Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

I think this book, “The River Cottage Cookbook” by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a bit mislabeled. By my count, there’s just a little under 100 recipes in this book (a very good amount), but it’s over 400 pages long! So what’s going on here?

In similar fashion to his Meat book (my review), Hugh goes deeper than just the recipes in almost every case. By deeper I mean that he encourages us to all get closer to our food.

I think this quote from the intro basically sums up what he’s trying to do here.

“In terms of the way we purchase or acquire our food, each household or family unit operates somewhere on a ‘food acquisition continuum’ (a phrase I invented) from, at one end (the far right if you like), total dependence on the industrial food retailers to, at the other (far left) end, total self-sufficiency…

Of course, the vast majority of Westerners occupy a place on the continuum very close to the far right. And probably only a handful of households in the entire country could claim to be truly self-sufficient. Nevertheless, that continuum really does exist, and all of us have the choice to move ourselves along it, in either direction. My contention is that any thoughtfully executed move from right to left, however small, is a move in the right direction.”

There are four major sections in this book and each chapter starts with the basic assumption that as a Western eater you won’t be getting whatever he is writing about from your backyard. So he writes first about how to buy that food and what to think about when you’re shopping.

But

He goes a step further almost immediately and write about how one could grow or raise the subject of that chapter in their very own backyards… if one was so inclined. So really this book isn’t a cookbook at all. It’s more of a food book.

Let’s go a bit deeper into some of the sections:

Garden

It should go without saying that the garden chapter focuses around delicious fruits and vegetables. Hugh starts the chapter off by detailing some general tips about buying produce from grocery stores, farmer’s markets and other sources.

The really interesting part of this chapter (and all the chapters in my opinion) is the DIY (do it yourself) parts which span at least a few dozen pages. Everything from how to set-up a garden to how to know what kinds of seeds will grow well in your area.

It should be noted though that this section and the others are mainly an introduction to the subject of DIY food. Hugh’s goal is to give you enough information to get started and the resources you need to really dive in. He doesn’t try to do too much and what he does present is incredibly interesting.

Recipes

All four sections have a number of recipes. If you were to look at the total pages devoted to recipes versus the pages devoted to growing and sourcing the food, you’d quickly get the impression that the recipes are just an afterthought. But I don’t think that’s true. The recipes are all very unique and all showcase the spoils of the section they’re in. For example, in this Garden section there’s a ratatouille, the River Cottage Chutney (an amazing mix of zucchini, tomatillos, raisins, sugar, and spices), and a very simple and sinful recipe for strawberry sandwiches.

Basically this chapter made me a bit upset that I live on the third floor of an apartment building.

Livestock

Hugh starts out this chapter with a quote that makes me think he might be my long lost English brother:

“Given that I am always happy to nail my flag to the mast as an enthusiastic carnivore, what I have to say at the beginning of this section may seem a little illogical. I think we eat far too much meat in the U.K. (USA also people). There, I’ve said it.”

His goal in this chapter is to try to convince people to get as close to the animals as possible and, yes, that means he argues for actually raising your own. He argues that really everyone benefits from this. The animals are better treated and you’ll become a much more informed eater. It also happens that the results will be more delicious.

He covers all the bases here: pigs, sheep, lambs, cattle, and chickens. I was reading this chapter next to Betsy and when I finished I asked her if she would ever let me raise pigs assuming we had the land to do so. She seemed okay with it although she also probably thought I was joking.

But I wasn’t. He really made me want to do it which is super cool.

The recipes in this section aren’t really your typical meat recipes. He assumes that if you’ve taken the time to read about buying meat or raising meat, you probably know how to cook a pork chop. Instead he focuses on things like headcheese, steak tartare, corned beef, and other old world dishes.

Fish

This chapter is actually one I could relate to. I used to go fishing with my Dad pretty frequently. I know how to gut and fillet a fish (I think I can remember) and definitely know the signs of fresh fish at a market.

He writes about three different areas of seafood though in this chapter. Besides the freshwater fish that I’m most familiar with, he talks about sea fish and shellfish. My favorite part of the chapter, by far, was the discussion on cuttle fish and how it was best to clean them in one’s bathtub because of the huge amount of ink.

There were photos. It was very interesting. I don’t even know where I could get a cuttle fish.

One thing about the recipes that I haven’t talked about yet is that a few in each section are devoted to curing and storing food. After all, if you really are growing your own veggies or raising your own pigs, you’ll want the fruits of your labor year around so he tries to give you the recipes to do so. In this chapter that means some salted fish recipes like Gravlax. But also there are some very unique recipes like Scallop Tacos.

Hedgerow

This section involves finding food in the wild. It includes wild game like rabbits, birds, and squirrels and lots of wild greens and nuts. Obviously you should be very careful if you’re going to go foraging for food, but he lays out some great ground rules to get you started.

As with all the sections, there are recipes. Some of my favorites from this chapter include a nettle soup, rabbit burgers, and a poached egg on toast with sorrel. Delicious stuff and FREE if you can catch it!

In conclusion

I think this book is for a very specific group of people. If obviously not for the person who’s trying to make a quick meal. It’s also not for the person who want to know 40 different ways to use ground beef. I think “The River Cottage Cookbook” though is perfect for anybody who’s at all interesting in learning about and possibly growing or raising food. Don’t buy this book for the recipes, buy it for the information. The recipes are just a big fat bonus.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

This is going to be a hard review to do in one post. “The River Cottage Meat Book“ by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, if you’ve never had the pleasure of laying your hands on a copy, is a serious tome. It’s broken into two large sections, the first on “Understanding Meat” and the second on “Cooking Meat”. Both sections could easily be their own books, but given the connection between understanding meat and cooking it, it makes sense to make this one complete work.

I’m going to show my cards early in this review and just say that I love this book. I love it because it explains perfectly to me what it should mean to be a meat eater. But maybe more importantly, it reminds me how much I have to learn about the meat we eat, or the meat we should be eating.

