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NonfictionCrafts, Hobbies & HomeCookbooksArts & Culture

Lifestyles: February 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

The writing workshop, the cottagecore aesthetic and, that’s right, the humble bean all get exciting updates in this month’s crop of lifestyles books.

★ Craft in the Real World

Matthew Salesses’ Craft in the Real World is a book whose time has come, and not a moment too soon. A critique of long-held assumptions about how creative writing should be taught, it is “a challenge to accepted models,” including “everything from a character-­driven plot to the ‘cone of silence,’ ” which silences a manuscript’s author while their piece is being workshopped. Salesses, who is the author of three novels, invites the reader to rethink the very notion of what constitutes craft and offers alternatives to a workshop model proliferated by, and largely for, white men. The world has changed, and the writing workshop must catch up. An essential addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in creative writing, Salesses’ text provides a compassionate approach sure to bring a new generation of authentic voices to the page.

The Mighty Bean

All hail the humble bean: Nutrient-rich, central to cuisines worldwide, inexpensive, easy to cook and with a low carbon footprint, beans are truly a power food. With her new book, The Mighty Bean, Judith Choate, author of An American Family Cooks, is our guide through the vast world of legumes, beginning with a bean glossary. (What wonderful names these little guys have: Rattlesnake! Eye of the goat! Black valentine!) With recipes ranging from Texas caviar to West African peanut soup to white bean gnocchi with bacon and cream, this cookbook travels the globe through “pulses” (another name for beans, and a tidbit I’m delighted to have picked up here) and encourages experimentation. I’m feeling inspired to shop the Rancho Gordo site ASAP.

The Little Book of Cottagecore

I first heard the word cottagecore from my 12-year-old daughter, likely my informant for all trends henceforth. For the uninitiated, cottagecore is a way of being—an aesthetic, a vibe, if you will—exalting the soothing textures and gentle rhythms of pastoral life. “It focuses on unplugging from the stresses of modern life and instead embracing the wholesomeness and authenticity of nature,” explains Emily Kent in The Little Book of Cottage­core. A cottage­core existence might include relaxing tasks such as baking bread, gardening and pouring your own candles—though I have to wonder how truly calm one may feel when feeding a sourdough starter or smoking the hives or coping with tomato blight. (Forgive me. I’ve suffered my share of frustrations during various vaguely cottagecore endeavors.) But simply brewing a cup of proper English tea is entry-level cottagecore that anyone can enjoy.

The writing workshop, the cottagecore aesthetic and, that’s right, the humble bean all get exciting updates in this month’s crop of lifestyles books.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Lifestyles: March 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

Whether you need to get your home office in order, need to shake things up in the kitchen or just need a laugh, this month’s Lifestyles column has got you covered.

★ Notes From the Bathroom Line

The beautiful thing about some books is their time-capsule quality, how they perfectly preserve a cultural moment between two covers. For Amy Solomon, one such life-changing title was 1976’s Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women. Now Solomon has created that book’s contemporary analog with Notes From the Bathroom Line, an eclectic mix of writing, art and “low-grade panic,” to quote the subtitle, from a large and rowdy cast of very funny women who are here to entertain you on the subjects of Goop vaginal eggs, missent text mortification, lies told to get out of things, dads’ girlfriends, advice not taken, instructions for the cat sitter, groveling and . . . well, a lot more. Comics and art nudge up against short essays and, maybe my favorite content category, collections of short answers to prompts such as “Slang That You Made Up That Will Never Catch On But It Should.” A consistent theme across it all: the ways in which we all squirm and sweat within our minds. I feel seen.

Work-From-Home Hacks

As a seasoned WFH-er, I’ll be the first to admit my habits aren’t always high performing or sustainable. If that sounds familiar, a weekly visit with Aja Frost’s Work-From-Home Hacks can gradually set you on a smarter course, whether you’ve been couch (slouch) typing for years or are still configuring your (bedroom) corner office. The book is handily sectioned into more than 500 bite-size, numbered nuggets. While some will no doubt be familiar, these tips—from ergonomics to what to wear, from battling distraction to unlocking the holy grail of work-life balance—constitute a treasure trove for anyone riding the WFH wave of 2020 and 2021. But the lasting value of this book is its broad usefulness no matter where you clock in. After all, email hygiene, scheduling boundaries and regular exercise are proven hacks for any work habitat. (Note to self: Wear shoes at your desk, and swap that shawl for a sweater before you Zoom!)

