6 Foodie Books You Should Definitely NOT Read While Hungry

Portions of this post originally appeared on Book Riot. I received copies of All For You and Mastering the Art of French Cooking for review consideration. For more on my review policies, please see my Full Disclosure page.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Fumi Yoshinaga

Shiro Kakei is a lawyer, but he's not one of these lawyers who work sixty hours a week and spend their lives at their desks. No, Shiro happily takes the most boring cases so he can put in his eight hours and go home, where he throws himself into his true passion: cooking!

I was expecting a light, entertaining slice-of-life story with What Did You Eat Yesterday?, but it was much better and more powerful than I thought it would be. First of all, for being printed in black and white, the food looked and sounded crazy delicious. This was my face the entire time I was reading:

Also, the recipes are kind of inspiring. As soon as I finished this manga, I started making side dishes for breakfast and dinner, trying to use up what we had in the fridge. I didn't consciously decide to start doing this, incidentally, it just seemed to happen naturally as an extension of reading the book. I have to agree with Shiro's boyfriend, Kenji, that adding side dishes makes the meal more satisfying. I began to feel so much healthier. Add to that Yoshinaga's beautiful, delicate drawings, awesome characters, and vignettes on how food can express love, carry memories, and is more than just following a recipe but also about using what you have and shopping for the best ingredients, and there really is nothing not to like about this manga.

Verdict: Definitely buy. In fact, after I returned What Did You Eat Yesterday? to the library, I bought a copy for myself, I loved it soooo much.

The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, ed. by Kate White

Death and food go together like sun and shade. Why? No one knows, except maybe Hannibal Lecter. In this cookbook, some of the greatest mystery writers in America (Scott Turow, Louise Penny, Mary Higgins Clark, Charlaine Harris, James Patterson, etc.) share their favorite recipes, from family standards to food straight out of their books.

For some crazy reason I decided to start reading this while I was waiting for dinner. Bad decision, or worst decision? The recipes were so good I started ROTFDMAO (rolling on the floor drooling my ass off). But even if you don't like to cook, this book is filled with entertaining stories and essays from mystery authors. I cried at Richard Castle's "pancakes are love," declaration, laughed at Nelson DeMille's Male Chauvinist Pigs in the Blanket recipe, and loved Lorenzo Carcaterra's story about Grandma Maria's Pasta Puttanesca. Lee Child closes the book out admirably with an essay on The Right Way to make coffee. The chapter on side dishes is pretty weak, but this is America we're talking about.

Verdict: Buy. Actually, this is another book I bought after borrowing from the library. Good ol library!

All For You by Laura Florand

Sassy and cute Célie is chef to one of the best chocolatiers in Paris, but her life wasn't always truffles and ganache. She grew up in the banlieue dreaming of marrying her brother's bestie, Joss, until he abandoned her to join the Foreign Legion. Now he's back, acting like nothing ever changed, and Célie has all the feels.

I've never been one of those people who get hungry or crave chocolate while reading a Laura Florand novel, although I do find her food descriptions to be fascinating and on fleek. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I can't eat chocolate, who knows. But with this book, I not only started craving chocolate, I had an entire dream about drinking hot chocolate, the one chocolate treat I really, really miss indulging in. It's kind of strange, considering that All For You is probably one of Florand's less food-centric novels. But then again, it did give me all the warm fuzzies. It's sweet and comforting and just what you need to lift your spirits, kind of like a cup of hot chocolate in book format.

Verdict: Buy.


The following books were ones I wanted to include in the above Buy, Borrow, Bypass, but life and work got in the way and I wasn't able to finish them before the deadline. However, I do still want to review them, so here they are!

Taste Test by Kelly Fiore

Nora is a small-town girl who grew up working in her dad's barbeque joint, but her dreams are much bigger than that. When she gets the chance to be on Taste Test, her favorite cooking competition show, she leaves District 11 her dad and BFF, Billy, to compete in an arena against kids from across the country. Only one can survive win the chance to study cooking in Paris. The problem is, can Nora trust the other contestants, particularly the infuriating and arrogant Christian Van Lorten?

