Review by Booklist Review
In I've Got a Grill, Now What?! Pamela Richards ushers the beginning barbecuer through the basic steps of choosing a grill (charcoal or gas), using it properly, and learning to prepare increasingly more sophisticated food on it. She takes the most basic subject of grilling, the hamburger, and explains in elementary terms how to prepare the meat and how to grill it to achieve the desired results. She then introduces in sequence variations on the burger: cheeseburger, stuffed burger, lamb burger, turkey burger, and, finally, an elegant crab burger. This book is the latest installment of a popular series of how-to books, so there will be plenty of patron demand. Before American concepts of barbecuing appeared, Asian cultures took advantage of charcoal-fired grills to create their own barbecues. Su-Mei Yu brings together the barbecued meats, seafood, and vegetables of many Eastern cultures in Asian Grilling. The renowned satays of Thailand appear along with the sweet-sour peanut sauces that have made them so popular. Recipes for Indian tandoori and Japanese yakitori add to the mix. A highly idiosyncratic cross-cultural blend of Thai and Mexican flavors, Thai Quesadillas combine lemongrass and fish sauce with distinctively non-Asian cheeses. A section on grilled salads provides a good blending of grilled, spiced meats served with greens. Gardeners, especially beginners, frequently end up with bumper crops of zucchini. These vines are easy to grow, look beautiful as they blossom, and, if the weather is favorable, they produce bushels of squash. Now in its third edition, The Classic Zucchini Cookbook has proved a particular boon to those who can't just give away all those summer vegetables. Not restricting themselves solely to zucchini, authors Nancy C. Ralston, Marynor Jordan, and Andrea Chesman show the versatility of virtually all varieties of squashes in appetizers, soups, salads, main dishes, desserts, and baking. They are careful to appeal to both grown-ups' and kids' tastes with a penne casserole with cheese and zucchini. Their soups, whether hot and spicy or cold and curried, also appeal to a broad audience. There are plenty of squash-based desserts as well: cookies, cakes, and pumpkin pie. Summer also brings an abundance of leafy greens from the garden, just begging to be turned into refreshing salads. Salads also fill the bill on sultry afternoons when the cook doesn't want to sweat over a hot stove. Yet many people are still afraid to make their own dressings, relying too much on manufactured bottled versions. Sally Griffiths and her coauthor remedy this with 100 Great Salad Dressings. To make tasty dressings, the cook first must know the properties of the oils, vinegars, and seasonings that the dressings comprise. So Griffiths lays out the differences among oils, particularly the properties of different olive oils and their cousins, the nut oils. She does the same for vinegars, noting the usefulness of flavored varieties and of balsamic vinegar. Her recipes for salad dressings start with simple vinaigrette variations and go on to highly specialized ones such as Passion fruit and Lemon Balm Dressing and Caraway and Smoked Bacon Dressing. What tops off a summer meal better than a cold, rich ice-cream sundae? In A Month of Sundaes, Michael Turback traces the history of ice cream in America from Thomas Jefferson's "discovery" of its pleasures during his stay in France. Although Americans took ice cream to heart immediately, the sundae took another century to appear. Moving from its origins in Ithaca, New York, through its heyday during the Prohibition to its present-day ubiquity, Turback tells the history of a quintessential American dessert. The first sundae, it appears, was a "Cherry Sunday," invented by a druggist for his soda fountain. A local divine christened it for the Sabbath, but the spelling soon changed. Turback recounts the individual stories of many famous ice-cream parlors across the nation that made their reputations with ever larger and more fanciful combinations of ice creams, syrups, and fruits. Along the way he offers recipes for ice cream and for some of the most notable sundaes ever consumed. Summer chefs lucky enough to own their own ice-cream freezers, mechanical or electrical, can always use more recipes for ice cream that go beyond vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Ice Creams offers candied ginger, greengage plum, and honey banana. This tiny book also holds recipes for sorbets, granitas, and ices. Recipes for sauces and for some accompaniments on the order of Double Chocolate Sauce and Warm Toffee provide complements to the ice creams. Color pictures ensure that cooks know what their products are destined to look like when properly prepared. International cookbooks stay popular all year round, and Italian food continues to dominate the scene. Cucina Siciliana focuses on everyday foods from Italy's southernmost province. There, as Clarissa Hyman and her coauthor point out, the influence of North Africa varies typical Italian dishes. Couscous appears as well as accustomed pastas. Rich, ultrathick tomato paste dried in the sun colors many dishes, and mint's aromas season others. Hyman's recipes are relatively easy to follow, but keeping flavors authentic requires access to specialty shops for cheeses such as caciocavallo and sheep's milk ricotta. Spectacularly rendered photographs reproduce Sicily's intense Mediterranean colors. After Italian cooking, Chinese food probably ranks next in order to America's heart. Renowned for its ability to retain food's flavor and color, wok cooking has always been speedy. But noted chef Ken Hom proposes to make it the "fastest food in the East" in Ken Hom's Quick Wok. Each recipe has stated preparation time and cooking time, a boon to those who have to manage their kitchen time thoughtfully. Recipes produce standard fare, most of it simple, such as curried shrimp and lamb with garlic and basil. These recipes assume a pantry of basic Chinese staples. British terminology presents a modest barrier to American cooks, but the recipes' conscious simplicity makes them attractive to beginning wok cooks. Many Americans still confuse Spanish cooking with Mexican cooking, and this misunderstanding has impeded the popularity of this European cuisine in the U.S. Janet Mendel has spent more than three decades in Spain, collecting recipes from every part of the nation. My Kitchen in Spain presents the best of her gleanings. Little Gypsy Pork Rolls, deep-fried pork cutlets enrobing bits of melted cheese, star among Mandel's tapas, those little bar snacks currently the rage across America. More substantial fare includes Spain's notable paella, a combination of meats and seafood flavoring saffron rice. Mandel also records paella made with pasta replacing the rice. Poor Folk's Potatoes offers a vegetarian dish full of flavor from its tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and garlic. Desserts include a sampling of Spanish candies. A brief list of mail-order sources increases the book's utility. These regional Spanish recipes are bound to excite cooks looking for something new to add to their repertoires. The cooking of the former Communist states of southeast Europe has been too long neglected. Galia Sperber brings back into the spotlight The Art of Romanian Cooking. Currently a research physician in London, Sperber recalls the foods of her youth in Romania, dishes her grandmother made. Romanian food uses many of the same ingredients as neighboring countries' recipes, and there are some obvious Turkish influences as well. Appetizers consist of small stuffed dishes using tart shells, breads, and vegetables. Romania's national soup, ciorba, recalls borscht and uses many of the same root vegetables along with fragrant dill. Italian influence reveals itself in mamaliga, Romania's version of polenta. De
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
The latest book from well-known cookbook author and teacher Hom includes recipes inspired by India, Thailand, and China. In addition to Hom's versions of perennial favorites such as Salt and Pepper Prawns (shrimp, that is the book was first published in England), there are such delectable choices as Chicken with Onion and Ginger Sauce and Baby Corn with Black Beans and Chili. All are quick and easy, and all are illustrated with photographs, many of them full page. Not to be confused with Hugh Carpenter and Teri Sandison's recent Wok Fast, with its generally "fusion-style" recipes, Hom's more substantial title is recommended for most collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
