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Category Archives: Books

Celebrating Color with Ripe: A Fresh Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables {Win a signed copy of the book!}

Celebrating Color with Ripe: A Fresh Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables {Win a signed copy of the book!}

My RSS Reader is embarrassingly loaded. I have 1000+ unread items at any given time, but I can’t manage to edit the list of blogs I follow because I truly feel like I need to read all of them (even though I rarely have time to). When I feel desperately overwhelmed, I click the dreaded “Mark All as Read” button, which makes me feel awfully guilty (all that great content I missed!). But most of the time, when I have just 15 minutes to spare, I cherry-pick my favorite blogs and catch up.

One blog I always prioritize is Cheryl Sternman-Rule’s “5 Second Rule.“ What I love about Cheryl’s blog is that her posts are on the shorter side of things—so I can read many in a short amount of time—but her words pack a lot of punch. From one post to the next, she can be funny, serious, poetic, politicized, nostalgic, moving—most often in less than 500 words.

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Posted on April 24, 2012 • Category: Books, Giveaways • 36 Comments
{Book Review} Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty – and Puy Lentil Galettes

{Book Review} Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty – and Puy Lentil Galettes

I know, Plenty is hardly a new book, having been published last spring, but it looks as though its popularity isn’t due to run out of steam anytime soon. Still today, I continue to see Twitter, Facebook and blog posts written about it several times a week, and they are always positive, laudatory, even. It may be the best global PR campaign for vegetarianism ever.

Some may be surprised that the book’s author, chef Yotam Ottolenghi, is not himself a vegetarian, but nevertheless has become famous through his creative use of grains and vegetables at his London restaurant, Ottolenghi. It seemed a logical choice for the Guardian to recruit the chef in 2006 to write a new column called “The New Vegetarian”, but some readers were angry that “the new vegetarian wasn’t a vegetarian at all”. Over time, Ottolenghi’s creativity won readers over and the column’s popularity was channeled into this even more popular masterpiece of a cookbook, Plenty.

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Posted on July 27, 2011 • Category: Books, Mains, Recipes, Vegetarian • 6 Comments
Book Review: The Book of Tapas by Simone & Inés Ortega

Book Review: The Book of Tapas by Simone & Inés Ortega

I really take delight in food that is served in small portions.  Any cuisine that involves dining at a table full of small plates makes me happy. Whether it be Greece’s fresh mezze, Italy’s tasty antipasti, or Korea’s collection of delightful banchan (side dishes), I adore them so much that I make up entire meals composed of these little wonders.

Enter tapas. Some will say they’re less popular now than they were just a few years ago, but I continue to see menus featuring tapas appetizers or offering a large selection of small plates that you combine to form a meal, tapas-style. In North America, they are not as frequently served in Spanish restaurants as they are in fashionable hang-outs like lounges and cafés. Perhaps in as effort to make them as exciting as the sparkling and colorful martinis often offered on the same menus, tapas have been dressed and fancied up, at times to the point of resembling canapés more than authentic Spanish tapas.

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Posted on January 14, 2011 • Category: Books, Lunch, Quiches/Tarts, Recipes • 5 Comments
Book Week: Croque-Monsieur Bake, Nigella Express Review

Book Week: Croque-Monsieur Bake, Nigella Express Review

Nigella Lawson really knows how to get you excited about food. In her TV show, it’s her warm way of inviting you into her kitchen and her down-to-earth manners that make you believe she lives just like you do (even though she’s married to multi-millionaire Charles Saatchi and is herself now worth millions of pounds). In her books, it’s her voice: her funny and sometimes witty comments before each recipe, the no-fuss instructions and mouth-watering pictures (in which she’s often featured). Somehow, she manages to make you believe she’s one of your friends telling you about a fabulous recipe she just found out about.

And so Nigella Express is an enticing book. I found myself wanting to try many more recipes than I had time to. I sometimes doubted the flavor level of some recipes based on the ingredients list but, except for one crab salad recipe in which I more than doubled the dressing quantities to make it flavorful, I found the results very satisfying.

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Posted on June 29, 2010 • Category: Books, Breakfast & Brunch, Recipes, Sandwiches/Tartines • 4 Comments
Book Week: Seared Salmon with Singapore Noodles; Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Book Week: Seared Salmon with Singapore Noodles; Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Once I cooked and savored my second dinner prepared from Nigella Express, I started to really “get” the recipe style: a simple (and usually short) list of ingredients, down-to-earth and easy-to-follow instructions, carefully chosen flavorings, and accurate measurements and cooking times. Once again, both the main course and the cookies were quick to prepare but packed in flavor.

For the main course, I chose a fish dish with an Asian twist: Seared Salmon with Singapore Noodles. The book includes many Indian- and Asian-inspired recipes such as sautés, curries, and soups—dishes that are simple to prepare, keep well, and even improve when reheated. What I liked about this recipe was the use of Madras curry powder in both the noodles and the rub for the fish. I love this spice mix; you can rub it on any piece of meat, grill it, and you’re done. It’s hard to go wrong with a one-stop blend that includes curry leaves, turmeric, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, chili pepper, bay leaves, fenugreek, allspice, and black pepper!

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Posted on June 19, 2010 • Category: Books, Desserts, Fish/Seafood, Noodles/Sautés, Recipes • 5 Comments
Book Week: Lamb, Olive and Caramelized Onion Tagine; Blackberry and Cherry Crisp

Book Week: Lamb, Olive and Caramelized Onion Tagine; Blackberry and Cherry Crisp

The first dish I cooked from Nigella Express wasn’t fitting for this time of year, really, but I was drawn to the bold flavors of the lamb, garlic, black olives and caramelized onions blended together. The Lamb, Olive & Caramelized Onion Tagine, appearing in the “Quick Quick Slow” chapter, indeed takes a bit of time to cook but as with most mijotés, it’s even better made in advance and reheated: it allows the flavors to fully develop and to blend together. The dish is very quick to put together so simply plan on making your tagine over the weekend and portion it for a lightning-fast-to-prepare dinner later on in the week.

To make up for the rather autumnal main dish, I chose a very bright dessert: a Blackberry Crisp. I cheated a bit, however, mixing seasonal cherries with the berries. Crisps are very basic desserts but I liked Nigella’s nutty and crunchy topping blending sliced almonds and sunflower seeds.

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Posted on June 17, 2010 • Category: Books, Desserts, Meat, Recipes • 1 Comment
Introducing A New Feature: Book Week

Introducing A New Feature: Book Week

I have been a bit quiet over these last two weeks, and that’s because I caught what started as a cold and then turned into a nasty sinusitis. Awake and coughing most of the nights, I took this opportunity to plan the newest feature on Food Nouveau: Book Week.

I have a big collection of cookbooks (E would say huge) that fills a whole bookcase in the kitchen and spills over in the living room (last time I checked, I counted more than 180 of them). Cookbooks are my weakness: I can’t stop buying them and I read them like novels. Sometimes I bookmark recipes I plan on doing later on but most often, I will forget about them and almost never cook from my books.

During one of my sleepless nights I thought, I can appreciate great writing but how can I appreciate a book for its true worth if I never cook from it?

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Posted on June 15, 2010 • Category: Books • 1 Comment