In case you can't tell by the summary, this book reminded me a bit of The Hunger Games. Too bad that title was already taken, it would have been much better than Taste Test. Anywho, this was a really fun, quick read. I loooooooooove books where the two main characters fight all the time. Nora had a few moments where I thought her behavior was unreasonable or annoying, and the ending left almost everything completely unresolved, but the bottom line is this is the kind of book you can kick back and read in an afternoon when you're after some lighthearted entertainment. As for the food, all but one of the recipes were dumped in at the end, and none of them sounded particularly appetizing or easy to make. I wouldn't call this a book NOT to read while hungry.

Verdict: Buy or borrow.

The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain

Laurent Letellier owns Le Cahier Rouge, a Parian bookstore. One day he stumbles upon an abandoned purse in the street and becomes obsessed with finding its owner after reading all the personal secrets she's written down in her little red notebook. She owns a red notebook, he owns a bookstore called The Red Notebook–clearly these two are meant to be together. But will they ever meet?

This is a charming, short novel in a similar vein to the movie Amélie, although not as fantastical and twee. It sounds like it could go into creeper territory but it really doesn't. I loved how there were a bunch of jokes you would probably only get if you spoke French–the name of Laurent's shop, for example; or the name of his daughter's cat, Putin, which can mean everything from damn to fuck depending on intonation (or the name of the Russian president, for that matter). Actually, now that I think about it, double meaning in names is kind of a theme in this book. As for why The Red Notebook is on this list, it's surprisingly chock full of delectable descriptions of food and drinking and eating, from pot-au-feu to hachis Parmentier. And if you don't know what either of those dishes are, don't worry–googling photos of them is half the fun. I started craving French food like whoa.

Verdict: Buy or borrow, but definitely read.

Mastering the Art of French Eating by Ann Mah

Francophile Ann Mah thought her dreams had come true when her hubby got a job in Paris. But just a few weeks after the big move, he had to go to the Middle East for a year, leaving Mah lonely and bored until this food writer finally had a lightbulb moment: she could write about French food! Using Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a travel guide, Mah set out to discover the stories "behind" the famous regional dishes of France.

Another day, another foodie memoir inspired by Julia Child. I mean, I get that she's a BFD to a whole generation of cooks and foodies, but it's getting to be a bit cliché at this point. I admit I had trouble getting into Mastering the Art of French Eating. I probably should have known better, seeing as how memoirs are not my thing, but I was expecting a lot more food in this book. Instead, it's mainly about Mah's struggles living as an expat–not just in Paris, but in other parts of the world (her hubby's in the diplomatic service). Which is fine, but I'm not super interested. I also thought the choices for and execution of Mah's quest were pretty damn lame. For Paris–the first chapter in the book no less–what dish does she choose? Steak and frites. Really? Out of all the dishes she could have written about? Giant snooze. In another chapter, Mah highlights two famous andouillette recipes of Troyes, but she doesn't even try them! At that point this book lost me. I will say, however, that the recipes at the back of each chapter sound tasty and I totally want to try them.

Verdict: Bypass, or borrow for the recipes.



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Weekend Cooking: JAMIE OLIVER'S GREAT BRITAIN

The English are about as famous for their food as the French are for their music. I'm not saying British food is terrible, just that it has that reputation, especially in North America. But Jamie Oliver's Great Britain (or as I like to think of it, Jamie Oliver presents: Jamie Oliver's Great Britain) is a book that aims to heroicize traditional British foodstuffs, from pub dishes to pies and puddings.

As a cookbook, there is a lot that's problematic about Jamie Oliver's Great Britain. Beth Fish Reads mentioned editing and consistency issues in her review, and those are definitely present. The recipes read like Oliver dictated them into his phone and the person transcribing them couldn't always understand what he was saying. That, added to the fact that most of these recipes require really quite advanced cooking skills, means that the average person isn't going to be making most of the recipes in this book, especially if that person happens to not be British. Would I eat haggis? Wellllll... I might try it, if I was in Scotland. Would I make it myself, from scratch, in middle of the US? No I would not.

