Cookbook Review: The Casserole Queens Make-A-Meal Cookbook

Well, it's that time of year again: fall.  Not my favourite time of year at all, since the days get shorter, colder, and darker, and I tend to get moodier, more sluggish, and feel the need to indulge in a lot of comfort foods.  And who doesn't love a good comfort food, really?  And nothing says comfort food more clearly, more resoundingly than a casserole.

Oh, how I luvs me a casserole!  So I was stoked to get a review copy of this pretty little book entitled The Casserole Queens Make-A-Meal Cookbook, which touts that it contains "100 mix and match casseroles, salads, side dishes, and desserts."  The Random House page breaks it down further, saying that there are 46 casserole recipes, 37 sides and salads, 13 desserts - and more.  For many of the recipes, there are gluten free options and diabetic-friendly options.

Upon receiving the book, I was taken in completely by the charming writing style and anecdotes shared by the authors, and the recipes looked fantastic.  I couldn't wait to try them!  They seemed simple and involved ingredients that were generally inexpensive and easy to find.  The first recipe was dying to try was the Deconstructed Cabbage Rolls on page 36.  I totally love cabbage rolls, and even have fond memories of my mom making a cabbage roll casserole that was to die for.  This recipe was even more tantalizing because it contained a decent whack of bacon in it, and bacon makes everything better!

The verdict, however, is a different story.  The casserole was disappointing.  For one thing, my 9x13 pan couldn't contain all the ingredients, so I had to move up to my largest lasagna pan - but not a big deal.  The issue I had with the casserole was that it was bland!  I made the recipe exactly as the cookbook stipulated, but I found the casserole lacking in flavour.  My roommate, T, thought it was fantastic, though, by my other roommate was on my side with this: he found it bland, too.  It was very disappointing, despite all the bacon.

But onto the next, which was another recipe which really tickled my fancy because it contains two things I love: tator tots (which I NEVER eat!) and cream of mushroom soup (something you can't go wrong with in a casserole).  This is the recipe on page 110, and I found that it did fit into a 9x13 pan just fine, which made me happy.  There was also an option to make your own cream of mushroom soup for the casserole, but I decided to go with at can of Campbell's. This was very easy prep-wise, which also made me very happy, and once the tator tots crisped up, it looked delectable!

The verdict, however, was: milquetoast!  I found it very salty, my male roommate found it salty as well, and T, who usually likes everything, found it kind of blah.  I was very disappointed, and started wondering if this cookbook was a complete dud.

But I wasn't going to give up on it yet.  One more recipe!  This time, a non-casserole: the Dill Bread recipe on page 160.  It's basically a batter bread you bake in a casserole dish.  Again, I made it just as the recipe stated to, but during the rising process the dough didn't do diddly, so I began to worry that my yeast was dead.  I baked the bread anyway, though, and...drumroll...we finally had a winner!  This bread was a huge hit with everyone!  It looked great, and it smelled fantastic.  It had a great moist texture, somewhere between a scone and a cake.  It was nice and spongy and soft, and it was tasty as hell.  This is something I'd definitely make again.  In fact, I think this will be a very versatile recipe to have on hand as I can think of all kinds of things you could put in here either with dill or with other herbs.  Or just plain, too.

I didn't get around to making any of the desserts, but there are certainly quite a few that look worthy of testing out. There are squares, brownies, cakes and pies, and the recipes all look terrific.

So despite having two so-so casserole experiences from this book, I am going to keep it on my overstuffed cookbook shelves, because it definitely has a lot of potential.  I am not going to write it off just yet - after all, fall has just begun and I'm eager to try a few other recipes in it, like the Chicken Enchiladas and the Savory French Onion Tart.  There are too many ideas in here to pass by!

Cookbook Review: Tyler Florence Fresh

The flap says: "In Tyler Florence Fresh, real unprocessed foods shine in simple yet creative recipes designed to maximize the flavor of each component.  Using easy techniques like quick pickling, searing, and dehydrating to heighten tastes and textures, Tyler masterfully mixes and matches flavors to create plates of elegant simplicity that are naturally brimming with wholesome nutrition."

I have really enjoyed Tyler Florence's TV shows on the Food Network, and he is one of the nicer celebrity chefs to look at - as the cover of his latest cookbook can attest to! - so I was super excited to get ahold of this new release.  But I have to say, very sadly, that I was disappointed with the cookbook overall.

I love the earth-to-table movement.  I love the concept of using fresh, locally procured ingredients and doing as little as possible to them to create spectacular stuff, and it on the surface appears that that's what Tyler has done with this book, so that's not my main beef.

