Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
2009 IACP Cookbook Award Finalists
Culinary Institute America Cookbook Collection By Culinary Institute America
Jewish Home Cooking By Arthur Schwartzs
Jewish Home Cooking
By Arthur Schwartzs
2009 IACP Cookbook Award Finalists
And
2009 James Beard Foundation Awards Nominees
Buy This Book
Visit Arthur Schwartzs
Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited
Schwartz (Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food) breathes life into Yiddish cooking traditions now missing from most cities' main streets as well as many Jewish tables. His colorful stories are so distinctive and charming that even someone who has never heard Schwartz's radio show or seen him on TV will feel his warm personality and love for food radiating from the page. Oddly, even the shorter anecdotes often run longer than the actual recipes; anyone intending to cook from the book should have some kitchen experience or risk frustration at the often brief instructions. Dishes run the gamut from beloved appetizers like gefilte fish to classic meat and dairy main items (cholent, blintzes), plus less familiar items like onion cookies and Hungarian shlishkas (light potato dumplings). Schwartz intersperses engaging commentary on everything from farfel and matzo to Romanian steakhouses and why Jews like Chinese food. Those with Westernized palates may recoil at the thought of gelled calf's feet, but Schwartz shows how stereotypically heavy Ashkenazi food can be improved and made at least somewhat lighter when prepared properly. Cooks and readers from Schwartz's generation and earlier, who know firsthand what he's talking about, will appreciate this delightful new book for the world it evokes as much as for the recipes. (Apr.)
See
Techniques Of Healthy Cooking
The Culinary Institute of America (CIA)
2009 IACP Cookbook Award Finalists
Buy This Book
2009 James Beard Foundation Awards Nominees
Screen Doors and Sweet Tea By Martha Foose
Screen Doors and Sweet Tea By Martha Foose
Buy This Book
2009 James Beard Foundation Awards Nominees
Screen Doors & Sweet Tea, by Martha Hall Foose, hardcover, 256 pages
The 10 Best Cookbooks for Summer
After flitting from Mexico to India and other equatorial points, this year the summer's warm-climate cookbooks centered on the American South. The best of many contenders is Screen Doors & Sweet Tea, a wisecracking, storytelling treasury of Southern dishes, both the well-known (cornbread, lady peas, juleps) and the slightly less familiar. Some, like Apricot Rice Salad, have an elegant, dinner-on-the-porch feel. Others (All for Okra and Okra for All), are resolutely egalitarian.
Foose has a marvelous gift for the pithy turn of phrase, and all of her recipes carry intriguing subtitles: "Proper Fried Chicken: My Thoughts, at Least," "Lunch Counter Egg Salad Sandwich: Ode to Waxed Paper," "Baked Macaroni and Cheese: A Vegetable in Some States."
As I see it, there are two ideal ways to enjoy this book: 1) Pick out your favorites, cook your way through them one by one, and gorge yourself silly; or 2) sit on the porch and read it while somebody makes you a julep. Either will do just fine.
June 1, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Jewish Home Cooking By Arthur Schwartzs
Jewish Home Cooking
By Arthur Schwartzs
2009 IACP Cookbook Award Finalists
And
2009 James Beard Foundation Awards Nominees
Buy This Book
Visit Arthur Schwartzs
Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited
Schwartz (Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food) breathes life into Yiddish cooking traditions now missing from most cities' main streets as well as many Jewish tables. His colorful stories are so distinctive and charming that even someone who has never heard Schwartz's radio show or seen him on TV will feel his warm personality and love for food radiating from the page. Oddly, even the shorter anecdotes often run longer than the actual recipes; anyone intending to cook from the book should have some kitchen experience or risk frustration at the often brief instructions. Dishes run the gamut from beloved appetizers like gefilte fish to classic meat and dairy main items (cholent, blintzes), plus less familiar items like onion cookies and Hungarian shlishkas (light potato dumplings). Schwartz intersperses engaging commentary on everything from farfel and matzo to Romanian steakhouses and why Jews like Chinese food. Those with Westernized palates may recoil at the thought of gelled calf's feet, but Schwartz shows how stereotypically heavy Ashkenazi food can be improved and made at least somewhat lighter when prepared properly. Cooks and readers from Schwartz's generation and earlier, who know firsthand what he's talking about, will appreciate this delightful new book for the world it evokes as much as for the recipes. (Apr.)