That being said, I honestly don't think the point of Jamie Oliver's Great Britain is to be a practical cookbook. Instead, it seems more like a love letter to UK food and culture. There are tons of color images, many of which are only tangentially related to food, giving it a scrapbook feel. And Oliver's focus seems to be more on telling us about the history of each dish and raising awareness of the richness, variety, and character of English (and Welsh, and Irish, and Scottish, etc.) food than giving detailed directions for beginners on how to make it. Even if you never plan on cooking a single dish in Jamie Oliver's Great Britain, if you're any sort of Anglophile, you'll probably still get a lot out of this book. And that's what completely won me over about Jamie Oliver's Great Britain.

As for actual cooking, the most approachable chapters are probably "Vegetables" and "Afternoon Tea." Like many places with short growing seasons, the UK is all about the root vegetables, and there are some fantastic recipes for potatoes here, as well as leeks (yum, love leeks), asparagus, spinach, brussel sprouts, and pretty much all my favorite veggies. "Afternoon Tea" is basically a collection of cake and cookie recipes. I decided to try out the Scottish shortbread recipe, since it only had three ingredients and didn't require that I use the Mixer of Doom.

Scottish Shortbread

--Taken from Jamie Oliver's Great Britain; makes 12 pieces

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
• 4 tbsp sugar, plus extra for dusting
• 4 oz unsalted butter

Flavoring options:

Chocolate, orange, & caraway

• Zest of 1 orange
• 1 oz good dark chocolate
• 1 tsp caraway seeds

Lavender & honey

• 2 tbsp lavender honey
• 2 tbsp lavender sugar (use only 2 tbsp regular sugar when making this version)

Lemon thyme & vanilla

• 1/2 a small bunch of fresh of lemon thyme, leaves picked
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract or paste

Directions:

Preheat the oven 325 degs F. Mix the flour and sugar together in a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter with your thumb and forefinger, then add your chosen flavorings (if you're using chocolate or seeds you might want to push these into the dough at the end, after you've rolled it out) and squash, pat and push it into a dough. [Here's what I mean about unclear directions. Is the dough supposed to be the consistency of pie crust or what? I just assumed it was, but I think I still overworked the dough a bit.] Don't knead it, you just want to pat it down flat. Push or roll it out until it's 1/3-inch thick--do this directly on to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper so you don't have to move it. Once it's in the shape you want--which could be square, round or a few mall finger shapes--feel free to thumb or pinch the edges. If it splits or tears, just press it back together--but remember, the less you work the dough, the shorter and better these cookies will be.

If you want to score lines on the shortbread so that you click it off into pieces later [total nightmare, fyi], you can. Sprinkle over some sugar, then pop the baking sheet into the oven and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it--you want a lovely light golden color (unless you're making the lavender honey version, which will be darker). Leave to cool, then put away in a tin or serve. These will be delicious for two or three days and make a lovely present for someone special.

And here were my results:



These tasted very flowery and were a little flat (but maybe they're supposed to be that way?). Were they blow-my-mind delicious? Nooo. But they were tasty, and pretty easy to make.

As I said, Jamie Oliver's Great Britain might not be the most practical cookbook, but it is a fabulous collection of recipes and culture from the British Isles. By the time I turned the final page on this book, I was totally in love! Definitely something I would consider a keeper and that may, over time, prove to be a treasured cookbook.


Thank you to TLC Booktours and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book to review! The publishers are also providing a copy of Jamie Oliver's Great Britain to one lucky reader of this blog. To enter to win, please fill out the embedded form below, or go here.

Weekend Cooking: THE HOMEMADE PANTRY--101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making by Alana Chernila

If we are to become people who do make butter, we might have to shift the way we see ourselves a bit. We might have to get into the adventurous spirit and unearth our own curiosity about where our food comes from. We might have to make a colossal mess of the kitchen. And we might have to slow down, at least long enough to knead a loaf of bread before the day begins.

