Are you one of those people who skips straight to the last page of a whodunnit? Do you read a cookbook review in frustration and haste, skimming the background blurb to find out whether the book was any good or not? Did I love it, did I kinda like it, is it already in the ... Read more »
It’s interesting how one book can expose a huge gap in my food knowledge that I didn’t know I had. Amber & Rye is subtitled “A Baltic Food Journey – Estonia · Latvia · Lithuania”, and to my chagrin, I opened it with no idea at all what to expect. Zuza Zak helpfully prefaces the ... Read more »
We’re brought up in the Western world with very definitive views on what comprises “comfort” and “easy” in food terms. A slice of bread slathered in butter, a biscuit with a cuppa, a slice of cake, a takeaway pizza loaded with anchovies and pineapple (yeah, sorry not sorry), a hot, crisp sugared doughnut from the ... Read more »
Mely Martínez describes this book as traditional home-style recipes that capture the flavours and memories of Mexico, and the delicately punchy red and gold frontispiece and cover do give that feel. The author starts with a warm and engaging introduction to herself, her life and her love of food, explaining how The Mexican Home Kitchen ... Read more »
There are a few heavyweights in Scandi food whose restaurants pop up in conversation with restless frequency, breathless descriptions of experience and a powerful sense of place bubbling on the lips of critics and food-lovers. Noma, Ekstedt, Fäviken, Frantzén, Maaemo, Geranium. Names like Rene Redzepi and the author of this book, Magnus Nilsson, evoke a ... Read more »
Condiments is an intriguing and unusual concept for a book, bombarded as we are on every supermarket and deli shelf with condiments of seemingly endless variety. In her single page introduction, Caroline Dafgard Widnersson explains that making condiments is her own personal hobby, likening it to raising children, and her mission in bringing the hobby ... Read more »
Marianna Leivatitaki, author of Aegean: Recipes from the Mountains to the Sea, spent her childhood steeped in the atmosphere of her family’s seafood taverna in Crete, immersed in ingredients, and the simplicity and purity of recipes she gathered in her notebook scribbles from the women cooking in Chania’s seafront restaurants. Her heritage is fresh fish from ... Read more »
Romania was a complete mystery to me. The closest I’d come was giving a desperately homesick, mosquito-bitten Romanian waitress in a remote Greek village a bottle of my repellent spray. She responded with heartfelt thanks and an equally heartfelt description of the beauty, warmth and vibrancy of her homeland. The poignant depth of her desire ... Read more »
Recently, I reviewed Tim Anderson’s Vegan Japaneasy. Now I want to tell you about his previous title, Japaneasy. Stylistically – in voice and in approach – both cookbooks are stamped with the humour, personality, skill and enthusiasm of their author, so I’ll avoid duplicating my own equally enthusiastic approval of all four traits (warning: probably ... Read more »
The second best thing about Tim Anderson’s Vegan Japaneasy cookbook is that it makes me laugh. On almost every page a tongue in cheek note, an off the wall comment or a daft joke catches my eye. Tim doesn’t dilute his personality or his tastes in this book. He talks with love about hunks of ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]