The New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes 

So, the title is clever but not quite accurate, at least to my mind. What Sam Sifton dishes up in The New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes are flexible recipes in a nonchalant narrative format with no numeric measurements. (Nope, not a one.) The improvisational approach will prove quite pleasing if you, like my husband, have little use for the specificity of most recipes and enough kitchen acumen to feel comfortable with glugs and splashes and dashes. These recipes may be simple in some ways, but they do require a certain I’ve got this culinary cool. I love reading them almost as much as I love eating the finished products. For kaya toast and eggs, you “add a healthy shake of white pepper” to the eggs and then “get to ’em with the toast.” Of split pea soup: “When you’re done eating you’ll be bowing like Hugh Jackman at curtain call.”

Whether you need to get your home office in order, need to shake things up in the kitchen or just need a laugh, this month’s Lifestyles column has got you covered.
NonfictionPhotographyFood & DrinkCookbooks

Lifestyles: May 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

Take a journey around the globe via the bookstores, recipes and fruits featured in this month’s lifestyles roundup.

★ Bookstores

For a bibliophile, it doesn’t get any better than Bookstores: A Celebration of Independent Booksellers, a coffee-table stunner featuring images by London-based photographer Horst A. Friedrichs. With every turn of the page, you’ll take a journey around the globe and through the stacks—from Spoonbill & Sugartown in Brooklyn, New York, to the curious Baldwin’s Book Barn in Pennsylvania, to idiosyncratic shops in the U.K., Germany, Austria and more. Along the way you’ll meet the owners who have made bookselling their lives’ work and art. They share how they came to the trade, what makes their shops unique and why the work—and the books themselves, of course—continues to matter so darn much in an age of, well, you know. I want to visit every single one of these bookstores, but that’s probably a tall order. Just knowing they exist, and holding this gorgeous artifact in my hands, feels like enough.

The Kitchen Without Borders

The other night my husband fixed a delicious Syrian meal: ma’areena soup, a bit like pasta Bolognese but decidedly different thanks to a seven-spice blend common to Middle Eastern cooking. We found this dish in The Kitchen Without Borders, a cookbook from Eat Offbeat, a New York City-based catering company that works with immigrant and refugee chefs. Eat Offbeat honors and shares the “special food memories our chefs have brought with them,” write Wissam Kahi and Manal Kahi, Lebanese siblings who began their careers with the simple wish to share their Syrian grandmother’s hummus. The book features dishes from Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and more. Profiles of the chefs appear between recipes for dishes such as fattoush, musabbaha (chickpea salad) and chicken shawarma. It feels like a true global community endeavor.

The Book of Difficult Fruit

Twenty-six fruits, A to Z, form the basis for poet and pie-maker Kate Lebo’s lovely, meandering essays in The Book of Difficult Fruit. Beginning with aronia, or chokeberry, Lebo weaves personal stories with facts from nature and science, resulting in a difficult-to-classify literary and culinary exploration—the best kind, in my opinion. Ever wondered what exactly a maraschino cherry is? Lebo will tell you, and then she’ll tell you about the almond flavor of stone-fruit pits, and then about cherry trees in her backyard, and about a strange brush with new neighbors, and about how to make real maraschino cherries. And on you go, through durian and elderberry, through Norton grape and Osage orange, all the way to zucchini—a curious, lyrical, alphabetical adventure.

Take a journey around the globe via the bookstores, recipes and fruits featured in this month’s lifestyles roundup.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooksArts & Culture

Lifestyles: October 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

The best lifestyles books of the month will give you a creative boost from the workplace to the kitchen.

