccoli gets short shrift with only three recipes, two of which are variations on “in cheese sauce”. The focus seems to be on grain based dishes – whether the grains themselves in one guise or another, or things like pastas, sandwiches (or other similar dishes like bruschettas and pizzas), and a whole lotta stir-fries on rice. And why tout seitan as a great protein alternative and then only offer one page and two recipes using it while tofu warrants a 25 page section and tempeh, which is probably harder to find, a 10 pager with lots of recipe options each?

Although the index parses out the vegan recipes, and they’re marked in the text as well, there’s no explanation of the differences between vegetarian eating and a vegan lifestyle, or even that the latter isn’t, generally, just a diet. And even in some of the vegan marked dishes they use honey, which for the majority of vegans is a no-no.

Overall – visually a great book, and well, well worth it for the techniques and sidebars – some of which will likely clear up all sorts of mysteries for the kitchen novice, particularly someone exploring a vegetarian alternative, or who just wants to expand their repertoire of vegetable recipes. It’s not, as the subtitle asserts, “the complete visual guide to healthy vegetarian & vegan cooking” – it’s far from complete, but it would be an excellent library addition to anyone with those goals in mind.

 

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Where Everything is Just Write

Fatally FlakyI was mucking about in one of our local English language bookstores, just looking for something casual to read (why, I don’t know – I have more books piled up and also loaded on my e-reader than I’ll likely ever get to) when I stumbled across a few books from Diane Mott Davidson. She has written what turned out to be a fifteen volume series (with more on the way I gather) of cozy mysteries – you might remember… no, you won’t… that a little over five years ago I reviewed a trio of such fare… if you’re interested, here, here and here – each of them progressively better than the previous one, thankfully. The genre is one of light reading fare, generally, as best I can tell, with a protagonist who probably shouldn’t be investigating whatever happened, but does so, and is almost invariably a woman, with a different career. The particular ones I was reading were food related – with the woman of investigatory skills being, respectively, the owner of a cookie shop, the manager of a chocolate shop, and the owner of a bed & breakfast.

So, though I’d not heard of Ms. Davidson, I thought I’d give one of the books a try, and started off with the first in the series (not knowing at the time there were fourteen more down the line already published and more on the way). Our heroine, this time, is a small town caterer in Colorado, divorced from an abusive husband, best friends with another ex-wife of the same guy, and a single mom with a newly budding adolescent. She is befriended by a local sheriff’s department investigator as the story progresses, who strangely seems to encourage her poking around in police business.

Let me save a little on suspense – I ended up reading all fifteen books in rapid succession – they’re easy reads, most taking me no more than a couple of hours, before bed, and I read the entire series in about five weeks. I’ll admit upfront that I found most of them in pirated e-book form (not that hard copies of more than the couple at the bookstore I started at are likely available here is really an excuse, but it’s the one I’m using). They weren’t amazingly well written, but they were fun, light reading, and I even tried some of the recipes from a couple of the books and they worked.

There’s a lot of belief to be suspended – a caterer (named Goldy, who runs a company called Goldilocks Catering: Where Everything is Just Right) who becomes an unofficial investigator for the local sheriff’s department – by midway through the series, both the noted investigator and others are pretty much actively encouraging her to do things that they themselves can’t because, well, it would be illegal. That anyone would hire this woman as a caterer… the fifteen books take place over a period of about four years, and each involves the murder of one or more of her clients or friends… for a total of around two dozen people dead, or about six a year… umm, no thank you, I’ll be taking my business elsewhere. Top that with her going about looking into people’s personal business in this small town, accusing one or another of them of murder, robbery, and mayhem, yet, these same people don’t seem to hold a grudge, reappearing later on to hire her for some event, or hang out with her at a party. A skewed timeline – part way through series she’s talking about having spent more than a decade building her catering business since her divorce, she’s 33 or 34 at the time, she spent seven years married to her abusive husband, who she supposedly met after college when she moved to Colorado… which pretty much puts her university years from ages 12-16. Oh, and at this same point in her early 30s, she spends at least a few paragraphs every novel lamenting the fact that she’s gotten old and can’t get around like she used to.