Understanding Meat

When I started reading this book, I started with the introduction obviously and as I was reading it I was thinking, “Wow. I wish I could just quote this whole introduction.” I also wish I would’ve read this before I wrote my Meat Rules a month or so ago. Not that I would’ve changed any of my rules specifically, but he just does such a great job of clearly stating some of the problems with meat production today and, in my mind, he asks a lot of good questions.

Luckily, he roughly reproduces (although not word for word) the entire two page summary on the River Cottage site, so I encourage you to go read it!

Meat and Right

Before the author gets into the actual different meats, there’s a very complex chapter on the philosophy behind eating meat. It’s only about 13 pages, but it’s extremely well-written and I find his arguments very compelling (obviously because I eat meat). He does something that is rare in books these days that I completely respect – He had a 3 page photo spread of the slaughter of two North Devon beef cattle. He says it’s important to start a book on meat with a reminder “that there is no meat without the death of a warm-blooded, sentient animal – and that those who eat meat must take responsibility for these deaths.” Obviously, it’s something that is justifiable in his (and my) mind.

I don’t want to linger to much on this section, but whether you agree with him or not, it’s hard to disagree that as meat eaters, we should be familiar with the process.

Good Meat

There’s about a ten page chapter that I think I can sum up quickly: The quality of meat we consume is horrible. As he says, “we appear to be happy to buy poor meat, so poor meat is what they keep giving us.” Note that he didn’t say cheap meat. He said poor meat, which implies quality. Most consumers focus solely on price and ignore completely where the animal came from, what it ate, how it lived, how it died, how it was stored, cut, packaged, and even cooked.

The Meat

The next 130 pages is basically a bible to meat. Each section is dedicated to an animal and it goes into extreme detail on how to select that meat, what different varieties are available, and the different cuts of meat for that animal. There are detailed charts for the visual learners. And in the margins of these chapters, there are specific references to meals later in the book that use that cut or variety of meat.

It’s all very well done and he’s such a good writer that it’s actually pretty easy to read. I’ll be honest, I didn’t read every section because it’s enormous and I’m only one man! I think it’s best to take it in parts, but it’s an incredible reference.

One of my favorite chapters is the one on Offal. It goes into great depth describing each cut of offal which is sometimes seen as a mysterious category of meat. Frankly, I love offal of all sorts and wish it was easier to come by in everyday life. I do think it’s easier to find than a few years ago even so maybe we are headed in the right direction.

Cooking Meat

If you’ve made it this far in the book, and you’re like me, you will be very hungry and ready to check out some recipes. And the book does not disappoint. There’s over 200 pages of recipes split up by cooking technique. So there’s a whole section on roasting (a large section), slow cooking, barbecuing, and preserving and processing.

The recipes have a certain sense about them. They aren’t overly complicated in any way and they all focus on the flavor of the main subject: meat. There’s very few fancy preparations or careful cutting. Most recipes come down to buying the best meat you can find (and you’ll know how to do that by referring to earlier chapters) and doing a few right things to the meat. Then you’ll be very well rewarded for your time, effort, and money.

The one thing I will say is that if you happen to have The River Cottage Cookbook (which I’ll be picking up as soon as possible after reading this), it looks like there are more than a few recipes duplicated between the two books. The author fully acknowledges this and just includes them because he thinks they fit nicely into both pieces. I definitely don’t think this is a problem as there are still tons of new recipes and also because this book is about a lot more than just the recipes.

If you are interested in learning more about meat, this book is an incredible value and resource.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

There was once a city girl who embarked on a move to Chicago and made a pit stop in Oklahoma, her home town. There she met a Wrangler-clad dude and fell head over heels. Many years, a few children, millions of readers, and one incredible website later, “The Pioneer Woman Cooks” was born.

I’ll be quite honest, I’ve never really gotten into her site, but I’m awed by her Internet empire. She has an incredibly loyal following. I mean, her most recent post (granted she was giving away some Le Creuset gear) had 30K comments. Not hits. Comments. Any blogger will agree that that is literally insane.

Her story about a city girl moving out to farm land is cute and she takes damn good photos and writes really delicious recipes. So while I’m not a regular reader of hers, I was excited to get my hands on her book to check out how she looks in a printed medium.

From City Girl to Ranch Hand

Ree’s is a really endearing story. As a casual reader, it appears as if she walked into a romantic comedy and just decided that that life would work just fine for her. And who can blame her really? I’m pretty sure I would be a horrible ranch hand, but I’d probably jump at the opportunity to re-enact the plot of City Slickers.

Anyway, the first part of the book is devoted to her story. How and why she made the transition from city to country and also how, in the process, she built one of the most popular websites around. She spends a few pages talking about her family, her philosophy behind cooking, and also lists a few kind of eccentric ingredients that she considers essential (Out of the three foods she mentions seasoned salt is one of them. Seasoned salt? Really? Over say… pepper or olive oil?)

On Making the Book

One thing that I immediately loved about this book is that you can tell that Ree did everything. I think she and I may have slightly different views on what constitutes awesome clip art, but you gotta respect someone who takes all their own photos and compiles everything on their own. That’s really cool. As she says:

“I didn’t have a staff of assistants to help me; I took all my own photos for this book, and used nothing but the natural light in my kitchen. I had friends do the illustrations, and used clip art I’ve collected through the years. It’s nothing fancy. But it comes straight from my heart. Thank you for allowing me to share my world with you.”

I’m pretty sure she can get that staff of assistants now if she wants…

Speaking of Photos…

I’ll be completely honest. One of the reasons I don’t regularly read her site is not because the photos aren’t excellent (they are some of the best on the Interwebs), but because there are so many of them. May God help you if you wanted to read The Pioneer Woman over dial-up. One of her most recent recipes had 45 photos which is pretty par for the course. It’s kind of overwhelming to me.

I mention this because I knew this when I got the book and I was curious how that style would translate in print. Turns out it actually translates in a very interesting and unique way. Obviously, each recipe can’t have 45 photos or she’d only be able to have 10 recipes in the book.

Instead she has about a photo per step in each recipe. It makes the recipes incredibly easy to follow and carries over some of her step-by-step (but not frame by frame) methodology on her site. Some recipes have 6 photos and some have 12 or maybe even a few more, but they flow nicely and the pages are laid out well.