My main beef is the presentation of the food in this book.  I'm not a fan of deconstructionism in food; I think it's unappealing, I think it's very fussy and pretentious, and I think meals made up of several components need to blended together to show how they work together, rather than dissected on the plate to show how separate everything is.  And this is what the presentations in this book do; they remind me of biology class where we had to dissect things and splay them out in their bare parts so we could analyze all these parts and pass the lab.  So I found many of the photographs didn't show the food off in an appealing manner and it really put me off.  It mad the food look broken and uncohesive.

And some of the food just looked plain unappetizing.  For instance, the yogurt foam on page 89 is one example.  I hate foam on foods - it's gross.  And there are a lot of sauces in this book that looks similar, and of course, since everything's broken down into its components it looks even worse.  Even the Key Lime Pie - a dessert I love! - is reduced to a puddle of green puree on a plate with crumbs of graham crust sprinkled on top and some little blobs of meringue dabbed here and there.  This did not inspire me at all to make the recipe!

I liked the concept of the hero ingredients Tyler used in this book, ingredients that are the nutritional star of each dish, like asparagus, salmon and tuna.  But the recipes overall seemed - despite what the flap says - overly fussy and too chi-chi for my tastes.  Plus, there are a lot of ingredients on here that fall outside my budget: truffles, fresh tuna, octopus, and squab, for instance.  This leads into my main complaint about the whole buy local/earth-to-table/sustainability movement: some chefs take it a bit far and turn simple things into elaborate haute cuisine dishes that the average person can't afford to make because some of the ingredients, while healthy and sustainable, are too expensive for the average joe.

I have gone through this book a few times, and I just don't feel there is anything in here I would consider making.  Even the chocolate cake would cost me a fortune to make, with 9 eggs and a pound of decent chocolate in it.  I'm sure it's divine, but that's a huge investment for a dessert for me.

So conceptually, a great idea for a cookbook.  Execution-wise, a totally different story.  I don't think I'll be keeping this cookbook around on my already overfilled cookbook bookcase. :(

Cookbook Review: The Epicurious Cookbook

I know I tout Canadian Living a lot on this blog, and they are fantastic, but I do use other resources, too.  One of them is Epicurious.com, which has one seriously bad-ass database for pretty much anything you want to cook or learn how to prepare.  They also have the catalogue of recipes that come from Bon Appetit Magazine and the now-defunct Gourmet Magazine, both of which I used to subscribe to (I don't subscribe to Gourmet anymore because it's defunct and Bon Appetit wasn't quite doing it for me anymore).  And this fall, Epicurious came out with its first ever cookbook: The Epicurious Cookbook.

At 400 pages, it's a bit of a tome, but it's a very attractive tome, with a bright red cover and lots of food porn photos between it's covers.  The chapters follow the seasons, starting with spring, and taking into account seasonal ingredients and seasonal fare, and all recipes come with a little blurb describing the dish etc.

I really liked the layout of the book.  Each recipe has its own page, and the ingredients are in one column with the directions in a facing column.  Most recipes are accompanied by scrumptious-looking photos, which of course everyone who is into cookbooks loves.  For more complicated recipes, the ingredients and instructions are broken down into steps for elements of the dish which is useful for planning and organization.  There are also a lot of tips about how to do certain steps ahead of time if you're preparing things in advance.  At the end there are menu ideas.

Cookies: Banana nut and Amazing Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter

Black Bean & Tomato Quinoa

The recipes look great, as one can expect from a site of this calibre.  I made five recipes myself, three of them cookies.  I made the Dark Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal cookie recipe on page 199 (though I don't have any cherries, so I replaced them with dried cranberries); the Banana Nut Oatmeal cookie recipe on page 284 (this was a hit at home); and the Amazing Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter cookies on page 283 (and they were amazing and I WILL be making them again because they were so good!).  Additionally, I made the Extreme Granola with Dried Fruit on page 298.  This was great granola!  I really enjoyed it.  Finally, I made the Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa on page 70.  Again, this was great and I'll definitely keep this recipe in my repertoire.  It was a very simple, tasty salad with clean flavours.  I'd add some feta cheese to it next time, though, just for some variety.  It made a healthy amount and I felt quite virtuous eating it because it's a nutritious, low fat dish.  I love lime and cilantro, too.

This is definitely a keeper cookbook, and I have plenty more recipes bookmarked that I must make.  For instance, the Salted Caramel Ice Cream on page 87 looks ridiculously amazing, and the Chicken Chili on page 251 looks like a great, low cost meal with a lot of bang for your buck as it uses a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, which for some reason are always a few dollars cheaper than buying a fresh chicken and roasting it yourself.  And those are just a couple of what I intend to make out of this cookbook.

I for sure recommend this book, and it's Christmastime, too, so it'll make a great gift for the foodie on  your list!