Of course, the last might be due to her diet, which seems to consist of everything fat-laden that she, her family and friends, can get their hands on (don’t try any of the books’ recipes if you’re even thinking about being health conscious). Even her assistant, a die-hard vegetarian (who nonetheless will cook whatever) agrees with her oft repeated comments that nothing lowfat or fat free can possibly be edible – as they load things down with cheese, cream and butter, repeatedly – even for clients who have requested lowfat or one or another special diet – time after time she simply decides that her clients are wrong about what they want and serves them whatever she wants. And a few other prejudices show up – in one book mid-series she, and a local doctor, have cured her assistant of his vegetarianism because the lack of protein in his diet was having him waste away or something (with all that dairy, not a chance, let alone whatever other sources of protein a good vegetarian diet provides) – but, she must have gotten some flack on that one because without comment, by the next novel, he’s back to being vegetarian, and suddenly in the peak of health, with a well-developed body, and is apparently irresistible to the local girls.

And, like the other novels I read, there’s not really much investigating going on. She pretty much does the shotgun approach to things, fantasizing and being paranoid about everyone she and whomever is dead has come into contact with, bulldozing into their lives with no regard for them, her own or anyone else’s safety, and, oh yeah, she never actually solves a single one of the crimes – in the end, she just annoys the killer so much that they seem to think she’s getting close to solving the mystery (which she’s not), so time and again, they come after her, attempt to kill her, and she is saved by either dumb luck or someone else happening to be keeping an eye on her that she doesn’t know about.

So that’s a lot to set aside. But somehow, Davidson makes the prose work, the books read well, and are enjoyable. So I can’t kick too much. Even if I’d like to.

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The Ole Switcharoo

Ray Kinsella: I think I know what “If you build it, he will come” means.
Annie Kinsella: Ooh… why do I not think this is such a good thing?
Ray Kinsella: I think it means that if I build a baseball field out there that Shoeless Joe Jackson will get to come back and play ball again.
Annie Kinsella: [staring in disbelief] You’re kidding.

– from Field of Dreams

Spell Cafe - "Spell Burger"

It was the ole bait and switch, only they weren’t involved. No intention on their part whatsoever. I think. You may remember I’ve started this strange little search for a decent veggie burger here in town, and the first round of nibbles didn’t fare so well. But I did get a few tips… not many… on some possibilities. One of those was Spell Cafe, Av. Moreau de Justo 740 in Puerto Madero, where several people asserted there was an amazing roasted vegetable burger. It sort of makes sense, the place is a tourist haven sports bar, so their specialty is a variety of burgers and sandwiches, salads, that sort of stuff. And strange cocktails. [This place has closed.]

And there apparently was. But there isn’t. And there may be in the future. But not now. The conversation went something like this, after I’d perused the menu and found no such item….

Me: “Someone told me you have a really great veggie burger, but I don’t see it on the menu.”
Waitress: “We don’t have it anymore. It was amazing.”
Me: “It was really that good?”
Waitress: “People ask for it all the time – I get more than a dozen requests for it every day.”
Me: “So why isn’t it on the menu?”
Waitress: “The managers said that too many people were coming in and ordering it.”
Me: “I don’t get it, that sounds like a good thing.”
Waitress: “They thought we were getting a reputation for the veggie burger and they don’t want people to think of us that way.”
Me: “That just seems really strange.”
Waitress: “We think so too, we’re all pushing for them to put it back on the menu. Maybe they will for summer.”
Me: “So how’s the regular burger?”
Waitress: “Really good.”
Me: “But not amazing?”
Waitress: “No, not amazing.”