★ Creative Acts for Curious People

Tell the story of your worst first date using only LEGOs. Design an ad campaign for bananas. Describe an ability you’d use to survive a zombie apocalypse. Ask someone to tell you the story of their name. These are but a few of the assignments in Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways, developed from the teachings of Stanford University’s well-respected design school (known as the d.school), where students collaborate and innovate in fresh, surprising ways for the greater good. Need a change of perspective on a project or an escape hatch from routine thinking? Want to encourage your team to loosen up, give helpful feedback or challenge biases? Look no further. “In the face of current challenges—those here today and those yet to come—we all need ways to prepare to act even when we are uncertain,” writes d.school executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg. Whether you’re an independent artist seeking new approaches to your work or a leader aiming to mentor and galvanize your people, this book has an experience for you. I plan to put it to use in my own nonprofit leadership and personal creative projects.

The Tiny Kitchen Cookbook

Annie Mahle spent many years cooking for groups of 24 in the galley kitchen of a schooner, so you could say she’s earned her small-space stripes. In The Tiny Kitchen Cookbook: Strategies and Recipes for Creating Amazing Meals in Small Spaces, Mahle gathers recipes requiring little cookware or fuss, including one-pan dinners, toaster oven-friendly bakes and small dishes that can serve as snacks or light entrees. She shares tips for making the best of your (limited) workspace and, in a genius section called “Use It Up,” offers ideas for what to do with ingredients that tend to linger, like buttermilk, cauliflower and pumpkin puree. In the tiny (vacation) house of my dream-future, this will be the only cookbook on hand, but for now it will be a welcome addition to my home kitchen, with its charming lack of counter space.

Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys

I happen to live in the same state as Sandor Katz, and he’s the sort of fellow Tennessean that makes me proud to call this place home. Katz gained an international following with his 2003 bestseller, The Art of Fermentation, the success of which took him across the globe. Now he’s back with Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys: Recipes, Techniques, and Traditions From Around the World, which explores microbial activity in the culinary traditions of China, Peru and other places far, far from Cannon County, Tennessee. Think tepache in Mexico, sour cabbages in Croatia, pickled tea leaves in Burma, koji in Japan and much more. Part travelogue, part cookbook, part chemistry experiment, Katz’s new book is a fascinating look at fermented foods the world over, and it aims, always, to be a respectful one.

The best lifestyles books of the month will give you a creative boost from the workplace to the kitchen.
Cookbooks

New Year, new chefs

Review by Sybil Pratt

Here’s a real find for front-line foodies, adventurous epicures, restaurant revelers and the many who are, by choice and/or necessity, armchair cooks and travelers, reaping the fun and wonder of the new and super-trendy from the cozy comfort of their homes. Coco: 100 Emerging Culinary Stars Chosen by 10 of the World's Greatest Chefs is part cookbook, part who’s-who of the international food scene and part guidebook to some of the world’s most intriguing restaurants (addresses, but not prices, are supplied).

Phaidon, a renowned art book publisher that has turned its talents to producing a fabulous line of international cookbooks, uses the 10 times 10 formula so successful for introducing emerging artists in different fields. Ten culinary icons—including Mario Batali, Alain Ducasse, Gordon Ramsay, Alice Waters and the legendary founder of elBulli, Ferran Adrià—select the 10 restaurant chefs he or she considers the most innovative and exciting, both in the food they create and in their cooking philosophies. Each selectee is introduced in a short essay by the selector, and presented with a brief bio, a sample menu, a few representative recipes and color photos of the chefs at work and dishes they're working on. What you get is a fascinating window into the wild world of today's cutting-edge gastronomy. And, as an added extra, each of the Masters offers a recipe for one of their own classic dishes. Few of the recipes are easy, simple or quick. But they are inspiring, even awe-inspiring, and become a kaleidoscope of contemporary kitchen craft taken to new heights by the new lights.

You’ll find fantastic dishes served in Copenhagen and Kyoto, Sydney and Seattle, Bali and Bilbao, Moscow and Marseille and, of course, London, Paris, Rome and New York. They range from relatively approachable (Gazpacho Aspic with Crabmeat; Raw Scallop with Green Apple and Dashi; Squab Stuffed with Squash and Chestnuts; Grilled Eel and Zucchini) to somewhat more elaborate (Black Radish Vacherin and Foie Gras Mamia; Cod Liver Snow with Bread Cigars; Bitter-Chocolate Cylinder with Coffee Mousse, Milk Ice Cream, Honeycomb and Irish Whiskey). Beware, should you have the culinary courage to undertake any of these recipes, that the measurements are metric, still strange and cumbersome for American cooks.