Guys. This book is AMAZING.

When I first saw Beth Fish Reads' review of The Homemade Pantry, I thought it might be worth checking out, but I didn't have very high expectations for it. I know how these make-it-yourself-at-home books tend to go: spend lots of money on specialized equipment and lots of time, OR just go to the grocery store and buy it there. Even though I like making my own food, I can't spend tons of money on new equipment for it, and I don't want to spend my entire day in the kitchen.

I didn't realize how perfect The Homemade Pantry was for me until I picked it up at the library. I've made my own cheese (see here), baked my own bread (here), and made my own liquors (here) from scratch before. If that sounds like something you could/want to do, you should definitely pick this book up. All of those types of recipes are in The Homemade Pantry, along with many others.

The Homemade Pantry is divided into sections imitating the aisles of your grocery store: dairy, bread, cereals, snacks, etc., which makes it very easy to navigate. You'll be surprised by how many items you can make at home that you might not have thought of before, like brown sugar. I also like that Alana Chernila didn't hit on my pet peeves with this book--requiring specialized equipment and approaching it from the perspective of a chef. There are some specialized tools required, but not as many as I would have expected in a book like this; and even when Chernila does suggest a particular kitchen gadget, she addresses what you can or should do if you don't have it on hand (including a warning about NOT using glass baking dishes, which I really could have used the first time I baked bread).

Also, from what I know about some of the things I've made in the past, such as ricotta, it seems like the recipes Chernila includes here are the simplest and easiest versions you can find. You really can made your own bread, cheese, etc., without spending the entire day in the kitchen; and as Chernila points out, it's usually cheaper and better-tasting!

The Homemade Pantry makes creating food staples at home extremely accessible. If you've ever been interested in being more self-sufficient, or wondered if you really could make your own cheese, bread, butter, etc., then you should definitely check this book out.


Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. For more information, see the welcome post.

Weekend Cooking: FOODTRIENTS--Age-Defying Recipes for a Sustainable Life by Grace O

My first thought on seeing this cover was: why is there a woman drinking water from a leaf? Are these recipes for our dystopian future where there's no running water? Because I don't live in a place with that many trees.

Turns out they ARE for our dystopian future. It's the first post-apocalyptic cookbook. Kidding! Or am I? Guess you'll just have to read the book to find out. Or read the other reviews where no one else mentions it.

Anywhosie, FoodTrients is a cookbook that claims to provide recipes that "promote longevity, prevent the diseases of aging, and increase energy and vitality." Basically, if we were living in The Hunger Games, this is the kind of food the people in the Capitol would be eating. And naturally many of the ingredients are exotic or unusual, because let's face it, if the book told you the ingredients in Doritos were preserving your skin, there wouldn't be much reason to buy the book. Or much of anything besides Doritos.

What are some these ingredients? I'm happy you asked. There's a table of them in the back of the book that's honestly the best part of this entire cookbook. But Grace O highlights some more unfamiliar (to me, anyway) foods: bitter melon, moringa, hemp milk, soursop, and chia seeds. I have never heard of most of these ingredients or seen them in my grocery store. I'm just happy when they have kale.

Honestly, this cookbook falls into a category I like to call "food porn." The pictures are nice to look at, but the chances that I'm ever going to make any of these recipes is pretty minimal. Not only do you have the unfamiliar ingredients with no suggestions as to substitutions (though I usually just Google that myself, it's nice when a cookbook author acknowledges not every food in the world is readily available to every person in America), there's also not much info on how to pick them out, clean them, handle them, etc.