I ordered it, the “Spell Burger”. Actually, it’s really darned good. I’d put it up in the top three I’ve had here in BA, along with Tucson and Kansas… maybe tied for third place with Hard Rock Cafe – and a hell of a lot cheaper (Spell’s is AR$28, while HRC’s burger is now AR$45. It’s a big, juicy well seasoned burger, they cooked it to the temperature I wanted without question (actually, as things have changed in town here over the last few years, it’s no longer an argument, or even that difficult, to get a burger or steak cooked rare or medium), and it was topped with plenty of fresh lettuce and tomato, cheddar cheese, smoky, crispy bacon, a perfectly fried sunny side up egg, and, to boot, no upcharge for swapping out french fries for a big pile of onions rings. The rings could have been slightly crispier, but were really good. Only criticism, the bun is one of those soft, pillowy types that starts to fall apart as soon as the burger’s juices hit it – I ended up two bites in having to switch to knife and fork. Oh, really good iced tea too.

So now I’m going to pull my own little switcheroo on you. When I started this veggie burger quest, I mentioned a book….

Veggie Burgers Every Which WayNot long ago I came across this little gem, Veggie Burgers every which way, by Lukas Volger, who writes the Veggie Burger Madness blog. Now, the book isn’t available here in BA, but it is available in electronic format, so I picked it up for my Sony Reader (yes, I have one, yes, I think it’s amazing, yes, I still prefer a print book when I’m curled up on the couch, yes, they have problems, and yes, I think ebook readers are the direction most everything will head over time). Unfortunately, just in terms of the conversion, it was really poorly done. The biggest hurdle was that it appears that whomever did it, used a character set that is incomplete – so things like fractions on the recipes are rendered out, for the most part, as question marks. It would make it very difficult for someone who cooks via recipe, and/or who wants to try out his, to follow pretty much any of them. Some of them end up being little more than lists of ingredients with “?” in front of them and no hint as to quantities. [See comments below for publisher’s response.]

That said, the combinations that he’s come up with, at least of the half dozen that I’ve tried making, are delicious. On my end it took some experimenting to figure out those quantities, but the results were worth it – of course I’m left to wonder if his quantities are the same as mine and therefore are his recipes actually as good as they seem or did I just take his ingredients and come up with my own? I’m going to assume the former, because the recipes he posts on his blog turn out well, so he seems to know what he’s doing. However, I’d have to recommend, other than as an interesting read, which it is, not to buy the ebook version. A shame, because it means someone didn’t bother to proofread it when it was converted (which, by the way, has been one of my criticisms of other ebooks that I’ve picked up – more than one book has suffered from similar flaws.) Anyway, if the topic interests you, pick up a copy of the print edition, it’s well worth it.

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The Golden Rule(s)?

“When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.”

– Walter Lippmann, Journalist

"Ratio" Bread

The writing of a cooking book is a difficult process, especially one which sets out to frame elementary principles. There are, of course, classics, many of which have gone through numerous iterations and revisions over the years. And, there are the new. Some of them worthwhile, others not. I have just meandered my way through one of the newest, a book which is of the worthwhile category, but with caveats. I hate to even have caveats, as the author is someone with whom I’m connected via various social-networking sites, and whose blog I enjoy reading. Yet, I have them.

The book, Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman, subtitled, “The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking”. Now, let’s start with the book itself – I don’t have a physical copy, I bought an electronic copy from Sony’s eBook Library – so it makes it a little hard to judge the aesthetics. Still, Sony purports that it is a straightforward reproduction – if that’s true, there are some problems with it – for one, the font is an odd one – with strange weighting and shading at various points. And, while that may be a simple matter of the electronic reproduction the one thing, pedantic as it may seem, that truly annoyed me throughout the book, is the lack of fractions. Other than ½ and ¼, the rest are composed of a superscripted numeral above the line, then a slash, and then a subscripted numeral below the line – not only does it make a fraction take up three characters, but it also extends them into the lines above and below. If this is indeed the font chosen for the book, it was a poor choice for a tome that’s filled with fractions – pick a font that includes them (or just use straightforward x/y style, 3 characters, but all on the same line). There are also no page numbers, at least in the electronic edition, making references to “see page XX” a crap-shoot. [Edit: I’ve picked up two other books from Sony’s eBook Library and both have the page numbers removed and the typeface seems odd. So I think it’s something they’re doing to the electronic editions as opposed to the way the books were originally published.]