Here’s a real find for front-line foodies, adventurous epicures, restaurant revelers and the many who are, by choice and/or necessity, armchair cooks and travelers, reaping the fun and wonder of the new and super-trendy from the cozy comfort of their homes. Coco: 100 Emerging Culinary…

Food & DrinkCookbooks

A holiday toast to wine books

Review by Eve Zibart

One of the nicest gifts you can give is wine and the version of wine that keeps on giving is a good wine book. Here are some of the best of recent publications, books long on information and short on showy obfuscation.

Oz Clarke's Introducing Wine: A Complete Guide for the Modern Wine Drinker, by one of the best wine journalists around, is, as it says, Just what you need to know. Clear, non-patronizing and practical, it covers how-to's, where-froms, buying, storing and affording, and is first-rate in summarizing styles. Clarke is frank, funny, balanced and just clever enough. The book comes with a wine wheel (reds on one side, whites on the other) that shows how Zinfandels and Shirazes meet at the black fruits and herbs/spices range, while California Pinot Noirs are lighter than Grand Cru Burgundy but outweigh Oregon Pinots.

Clarke also has a 2001 edition of his Pocket Wine Guide, which covers some 1,600 labels in snapshot form. More serious in tone, and organized with more emphasis on questions of taste, terroir and style (i.e., ordering from a restaurant wine list) is The River Cafe Wine Primer by Joseph DeLissio. However, despite some fairly basic information on educating the palate by tasting at home and so on, it would be better suited to someone interested in actually learning wines for long-term pleasure than Clarke's buy-it-tonight, drink-it-tonight tips.

The Guide to Choosing, Serving & Enjoying Wine is as visual as a Web site, colorful, novelty-sized and in a few places just too, too perky ( Are you uncertain about the difference between a wine grower and a winemaker, a vintner and a viticulturist, or about what a wine producer is? ). Once you get past that and the cartoon characters, it's a solid little primer, covering etiquette, business dinners, decanters, glasses, useful tools (stocking stuffer ideas?) and storage. It would be a very attractive first wine book. Appropriately, while winemaking patriarch Robert Mondavi wrote a foreword to DeLissio's book, son and modern-era mover Michael Mondavi writes one here.

Finally, for the new obsessive, or the sort who gets sidetracked and enjoys it, there's the ultimate resource, The Oxford Companion to Wine. It's really a desk encyclopedia, covering not only chemical attributes and specific varietals and producers but gold rushes (which inspired alcohol-making booms), the lyre (not the musical instrument, but a vine-training apparatus resembling one) and gobelet (also a vine frame, this one goblet-shaped), Baga (the most popular grape in the Bairrada region of Portugal), Rutherglen (Australia's answer to Oporto) and even Soviet sparkling wine (don't even go there).

The 2001 Edition of Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: A Lively Guide is a broad, approachable and, yes, lively handbook, with the basics outlined first and helpful notes in the margins along the lines of, If you can see through a red wine, generally it's ready to drink! There are also tips on pairing food and wine and FAQ assembled from his real-life classes: what to do with leftover wine (like me, Zraly belongs to the clean-bottle club), what sort of corkscrew to use (he sweetly admits to breaking a dozen corks a year), and what he thinks of ratings (not much another virtue). The biggest drawback to this book is that it's Franco-heavy. Australian wines and wineries get only three pages the entire Wines of the World: Italy, Spain, Australia, Chile & Argentina chapter (note the omission of New Zealand) is only 27 pages long, and that counts the maps. New York State gets about a page and a half; the Pacific Northwest only one (no British Columbia, either). Still, you might argue that it's the French who make wine so mysterious, so maybe it takes more time to explain.

Eve Zibart is a restaurant critic for the Washington Post.

 

One of the nicest gifts you can give is wine and the version of wine that keeps on giving is a good wine book. Here are some of the best of recent publications, books long on information and short on showy obfuscation.