I thought it was pretty cool actually.

Pioneer Food

Ok. So let’s talk recipes. The book is laid out in meals of the day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a few bonus chapters thrown in for sweets, appetizers, and some other interesting meals. There’s 67 recipes in all and I’m pretty sure that most of them are new to the book, but some of them are favorites from her site which she acknowledges.

These are serious farm recipes. They are made to be not too much work to make, very filling, and very tasty. You won’t find any light ranch dressing arugula city salads. There’s iceberg wedges with real buttermilk ranch dressing. There’s jalapeno poppers wrapped in bacon. There’s fried chicken and chicken fried steak.

There’s some recipes that I’m not really sure I would’ve thought to put in cookbook form like egg-in-a-hole (Take slice of bread, cut hole in it, butter it, fry it, crack an egg in the middle, flip it). But then there are some that are completely original. She makes a pineapple upside-down cake in a cast iron skillet that looks pretty out of this world.

But mostly, I would classify her style and recipes as solidly American. I’m talking heartland America. Kind of like Paula Dean except slightly healthier and a lot funnier. I don’t classify it like that to be insulting, I’m just not really sure how else to categorize it. There’s some exceptions like lasagna and clam linguine, but even those are pretty American these days.

Who is this book for?

Well, for starters I would say don’t buy this book if you’re searching for low-fat recipes. These recipes contain real butter, real oil, and other incredibly delicious things.

But more importantly, I’d give this book a serious thought if you are trying to learn to cook. I say that because even after reading some “Learn How to Cook” cookbooks, this has got to be the most straightforward way to teach recipes I’ve ever seen. If you literally have no idea how to make meatloaf, I have no doubt you could follow this recipe and succeed. The writing is clear and the photos are very helpful.

Do I read her website everyday? Not so much. Do I agree with her choices of clip art? Nahhh. Do I think I could hold my own in a fried chicken battle again her? Probably. Do I think that a huge amount of people in America could learn a lot from this book and be entertained while reading it? Definitely.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

When I received “Gourmet Today” as a Christmas gift (thanks Sis!), I actually thought it might be the Lord of the Rings Trilogy before I unwrapped it. That’s because it’s enormous. It’s over 1000 pages. That means your per page cost is about as good as it gets for a cookbook. But as we all know, size does not matter (ya-right), so let’s dive in and see what this tome is all about.

Dr. Ruth

This book is edited by one of the best and most respected food writers in generations, Ruth Reichl. She was the editor of Gourmet Magazine for 10 years and, granted, Gourmet just went out of business, but it’s still an institution. And she’s won 4 James Beard Awards, so she knows a thing or two about food and cooking.

Nick

Ruth kind of won my heart over in the Introduction of this book because it turns out she has a son named Nick. And Nick used to be scared of food and cooking but now he loves everything food. He calls her constantly asking for cooking advice and recipe ideas. And in some ways, he was the motivation for this book.

As she says:

“I have learned as much from Nick as he has learned from me. Through his questions, I have come to realize how dramatically American food has changed. “I’m in the supermarket. What kind of rice should I buy for risotto? Arborio, basmati, jasmine, sushi…”

And that’s kind of the theme of this book. It’s filled with updated recipes that reflect not only the vast variety of food that available to people, but the recipes are also sensitive to the way people think about food. Again in Ruth’s words, “Even the most dedicated carnivore is forced to occasionally cook a vegetarian meal.” And trust me, that’s something that dedicated carnivores can struggle with.

Booze

Again, Ruth is trying to win my heart over by starting this book with 32 pages of delicious cocktails. There’s all the classics in this chapter and some new updated fun drinks like a Cucumber, Ginger, and Sake Sangria and a Rhubarb Collins. A lot of these drinks would be great to host a happy hour or even as a reference just in case you need to whip up some bloody marys. Good stuff Ruth.

Starters, Soups, and Salads

This wouldn’t be a comprehensive recipe book without 180 pages of starter dishes. When you take a look at the index for the Hors D’oeuvres you start to get an idea of the huge range of recipes that are going to be in this book. But the thing is, they are all very contemporary. It’s possible that there are recipes from each continent (except Antarctica). If you can’t find something you love in these chapters, you simply don’t love food. You must eat nothing but rice and drink nothing but water.

Pushing Boundaries

One thing I immediately liked about this book is that it will give people the tools to explore new foods and push their boundaries. I’m sure I’m not the only person that walks down some aisles in the store these days and sees all kinds of interesting foods and products. It seems like some of them were not even there a week ago.

Chayote? Ramps? Gravlax? These are all covered and so much more.

Vegetarian Mains

I think this chapter alone shows a few things. It shows that this book really is making an effort to modernize recipe books. It also shows that there is a need for a chapter like this. More people are eating more vegetables. Or possibly, more people are interested in eating more vegetables, but not always sure how to do it. This chapter is the ticket. Ruth says at the beginning of this chapter, “It seems to me that it is time to put the joy back into the act of eating vegetables.”

The thing about these main dishes is that they are all very strong on flavor. It seems like they were written and tested with the purpose of making a meat eater happy while respecting a vegetarian diet. And that’s awesome. In fact, I’m definitely going to be making some of these recipes. I’d say that the front runner right now is the Vegetable Enchiladas with Poblano Sauce. All the recipes sound excellent though.

Don’t Worry Carnivores

There are over 100 pages of wonderful meat recipes and there are lots of classics and lots of new stuff. The chapters are split up by meat type (fish, poultry, beef, etc.) and even organized by sub-categories (chicken, duck, turkey, etc). And again the contemporary feel of the recipes is amazing. It’s not that they are high-brow at all (although some of them are). The recipes are generally accessible, but they reflect what people can find in supermarkets these days which is a wide variety of different cuts and flavors.

The Sweet Life

I actually don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but there is plenty in this book for those of you that do. Over 200 pages to be exact. Everything from cookies and cakes to pies and pastries. This wasn’t my favorite part of the book, but I suspect that it would probably be the go-to section for a number of people.