Now, to the content, which is, of course, far more important. It’s well organized, well thought out, and well written. All great things. I love the introductory parts that lead us deftly into the premise of the book. I particularly like that Ruhlman is careful to iterate and reiterate that the concept of “ratios” as basic cooking formulas (this much flour to this much liquid yields this type of dough) is meant as a guideline and not as an absolute. But after the introductory part, that message gets lost. Certainly there are variations presented on each type of dough, sauce, etc. – though without much in the way of an explanation as to why, and what effect these variations will have – more of, “just try this”. There are several points where the message seems to be contradicted, with assertions that “this will always turn out”, “this is golden”, and the like. Not many, but enough to be noticeable. And then, at the end, he reiterates that really, truly, these are just guidelines.

What’s missing, for me, and it’s probably based on living out of the U.S., is any sort of information that might be usable for someone who is not operating in the ideal kitchen conditions in which he tested out his formulae. There’s no acknowledgement of the differences in amounts of liquids needed at various altitudes above sea level, only one vague reference to “ambient humidity” differences, nor for their being a different absorption rate of different types of flours (something I’ve pointed out in this blog many times, with almost all our wheat here being “soft” wheat rather than “hard”, the quantities of liquids are always different from what I was used to back in New York or Michigan).

As an example, I started with his most basic bread formula. Following his formula exactly produced a dough that had the consistency of a melted marshmallow – something that couldn’t be picked up without oozing through the fingers, that puddled and spread out when set on the countertop, that at best might have been poured into a loaf pan and prayed over. In order to get a texture that was workable, I ended up adding a little more than 8% extra flour – that doesn’t sound like much, but on 4 cups of flour, it’s an extra ⅓ cup, and to someone who bakes regularly, it would be a non-issue to simply adjust, but I think for the average home cook something more was needed – perhaps a description of what the texture should be like (“smooth and elastic” is not communicative for someone new to baking, I know, from teaching classes), with a note that one might need to add more flour, or more liquid, depending, in order to achieve that texture. The bread, for a basic one, turned out rather tasty, though I’m still trying to figure out why one side of it exploded as it baked (see above).

But these are quibbles. Overall, the book is an excellent resource, and if you go into it with the understanding (or pay attention when he announces it) that these are not dogmatic rules, it is an incredibly useful aid in the kitchen.

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Mr. T’s Pizza

“The test of a great pizza is its irresistible crust. If you have never had a pizza with a thin grilled curst, you will love its crispy texture and charred flavor.”

– from Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas by Craig W. Priebe

Grilled Pizzas and PiadinasBuenos Aires – The quote above comes from one of my relatively new favorite little cookbooks. It’s a great, step-by-step guide to making various types of grilled pizzas and, those wonderful fold over pizza sandwiches, the piadinas. It’s well-written, to the point, doesn’t make any outlandish claims to having invented the genre as, well, one in particular has, and best of all, is really nicely illustrated with superb photographs that give you a solid sense of what you can expect. It also covers the gamut from basics to elaborate, from savory to sweet, and from pizza for one to party planning. And maybe the really best thing of all, they make it easy. What more can you ask from a cookbook?

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I felt compelled to start sampling my way through more of the offerings of the pizza a la parrilla world in and around Buenos Aires, and so I’ve started on that little journey. Now, to start down that path, I’m going to begin with Pete Gonzalez’ house. Pete, perhaps better known as the Blessed Pedro González Telmo, or by his diminutive (shared with his patron saint), San Telmo, was just a guy, you know? In fact, the “San” is not even factual, since he was never canonized. The “Telmo” is, in Spanish and/or Portuguese, the diminutive of Erasmus, or Saint Erasmus, the real San Telmo, patron saint of sailors everywhere – though our boy Pete generally is invoked by Portuguese and Spanish sailors – just to be different one supposes – and just exactly how much good does invoking a guy who was never actually sainted do?