Oz…

NonfictionChildren's & YAReligion & SpiritualityCookbooks

So many great Halloween books, it’s scary

Review by Emily Abedon

There are some who lock their doors on Halloween, shut off the porch light, and scoff at the events that take place on the high holy day for witches. Who wants to party with ghosts and goblins? It seems most Americans do. Only for Christmas do consumers spend more. And it's not just for kids. All ages are getting in on dressing up their yards, homes, and selves to make light of a holiday that can be as much about harvest happiness as house hauntings. Several new books help hard-core Halloweeners indulge with frightening abandon.

It's as if Martha Stewart meets Elvira in Donata Magginpinto's Halloween Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family. Magginpinto, food and entertaining director at Williams-Sonoma, presents party fare that's tasty and fun when the theme is a scream. Her food from the cauldron, features cold-season favorites, like curried soup and custard, that take advantage of October's trove of squash, pumpkin, and sweet potato. There are also old-fashioned delights caramel apples and popcorn balls that don't require toil and trouble. Halloween Treats is full of clever and creepy concoctions. Cookie-cut marshmallows become ghosts in the cocoa; peeled grapes and shredded carrots are easily mistaken for witch's hair and goblin's eyeballs; thin black licorice strings double as spider legs when placed between chocolate cream sandwich cookies. You'll also find ideas for decorations that little hands can help make. Children can collect colorful autumn leaves for leaf lanterns, decorate mittens for Halloween hand warmers, and go wild with a glitter pen for personalized trick-or-treat bags.

The Big Book of Halloween: Creative and Creepy Projects for Revellers of All Ages is the ultimate reference if you want to turn your house into trick-or-treaters' most popular haunt. Pieces of polystyrene board turned into gravestones in your yard, white sheeted ghosts on your front stoop, ghoulish gourds in your window and a papier-mache tarantula over your shoulder may hinder the kids from ever making it to your candy bowl. Author Laura Dover Doran suggests far more festive treats than bite-sized chocolate bars. She provides a how-to for the ickiest edibles: spaghetti squash brains, pumpkin pulp slime, peanut butter and flour shaped into your favorite internal organs. If you ever thought a Christmas gingerbread house looked dreamy, wait till you see Doran's nightmarish haunted house cake. Sitting in a Vienna wafer cemetery, this sweetly spooked spot has windows boarded up with sugar wafers and a cookie crumb landscape that's a dead-ringer for dirt.

The Big Book of Halloween features fabulous costumes for children and adults, luminaries, topiaries, and table decorations that take the spirit of the eerie eve and fly with it. Many of the projects require a trip to the craft shop and tools like hot-glue guns or craft knives. But Doran's precise and comprehensive directions should take the fear out of the do-it-yourself Halloween. The Big Book of Halloween is chock full of facts, historic tidbits, and safety tips. Herein you can learn of the holiday's roots in Celtic tradition, read about the increasing popularity of vintage Halloween collections, and acquire ten top excuses to tell the kids what happened to their candy when your adult hands started wandering.

But if you're going to blame a ghost, better first get your facts straight. Hanz Holzer's Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond will furnish you with more information that you probably knew existed about the high-spirited apparitions. Holzer is a parapsychologist whose interest in ghosts has taken him around the world to compile this fascinating assortment of haunting tales. Holzer distinguishes between several types of ghosts and tries to clear up common misconceptions. Ghosts do not travel, he explains. They haunt in one place, usually where their death tragically occurred. This is good news, no doubt, for those of us who would choose to run away if confronted by one. Holzer personally documents his own visits to haunted spots as diverse as castles and trailer parks, and details his interviews with the hundreds of people who claim to have experienced a presence that they cannot explain in terms of material reality.

From the start, he acknowledges cynics and non-believers. But those who best understand that ghosts exist, according to Holzer, are psychics, those who have used their extra sensory perception to experience an apparition first-hand. You needn't be psychic to enjoy Ghosts. The number of ghostly testaments is intriguing. The stories themselves are downright scary. But beware: reading this alone at night, especially in a creaky house, could be a health hazard.