Things I’ve made

I read a lot of cookbooks and I do my best to actually make a few of the recipes from each book I review. I intend to make more recipes from this book because there’s such a huge range of recipes. I feel like I could cook from this book everyday and not really get sick of it… which is the point.

Things I’ve cooked from this book already? Well, I made this delicious cauliflower soup and also the chocolate babka I posted a few days ago. Both were very tasty.

I’m not really sure that this book got a lot of press when it came out. Maybe I just missed it, but I hadn’t even heard of it before it was gifted to me. In any event, I think “Gourmet Today” is a fantastic resource. I’ve already found that my copy is getting a bit tattered around the edges, which is always a good sign.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

I was excited to get my copy of “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer. I was excited because I know he’s a good writer, it’s on a subject that I care about, and it got more hype than a Tiger Woods scandal (ok not really). And while it was kind of masochistic of me to decide to read this over the holidays when meat is such a staple in my family, I’m very glad I did. After thinking about it for two weeks, let me see if I can put it into words why I think everyone should read this book. (And it’s not because I want you to be vegetarian. Trust me. I don’t.)

A Fiction Writer on Food

The question that was most pressing for me when I saw this book is, “Why the heck would a fiction author delve into the incredibly complicated world of food politics?” The answer was given pretty early in the book. First, turns out Mr. Foer is a smart guy. He was a philosophy major, he’s incredibly well-read, and he has a fantastic and, I think, poignant writing style. He appears to be genuinely interested in the topic. Second, he had the skills and the financial means to devote himself to nothing else but researching the meat industry for years. Very few people can do that – just travel around and poke and prod into something… Finally, and most importantly, he had a baby. And while he seemed to be content for many years eating whatever, he suddenly felt the need to explore WHAT exactly he was going to be feeding his child and WHERE it came from. Three years later, this book is the result.

What this Book is Not (Sort of).

Very early on, Mr. Foer does his best to combat the assumption about this book that it’s a strict and straightforward case for vegetarianism. He says:

“I, too, assumed that my book about eating animals would become a straightforward case for vegetarianism. It didn’t. A straightforward case for vegetarianism is worth writing, but it’s not what I’ve written here. Animal agriculture is a hugely complicated topic. No two animals, breeds of animals, farms, farmers, or eaters are the same… And eating animals is one of those topics, like abortion, where it is impossible to definitively know some of the most important details.”

SPOILER ALERT: I say sort of in parenthesis because after 260 pages he is a vegetarian. Although he does a better job than most at presenting different views to show how complicated this issue is, he’s still a vegetarian. So the book is a case for vegetarianism, but just not a straightforward one.

Foer says that it’s telling that people assume this book is going to be a case for vegetarianism, because it means that deep down, we all know that if you closely analyze agricultural methods of meat production it will lead to a vegetarian answer. I think he is reaching here. Honestly, I assumed it was fiction until I read about it. I started thinking it was about vegetarianism when someone told me it was a book about vegetarianism.

What this Book Definitely IS

This book is, without a doubt, the most effective and straightforward case I’ve ever heard against industrial factory farming. Some of the facts are nothing new if you’ve read other books on the subject. But what he does really well, I think, is make the material very real for people who may not normally be open to reading about such things.

Foer does this through story-telling, which is something he is very good at. He tells various stories throughout the book to get his point across. One chapter, for example, is about poop, or shit as he says. Just how much of it is produced by factory farms, how it’s disposed, and why you should care. And seriously, this shit matters!

Powerful Words

Throughout the book Foer uses some interesting methods to get his point across. Some that stuck with me weeks after reading the book include:

• A rational argument for why we should start eating dogs. Think A Modest Proposal only he isn’t joking. It might be simple to cast aside his proposal as ludicrous, but it’s much harder to rationally answer it.
• Writing a short phrase enough times to equal 21,000 characters (it takes five pages). If you’re an average American, in your lifetime you will eat one animal for each character on those pages.
• Comparing the amount of space an average broiler chicken is raised in to the area of an open page of his book. Hint: You have to subtract.

Other People’s Views

One of my favorite parts of the book was near the end when Foer does his best to show how complicated this issue really is. There are various chapters written by real people that show the complicated nature of agriculture. There’s the chapter written by a vegetarian beef farmer. Even better – there’s a chapter written by a vegan person who is building a slaughterhouse.

In My Opinion…

I’m trying to keep this review as objective as possible even though I’m obviously very passionate about the subject of food and I don’t agree with some of Foer’s conclusions (I tend to side more with the farmers in the later chapters). I do believe though, that regardless of whether or not you are vegetarian, there are some obvious things that can be gleaned from Foer’s book. And as Foer would say, these things matter.

First, our meat supply system is broken. People’s demand for super-cheap meat (how is a pound of flesh ever cheaper than a pound of broccoli?) has created a system that supplies that super-cheap meat but with near disregard to quality. It’s an incredibly cruel system that also passes on a number of unseen costs (environmental, disease, etc.) to future generations.

Second, our food labeling system is broken. It’s basically impossible to know where 99% of the meat you eat comes from or under what conditions the animal was raised in. Even if you don’t care about animal welfare, you should care about this as a matter of public health.

Third, it’s important to eat lower on the food chain. I’m not sure that he ever really states this in the book, but this was something that I took away from it. As other food policy writers have said, it’s basically impossible to fix a lot of these problems as long as we are consuming billions of animals a year. As a society, we need to eat less meat.

Fourth, we have to figure out a way to talk about these issues without name-calling. I was talking to a good friend about this recently and they said, “Nick, you realize that you sound very self-righteous when you talk about this stuff right?” And maybe I do, but that’s not my intent. Foer occasionally comes off as a self-righteous hippie liberal in the book, but it’s not good enough to discount his argument for that reason. You can be self-righteous and still be right. So if you are interested in discussing these things (and I think everyone should be), try not to be judgmental of someone else’s choices and try not to be sooo defensive if someone questions yours.

So, if you’ve read this book, leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it. Or, if you don’t feel comfortable leaving a public comment, shoot me an email: nick@macheesmo.com.