Pizza a la parrilla at La Casona de Sr. Telmo

Now, there’s a little mini-chain, three shops, that gets all that right, calling themselves simply, “Sr. Telmo”, or Mr. T as I like to think of him. He never, by the way, lived here in Buenos Aires, let alone in the neighborhood that bears his name. The flagship of the trio, if one can call a somewhat dark, slightly dingy spot a flagship – more of a flagrowboat perhaps, is on the side street of Carlos Calvo, at number 240. Here, they refer to it as La Casona de Sr. Telmo, Mr. T’s Big House. I met up there earlier in the week with a visiting writer from OUT magazine, here hoping to find a vibrant, thriving, and numerous gay american expat population – I wish him luck, I’m afraid I was of little help in that regard, and so far the couple of people who I referred him to tell me they didn’t feel they were either. Perhaps something will come of it, since a couple of people decided that maybe we should try to get a group together and see just exactly who will show up (so if you’re a member of the category – 9 p.m. this Saturday at Empire Thai, downtown – I won’t be there, Saturday night isn’t exactly free time for me).

Wait, back to the pizza, since that’s what we’re here for. Let me just say that this place’s pizza isn’t quite what I think of when I think of grilled pizza. It’s grilled – not cooked over, say Saint Elmo’s Fire (San Telmo, you know, that’s where it comes from) and, it’s a pizza. I give them that. But it’s not that stretched out, cracker thin, misshapen crust that we’ve all come to know and love, topped with just a few, thinly laid ingredients so that they warm through while the dough cooks on its second side. This is really just a thin crust regular pizza where they happen to cook the dough on the grill, and quite possibly finished in the oven to melt all the cheese on it. Here, we sampled a half and half of their “Hot Pizza”, touted as mozzarella, bell peppers (red and green pickled as it turned out), spicy olive oil, and “various picantes”, which seemed to consist of a drizzle of a hot sauce that may have been the chipotle style tabasco sauce; and the other half, my luncheon companion wanted to try something “truly local” – what could be more unusual and uniquely Argentine than hearts of palm drizzled with salsa golf? Though it sounded vaguely interesting I eschewed the idea of trying the pizza named after the house with its toppings of bechamel sauce, ham, broccoli and mushroom – perhaps in a pot-pie?

So, the evaluation – beyond that it just doesn’t come across as real grilled pizza to me… the dough was relatively bland, but I’ve had worse. The toppings, perhaps just based on our selection, not that interesting – the “Hot Pizza” the more enjoyable of the two, but neither was a winner – the telltale sign I suppose is that with one pizza designed for two people, we left two of the eight slices behind on the plate, one of each. And at least on my part, it wasn’t because I was full. So, I’ll give this spot a just “okay”.

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Vacation Books

“I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.”

– E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951

Buenos Aires – One of the things I like about vacationing by myself is that in between the various bits of sightseeing, I can catch up on reading. There are too many distractions at home to read as much as I’d like. While out and about, I can read while I eat, I can read in my hotel/b&b room, whatever strikes my fancy. So, beyond a couple of magazines that I just took along for entertainment value and to get them off my reading stack, I took two books with me.

The Last Chinese ChefFirst up was the reading for total pleasure. I’d run across references to the book The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones, in various spots on the internet – I think I even used a quote from the book as part of one of my posts not that long ago. It sounded completely intriguing, and then a couple of food biz friends recommended it highly. I do the same. By turns a romance, a food book (and I’m already tracking down recipes to try out, some of which the author provides on her website), a personal narrative from several perspectives, and even a touch of suspense, the book is well crafted, an enjoyable read – not a completely light, easy reading book, but not overly intellectual either. Initially I thought it was a little… fluffy… when it started out – the narrative part, at times, does have a sort of harlequin romance character to it – but it quickly becomes clear this is intentional and meant to reflect the proponent’s personality more than anything else – sections that are narrated from the point of view of other characters take on an entirely different style, tone and quality of writing – it’s clear that Ms. Mones can write well, and chooses simply to use a lighter style of writing for the first character introduced. I never read her other book for which she is famous – Lost in Translation – I hated the movie, but then, never judge a book by its movie… you know? Highly recommended reading material for anyone who likes food and cooking.