Cookbook Review: 150 Essential Whole Grain Recipes

If you're familiar with this blog, you'll know that I'm a big fan of Canadian Living Magazine and that I'm a long-time subscriber.  Their recipes are pretty much fool-proof and I use them a lot in my kitchen.  And lo and behold, they have a new cookbook out that focuses on something I could definitely use more of in my life, whole grains.  It's called 150 Essential Whole Grain Recipes, and it comes to us via the vastly experienced staff at the Canadian Living test kitchen.

The book is divided into six chapters: Whole Grain Basics, which covers whole grains are and talks about health benefits and gluten free grains; Wheat, Spelt, and Kamut; Brown Rice and Wild Rice; Buckwheat and Rye; Quinoa, Corn, and Millet; and Barley and Oats.  If you are a person who cannot eat gluten, you'd probably really appreciate this book as it provides a lot of great gluten-free recipes and wheat alternatives.

I personally have made five recipes from this book so far.  First came the Whole Wheat Pecan Waffles on page 16.  Loved them, but then again, who doesn't love waffles?  For a indulgent treat one night, I made the Sweet Chili Popcorn on page 207. Loved it!  Though it could have used a bit more kick; perhaps I'd add some cayenne the next time I make this.  But it was basically like caramel corn with a chili-salt flavour and it was a really great accompaniment to a movie night. I made the Oatmeal Scones on pate 253, only I added fresh cranberries to the mix since it was near Thanksgiving and there were fresh cranberries to be had.  I love a good scone, and I'm happy to say that this recipe is a keeper.  It was also a hit with my roommate, who is also a  lover of a good scone. I made the Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies on page 255.  These came out quite dense and a little drier than I prefer my cookies to be, but they were a nice treat and I felt like I was eating something healthier for a chocolate fix.  My eight year old roommate really liked them, too.  Finally, since I am a quinoa fan, I made the Black & White Bean Quinoa Salad on page 181.

I made some substitutions, though, since I don't particularly like navy beans or cucumber.  So I put in a can of chickpeas instead of the navy beans and I diced up a green pepper instead of the cucumber. I also omitted the jalapeno pepper since I don't like those either.  But the dressing for this was very good and the end result was quite delicious!  My roommate liked it, too, and it made enough so that I could have a few meals out of it.  I will go back to this recipe again and again, I think.

Apart from these recipes I made, I have a whole bunch bookmarked in the book for future reference.  There are quite a few bread recipes I want to try and the Chunky Chili Corn Bread Cobbler on page 162 is calling to me!  I just have to wait until I can get a roast of beef at a decent price.  For you vegetarians out there, there are plenty of recipes that would suit a veggie diet and even a vegan diet.

This is a great all-round cookbook with a lot of yummt stuff in it, and as is usual with Canadian Living recipes, they all turned out how they were supposed to without any issues.  I definitely recommend this book and will be keeping it in my already overcrowded cookbook bookcase!

Cookbook Review: Best Recipes Ever

My regular readers should probably know right now that I am a huge fan of Canadian Living, as evidenced by the sheer number of Magazine Monday recipes I post here that come from their magazine. They publish a lot of cookbooks, and I was lucky to receive a review copy of one of their recent releases, Best Recipes Ever. It's a co-release between Canadian Living and CBC, which airs the show Best Recipes Ever, hosted by Kary Osmond. I have seen the show, and it's fairly basic and a tad boring, but they do have great ideas. In fact, it was after seeing an episode on cabbage rolls that I was inspired to email my friend Mr. Anchovy and ask for his mom's cabbage roll recipe, which resulted in my epic cabbage roll day.

The book is very much what fans of Canadian Living have come to expect over the years: reliable, easy, consistent recipes that have mass appeal. I found it refreshing that the book didn't get divided into the predictable chapters of "appetizers", "mains", "desserts" etc., but rather it was organized into categories like "Party Fare", "Meat-lover Mains", "Eggs and Brunch" and "Beat the Clock." It's different, and it's more specific, and it makes sense.

I recognized many of these recipes from the magazine and some of them I'd even made and showcased here as part of Magazine Mondays. For instance, the Curried Pork Burgers on page 105 - which has become a favourite among my extended family - is something I've made and posted here, as is the Blueberry Oatmeals Squares recipe on page 167. There are others I recognize, too.

There are plenty of recipes I am dying to try, as well. The Halibut & Spinach Curry on page 165 look amazing and is right up my alley - halibut is my fave fish! - and the Sublime Mac & Cheese on page 303 looks like it lives up to its name. And it probably will; the beauty of these recipes is that they are Canadian Living tried & tested, and I know from years of making them that they're going to turn out.

One new recipe I tried out was the Rhubarb Coffee Cake on page 281. I have a bunch of rhubarb I need to use up before I move and this was a good opportunity to bake with some. The cake was excellent, and everyone I shared it with loved it. Perfect texture, great flavour - just another tried and true Canadian Living Recipe.