If you haven’t read this book, I would very much recommend it. Even if you don’t agree with everything in it, it’ll get you thinking for sure.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

I gave a few copies of “How to Roast a Lamb” away a few weeks ago and unfortunately the people who won have yet to receive it because the book is on back order! The publisher is telling me that they are going to ship them out soon though. After reading this book, I can see how it’s on back order. It’s really a stunning cookbook and is very transparent about not only Greek food, but also the life of a chef. In this case, chef Michael Psilakis.

The structure of this book is odd for someone who reads a lot of cookbooks. It’s not structured by meal or type of food, or anything like that. Instead, it’s structured off the life of the author. Each chapter is sort of based around periods in this chef’s life: childhood, growing up, family, fishing, restaurant life, etc. It’s an interesting way to structure a book and because of that structure it reads more like a biography than a cookbook.

But don’t worry. The recipes are there. And they are legit.

My Father’s Garden

After a well-written and interesting introduction (and some family photos), along with some basic Greek ingredients that show up throughout the book, Chef Michael gets into the first chapter. Here he talks about his youth, gardening with his father. He talks about planting seeds and how he learned about vegetables and where they come from. One section really got to me, because I had a similar talk with my father growing up:

And those vegetables! I can still remember the vivid tastes, smells, and textures. “Smell this,” my father said as he held a ripe tomato under my nose. “What do you smell?”

“Dirt,” I answered.
“Earth,” he corrected me. “You smell the earth.”

I’ll be honest. I don’t smell earth anymore on most of the tomatoes I buy and eat. Sometimes I almost forget that that’s where they come from.

This chapter has a ton of fantastic recipes in it. Great salads are included like the shaved fennel, cabbage, olive, onion and graviera salad. There are some family style dishes like the stewed English peas & mushrooms. But all of the dishes in the chapter originate from the author’s childhood garden. And while you may not be able to recreate that garden, he makes the flavors accessible.

Open Water

Seafood is very important to the Greek diet. This chapter shows that. It’s one of the longer chapters in the book and while some of the recipes are kind of ambitious (octopus), some are very simple (grilled swordfish with braised cauliflower). The freshness of these dishes are amazing. The idea is to take something straight from the sea and bring it to the table. When you do that, you don’t need a lot of other flavors. It’s simple and wonderful.

I’m going to skip around a bit because besides these first to chapters, there are nine other fairly lengthy chapters in the book and I won’t spoil all of the surprises for you. Each chapter though starts with a story – where and when the recipes originated – and then has on average 10 recipes in it that are all very delicious sounding.

But What About The Lamb?!

If you just see the cover, there’s a fear that it’s an entire book about how to roast lamb. While interesting, it’s not very applicable to my daily life. That said, when I got into the book, I got to page 80 or so and thought… wait a second, there hasn’t been a single lamb recipe yet! What’s the deal with the lamb?!

Have no fear though. The lamb does come. Eventually there is an entire chapter on the lamb and goat. If anything in this chapter, you get a sense of respect for meat that is unfortunately lacking in our culture. Every piece of the lamb is used and there are some interesting resulting recipes. There are some delicious sounding recipes for lamb heart and lamb tongue. Now if I could only get my hands on some…

The Ambitious Anthos

One very interesting part of this book is following the Chef’s journey through his restaurant career. This all culminates in Anthos, the Chef’s NYC restaurant. Chef Michael did something really cool in this chapter. He gives some of the actual recipes that he uses or has used at Anthos. It’s cool because after reading through the book you can see where the recipes came from. You can see how he got to his smoked octopus recipe (sort of).

As for the recipes though, they all look delicious, but you would have to have some guts to try them. I’m not saying I won’t try one someday, but they are very serious recipes. The poached halibut dish, for example, has an astounding 49 ingredients. It’s amazing to read and the photography is great, but I’m not sure that most readers will be making much out of this chapter.

That said, this chapter acts as a climax in the book. I don’t think the intent is that you would necessarily try these (although I bet he would be thrilled if you did). Instead, he just wants to finish the story. It’s a cool chapter, even if it’s not exactly practical.

The Aegean Pantry

Right after this intense foodie chapter, we do a complete 180. This chapter is the exact opposite. It’s the basics of Greek cooking. In fact, the recipes in this chapter are used in about 80% of the recipes in the book. So this chapter is basically essential. The recipes are simple – most just a few ingredients – but the flavors are serious. Recipes like garlic confit and artichoke confit are included along with an assortment of vinaigrettes and sauces. These are the things you would find in any Greek grandmother kitchen if you started rummaging around.

These are the recipes I’ll definitely be trying.

I must say that I really loved “How to Roast a Lamb.” The recipes are clean and delicious, but more importantly, I think the book gives you a sense of the respect that the Greek culture has for food. It’s something that I really admire and I feel like everyone can learn something from their simple and flavorful take on food.

Use quality ingredients, appreciate those ingredients, enjoy those ingredients with people you care about. Who doesn’t want to do those things?! That’s what this book is about and if you agree with that then you’ll love this book.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

I was really excited to get my hands on a copy of “The Foodie Handbook” by Pim Techamuanvivit (Chronicle 2009) because, honestly, I was reading her blog way before I started Macheesmo. So, it was great to see such a substantial thing that started from humble food blogger roots.

While I was excited, I was also somewhat skeptical. I wasn’t quite sure what a foodie handbook would entail. Is it a cookbook? Is it a travel guide? Does it tell you how to shop for ingredients? Shockingly, the answer is all of the above. Let’s dive in!

A Food Quandary. In her very short, 2 page, introduction Pim does a great job of explaining a problem that I have regularly. That problem is that it’s hard to talk and write about food because it’s a hard thing to describe. Food becomes polarized for most people – it’s either familiar and comforting or strange and exotic. Pim talks a bit about this odd contrast in her intro:

“A chocolate cake is decadent and sinfully delicious, pictures of food that tickle your mouth to water are food porn, simple dishes… are dismissed as comfort food, while intricate cuisine composed of exquisite ingredients is pretentious and haughty. It seems almost impossible to say anything at all about food without a pang of regret, without apologizing for some sort of offense, real or imagined. No wonder food is such a lost cause to so many.”

