Mysterious Feasts

Full disclosure, I'm not a cake lover. I really can take it or leave it, and most often choose the latter. However, my "Literate Foodie" bookclub is discussing this one, along with sampling cakes made from the recipes, so I read it. I found it charming. The illustrations are adorable, and the musings about cake give the reader something to think about. Cake is seen as not just a food, but really more of a centerpiece for gatherings with the bonus of also being delicious. There are only 17 recipes, and the majority of those seem to be nothing special. If you are a baker, though, perhaps you will see them as innovative in a way the I can't perceive. Each of the recipes comes with a few notes, and those provide a bit of information the reader may not already know. The illustrations have little to do with the specific recipes provided, and the personal narrative included with the illustrations references cakes for which there is no recipe included. It was a quick...

The world of catering that is explored in this book is not your run-of-the-mill catering, unless you happen to be a multi-millionaire. This book shows what it is like to produce $2,000 or $3,000 a plate meals in makeshift kitchens, night after night. Or even some $10,000 a plate dinners, and sometimes for thousands of guests. This stratospheric level of catering requires chefs and staffs with every bit of the skill required for top restaurants, but it requires a very different personality type. The Lee's book alternates between chapters based on interviews and chapters based on their own experiences as they take on the lowest level responsibilities in the catering kitchens. They set the scenes well, making me feel as though I were in, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art to cook for a fundraising event or at the estate of an uber-wealthy client serving up a highly individualized wedding feast. The customers, whether they are event planners or pampered brides, are more than just c...

This is a mashup of historical, contemporary romance, and cooking, with a soupcon of mystery thrown in. A young woman goes to work for a cooking magazine, discovers some hidden letters which may have historical significance, and becomes obsessed with finding the writer. Along the way, she finds herself and a new beau. The best part of the book is contained in the descriptions of the the food and other cooking related scenes.

The first thing is, this is a young adult book. It has short chapters and sentences, and the descriptions of the horror of the experience are not graphic. As does any children's book, it has hope. In fact, it is suffused with hope even though it describes the movement of a group of refuges moving through the interior of Prussia in an attempted escape from the Russians on the Wilhelm Gustloff during its fateful sinking. The book is told from the first-person perspective of four characters: a young nurse, an equally young art restorer, a Polish girl, and a German sailor. Chapters move from character to character, giving different perspectives on the same event as well as propelling the story along. Each of these four main characters truly comes to life, but so do many of the minor characters with whom they interact. The book is well constructed and does what the author intends, which is to send the reader to researching more about this maritime disaster. In today's world, it r...

This book has actually kindled an interest in food writing for me. I'm quite sure I have not enjoyed a book about food so much previously. Lohman has a conversational style that is easy to read as she takes a historical perspective on eight flavors that have gone from no American influence to staples in an American kitchen. These are black pepper, vanilla, garlic, soy sauce, MSG, chili, curry, and sriracha. We learn about the people who championed the flavors, how they made it into our culinary culture, why we like them, and what they are used for. Scattered throughout the chapters are recipes adapted from historical uses. I tried the fish curry and we really enjoyed it. In the end, the author offers some suggestions about what might become the ninth flavor, and I guess we'll just have to wait to see.

Who knew there were TED books as well as TED talks?!  This book, while not profound, does remind us of how important it is to find a place of stillness in our lives. While not actually using the word much, Pico Iyer encourages us to meditate and perhaps even take retreats. Rather than coming home from an experience-filled travel vacation exhausted, one can come home from a stillness-infused vacation refreshed. He talks a great deal about Leonard Cohen who, it surprised me to learn, was a master at the art of stillness. This is a very short book, really more of an essay with calming photos, and a very easy read. It gives the reader an entry point into, as the subtitle says, "adventures in going nowhere." The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere Pico Iver Published November 4th 2014 by Simon Schuster/ TED 9781476784724

If you want to fall in love with Mediterranean food, you can't do better than to explore Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbooks. Ottolenghi has several restaurants in London, though he was born and raised in Jerusalem and brings his Mediterranean background to his food. At this point, I've tried a couple of recipes, and I'll be making many more of them. While some of the ingredients can be harder to find, all spices and herbs are available at Amazon. Ottolenghi is no food snob, and he'd tell you to substitute something as close as possible if you can't find the ingredient. This works for most things, though I don't know what I'll substitute for samphire, a sort of seaweed. I started my Ottolenghi exploration with a marinated turkey breast. There were no unusual ingredients here, but marinating turkey in lemon, wine, and herbs (no sage in sight) produces a wonderful feast that is decidedly not your usual Thanksgiving fare. After smelling the turkey cooking, my ...

At one point in DESOLATION MOUNTAIN, a character says that things are getting weirder and weirder. This inexplicable sense of something being "off" permeates the book until, in the end, we find out what that thing is. A plane carrying a controversial senator and her family crashes in the Iron Lake Reservation near Cork O'Connor's home in northern Minnesota, and members of the local tribe are the first on the scene. The flight recorder cannot be found, and as mysterious and brutal military men and women show up along with the FBI and other investigators, the tribe members who witnessed the crash begin disappearing. Cork's old colleague and ex-Secret Service agent, Bo Thorson, also arrives, paid by a secret interested party. And, to top it off, there is an active underground militia operating in the area. Cork's sensitive son is on track to become an Ojibwe shaman, and he has had a vision that both obscures the source of the plane crash as it suggests the e...

Gorgeous photos showcase the beautiful food, and also give a sense of how this cookbook presents Chinese food that is different from the run-of-the-mill local Chinese joint. The authors, from the Mei Mei restaurant and food truck owners, discuss and encourage sustainable ingredients, so this will appeal to those who bring a social consciousness to their cooking. The ingredients are nearly all readily available, and there are recipes for sauces which might be harder to find. The gorgeous photos indicate presentations that are more "Western" in appearance. For instance, the beef with broccoli is a whole flank steak sliced in the center of a platter and surrounded with broccoli. The photos make this as much a coffee table book as a cookbook. Thank you to netgalley for providing a preview copy of the book for review. Double Awesome Chinese Food: Irresistible and Totally Achievable Recipes from our Chinese-American Kitchen Margaret Li, Irene Li, Andrew Li Expected publicat...