This is definitely a keeper cookbook for me, and if your a Canadian Living fan, or want to be converted into one, this is a great investment and worth some space on your bookshelves.

Cookbook Review: In the Sweet Kitchen

Back in 2004, when I was working at Crapters and on the cusp of deciding to go to culinary school, I used my 30% staff discount to purchase a whole bunch of cookbooks. Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen was one of them. It was a $60 beautiful hard cover and I immediately fell in love with it because half of the book was devoted to information about baking: ingredients, techniques, equipment, and all kinds of stuff I was previously oblivious to - including a section on high altitude baking, which would come in handy later on in my life when I moved back to the mountains. The recipes were also lovely, and I embarked upon making several of them.

Recently, In the Sweet Kitchen has been re-released for the book's 10th anniversary with an updated trade paperback cover. Yours truly was interested to see if there were any updates to the book that might tantalize me, and I got a review copy. Recently I sat down to compare the two editions, and there are very few changes. The subtitle is different, and a minor word or two has changed (mind you, I didn't go through it with a fine toothed comb), and there fewer photos (and the photos are not new either), but other than that, except for a new preface, the books are the same. And there were no new recipes!

I am not complaining, though, because the recipes the book does contain are excellent. The information on baking, which is extremely comprehensive, is still well worth the large chunk of space on my small cookbook shelving unit this volume takes up.

I have made several recipes. Of course, I have made Regan's Ultimate Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies (page 501) several times, and it's a recipe I still go back to, even though I have had to tweak it slightly to get it to work for me. There is a post way back in my archives about them here.

I also have made the Roasted Clementine and Chocolate Tart with a Macadamia Nut Crust (page 461). Actually, I've made this more than once. The first time was for a dinner party I threw when I still lived in Ottawa, and the second time was when I was on the dessert station at culinary school. The chef instructor had me adjust the recipe a bit; we didn't use clementies but rather just the regular oranges the school kept around, and I had to use hazelnuts instead of macadamia nuts, but it turned out great.

Additionally, I have made Regan's Flaky Tart Pastry (page 653), her blueberry pie (alas, not with wild blueberries because they are not always available to me), her Damn Fine Apple Pie (page 472), and today I made the blueberry muffin recipe on page 608, only using huckleberries I had in the freezer from last year. They were delicious!

The recipes in this book vary between very sophisticated and very simple & "down home," which is something I really like about this book. There is something for everyone and ever skill level. That element, combined with the 300+ pages of instructional information, makes this an excellent book for both the beginner and the seasoned baker! A definite recommend!

Cookbook Review: Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook

The flap reads, "When the first Blue Ribbon restaurant opened in 1992 in downtown Manhattan, it ushered in a new era in dining, one where reservations aren't taken and delicious food—dressed up or down—comes out of the same kitchen. On a menu suited to satisfy every craving, Herb Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Sage, a favorite with neighborhood regulars, shares equal billing with Beef Marrow Bones with Oxtail Marmalade, the late-night dish most often requested by the celebrity-chef crowd. After seventeen successful years, Bruce and Eric Bromberg, the brothers behind the now nine-restaurant Blue Ribbon phenomenon, share their secrets for exceptional American fare."

Well, I am not from New York, so I cannot say whether or not the Bromberg Brothers have created a "phenomenon," and I certainly had never heard of these guys before, but I can tell you that this is a really nice cookbook.

Blue Ribbon Cookbook, named after the bothers' series of restaurants, has a little bit of something for everyone, covering the categories of main dishes, desserts, veggies, and my personal favourite, brunch. I do love good brunch ideas and recipes! Which is probably why the baking in this book is what appealed to me the most. Beef Marrow Bones with Oxtail Marmalade (page 84) and Seared Long Island Duck Breast with Orange-Cassis Sauce (page 104) and all well and good, but I was more excited about the Blueberry Muffins on page 178 and the Light and Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes on page 177.

The two recipes I made from this book were both total winners: the aforementioned Blueberry Muffins were excellent, as was the Country White Bread on page 203. The bread had a higher salt content than I am used to, but it was a really flavourful loaf with a nice chewiness and a texture reminiscent of an artisan sourdough loaf. It didn't last long!

There are quite a few other recipes I plan on making from this book, including the pancakes (which I will turn into waffles), the Doughnut Muffins on page 182, and the Raisin Walnut Bread (for which I will use pecans) on page 202.

Lots of good stuff to choose from in Blue Ribbon Cookbook, and the pictures are so mouthwatering, too. There is also a handy chapter entitled "Building Blocks" which features recipes for stocks, sauces, and condiments. The sandwich chapter also looks very promising - who doesn't love a good sandwich? At $43 CAD this book is a tough sell, though, as it is relatively slim at just over 250 pages. There are definitely some great ideas in here, however, especially if you're into more high end recipes.