SeeSaturday, March 21, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Roasted Tomatoes
8 ripe plum tomatoes sliced in half lengthwise,
3 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil,
2 table spoons of sugar,
preheat oven to 375 degrees,
place tomatoes cut side up on baking sheet,
drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with sugar, sea salt and freshly ground pepper.
Roast for one and one half hours, set aside to cool,
Can be refrigerated for up to two days and be put in your favorite recipes.
We will be using them in a chicken dish for dinner tonight.
Thanks to Sheila Lukin for these recipes from the book 10 Sheila Lukin by Workman Pub.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tillie Lays An Egg By Terry Golson and Ben Fink
Tillie Lays An Egg
By Terry Golson and Ben Fink
Buy This Book
See Terry's Hens live
Ben's Web Site
Scholastic’s Spring Chickens
By John A. Sellers, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 12/18/2008
Chickens and hens are familiar sights in picture books, going all the way back to Chicken Little. But fictitious fowl will need to make room for some real hens, with next month’s publication of Terry Golson’s Tillie Lays an Egg (Scholastic Press). Though Golson has written several cookbooks over the years, including 1,000 Lowfat Recipes (Wiley) and The Farmstead Egg Cookbook (St. Martin’s), this marks her first book for children.
In the book, Tillie, an adventurous bantam White Leghorn, hunts for the perfect place to lay her eggs in and around Golson’s Massachusetts property—out in the garden, atop the breakfast table and in the laundry room, among other spots. Readers are prompted to find where the egg is hidden on each page, as Tillie’s fellow hens look on.
Golson’s hens have already spent some time in the public eye, thanks to her Web site The HenCam, which she has operated since 2005. The Web cam on the site offers a peek into the lives of the chickens (and a rabbit) she and her family keep in their hen house at their home outside Boston. The HenCam also features Golson’s blog about her experiences keeping hens, and attracts more than 10,000 unique visitors each month. “A lot of people who work in cubicles watch the HenCam and tell me it saves their sanity,” says Golson.
The author had been involved with a writers’ group for several years before she thought about writing a children’s book (she had joined to try to get outside what she calls her “food voice,” which she uses in her cookbooks). Following a successful session with photographer Ben Fink for Golson’s The Farmstead Egg Cookbook,the author began to brainstorm other ways to work with the award-winning food photographer. “I wanted to do more with him, but a cookbook wasn’t in sight,” she says. “Then the proverbial light bulb went off over my head. I had this vision of posing my hens in tableaux filled with vintage chicken tchotchkes.”
One of Golson’s agents (she has another for her cookbooks), Carrie Hannigan of Russell & Volkening, submitted the proposal to Scholastic. “[Terry] had a vision,” recalls David Saylor, v-p and associate publisher at Scholastic. “This one hen of hers had great personality, and she wanted to create this book around this chicken.” Saylor and Scholastic editor Kara LaReau liked the concept—“everyone loves chickens,” Saylor notes—and LaReau acquired the book in summer 2006.
Adding to the concept’s appeal was Fink’s photography, which Saylor calls “beautiful and moody,” as well as Golson’s extensive collection of chicken-related ephemera. “Anyone who has chickens will tell you that they are always being given chicken-themed objects, like oven mitts and memo holders,” Golson says. “I’ve tried, over the years, not to be overrun with the stuff, although there’s always been room for the special object.” (She adds that her collection “grew exponentially,” once she began collecting with the book in mind.)
The book’s photographs are filled with these items—which include tins, glassware, fabrics and board games—giving readers numerous details to pore over as they search for Tillie’s eggs. “We were going for a vintage ’40s or ’50s feel, which is where a lot of this ephemera is from,” says Saylor. “We tried to give it a sweet, charming Americana look.”