Llewellyn's 1999 Magical Almanac allows you to take the spirits into your own hands. Pagans, witches, shaman, astrologers, and herbalists contribute to this collection of pieces that show you how to bring a little magic into your life. You'll find advice for dealing with depression, connecting with your spiritual self, and increasing your energy. But there are even more down-to-earth, practical tips about banishing mildew with herbs, healing with honey, and relaxing with aromatherapy, plus lunar, sunrise, and sunset charts. Llewellyn's Magical Almanac features a love spell and an incantation for acing a job interview. Witchcraft never seemed so benign. Banish all images of pallid, wart-nosed hags, this book advocates the power of looking good, even providing a spell for glamour.

The true charm of this multi-cultural exploration of all things magical, mystical, and divine lies in its gentle reminders to embrace each day, celebrate the natural world, and take your fate into your own hands in October and all year long. If the too-much-candy stomach ache is in full effect, plastic spiders have lost their appeal, and you've conjured up a good year's worth of scariness, Pumpkins may be just the thing to ease you gently out of Halloween. True to it's name, this coffee table book delivers photograph after photograph of the fleshy orange fellows.

Pumpkins displays all shapes, sizes, and types, au naturel in fields, for sale at country farm stands, or piled high alongside their gourd brethren in romantic country settings. The pictures highlight all the subtle differences that make October's favorite fruit entertaining characters even before their faces are carved. Rynn Williams's introduction to Pumpkins reflects on the fruits' tendency to summon childhood memories. In that way, they are akin to Halloween itself, with all of the holiday's food, fun, and frights.

Emily Abedon is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.

There are some who lock their doors on Halloween, shut off the porch light, and scoff at the events that take place on the high holy day for witches. Who wants to party with ghosts and goblins? It seems most Americans do. Only for Christmas…

Cookbooks

All About Cake

Review by Sybil Pratt

Top Pick in Cookbooks, December 2018

’Tis the season for baked sweets, and Christina Tosi, the two-time James Beard Award-winning baker, mastermind maven and chef/owner of Milk Bar, will amp up your cake-making capabilities. The wildly innovative Tosi, who found most cakes to be boringly blah, decided to find ways to give them the verve and variety her sugary sensations are renowned for. The remarkable results are all in All About Cake. These winners—from bundts and a Strawberry Layer Cake to cupcakes, sheet cakes, fancy layer cakes, cake truffles (yes, you can turn out a Cake Truffle Croquembouche for Christmas), microwave mug cakes and a Banana-Chocolate-Peanut Butter Crock-Pot Cake—tell flavor stories with creative fillings, craveable crunches, hidden gems of texture and Tosi’s signature unfrosted sides. Having at your side a wonderfully opinionated pro like Tosi who can’t—and shouldn’t—curb her enthusiasm and instructional fervor for all things baking is an unbeatable, delectable treat.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

’Tis the season for baked sweets, and Christina Tosi, the two-time James Beard Award-winning baker, mastermind maven and chef/owner of Milk Bar, will amp up your cake-making capabilities.

Cookbooks

Tasting Italy

Review by Sybil Pratt

National Geographic and America’s Test Kitchen have combined their prodigious talents to produce the lusciously extravagant Tasting Italy: A Culinary Journey. With over 100 recipes, 300 photographs and 45 maps, it’s the perfect gift for Italophiles. It’s a wonderful coffee table book and top-notch cookbook, but it’s also a travel guide to Italy’s 20 regions, filled with vibrant, full-color photos and explorations of the edible treasures that make each area unique—cheese, wine, cured meats, produce and so much more. Brimming with tradition and tested to the nth degree, these recipes showcase the robust regional food that makes Italy a mosaic of magical flavors. Whether it’s Venetian Seafood Risotto, aromatic Tuscan White Bean Soup, Umbrian Sausage and Grapes, golden Roman Gnocchi or a light and bright Sicilian Fennel, Orange and Olive Salad, each dish takes you into the authentic heart of la cucina Italiana.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

National Geographic and America’s Test Kitchen have combined their prodigious talents to produce the lusciously extravagant Tasting Italy: A Culinary Journey.