Will it stay on overtaxed kitchen shelving unit? Oh yes!

Book Review: The Spice Necklace

The flap reads: Spices and herbs are the heart and soul of Caribbean cooking, adding more to the pleasures of the table here than perhaps more than anywhere else. In The Spice Necklace, award-winning food and travel writer Ann Vanderhoof embarks on a voyage of culinary discovery, as she follows her nose (and her taste buds) into tiny kitchens and fragrant markets, through rainforest gardens and to family cook-ups on the beach, linking each food to its traditions, folklore, and history.

Oh man, did I ever enjoy this book! Now, when I think of Caribbean cooking, the word "jerk" immediately comes to mind, and I am not a fan of spicy foods at all. But The Spice Necklace really opened my eyes up to the enormous variety and versatility in Caribbean cuisine. Actually, the word "jerk" doesn't even appear in this volume, which surprised me; but then again, Receta (Spanish for recipe), Ann and her husband Steve's boat, didn't travel to Jamaica in this book, sticking instead to the Windward and Leeward Islands, which include Trinidad & Tobago, Grenada, Martinique, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Dominica, amongst others. Having taken a two-year break from their bustling lives in Toronto, Ann & Steve embark upon a sailing adventure around the Caribbean, eating, cooking, and discovering a cuisine as they go.

Ann & Steve don't just stay on their boat, either, enjoying the more immediate luxuries of freshly caught fish and local markets. They often rent a lemony vehicle and drive well off the beaten tourist path to seek out the most unique culinary experiences a particular island has to offer. They endure a horrendous drive in the Dominican Republic to taste dishes made with local goats who feed on wild oregano; they hunt fresh water crayfish in the rain forest of Dominica; they seek out decadent tarts called "The Torments of Love," a specialty of Guadaloupe; and they eat a vegetarian and locally-foraged Rastafarian feast back in Dominica. They visit rum distilleries, cocoa and vanilla plantations, and while all this is happening, Ann provides a fascinating glimpse into the production, history, folklore, and personal stories of the people who make, grow, harvest, and cook a seemingly endless array of exotic ingredients - many of which we take for granted here in North America.

Each chapter is a delight and I found myself so looking forward to whatever Ann & Steve encountered next in their travels because I knew it would be something cool and unexpected. I was never disappointed. And bonus - this book comes with over 70 recipes, too! I plan on having a Spice Necklace-inspired family dinner using recipes from the book!

The one recipe I have made already is the Grenadian Banana Bread with Chocolate, Nutmeg, and Rum, found on page 21. I even went to the liquor store to buy rum (though I didn't want to invest in a relatively expensive bottle of dark rum when I could get a mini of amber rum for $7). This banana bread is unlike any I've ever had before; the spices hit the back of your mouth just as the rum starts tingling on the tip of your tongue. This is no mere banana bread; it's a sensual experience to savour. Kind of like the book!

The only thing I didn't like about this book was that (apart from not having any pictures in it), it didn't have an index, and I found myself quite frustrated at time trying to keep information straight in my mind because I couldn't easily reference it via an index.

Nevertheless, this book is a keeper, and despite its lack of photos, Ann has a web site here where she has a photo gallery.

Cookbook Review: Giada at Home

I am a huge fan of Giada de Laurentiis, so I was very excited to get my hands on a copy of her new cookbook, Giada at Home: Family Recipes from Italy and California.

As usual, Giada's slim volume is packed with drool-worthy recipes and cool ideas that never fail to inspire me. This book, as the flap states and as the title indicates, incorporates traditional Italian dishes with the fresh, clean flavours of California. In typical Giada style, this new book also heavily features pictures of warm get-togethers with friends and family, with a heavy emphasis on Giada's new baby daughter, Jade. I have to admit, I was a smitten with the baby as I was with the recipes!

Giada always uses clean, whole ingredients in her recipes, focusing on fresh veggies and seasonality. Divided into the usual cookbook categories of appetizers, soups & sandwiches, desserts, etc., there is also a brunch chapter with some recipes I can't wait to try. The Pancetta & Cinnamon Waffles on page 228 being at the top of my list. My new waffle iron is going to get a great workout with this one. The dessert chapter also tantalized me with a very mouthwatering take on tiramisu, this one using lemon and hazelnut instead of the traditional coffee flavours. I cannot wait to make that.

The one recipe I have tried was the Rigatoni with Creamy Mushroom Sauce on page 80. I had a friend over for dinner last week and I thought this was the perfect time to try a new recipe out. This was a simple dinner, though I had to make some substitutions because marscapone cheese is way too cost prohibitive for me; I used some light cream cheese instead and it worked fine. For the mushroom assortment, I used a portabella, some regular button mushrooms, and some enoki mushrooms. Instead of white wine, I used some cooking sherry. This was a great dish! I wouldn't spend the money on enoki mushrooms again, though; they didn't really add any big flavour to this. The portabella mushroom was totally worth it, however!