Scholastic is hoping that the photographs will help distinguish the book from illustrated farm- and chicken-themed titles for children on the market. But getting the perfect shot was not always easy. “It’s difficult to capture the one moment that needs illustrating in a way that’s not static,” Golson says. “Birds don’t have smiling mouths, etc., to convey expression. So we had to get that one fleeting moment when Snowball had exactly the right “eye,” was turned exactly the right way, [and] the lighting was just right.”
But Golson says that Tillie—Snowball in real life—was a good sport during the photo shoots (Scholastic renamed her for the book, to avoid giving it a seasonal-sounding title). “I had spent months training her to pose, so she was comfortable in all of the unusual situations,” Golson says, adding that positive reinforcement helped, too. “She got a lot of treats. Chickens are very food-motivated!”
Although Snowball/Tillie died this past year, as have some of the other hens featured in Tillie Lays an Egg, Golson maintains a practical outlook, noting that hens are not bred for longevity. “It’s great to have Ben’s photos to remember them by,” says the author. “But I have new hens that fill the coop with a lot of personality and activity.” Those include three new bantam White Leghorns, who Golson calls “the actresses who play Tillie.”
Golson is currently working on a few picture book ideas, including a possible follow-up to Tillie Lays an Egg, and her agent is shopping an adult novel (a romantic comedy) as well. And next spring, HenCam viewers could get a glimpse of two planned additions to Golson’s home—a pair of mini-goats. Says Golson, “I’m sure they’ll have adventures that will need telling.”
Egg-static Librarians Get Behind Tillie
This article originally appeared in SLJ's Extra Helping. Sign up now!
By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 3/23/2009 2:05:00 PM
Librarians and teachers are in egg-stasy over Terry Golson’s new children’s book, Tillie Lays an Egg (Scholastic, 2009), and her hencam, which dovetails with the fanciful tale.
“There’s been a lot of spontaneity and fun around the book,” says Golson from her home in Carlisle, MA. “I think what they’re responding to is my sheer joy and love of my chickens.”
At the Chicago Ridge Public Library in Illinois, librarians are holding a month-long chicken fest they’ve tagged "Chick-It-Out," which ties into the book. There are crafts, contests, and the library is even planning to raise chicks (with its own webcam), which, if all goes well, should crack their way into the world around April 28th.
“I think this is the right book at the right time,” says Constance VanSwol, head of youth servi
Golson’s decision to write a book around her hens seemed only natural to her. As the author of The Farmstead Egg Cookbook (St. Martin's, 2006), she had an affinity for her feathered friends. Golson’s owned a brood of chickens, now numbered at 13, for the last 14 years. “I started with one lone, leftover 4-H project, a little white chicken,” says Golson. “But if you have only one chicken it gets lonely, so you have to get more.”
The hencam, which Golson says clocks between 10,000 to 15,000 unique visitors a month, actually outdates Tillie. Golson says her “nerd” husband started it four years ago when they moved to a bigger lot with electricity that ran to the barn.
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| Librarians are egg-static over Terry Golson’s new children’s book, Tillie Lays an Egg (Scholastic, 2009). |
The Chicago Ridge Public Library’s event may be an elaborate celebration for one book—but VanSwol says it hasn’t proved expensive. By getting the eggs and incubator donated, VanSwol thinks they’re spending no more than about $100 for the remainder of the crafts and giveaways planned for the month. They’re also splurging for T-shirts that read, “Chick-It-Out,” which was a piece of fan love even Golson couldn’t pass up. For a T-shirt, she traded a signed copy of the book, which will go to a lucky patron.
Fans may have more to look forward to from Golson—although they might have to settle for a different farmland friend. New book ideas are already hatching, plus Golson plans to buy two goats, and her husband has promised a goatcam to follow.
But those wishing for another chicken fest may have to put that hope on simmer.
“Of the three children’s books that my agent is currently shopping around,” adds Golson, “two do not have chickens in them!”