BottomfeederMy other book was a bit more on the serious side. Bottomfeeder: How to eat ethically in a world of vanishing seafood by Taras Grescoe, has been sitting on my reading stack for months now. Like other books of the genre – the more prominent recent ones being what seems a slew by Michael Pollan, it’s a grim picture of what we’ve done to our food supply, what’s going to happen if we continue the way we are, and suggestions for what we can do about it. Unlike Pollan, Grescoe tackles the theme with a bit of a sense of humor, and a bit of self-deprecation – in his quest for information, detail, and some of the whys and wherefores, he finds himself, by conscious choice, eating his way through a selection of seafood that he already knows, based on his thesis, he oughtn’t to be. He excuses himself with “this will be the last time I ever…” sort of reasoning, which doesn’t really excuse it, but is the same reasoning that most of us use when confronted with ideas of the sort that we have some responsibility for the planet and our bodies in our choices of what we eat. The old “it’s already been caught, so if I don’t eat it, someone else will or it will go to waste” is a specious argument – lowering demand, in the long run, can only help towards a change in the approach of restaurants’, fishmongers’ and fisheries’ attitudes. One bite at a time. The book does not end on any sort of upbeat or hopeful note – Grescoe seems to have concluded that it’s unlikely change will come in time – one hopes he doesn’t actually believe that, as, if so, the only reason for having written the book would have been self-promotion and greed – and I don’t think that’s the case, I think he just doesn’t sum things up in a way that is as likely to lead towards change as he could have – he’s presented his case, he’s basically stated what he’s going to do about it, and he leaves it up to the individual reader to decide what he or she is going to do. The case statement was powerful, the summation to the jury of his peers could have used more punch. Still, overall it’s well worth a read – not to mention taking some action.

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The Glow

“Given our shared passion for cooking, how is it that we were suddenly convinced to retire our pots and pans for good? It’s not just the extra cupboard space that our oven now provides.”

– from the book reviewed here…

Raw Food real worldBuenos Aires – Okay, pet peeve in regard to book titles. Yes, book titles. If you have a catchy title, if you, or your editor or publisher, gave it some thought, why do you need a subtitle explaining what your book is all about? Is it really that difficult, with a book called Raw Food Real World for anyone to grasp the subject matter at hand? Does it need 100 Recipes to Get the Glow? Which, by the way, comes across to me at least as less explicative than the title – sure, I get the 100 recipes part, but “get the glow”?

That out of the way, let’s look at the book. It’s a subject matter that’s all the rage these days – raw food or life food. It’s written by a chef who, at least within the New York foodie world, is pretty well known, and his wife, who isn’t. It’s beautifully illustrated with photos of the food, and less so with lots of pictures of the two of them, presumeably glowing. Not that they’re not a cute couple, in fact, Matthew Kenney is… well, was… one of the cutest chefs around – but that’s 15 years ago or so when he was running Matthew’s on the Upper West Side (which was not a raw food vegan restaurant and was a spot I regularly dined at and had a good number of late eve conversations with Matthew about the industry after introducing myself) – we all lose a bit of cuteness with age, you know? Graphically, it’s not well designed – the recipes for the most part are fine, but the chapter introductions are all done in spindly white text set on vividly colorful pages, with a particular fondness it seemed for yellow and orange, making them difficult to read.

Their explanations of how and why they got into a raw food lifestyle are relatively straightforward, if, perhaps, punctuated by a few too many gee golly gosh how good I felt after I did this moments that get a bit repetitive. The level of detail is probably just about perfect for someone who’s more interested in this as a recipe book than as an explication of the lifestyle itself. The recipes are well written and clear, and sound delicious. On the other hand, most of them sound like things that are fairly complex to make – the “real world” part of the title is a bit misleading. I did a little surfing online to see what sort of reaction the book has garnered among the raw food folk, and one of the most common comments is something to the effect of “everything looks so good, but way beyond my skill level to make”. Which was my reaction and I cook for a living.

The recipes, and the whole story they present, in general, are clearly aimed at those with a lot of time on their hands to make stuff, and more, with a lot of cash to burn. Exotic ingredients, professional level equipment – and no suggestions for substitutions on either – in fact a bit disparaging of any attempts to make this food without using the best (and most expensive) kitchen tools and ingredients out there (with supplier sources listed for where to order all this exotica from should you live somewhere, say, other than New York City or San Francisco).