Cookbooks

Israeli Soul

Review by Sybil Pratt

Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook’s first cookbook, Zahav, was named the Best International Cookbook in 2016 by the James Beard Foundation. Now the pair is back with Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious, an appreciative deep dive into iconic Israeli food, and its release is perfectly timed for Israel’s 70th anniversary. With fabulous photos of food and people, plus instructive, step-by-step photos, Israeli Soul is a home cook-friendly culinary tour of the dishes brought to Israel by immigrants and shaped by cultures “both ancient and modern.” Solomonov and Cook’s exuberant narrative details their “soul odyssey,” searching market stalls, restaurants, street carts and bakeries in big cities and remote villages for the best versions of gastronomic go-to’s like hummus, pita, shawarma and falafel, plus sabich, salads, soups, stuffed veggies, kebabs and sweets. It’s an irresistible invitation to enjoy the legendary soul food of Israel.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook’s first cookbook, Zahav, was named the Best International Cookbook in 2016 by the James Beard Foundation. Now the pair is back with Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious, an appreciative deep dive into iconic Israeli food.

Cookbooks

Everyday Dorie

Review by Sybil Pratt

Top Pick in Cookbooks, November 2018

I read a lot of cookbooks, and it’s rare when I want to make—and eat—almost every recipe. But that’s what happened when I went through Dorie Greenspan’s latest, Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook. She’s out-“Doried” herself this time: The 150 recipes included here are fabulous and introduced with wonderfully written and informative header notes. Greenspan’s impeccable instructions, make-ahead advice and ideas for swapping out major ingredients are all seasoned with her casual, practical ease, culinary savvy and style. There are dishes for every occasion, with innovative riffs like Gougères with a zippy addition of Dijon mustard; classic Flounder Meunière with an added pizazz of Onion-Walnut Relish; a hot, spicy, slightly sweet Beef Stew with a handful of cranberries; Clam Chowder made with lemongrass, coconut milk and ginger; and of course, Greenspan’s ever-splendid desserts (check out her Apple Custard Crisp). Dining with Dorie never disappoints.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

I read a lot of cookbooks, and it’s rare when I want to make—and eat—almost every recipe. But that’s what happened when I went through Dorie Greenspan’s latest, Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook.

Cookbooks

Cook’s Illustrated Revolutionary Recipes

Review by Sybil Pratt

Cook’s Illustrated magazine, champion of a thoughtful and no-nonsense approach to home cooking, is celebrating its 25th anniversary by giving us a present—Cook’s Illustrated Revolutionary Recipes. The “revolution” here is not exotic ingredients or wild flavor combos; it’s an insistent pursuit of perfect recipes and the foolproof way to make everything from poached eggs and the crispiest of Crispy Fried Chicken to rich Ragù alla Bolognese or a No-Knead Brioche. Each of these 180 recipes is a master class, starting with an essay that breaks the dish apart and explores how and why it works. Included along with the carefully detailed cooking directions, black-and-white photos and line drawings are tips on techniques and prep, what to look for when buying ingredients and intriguing variations to extend your repertoire.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Cook’s Illustrated magazine, champion of a thoughtful and no-nonsense approach to home cooking, is celebrating its 25th anniversary by giving us a present—Cook’s Illustrated Revolutionary Recipes.

Cookbooks

Cook Like a Pro

Review by Sybil Pratt

Ina Garten is back and better than ever. Cook Like a Pro: Recipes and Tips for Home Cooks is Garten’s 11th cookbook and a super seminar on how to incorporate the time-tested kitchen tricks she’s come to rely on into your own cooking. Though she’s a true self-taught cook, Garten’s years as a caterer and specialty food-store owner and her close association with professional chefs and bakers have taught her how to make “flavors sing and presentations pop.” Now she shares her pro tips with us, along with a carefully curated collection of recipes, from cocktails, appetizers (Sausage & Mushroom Strudels) and breakfast delights to soups, salads and dinner (flaky Flounder Milanese topped with Arugula Salad), finished off with veggies, sides and desserts (Fresh Fig & Ricotta Cake). Sprinkled throughout this comestible cache, like informative amuse-bouches, are short essays on measuring, prepping, baking and testing for doneness like a pro. This is bound to be one of the season’s go-to gourmet gifts.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ina Garten is back and better than ever. Cook Like a Pro: Recipes and Tips for Home Cooks is Garten’s 11th cookbook and a super seminar on how to incorporate the time-tested kitchen tricks she’s come to rely on into your own cooking.

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