So I’m hoping that this book will help get rid of some of that mystique and teach everyone how to fall in love (or back in love) with food.

Eating Like a Foodie. One thing that becomes apparent quickly in this book is how comfortable Pim actually is writing about food. She has a very lighthearted style of writing and does a great job of explaining smells, textures, and environments. Before I even knew it, I was 20 pages into this chapter and couldn’t put it down. I think this might have something to do with the years and years of blogging that she has under her belt. Whatever it is, it’s a very good thing.

She talks a lot in this chapter about complex flavors from simple ingredients and I was immediately pulled in. That is until I read the first two recipes. The first one involved hibiscus flowers and the second involved saffron. The recipes were simple. Just a few ingredients. Unfortunately those ingredients happened to be out of the normal range for most Americans I think. But, I give her a pass, because her third recipe was simple and delicious and everything I wanted: a simple onion and bread soup.

The rest of the chapter is a fantastic read. Each section comes off as kind of a long blog post – which I liked. First, Pim gives a funny and also helpful guide to dining in a more upscale restaurant. She reminds us that while it’s sometimes hard to not be intimidated when you walk into a nice restaurant, we have to remember that we are in charge! It’s our money after all!

Then she does a 180 and gives tips on how to eat on the street. She gives some good tips on how you can enjoy your travels and become a virtual Bourdain! All while hopefully not contracting the “Montezuma’s Revenge.”

Cooking Like a Foodie. This is really my favorite chapter in the book (big shocker there). A lot can be summed up by the first sentence: “Buy the best ingredients you can afford.” I could write a whole post on why that sentence is novel in our times. A lot of people try to spend as little as possible on food and then they’re shocked when their dinners turn out sub-par. Pim’s strategy is one that I completely endorse. Ask a lot of questions and learn what ingredients and foods are the best, buy the best ones you can afford, and cook them simply.

The recipes in this chapter are clean, fresh, and look delicious (Did I mention that the photography in this book is some of the best I’ve seen? I love it.) There’s probably 30 recipes in this chapter and they are exactly what I expected out of this book.

Drinking like a Foodie. This chapter is first and foremost about wine, which is one of the most intimidating things in a dining experience. Wine lists can be, literally, books in some restaurants. The first thing she says, which is very important, is that the chapter is not going to transform you into a wine geek. In fact, don’t ever strive to be a wine geek – someone who lives and dies by arbitrary wine ratings that someone else set and have very little to do with how that wine will work for your meal or your situation.

So don’t be a wine geek.

Instead, she gives a lot of very practical tips to make wine very accessible. How to purchase it, how to pair it with food, and how to ask for recommendations. This could honestly be a book on its own and I imagine that it might be the most helpful chapter for a large number of people.

Being a Fabulous Foodie. Pim lost me on this chapter. She lists 50 things that a “foodie” should do in his or her life. I found this to be just a bit pompous. By my count, to complete the list, you would have to travel to 18 different countries. That’s a bit much for most people I think. It’s just unrealistic and I think it sets a bit of a high expectation for being a foodie. I think you can be a perfectly good foodie and never leave your home town.

Maybe you do have to “eat a plate of truffe bel humeur at the restaurant L’Ambroisie in Paris” or “Eat a Yangcheng hairy crab, preferably in or near Yangcheng Lake in China”. If that’s true, I might not ever be a foodie. I would love to have some of those experiences, but it’s a lot to ask.

That said, there are some very down to earth recommendations in the list also. I love at least half of them. Learning to make a good loaf of crusty bread can make you a foodie and requires just a few bucks and some time. My favorite suggestion in the list is learning to make your parents’ favorite meals. That’s awesome and the kind of thing I would expect a real foodie to know.

So I’m not sure that I agree with everything that Pim sees as important. Of course, if you wanted to save every nickle and dime and prioritize these experiences over everything (including your kids’ education maybe) you could really live the life of a foodie as described in this book. In fact, you kind of get the impression that she views these things as important because it’s her life…

But. Some of it is spot-on and throughout the whole book, she writes with a very whimsical voice that, at the very least, makes it a very easy and fun read. If you’re looking for a good lighthearted read about food for a plane ride or something, this fits the bill and there are really good tips in the chapters.

If you wanted to use this book as a checklist to actually becoming a foodie, I might add an item to the list: Get a second job.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

If you are a regular Macheesmo reader, it’ll be no surprise to that I like a good pizza pie. Personally, I’m a thin crust kind of guy but on a cold day I can get behind a good deep dish pizza. Any way you slice it though (ha!), there’s nothing like a good piece of pizza.

While it’s an older book, I think it’s worth taking another look at “American Pie” by Peter Reinhart. If you didn’t know, Peter knows baked goods. He’s been called a master bread baker by more than one qualified person and I’ve learned a ton about bread from his other book “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.” So yea, I wanted to check out his thoughts on one of my favorite foods.

The Hunt. Peter is a fantastic writer and I was pulled into the story behind this book. I think it was so appealing to me because I’ve had a similar idea to go on the hunt for the “perfect pizza” whatever that may be.

The moment is one you may have had… you arrive in a town and a friend or lover or family member or complete stranger says that you MUST go to (insert pizza place here) because they make THE BEST pizza. But do they? Do they really?

Well, for the first 80 or so pages of this book, Peter documents his hunt. Now, as a regular cookbook reader, I must say that it’s pretty ballsy to spend the first 80 pages of a book devoted to something other than recipes.

But if you’ve ever had a pizza that is just… heavenly, especially if you have had the privilege of eating at one of the places Peter visits on his quest, I think you’ll enjoy the ride. He’s a great writer and story-teller and he makes his quest for the perfect pizza into an Odyssey of sorts.

But more than that even, it legitimizes him as a pizza authority. After you read (or even skim) these first 80 pages, you’ll know that this guy knows his pizza. And the recipes that are in the last 2/3s of the book are very, very legit.