Just as the instructions are sparse, so is the science. I'm not sure I trust any of Grace O's claims as to the benefits of these ingredients or meals--she offers nothing in the way of supporting evidence or citation, and the lack of specificity makes the whole thing feel more like wishful thinking or guestimating. Does Grace O have a degree in any health sciences-related field? It's not mentioned in her bio that she does. She has cooked for royalty, though (see what I mean? Capitol food). I'm not entirely sure where she's getting her information about the healthfulness of these ingredients or exactly how much one has to eat of them to make an appreciable impact. Yeah, red wine's healthy (note: red wine is not listed as one of the "FoodTrients"), but only in certain quantities.

I will say the best part of the book was the "Starter" section. Actually, this was the only section where there were recipes I wanted to try. I made the Quinoa Tabbouleh on Pita:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup quinoa
• 1/2 tbs kosher salt dissolved in 1 cup water
  
• 2 cups finely chopped parsley
• 1/2 cup diced tomatoes
• 3 tbs chopped scallions
• 4 tbs olive oil
  
• 2 tbs lemon juice
• sea salt and pepper to taste
• pinch of sumac
• 3 whole-wheat pitas
  

Directions

• Combine the quinoa and water in saucepan and cook, covered, at medium-high heat for 20 minutes [I followed the package directions]. Allow to cool.
• Toss quinoa with parsley, tomatoes, scallions, 3 tbs olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sumac [I didn't have any sumac so I used some herbs de Provence].
• To make pita rounds, heat oven to 400 degs Fahrenheit, brush with olive oil, and bake for 10 minutes in foil.

I'd never cooked with quinoa before, so this was a bit of an adventure (one thing I learned: buy the pre-rinsed quinoa next time). The recipe itself was okay. I liked how the quinoa was a little crunchy, but the lemon juice was overwhelming. You definitely need something in there to give it flavor, though, or it would be horribly bland. For the most part I thought it was a lot of work for a snack, but if you have some quinoa leftover from another meal this would be a good way to use it up. The recipe is VERY basic, and I noticed that's pretty typical of the dishes in FoodTrients (whole wheat garlic noodles, for example). As one might expect, the recipes focus on ingredients and for the most part have simple cooking techniques.

Overall, however, not many of the recipes in this book sparked a desire in me to make them. Some of the mains looked downright unappetizing, and there were a lot of dishes that I personally wouldn't be able to eat because of my own health issues. I also find the idea of spending the time, money, and energy to import ingredients from far-flung continents for the sole purpose of making me healthier very death-of-the-Roman-Empire, but that's probably just me. If you're interested in working with ingredients such as the ones I mentioned, however, then you'll probably want to check this book out.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me this cookbook to review!

Weekend Cooking: DROPPING ACID by Jamie Koufman and Jordan Stern

I know this will probably shock y'all, but sometimes my life isn't that glamorous. Like a few years ago, I started to feel this pain in my chest as if I was being stabbed through the heart. I thought I might be having a heart attack and I was only twenty-eight! Fortunately, it wasn't a heart attack--it was acid reflux (I found this out after two visits to my regular doctor, a trip to the ER, and seeing a GI specialist).

Acid reflux is the type of disease that sounds silly, until you actually get it and can't sleep, can't breathe, can barely move, and can't eat. I took Prilosec for about three months straight and that seemed to get it under control. Aside from occasional flare-ups, I didn't have any problems until a few weeks ago when I started to feel that stabby sensation again. Back to the Prilosec, even though it's not that good for your stomach.

Here's the thing about acid reflux: you cannot. eat. ANYTHING. Coffee, tea, chocolate, alcohol, bacon, cheese (you all know how much I love cheese)... Just imagine every food you enjoy or consider a comfort food, and then cross it off your list of things you can eat. Welcome to rice and boiled chicken for the rest of your life, bitches. I'd almost rather die, except acid reflux doesn't kill you--it just makes you FEEL like you're dying, then the cure makes you feel like there's no reason left to live anyway.

It's such a bummer.

