Monday, December 22, 2008

Japanese Homestyle Cooking or Oxford Companion to Italian Food

Japanese Homestyle Cooking

Author: Tokiko Suzuki

A comprehensive, fully illustrated cookbook of popular Japanese recipes Japanese Homestyle Cooking makes use of each season's most plentiful ingredients for preparing delicious meals. Including over 135 recipes, this comprehensive cookbook brings the most popular meals in Japanese homes to your home.
The menu variety is stunning, with foods that are simmered, broiled, pan-fried, deep-fried, steamed, and dressed with vinegar. Recipes include Sashimi, one-pot meals, rice, noodles, soups and more. Since Japanese cuisine is world renowned for using healthful ingredients it is no surprise that the dishes featured here are ideal for health-conscious and weight-conscious consumers.
All dishes are beautifully photographed in color and include fully illustrated, easy-to-follow directions. A special feature provides an illustrated listing of common Japanese utensils with directions for their proper use. Japanese Homestyle Cooking is the best reference you'll find for making delicious, healthy Japanese meals everyday.



New interesting book: Gaias Kitchen or Food and Wine Wine Guide 2008

Oxford Companion to Italian Food

Author: Gillian Riley

Here is an inspiring, wide-ranging A-Z guide to one of the world's best-loved cuisines. Designed for cooks and consumers alike, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food covers all aspects of the history and culture of Italian gastronomy, from dishes, ingredients, and delicacies to cooking methods and implements, regional specialties, the universal appeal of Italian cuisine, influences from outside Italy, and much more.
Following in the footsteps of princes and popes, vagabond artists and cunning peasants, austere scholars and generations of unknown, unremembered women who shaped pasta, moulded cheeses and lovingly tended their cooking pots, Gillian Riley celebrates a heritage of amazing richness and delight. She brings equal measures of enthusiasm and expertise to her writing, and her entries read like mini-essays, laced with wit and gastronomical erudition, marked throughout by descriptive brilliance, and entirely free of the pompous tone that afflicts so much writing about food.

The Companion is attentive to both tradition and innovation in Italian cooking, and covers an extraordinary range of information, from Anonimo Toscano, a medieval cookbook, to Bartolomeo Bimbi, a Florentine painter commissioned by Cosimo de Medici to paint portraits of vegetables, to Paglierina di Rifreddo, a young cheese made of unskimmed cows' milk, to zuppa inglese, a dessert invented by 19th century Neapolitan pastry chefs. Major topics receive extended treatment. The entry for Parmesan, for example, runs to more than 2,000 words and includes information on its remarkable nutritional value, the region where it is produced, the breed of cow used to produce it (the razza reggiana, or vaccherosse), the role of the cheese maker, the origin of its name, Moliere's deathbed demand for it, its frequent and lustrous depiction in 16th and 17th century paintings, and the proper method of serving, where Riley admonishes: "One disdains the phallic peppermill, but must always appreciate the attentive grating, at the table, of parmesan over pasta or soup, as magical in its way as shavings of truffles." Such is the scope and flavor of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food.
For anyone with a hunger to learn more about the history, culture and variety of Italian cuisine, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food offers endless satisfactions.

Kathleen A. Welton - Library Journal

Widely praised by leading Italian chefs and including a foreword by Mario Batali, this A-to-Z guide to Italian food and culture includes more than 900 articles on everything from medieval cookbooks and Italian food in Renaissance painting to the latest cooking methods and regional delicacies. The content is engaging and appetizing and is equally enthralling whether discussing history or flavor, as it provides answers to questions great and small about all things Italian. The book is organized alphabetically, but its content is also accessible by subject, which include art and culture; baked goods; biographies; cheese and milk products; culinary terms; drinks and beverages; fish and seafood; fruits, vegetables, and nuts; herbs, spices, and condiments; history and society; meat and meat products; pasta and rice; prepared food and dishes; preparing, serving, and eating; regional cuisine; and sweets and confectionary. While photos are scattered throughout, more care could have been given to the book's visual presentation with the inclusion of additional images as well as sidebars, favorite recipes, and perhaps a color insert. Nevertheless, the book will delight readers and meets its goal of providing browsing pleasure. The author clearly shares her passion for food, having written many books on food and art, including Renaissance Recipesand A Feast for the Eyes.



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