This is the third Giada book I have on my cookbook shelves, and once again, it's well worth the precious space there!

Book Review: My China, by Kylie Kwong

I treated myself to this weighty tome for Christmas, being a fan of Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking, which launched my series Cooking with Kylie.

My China's subtitle is "A Feast for the Senes" and that it definitely is.

Kylie is a fourth generation Chinese Australian, born in Sydney. This book is her homage to her Chinese heritage, and recounts her travels through much of China and Tibet, cooking and eating as she goes. She starts off in the village of her ancestors, where she is greeted like a long lost relative and where she cooks up the first of many feasts featuring local ingredients in rustic cooking conditions. My China takes the reader everywhere: up the Yangtze, along the Silk Road, the Great Wall, to the great cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing, to Lhasa in Tibet, and to a place that really fascinates me Xi'an, where the Terracotta Army resides. Interspersed with food history and stories, are cultural vignettes featuring Chinese history written with Kylie's sense of wonder, respect, and enthusiasm.

Kylie's descriptions of her experiences are a feast for all the senses. She is a great writer, I discovered, incorporating sound, taste, touch, and smell into her narrative so well I could imagine myself there with her. And there are plenty of large, colourful photos to feast the eyes on.

There are over 80 new recipes in this book, and I have yet to try them. But I will!

This is a great companion book to Beyond the Great Wall, which I reviewed here. There were many similarities between the two books, both being a great mixture of travelogue, photographs, recipes, and personal stories.

If you are fan of Kylie Kwong and Chinese food, history, and culture, you cannot go wrong with My China!

Book Review: Confections of Closet Master Baker

Some time ago, Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies had a giveaway for Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado, and guess who won? Go me!

This book was well-reviewed by not only Natashya but one other food blogger whose name I cannot recall right now, but I was really excited about getting to read it, and finally, I did.

Gesine started out as a Hollywood movie executive, and it took me a while to figure out exactly whom she was related to; turns out she is Sandra Bullock's younger sister (um, yeah, the last name should have been a dead give-away but I am slow, I admit!) and for a while she ran Sandra's movie production company. But she was miserable and hated it, and her mind was always on baking and dreamy confections. So, one day after having enough of the Hollywood lifestyle, Gesine and her husband relocated to Vermont and opened a little bakery.

Interwoven with Gesine's tale of starting up the bakery and all that involved and stories of how life has been for her since the opening, are lovely vignettes of Gesine's childhood spent partially in her mother's homeland of Germany, and poignant stories about the women in Gesine's life who helped shape her passion for pastry. Including a collection of her favourite recipes, this book is a wonderful homage to the experiences, people, and flavours of Gesine's life that inspire her baking and keep her wanting to keep ungodly hours at her bakery so that she can do what she loves and is passionate about: feeding people sugary, buttery treats.

This was a light book to read, and it was a joy to read. I haven't made any of the recipes yet, but I have my eye on a couple. This book actually made me think of a lot of the common foods - both baking and savoury - that marked my childhood, too, and it made me appreciate all the more the love of cooking and baking my mother instilled in me, and the nurturing it can do for one's soul.

Thanks, Natashya! This was a great find!

Cookbook Review: A Year in Lucy's Kitchen

Am I a bad Canadian if I admit I'd never heard of Lucy Waverman before I got this book? Because, honestly, I didn't have a clue who she was and had to do some research in order to figure out that she's actually pretty well-known in certain Canadian circles. Lucy is a prominent Canadian food columnist and food writer, and she's famous for her articles in both The Globe and Mail (one of Canada's national newspapers) and the LCBO's Food & Drink Magazine.

OK, I'm in BC. I neither read The Globe and Mail nor have access to the Liquor Control Board of ONTARIO's periodical. Sue me!

It doesn't matter because Lucy's new cookbook, A Year in Lucy's Kitchen, has made me fan!

We are all surely familiar now with seasonal eating, but Lucy actually takes the concept further and provides recipes & menus on a monthly basis, using local, seasonal ingredients appropriate to each particular month. I really enjoyed this approach, not only because the recipes were broken down even further from seasonal to monthly, but this made for a much more interesting structure for a cookbook. While I do love cookbooks, don't get me wrong, as a writer (with a degree in creative writing), I often get bored with the structure of your average cookbook: appetizers, soups, salads, main courses, veggies & side dishes, desserts. Etc. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading a mystery novel I already know the resolution for. In the case of A Year in Lucy's Kitchen, I was delighted with her approach to the structure of the book and it made it a much more interesting read for me.

