Hummus is made of chickpeas, tahini, garlic, and lemon; pesto is made of basil, garlic, pine nuts, and extra-virgin olive oil. (With some camps arguing for Parmesan as an essential fifth ingredient.) Many of the best recipes are made of four ingredients or fewer. But despite that, most cookbooks centered on just-a-few-ingredient recipes opt for [...]
As a culinary professional with hundreds of cookbooks in my collection, I’m hard-pressed to say what kind of cookbook is my favorite. Ethnic? Technique-driven? Ingredient-driven? With a specialty diet focus? Well, I’d have to say that The No-Cook, No-Bake Cookbook represents an engaging intersection of everything I love. Matt Kadey has tapped into a variety [...]
Diet plans come and go (most are disproved at some point), but there are a few core concepts that make a lot of sense. One of those is focusing on eating foods low on the GI, or glycemic index. That means foods that don’t cause a sharp spike in blood sugar, and that in turn [...]
I’m going to make a bold statement here and say that Indian food is the new Italian. It’s everywhere! And that’s a magnificent thing, because Indian cuisine is fresh, flavorful, and features a bevy of spices and veggies. In Suneeta’s thoughtful book, she not only includes recipes of every category (my favorites are the ones [...]
Burritos, enchiladas, tacos, tamales, salsas … in other words, all the Mexican dishes we like best! This cookbook offers 200 classic recipes that are bound to make you hungry at the mere thought of them. Plus, author Kelley Coffeen has also included a useful list of food terms along with detailed descriptions of essential ingredients. [...]
This book is a treasure trove! If you’ve never made raw food before, don’t worry — authors David Côté and Mathieu Gallant have helpfully included a fully photographed section of essential ingredients as well as “Techniques” chapter that includes an at-a-glance table of soaking times for various nuts, seeds, and grains. (Frankly, even if you’ve [...]
I’m not a big fan of sweet snacks — can’t remember the last time I had a Ho-Ho — but if I were going to indulge in Oreos or Raspberry Zingers, I would much rather make them myself. And now I can! Yes, Casey Barber has cracked the code on how to create all of [...]
Reading Carsten Bothe’s Dutch Oven is a little bit like traveling through time: you meet trappers, cowboys, and even the settlers who became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch despite coming from Germany (a misnomer, Carsten suggests, that may stem from the fact that the word deutsch means “German” but sounds like it means “Dutch”). Dutch [...]
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As an avid whole-grain gluten-free cook and baker myself, I found a lot to love in Judith’s beautifully photographed book. It’s all here: a deliciously satisfying array of recipes, information on what it means to be gluten-free, and a handy reference guide to various whole grains. Perhaps because this is a Canadian cookbook, I came [...]
Continue reading about The Complete Whole-Grain Gluten-Free Cookbook
If you’ve ever contemplated a career in the restaurant industry or if you’ve ever been curious about how chefs and their crews manage to produce hundreds of unique meals every night, you’ll love this book. Scott Haas went behind the scenes for 18 months to see exactly how the back of the house — that’s [...]