The Recipes. Before we even get to the recipes, Peter does the right thing and addresses a few issues about making pizza. First, and this is something I completely agree with, crust is 80% of the battle. Figure out how to get a really good crust in your home environment, and you can beat 99% of the pizzas in America. Seriously. He also has a few words about sauces and cheeses, but really most of the introduction is devoted to the crust – and rightfully so.

What I was very happy to see is a number of scenarios for the home baker. A really good pizzeria almost certainly has a brick oven or some other method of cooking the pizza evenly and at very hot temperatures. This is hard to replicate for the home cook, so Peter lays out different scenarios that you may have and how to best approximate a pizzeria crust.

Even the worst scenario (normal oven with no stone or baking tiles) is covered and he has some nice tricks that still produce decent results (I’ve tried one of them.)

Speaking of Crust. Finally on page 103, we get into the recipes. I must say though that I didn’t find this to be a problem at all. The first 100 pages of this book are an awesome read and if they don’t make you excited to make some pizza, well, I don’t know what to tell you.

The first thing that becomes apparent when you get into the recipes is that Peter is not a fan of shortcuts, and with good reason. But at the same time, he makes it clear why each step is necessary in the crust process and he actually makes it all very accessible. There are 12 pizza dough recipes in the chapter and they really span the gambit of doughs – from the super thin to the super thick. My favorite and one that I’ll be trying very soon is the frozen pizza dough that you actually par-bake and then freeze to mimic (but destroy) the store-bought frozen pizza varieties.

In my opinion, this chapter is the most important in the book, the rest is just, well, toppings.

Sauces. Well, there are definitely your standard tomato sauces in this chapter, but that is just the beginning. Peter introduces us to a killer pesto (and a few varieties) along with some spicy, infused oils, eggplant purees, white sauces and even an onion marmalade. All of these, along with the dozen or so of other sauces, would be wonderful on a pie.

Finally, The Pizzas. So the last 90 pages of the book is devoted to actual pizzas. But here’s the thing. After you’ve read the crusts and the sauces, they actual recipes seem almost unnecessary. I mean… he’s given you the building blocks for great pizzas, so start building!

But there are some other details that he gets into in this chapter that will definitely help you out. Things like how to actually shape a pizza correctly and how to pick a cheese or two that will work well with your pizza. Important stuff no doubt. He also gets you started with about 30 or 40 actual pizza recipes (dough, sauce, cheese, toppings all together). But the variations on each of these recipes is pretty much endless. The point is that he does a fantastic job of giving you the tools and info you need.

So, if you happen to live in one of the cities that is considered a pizza haven, then this book will give you the tools to produce similar results – close to your favorite pizzeria. But, I think this book might be even more important for someone living in say, rural Wyoming where I’m from. The best pizza we have there is from the local Pizza Hut. If that’s the case, using the tips and recipes in this book, I would bet you can make the best pizza in a 100 mile radius.

Other books by Peter Reinhart:
- The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
- Crust and Crumb

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

If there is one cuisine that I’m probably most unfamiliar with it’s the Southeast Asian cuisine. Every time I see a recipe that comes from that region, there are probably more ingredients that I don’t recognize than ingredients I do recognize.

It’s not that I don’t try. I really am starting to learn some basics, but I think it’s kind of hard unless you’ve actually been to the region in question. Luckily, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, the authors of “Hot Sour Salty Sweet” spent enough time there to become regional experts. Even if you’ve never been there, if you have any interest in learning about some of the magical dishes and culture of Southeast Asia, this is the book for you.

The River Road

When the authors decided to set out on the journey that became this book, they were searching for some unifying trait that could link the cuisines of all of the Southeastern regions. Much like countries in the Mediterranean area have distinct elements to them, they found something similar.

As they got more into their trip though, they realized that the journey wasn’t exactly what they thought it would be. They kept coming back to one centralized thing: The Mekong River.

“So, our initial goal of eating our way through Southeast Asia evolved into the somewhat specific goal of exploring the food of the Mekong region by eating our way along the river, from Yunnan to Vietnam. Like students in a life drawing course, instead of drawing the entire model, we found ourselves drawing only an arm, an elbow, a hand.”

Journey through Photos

One thing I loved about this book before even really getting into the recipes, was the photos. As the two authors traveled along the river they took stunning photos of the people and the geography. Of course, there are photos of the food, but the photos of the region were more interesting I thought.

As someone who has never been to this area of the world, I found myself just leafing through the book looking at all the great photos. Rice fields, street vendors, lush river deltas and near-third world streets give the entire book a very unique feel. Even if you never cook a recipe out of this book, it would be a fantastic coffee book and is really fun to page through.

Hot Sour Salty Sweet

You figure out how the book got its name very early on. Those are the flavor profiles that each dish will balance. Even beyond each individual recipe, each menu will try to balance those flavors. Once you start to identify which ingredients in Southeastern cooking give each of these traits, it becomes easier to adjust a recipe to your liking. Fish sauce, for example, will add a salty background to any dish. So by adding a few drops of fish sauce to something, you can bring out a salty element.

The authors do a good job of walking you through different recipes and how those recipes balance these four tastes.

Sauces, Chiles, and Salsas

The chapters in this book are organized by food. I love that they start the book with these items because they seem so integral to that cuisine. I don’t think I’ve ever had Southeast food without some sort of dipping sauce or chile paste or something to enhance the flavors of the food. It’s fun and flavorful and one of my favorite parts of the meal.

Some of these sauces are incredibly simple (like the fresh chile-garlic paste which has 4 very standard ingredients) and some will require a bit more effort. What shocked me though was that all seemed fairly doable. None of the sauces or pastes required days of cooking and I think the most ingredients one had was around 10, but most were in the 4-6 ingredient range.

It was demystifying and encouraging to see the recipes laid out in such a straight forward manner. It made me want to make some of them right away!

As a note, each recipe is also classified by the region where the authors found it. They also provide the original names for all of the dishes so you’ll see something like:

Thai Fish Sauce with Hot Chiles
[ prik nam pla - Thailand, Laos]

This is probably helpful for some people, but since I’ve never been to any of these places the extra classifications were a bit lost on me. You do come away from it though with a feeling that towns hundreds of miles from each other have a lot of cuisine elements in common.