I found out about Dropping Acid: The Reflux Diet Cookbook and Cure after googling "food to fight acid reflux." This is the only diet book I've ever read--but instead of cutting fat from your diet, you're trying to cut PH levels. I've read cookbooks for people with acid reflux before, like Eating for Acid Reflux by Jill Sklar and Annabel Cohen; but those books were incredibly disappointing. Not only did they not tell me anything I didn't already know, the recipes sounded terrible and weren't anything I'd ever want to eat.

Dropping Acid claims to be different, and for the most part it is. For one, I learned a lot about reflux, and realized I'd been suffering from it for a lot longer than I'd thought. According to Koufman and Stern, heartburn is only one of the less common symptoms of acid reflux--the majority of symptoms are things like coughing, hoarseness, feeling like you're choking or you can't swallow, and lots of mucus in your throat. If that's true, my reflux is definitely triggered by stress--I basically lived off frappacinos during finals week while in grad school, because I couldn't manage to swallow anything solid. Symptoms of "silent reflux," as Koufman and Stern call it, are often misdiagnosed as allergies, halitosis, dental disease, or asthma.

The diet part of the cookbook is two-fold: first, you spend 2-4 weeks on a strict diet eating nothing with a PH above 4. In part two, you can relax the diet and eat things with a higher PH, as long as you do so in small doses.

Here's what I really like about Dropping Acid: it's totally reasonable. When I first visited the GI specialist after realizing I had acid reflux, he was like, "No more coffee, tea, alcohol, or chocolate." Seriously? You need to let people down gently when you give them news like that. Koufman and Stern are more realistic: one cup of coffee a day is fine, a cocktail is fine as long as it's not right before bed, etc. They give you a list of really good foods you should try to incorporate into your diet, and generally bad foods you should avoid, and basically give you the building blocks to make smarter decisions about what you eat. They also say that everyone has their own hard limits on what foods they should definitely avoid at all times.

As for the cookbook section, that's a mixed bag. At first I was really exited because the recipes sounded like something I might actually want to eat! There were delicious-sounding smoothies, pancakes, quiches and omelets; salads that didn't sound half bad (I'm not a big fan of salads), entrées like mad mushroom stew, one-pot chicken blanquette, and scallops with penne verde; and even snacks and desserts like ginger cheesecake. A lot of the credit for these awesome-sounding recipes probably goes to Marc Bauer, a chef at the French Culinary Institute.



Then I tried to actually make a few of the recipes and realized the directions could use some work. For example, in the vegetable frittata with quinoa, there are no times given as to how long to actually cook the frittata or any of the vegetables. You can't assume people know how long it takes to cook to anything "thoroughly," or even that people know what a thoroughly cooked vegetable is. This is a culture that doesn't know fries are made from potatoes, for heaven's sake (The New York Times republished this recipe with cooking times--thank you, NYT). I also tried a few of the salads and they were okay, but a little weird-tasting.

Despite my problems with some of the recipes, overall I'm happy with this book, because it makes me feel like I can eat well and still be relatively healthy. Just knowing basic foods that are good to eat (rather than only the bad stuff) and warning signs other than heartburn is really helpful. I definitely recommend Dropping Acid if you or someone you cook for suffers from acid reflux.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Imaginary Cookbook: SASSY GAY FOOD--The Recipes Every Girl Needs from the Sassy Gay Friend Every Girl Needs

After my review of 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know, I started to think of other cookbooks that could be marketed to women. Naturally, my mind jumped to Sassy Gay Friend, the man who leaps in to save literary and historical characters from their own folly. What would SGF make to wake the intervention-hungry world up?



MiO Mojito: Because why add kool-aid to water when you can add it to alcohol?

Stupid Bitch Bundt Cake: Real Housewives make bundt cake, and then they rub the other housewives' face in it.

What, what, what are you doing?! Risotto: You need a time out. Stand over the stove for an hour stirring rice and think about your life. Is this what you want?!? No, you want to eat risotto in a restaurant like a reasonable human being. Stop wasting your time!

Look at Your Choices Chicken: Girl, what is wrong with you? Do you not watch Martha Stewart? Put a sauce on that or something, unless you want to be choking on stringy chicken for the rest of your days! Do you want to be the stringy chicken girl??