On the positive side, I like that they don’t preach. In fact they’re quite clear that they aren’t fanatically committed to a 100% raw food vegan lifestyle, and actually enjoy eating both cooked food and non-vegetable food, when they eat out, but have chosen this for home – and even that has it’s minor exceptions. In their lead-ins they do make it sound like anyone could jump on the bandwagon should they want to, it’s just a shame that the recipes make it seem far harder than it has to be to do so. And that leaves this book, for me, as one to sit and glow on the coffee table, should you be so inclined, and less likely to be on the kitchen bookshelf where it might be used.

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Sourdough Dreams

“It is important to understand the basic differences between the wild yeast of sourdough and the commercial baker’s yeast in most other breads. First sourdough yeast grow best in acidic doughs, while baker’s yeast does better in neutral or slightly alkaline doughs. Baker’s yeast is a single species, with hundreds of strains and varieties, while sourdoughs are usually leavened by one or more species in the same dough, none of which is baker’s yeast. Baker’s yeast is a highly uniform product that produces an equally uniform texture in bread dough. The wild yeast are anything but uniform, and they vary from country to country. But the most impressive difference between the two yeast types is that a single package of instant dried yeast produces just one batch of bread, while the same amount of wild sourdough culture produces loaf after loaf for the lifetimes of many bakers.”

– Ed Wood, Classic Sourdoughs

Local Breads by Daniel LeaderBuenos Aires – Though it was published last year, I just got around to reading through Daniel Leader’s Local Breads. I was particularly interested in this bread baking book because it focuses on sourdough breads from a number of traditional European cultures, and it’s a topic, good sourdough bread, that is, that comes up regularly in expat conversation here. A friend of mine recently went back to the U.S. to visit family and agreed to bring back a couple of different books that I’d wanted, so here was my opportunity. Daniel Leader is well-known for his award winning book Bread Alone that came out in the mid-90s – a solid introduction to the world of bread baking. This new book has gotten rave reviews, with only minimal criticism for at times being a bit technical and dense. I have to admit, I didn’t find it that way, but then, I’m kind of used to reading books of that sort.

I am, however, going to point out the emperor’s nudity… just a bit. Overall, I liked the book immensely. It was a completely enjoyable read, and his stories about different regions and his travels are engaging. His recipes are a little repetitive, giving overly detailed step by step instructions, over and over again – but then, most people probably are not sitting down to read the book cover to cover – they’re picking out one or two recipes and trying those out – so they don’t really want to be flipping back and forth to previously referenced techniques. I can’t really fault him there. I did find his writing to be a bit… hypocritically humble – hmm… maybe that’s not quite the phrase. He constantly bows and scrapes to the various bakers he talks about, as if each, in turn, is some sort of godlike figure in the world of baking – producing the ultimate loaf of bread of their style. He then turns around, one by one, and discusses how he took their product and “perfected it”. Beyond the presumption that he can take on the recipes of the gods (maybe he just writes about them as if they were on pedestals…), his regular assertion of his ability to turn these humble (yet deity-produced) loaves into his version of perfection, is a bit off-putting. Sort of like listening to that guy at a cocktail party who stands there while you’re talking, tapping his foot and waiting for his turn to tell you you have an interesting idea, but he has a better one.

My biggest problem with the book is his math. Initially, it didn’t catch my eye, until I hit the phrase in his section on German breads – “He told me that the average German eats a kilo of bread a week – about 10 ounces of bread a day.” and then goes on to talk about how this seems to be alot in comparison to Americans. Mmmm… no, a kilo a week would be 5 ounces a day, pretty much the same as the amount he talks about for Americans. Either he meant 2 kilos a week, or he simply got his math wrong. I would have just discounted it as a simple mistake, only when I started out to try his recipes, I found similar problems with the numbers.

