Mmmm... Cookbooks
I hope you’ve had a chance to take a look at our Holiday Gift Guide online. The non-virtual version will be available momentarily.
This week I figured I’d go through some more titles in the guide… specifically the cookbooks we chose this year. It seems like the right thing to do since the weather has finally turned cold (there’s even snow on the ground, or at least there is as I write this, the day before it gets floated out into the ether). With the cold comes a tendency to get reacquainted with those hearty roots and tubers and the dark, leafy greens, and the whole process of full on, hours long cooking. It’s not so bad to have the oven cranking out 375º when the insulation in your apartment is pretty crappy and the windows shudder every time a gust of wind blows down the street. In fact, one could say it’s value-added. Not only will there be delicious victuals to eat, there’ll be a bit of extra warmth to hold onto before crawling into the multi-blanketed bed.
To that, I submit Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food, Simone & Inez Ortega’s 1080 Recipes, and Mark Bittmann’s How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. Waters’ book is arguably the biggest cookbook of the year and not for nothing as they say in places New York-y. Waters is driven by a passion for locally grown, organic, seasonal food and this book continues to promote this while adding invaluable kitchen techniques and over 200 fantastic recipes. 1080 Recipes has the big, boxy look of another Phaidon phenomenon, The Silver Spoon, but turns our interests from Italy to Spain. This is surely the culinary bible of its region, replete with delicious recipes. And of course Bittman’s continuing saga of How To lands this time on Vegetarian fare and his boundless enthusiasm for simply prepared yet transcendent food follows.
And of course, Secret Ingredients, though not a cookbook per se, is the perfect accompaniment to a dinner prepared for one with maybe a glass of wine (who needs witty repartee when you have The New Yorker), while Bourdain’s No Reservations could handily upstage any reality-based TV programming that one might be tempted to slog through under a blanket and a cat on a wintry eve.
Of course, the best of all possible worlds is a delicious home-cooked meal prepared by someone else, perhaps, someone who received one of these delightful books as a gift from you.
This week I figured I’d go through some more titles in the guide… specifically the cookbooks we chose this year. It seems like the right thing to do since the weather has finally turned cold (there’s even snow on the ground, or at least there is as I write this, the day before it gets floated out into the ether). With the cold comes a tendency to get reacquainted with those hearty roots and tubers and the dark, leafy greens, and the whole process of full on, hours long cooking. It’s not so bad to have the oven cranking out 375º when the insulation in your apartment is pretty crappy and the windows shudder every time a gust of wind blows down the street. In fact, one could say it’s value-added. Not only will there be delicious victuals to eat, there’ll be a bit of extra warmth to hold onto before crawling into the multi-blanketed bed.
To that, I submit Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food, Simone & Inez Ortega’s 1080 Recipes, and Mark Bittmann’s How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. Waters’ book is arguably the biggest cookbook of the year and not for nothing as they say in places New York-y. Waters is driven by a passion for locally grown, organic, seasonal food and this book continues to promote this while adding invaluable kitchen techniques and over 200 fantastic recipes. 1080 Recipes has the big, boxy look of another Phaidon phenomenon, The Silver Spoon, but turns our interests from Italy to Spain. This is surely the culinary bible of its region, replete with delicious recipes. And of course Bittman’s continuing saga of How To lands this time on Vegetarian fare and his boundless enthusiasm for simply prepared yet transcendent food follows.
And of course, Secret Ingredients, though not a cookbook per se, is the perfect accompaniment to a dinner prepared for one with maybe a glass of wine (who needs witty repartee when you have The New Yorker), while Bourdain’s No Reservations could handily upstage any reality-based TV programming that one might be tempted to slog through under a blanket and a cat on a wintry eve.
Of course, the best of all possible worlds is a delicious home-cooked meal prepared by someone else, perhaps, someone who received one of these delightful books as a gift from you.
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