Pity Party Pita: Boo-hoo! I'd feel sorry for myself too if all I had in the fridge was vodka, cat food, a package of 3-week-old bread, and a container of hummus. Look at your life, look at your choices. I think you're a 30-year-old woman who can't feed herself. For god's sake, take a cooking class and flirt with some chefs.

He Broke My Heart Blueberry Cobbler: Really?!? This is the guy were really planning to marry? He's been in jail 3 times! He should be kissing your feet that someone as good as you would even consider sleeping with him, and what does he do? Make you feel pathetic to give himself an ego boost. You can do better. Wake up!

Weekend Cooking: 100 RECIPES EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW: ENGAGEMENT CHICKEN AND 99 OTHER FABULOUS DISHES TO GET YOU EVERYTHING YOU WANT IN LIFE

I know what you're thinking right now: that's a long title. And also: everything you want in life?!? But you want so many things! Can food really get you all that? No, no it can't. Or can it????

Anyway, who cares, there's no harm in trying, right? *cough* Let's start with the recipe this book is built around: Engagement Chicken. Basically a lemon roast chicken, but with the added benefit/detriment (you decide) of making men fall in love with their stomachs... or you, the book doesn't really go into specifics. POINT IS, make this chicken for a guy, and bam! he'll ask you to marry him.

<--This is what I look like while cooking, fyi.

I had several issues with the centerpiece recipe of this book, mainly because it was just way too general. How many people have roasted chickens in their lifetimes? Not me. Even one of the Glamour editors who tried this recipe said she had no idea what giblets were (which definitely puts these recipes in a new light). Yet the book never actually explains what giblets are, or has any technical instructions at all. Are they contractually obligated not to say, "Yo, giblets are..." whatever they are? Because if YOU wondered what giblets were, it's a fair bet that your readers might, too. Also, I'm pretty sure roasting a chicken involves some sort of tying of the chicken legs. I'm not exactly sure why or how this is done, but I clearly remember a French guy doing it on Anthony Bourdain. Yet does the recipe mention anything about tying chicken legs together? Nope. So if you were a newbie cook who'd never roasted a chicken before, you'd just plop that sucker into a roasting pan and who knows what might happen!

The rest of the recipes--i.e., recipes from Glamour that they renamed to fit in with the theme of the book--are a mixed bag. I skipped the breakfast and drinks sections, because I don't mix drinks and I sure as hell don't make breakfast. There are a few must-tries, like "Perfect Host Lobster Pie," which sounds like it's ridiculously easy to make and incredibly decadent at the same time (love that concept); and "Complexion Soup," which is really just a carrot soup. But then there are other recipes like "Broke and Fabulous Grilled Cheese." In case you're wondering, yes, it is just bread and cheese grilled.

My favorite two sections of the book were "Sides" and "Cheap & Easy Meals." Who doesn't need creative ideas for side dishes? I'm always buying something that I think will be great, like brussel sprouts, and then wondering what to do with them. The sides section contains a "Kitchen Basics" insert that has five recipes for vegetable sides, plus four recipes for toppings you can use on any veggie. In fact, the inserts are definitely the best part of the book--they cover things like basic pasta sauces, $5 chicken dinners, and making the perfect cheese plate.

I think overall this is a pretty good cookbook, although the packaging just bothers me. I know it comes from Glamour, which is a woman's magazine, but did they have to market it soooo aggressively as a cookbook for women??? What if I want a guy to make Engagement Chicken for me to convince me to accept his proposal? No guy is going to pick this book up. This gives me a sad. Also, there's this strange dichotomy between a circa-1950s assumption that women are the ones who cook in a relationship ("Let's not forget the cook's needs when we're thinking about the guy's needs!" "Get the man in your life to make this for you--the recipe is that easy." Are you freaking kidding me right now, Glamour?), and the fact that it's obvious none of the editors of Glamour actually live like this (prima facie evidence, the editor who didn't know what giblets were). Do they think the women "in the middle," living between LA and NYC, do? Because that's... kinda dumb.