The chapters, one for each month, do indeed focus on seasonal fresh ingredients, and with the added bonus of simple, easy-to-use menus for great meals that are quick and delicious. What I also loved about this cookbook was the variety in cuisines: Thai, Indian, Chinese, Jewish - to name a few. I love cookbooks with varied themes!

As for the recipes, they are great! They are not fussy, not complicated, and don't involve huge lists of ingredients. I made two recipes: Spinach, Apple, and Avocado Salad on page 273 (substituting romaine lettuce for the spinach, and cashews for almonds, as that's what I had on hand) and the Plum Pizza on page 208 (substituting apples for plums as I don't like plums). In the case of the salad, it had nice, refreshing dressing I'll definitely use again. As for the Plum Pizza, which was more along the lines of an apple tart in my case (I'll do an upcoming post on this soon), it was spectacularly simple and delicious, and something I'll definitely do again.

I have bookmarked over a dozen recipes to try from this book, and I can't wait! A total recommend!

Cookbook Review: Earth to Table

There was a ton of buzz about this Canadian effort by chef Jeff Crump and pastry chef Bettina Schormann on places like Twitter, and I was really looking forward to getting my copy. As the title suggests, Earth to Table: Seasonable Recipes from an Organic Farm celebrates the simplicity of bringing food from the garden or farm directly to your plate in a world where such a process is usually overcomplicated by corporate agriculture.

The authors run the kitchens at Ancaster Old Mill in Ancaster Ontario, and funny, thing I actually ate at this restaurant when I was 19 years old as it was where my uncle held his wedding reception. I remember it as being the swankiest event I'd ever attended in my life (there was an open bar!), and even 16 years later, it's still up there in the rankings.

But back to the book. The flap reads: "Having learned the secret of local cuisine working in world-famous restaurants like Alice Waters's Chez Panisse, Jeff Crump set about developing a network of farmers to keep his own restaurant's kitchen humming all year round. It was not long before he was out in the fields himself, alongside pastry chef and collaborator Bettina Schormann, planting onions and harvesting the heirloom wheat that would form the backbone of her menu's breads and desserts."

Starting with spring, Jeff & Bettina take us on their journey as their forage and farm their way through seasonal, local, and sustainable cooking. Also members of the Slow Food movement, their passion about their mission jumps off the page. Highlighting other chefs, restaurants, and their earth-to-table relationships in the USA, Canada, and the UK, the book exposes how a quiet movement is beginning to become main stream in the industry.

As a baker, Bettina's wheat story was particularly interesting to me. She sourced out an heirloom strain of wheat, planted it, tended it, harvested it, ground it, and baked with it. Her trials and tribulations were a fascinating read, and even though she didn't get much wheat in the end, what came across strongly to me was just how much we take a staple such as wheat for granted in our society.

As for the recipes, they are simple, not full of fancy ingredients, and I'm looking forward very much to cooking with this book. I have a whole bunch of recipes bookmarked for future reference, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I'm going to be trying some for our two family dinners.

Earth to Table is far more than a cookbook; the information about foraging, farming, and sourcing local ingredients is well-presented and I got a lot from reading the non-recipe sections of the book. Of particular interest to me was Jeff's explanation of the difference between dirt and soil - something I'd never thought of, and something I need to reconsider as I continue with my own gardening and earth to table journey.

This is an amazing reference book I'll definitely be keeping on my shelves.

Book Review: The Fruit Hunters

I've had this book sitting around for a long time, and I procrastinated for months before finally finishing it today. One of the reasons was the introduction didn't grip me. An introduction should be gripping, shouldn't it? Somewhat? The second reason was that we were having cat peeing/marking issues at the time, and this book was a victim. I sat it on the stairs, where it collected dust and cat hair, so that it could dry out and de-odourize a bit. Eventually, I got sick of it there and did my duty as a book reviewer.

The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession by Adam Leith Gollner is a wild ride to say the least. Taking the reader to the margins of society - much like Krakauer did in Under the Banner of Heaven - this book explores the world of, well, fruit. But not just our grocery store fruit - we're talking the exotic, the rare, and the downright weird fruits that 99% of us will never see in our lives. Gollner travelled the planet during his research, going to the Seychelles in search of the endangered coco-de-mer; the junlges of Borneo to sample the stinky durian in it's natural habitat; Cameroon in search of the miracle fruit; as well as a bunch of other far off places like Hawaii, Thailand, and South America. Along the way, Gollner exposes a cornecopeia of not only exotic fruits, but strange, strange people.

As with most books I read, it's the characters that grab me, and this book was no different. The author meets some of the most obsessed whackos non-fiction has to offer. You couldn't make up some of these people if you wanted to.