I decided to start off with his section on liquid levain – a watery sort of sourdough starter that is all the rage amongst a certain group of French bakers these days. The levain itself turned out to be quite easy to make, a simple mix of 2/3 cup of water and 6 tablespoons of flour… hmmm… that is quite a bit of water, no? Left to sit with various stirrings and daily additions of 1/3 cup each of flour and water. Over the course of four days it turned into a bubbling, fermenting container of delightful smelling levain the consistency of light cream.

liquid levain - in the beginning
In the beginning – just mixed

liquid levain - after 48 hours
After 48 hours, with two additions of water and flour

liquid levain - after four days
After four days and four additions, bubbling and ready to use.

That was all well and good and I was excited and ready to go. My first inkling that something was amiss was as I mixed the ingredients for his Baguette à l’ancienne, an old world style baguette. He talks regularly in the book about doughs that are hydrated more than what we’re used to working with. But this was like thin pancake batter. He didn’t give a detailed description of consistency, merely that it would be far softer than what one would normally think of, and he does say it will be a challenge. At the same time, though he opts for machine kneading, he asserts that it’s possible to hand knead this dough, with care. that wouldn’t have been possible with this – it would have simply poured onto the counter and dripped off onto the floor. I looked back at the numbers in his recipe, and sure enough, his proportion of water to flour comes out pretty close to 1:1 – I mean, even a “wet dough” is generally only about 2/3 the amount of liquid to flour, and most people work with bread doughs that are more like 1:2. Top that with past experience here that the flours here need extra water in comparison to what I’m used to in the U.S., and something was clearly wrong. Still, I gave the mixer a try – he asserted that after 8-9 minutes of high speed mixing the dough would take on the consistency of a marshmallow. Maybe if it’s been melted over high heat…

Mini-sourdough loaves

So, I added in flour – high gluten bread flour in fact to help it develop some structure, almost 50% more than his recipe called for before I got something that was remotely marshmallow-like. At that point I wasn’t going to even try to shape this mess into baguettes and simply poured it into greased mini-loaf pans, let it proof for a couple of hours (it did rise… though slowly), and then baked out these little loaves. The taste was great – the lightly tangy sourdough flavor – and with the extra flour the consistency was okay – though not really baguette-like.

And, I moved on… more cautiously now. I’d already decided I wanted to also try his recipe for Pain de campagne, more commonly referred to as boules. I decided to approach this carefully, as looking at the recipe I could already see that the liquid to flour was at 85% and I wasn’t looking forward to a liquid mess. So I added only about half the water upfront, figuring on adding in more as needed. In the end, I needed very little more, a matter of a couple of tablespoons, and bringing the liquid ratio down to about 65%. From that, I got a nice, soft, pillowy dough, that fit his description perfectly. I continued with the rest of the process, and, voila! Boules.

Boules

Now, to this point, I’ve only tried those two recipes, in the section of liquid levain. I have yet to delve into the making of others, though I’m going to continue trying out various ones over the coming weeks and months. My sourdough starter is bubbling away, and I’m feeding it and chatting with it on a daily basis. I’ve read a few blog entries by various other folks who’ve tried different recipes (the most common choice seems to be his basic yeast baguette recipe, different from the one I tried above), that seem to have had good results.

So the question I’m left with is… is his math just off or is there something so very different about the flour here? If anything, I’d have expected based on past experience that if it was the latter that I’d have needed more water, not less, so it leads me to think his math is off, or the book wasn’t carefully proofread. More tests and trials to come….

Other last notes on the book – which may add credence to the proofreading hypothesis – there are numerous typos in the book when it comes to foreign words, a simple example, he refers to an Italian tomato bread as al pomodori – mixing the singular article with the plural noun – I realize that’s not something that everyone will notice, but it’s something he should have (it should be either al pomodoro or ai pomodori). And back to that sort of conceit mentioned above – he subtitles the book Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipe from Europe’s Best Artisan Bakers, yet, his travels (at least as detailed within the book), and recipes, only cover parts of France, Italy, Germany, and a very brief look at Czechoslavakia in search of one particular bread. Europe’s a whole lot more than that, and there are wonderful artesanal breads from many other countries and cultures – perhaps, who knows, perhaps better than the ones he terms Best.

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