Anywhosie, despite that, the recipes in the book are worth checking out. I think this would be a great cookbook to give to anyone who's starting out in their first kitchen. And if it's a guy, well... I guess you could just copy them down for him?

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, and photographs.

Too Many Books In the Kitchen

I got a Kindle for Christmas, and for some reason it's made me mad for downloading cookbooks.  Not only are cookbooks generally a lot cheaper in eBook format, but you can download a sample and see how you like them before you buy them.  This has been really useful for me as I can generally tell when a cookbook's going to be a pain in the ass from the introduction.  Here are a few that I've tried out so far:



I wanted a cookbook of "rustic" (re: simple) French recipes, so I tried out Provençal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France by Mary Ann Caws.  She starts off talking about her perfect retirement in France, which was preceded by her perfect college days at Bryn Mawr, her perfect marriage, and her perfect children who spoke française at home because they're all just so special.  I kind of hate this woman, but I persevere in the belief that the recipes she gives us will in fact be simple and good.  And she is a pretty good writer.

I was also immediately interested in Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable, and Seasonal Kitchen by Amy Pennington and Della Chan.  All the things I could possibly want are right there in the title--thrifty, sustainable, and seasonal.  The book also promised tips on how to keep an apartment-style kitchen garden, which would be pretty great.  However, I knew I was going to have issues with this book in the "Stocking the Pantry" section, where the author lists four different types of flours, none of which I had ever heard of.  If I have to keep track of flour, I'll go crazy.  Straight up.  Also, the author calls people who stay at home cooking instead of going out to eat while they're in their 20's lame, which seems counterproductive to the selling of one's cookbook.  Then I skipped ahead to the recipe section and realized I had no interest in cooking any of the meals.  One of them was called "bones and beans."  Wow, yum.  That'll be awesome for our cannibalistic, dystopian future.  Here's a great idea for a pantry meal: spaghetti.  Moving on....

5 Ingredient Fix: Easy, Elegant, and Irresistible Meals by Claire Robinson is another book that I was instantly attracted to.  Five ingredients!  Sounds good to me.  But this book is odd.  Robinson begins the introduction by saying her philosophy centers on good, seasonal ingredients.  Okay!  But the book isn't organized by ingredient or season, so it seems to go against her "philosophy."  Furthermore, I was more than a little annoyed that she includes cocktail recipes in the book.  If I wanted cocktail recipes, I'd pick up a cocktail book, first of all; and second of all, how hard is it to make a cocktail with 5 ingredients?  Really.  Anyway, I'm not sure I want to buy this book and have yet to try any of the recipes.

One of the things I NEED in my life is bread.  Even if I eat A LOT, I don't feel full unless I have bread with a meal.  Bread is surprisingly expensive, however, and I feel I could save money if I made my own bread.  This is why I sampled Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads by Nancy Baggett (awesome name for a baker, btw).  At first I was impressed by the scientific tone of the introduction and the fact that I didn't have to knead bread, which is great because I have arms like noodles.  However, from mixing to the point where you actually put the bread in the oven is a 30+ hour process, which seems mighty long, and this was another book that required me to buy a bunch of different flours.

Then I was tooling around Amazon and spotted Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  These bread recipes are also no-knead, can be stored in the fridge or freezer until you're ready to bake them, and truly require only five minutes (not counting rising and baking time, which is about 40 or so minutes).  The sample I downloaded also suggested I would not need to buy any special flour or ingredients unless I wanted to, and no special tools.  Hooray!  This is the book for me!  I bought the whole thing, only to realize they do require special tools and flours that weren't mentioned in the free sample.  Nuts.  However, this still seems like a very hassle-free way to bake bread, so I think I will persevere and give it a try anyway.  Whether it will be worth giving up the convenience of just buying bread from Panera on my way to and from school remains to be seen.



What are your favorite cookbooks?

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