There are fruitarian Doomsday cultists in Arizona. There are vicious fruitleggers. There are mega-rich men who spend their time collecting exotic fruit trees. There is the weirdo who invented the Grapple. There are men who make it their life's work to go clomping around the world's jungles cataloging every fruit they come across. There is the guy in Florida commonly known as "Graftin' Clafton", who is addicted to grafting to the point where security guards now make him leave his grafting implements at the door when he enters a certain botanical garden (he'd been caught grafting different species there too many times).

The Fruit Hunters also is a depressing overview of our modern fruit and agriculture industries. The chapter on marketing fruits here in North America was extremely disheartening. I will never go into a grocery store's produce aisle and look at the fruit displayed there the same way ever again.

A few things I'd like to point out:

• never buy Grapples. Trust me. It's not worth it and I wouldn't give that idiot any of my money
• 90% of the foods we eat derive from about 30 plant species
• fruit hunting isn't cheap, which is why it seems to be dominated by rich white men - most of them American
• some guy named Bob Harvey invented a nuclear powered artificial heart in the 1960s - WTF?

A fascinating read, one that I totally recommend.

Book Review: Well-Preserved

The flap reads: "Most of us remember our mothers or grandmothers painstakingly canning tomatoes or pickles outside on a sweltering summer day so they'd be able to grab them from the basement pantry come winter. But how can a busy person with limited time and space put up the seasons' delicious bounty to savor later in the year?"

The essence of Eugenia Bone's Well-Preserved is summed up in the subtitle, "Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods." Bone herself lives in a small New York apartment, and if her book is any testament, she can pump out an incredible amount of stuff in a small, limited space.

Covering water bath canning, pressure canning, pickling, smoking & curing, freezing, and oil preserving, Well-Preserved covers a lot of ground in a slim volume. Bone's highly readable tone makes quite a scientific subject engaging and inspiring. Methods for these different types of preservation are well-laid out and the language is accessible. Her recipes look delicious and inventive. When canning time comes around this neck of the woods, I will for sure be making some of the recipes I've bookmarked, like the Strawberry Balsamic Jam and the Stewed Onions with Marjoram.

Bone structures the book around one master recipe, like the Strawberry Balsamic Jam, and then provides a series of recipes that use that one master recipe as a staple ingredient. There are a lot of cool ideas for everything from desserts and main dishes to salads and soups. As one might expect, there is a ton of variety.

So, I am very much looking forward to canning season (which is usually around the end of August in my family), though this book has some great ideas for non-canning preservation methods that I can totally see myself using. I am very grateful for my freezer, I can tell you that!

Book Review: The End of Overeating

Here's a book every foodie might find interesting - or not. Depends on what kind of foodie you are. If you're like me, most food is indulgent in some way, and some foods are much more than indulgent. Some foods are like crack. Which can be a problem. Consider yourself warned!

Anyway...

The flap reads: "Most of us know what it feels like to fall under the spell of food - when one slice of pizza turns into half a pie, or a handful of chips leads to an empty bag. But it's harder to understand why we can't seem to stop eating - even when we know better. When we want so badly to say "no," why do we continue to reach for food."

Written by Dr. David Kessler, The End of Overeating is part food manufacturing expose, part biology lesson, and part impulse-control rehab.

I guarantee that after you read this book you'll only want to eat lettuce - for a while. Which might not be a bad thing, right?

So, why do so many of us overeat, and not just once in a while, but regularly? Well, according to Kessler, this isn't a will-power issue: the food industry is purposely setting out to make foods so yummy - or "hyperpalatable" - that our bodies are being biologically programmed by the industry's layering of fat on sugar on salt to eat more and more. The industry, whose number one priority is to make as much money as possible, is purposely manipulating our food so that resistance is futile.

Kessler's research is meticulous, and he even gets an anonymous food industry insider to give up the ghost on some of the secrets of food manufacturing. Kessler also talks to numerous researchers, obesity experts, and scientists who give him the low-down on the biology behind overeating and weight gain. It's fascinating stuff, actually.

The author also offers a rehabilitation plan for those amongst us who are "conditioned hypereaters." Interestingly enough, this is a cognitive behavioural approach that included many components of both CBT and the DBT I did a couple of years ago. Some of the impulse control and distress tolerance techniques are virtually the same as what Kessler describes in his Food Rehab(TM) program. This really piqued my interest, not only because it was already familiar to me in a different context, but because it's quite novel. This isn't a dietary solution and this isn't a will-power solution: this is a reprogramming of the brain solution. And, like recovering from BPD, it's hard, hard work.

Though this is packed with quite a bit of scientific and psychological information, Kessler does an excellent job of keeping this book readable. He avoids insider jargon and lingo, keeps his prose simple and to the point, and makes the sections in the book short and consise.

This book is definitely worth a read.