After this chapter there are two fantastic chapters covering soups and salads, each chapter having about a dozen recipes.

Rice and Noodles

The next two chapters really embody what I think of when I think of these dishes. As the authors say, if rice is the bread of the Southeast then noodles are the potatoes. They are basically a part of every meal, even breakfast and dessert in some cases. One recipe that I definitely earmarked was a fairly elaborate, but traditional Pad Thai – one of my personal favorites. At 22 ingredients, it’s a substantial dish and some of the ingredients may be hard to find, but nevertheless, you may see it on Macheesmo in the future.

Meats and Veggies

There are entire chapters that follow the rice and noodles chapters on vegetables, seafood, poultry, beef and pork. This is when you start to really get the impression of how thorough this book is.

The authors leave no recipe unwritten it seems. You have to love that!

Street Food

Maybe the best chapter in the book, in my opinion, is one of the last ones which discusses all of the interesting street foods available in a typical Southeastern village. The recipe that I must make immediately is the pork dumpling recipe. The authors finally shed some light on the dough that’s used to get that great texture (Asian tapioca!). Again, I’m not sure where to find that, but I can probably hunt it down.

This book is a work of art in my opinion. It’s visually stunning, very well-written, and includes hundreds of recipes. Coming in at around 350 pages, the authors really take the time to take you along with them as they traveled along the river in search of great food.

If you are at all interested in Southeast Asian cuisine, this is one of the best books I’ve seen on the area. “Hot Sour Salty Sweet” would be a great addition to your cooking library if you want to start experimenting with Asian food and can’t afford the plane ticket and decades it would to replicate their experiences.

Every other weekend, I review a cookbook in an attempt to lend some guidance in a field that has become overrun. These days everyone is writing cookbooks and it’s incredibly upsetting to buy a dud and have it sit on your shelf for years – staring at you, mocking your poor judgment.

I would say if there is one recipe that’s pretty much changed my life over the last year and a half or so, it’s no-knead bread. I make about a loaf a week and Betsy and I use it throughout the week for toast or sandwiches or just to snack on. So I was really excited to read (and cook from) “My Bread” by Jim Lahey, the creator of the no-knead method.

Falling in Love with Bread – The first thirty or so pages of this book are inspiring. They tell the story of how Jim fell in love with bread and how he decided to spend his career bringing bread to American tables. And not just through his bakery. You get the impression that he really wants to teach people how to make life-changing bread. And I can vouch for it. And this is the book that can teach you too.

Beyond being a great baker and inspiring cook, he is also a fantastic writer which shows in his introduction. He talks about why he thinks bread needs to be reintroduced to the American kitchen:

“…Most of the better bread made in this country can only be found in boutique bakeries, often located too far away from home, and for too much money. Also, to my mind, so many of the so-called artisanal breads are the result of shortcuts and compromises. We don’t have a strong bread culture in America. Too many people don’t really know what bread should taste like, and too few have experienced the process of baking it. For most people, the best way to taste bread as it should be is to bake it themselves.”

I obviously don’t have the experience in bread (tasting, cooking, etc) that Jim has, but I can say that even the very first no-knead bread loaf I made was some of the best bread I’ve had. So good job Jim.

The Lahey Method. In my mind you could also call it the lazy method because it really doesn’t require much work. Instead, you let time do the work for you. Instead of kneading and fermenting and kneading and proofing like you need to do for some breads, you just have to let this sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours.

I’m not going to go into all the details of the bread making process because this post isn’t about that. I promise though that it is pretty straightforward and requires very little equipment. While he does recommend a fairly expensive cast iron pot, I’ve made quality loaves with other methods. That said, none of them are as crusty and crackly as the loaves I make in the pot. Jim does say that you can use a ceramic pot with “no discernable difference”, but I’ve never tried it. I’m sure it works just fine.

Specialties of the House. The next part of the book really got me excited about bread (not that I wasn’t already). Jim starts with the basic method of no-knead bread and transfers it into about 20 variations. Everything from Rye Bread to Ciabatta and even this absolutely awesome recipe for rolls wrapped in banana leaves.

Everything in this chapter looks amazing. Some of the recipes are traditional and some are more inventive. I’m sure all are fantastic though. I can’t wait to try some of them out!

Pizzas and Focaccias. Most pizza doughs need to rest overnight so it makes perfect sense that this no-knead variety could be adapted to pizza and focaccia. Jim is a pizza master. Or at least that appears to be the case based off of the recipes and photos in this chapter.

I’m not kidding when I say that I want every pizza in this chapter right now. I want to eat the pizza Funghi (lots of mushrooms) and on the side have a great slice of Pizza Cavolfiore (Yep. Cauliflower.)

If you were reading this book without looking at the table of contents, you might wonder where he was going to go from here. There is still more than 1/3 of the book left and it seems like he has covered all the basics and then some.

But then…

The Art of the Sandwich. It makes so much sense once you see it. If you are going through the trouble of making this fantastic bread, you might as well know how to make the best sandwich ever with it.

Jim definitely will show you the ropes in this chapter. Everything from roast beef to roasted pork and homemade mustards, pickles, aolis, and artichoke spreads.

This chapter made me very hungry and was a great surprise.

Leftovers. One problem that Betsy and I definitely have is that it’s tough to eat an entire loaf of bread before it gets stale. The loaves are huge and we are only two people. Luckily the loaves are also incredibly cheap to make. That said, Jim does go over some great ways to use leftover breads that are maybe too stale for the sandwich or toast. He suggests using them for soups and puddings and gives you all the necessary recipes to make it happen.

I can’t tell you how much I recommend this book and this method of bread making. Sure, you can find the no knead bread recipe and some variations on various websites including this one, but there is something to be said for going straight to the source. Not only are you supporting the artist (and I do consider him an artist), but you’re also getting tons of other applications for this bread method.

I got really excited when I read this book and I can’t wait to try out some of the recipes. If you are at all interested in getting into bread baking, I highly recommend this book. It’s very accessible and demonstrates that you don’t have to have thousands of dollars worth of equipment or decades of experience to make really exceptional bread.