Book Description
As owner and proprietor of The Lady & Sons restaurant in Savannah, Paula Deen is one of the South’s most celebrated chefs. Now two of her cherished culinary classics–The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook and The Lady & Sons, Too!–have been combined into one delicious volume, available in hardcover for the first time.
As a special treat,
Paula Deen’s Kitchen Classics includes candid photos from Paula’s recent wedding, as well as scrumptious new dishes from the reception, tasty creations that have never appeared in any of her other books.
Here are hundreds of mouthwatering, easy-to-follow recipes. For appetizers, soups, and salads, whip up some Georgia Spiced Pecans, Mini Onion Quiches, She Crab Soup, and Gingersnap Pear Salad. The delectable main courses will be the hit of any family supper, Sunday picnic, or dinner party. Who can resist Beaufort Shrimp Pie, The Lady’s Oven-Roasted Ribs, Ron’s Grilled Peanut Butter Ham, or Hot Savannah Chicken Salad Casserole?
Enhance any meal with heavenly side dishes like Crunchy New Potatoes, Collard Greens, and, of course, Fried Green Tomatoes. And what meal is complete without sinful desserts–from Mississippi Mud Cake and Cherry Cream Cheese Pie to Sliced Nut Cookies and Butterscotch Delight? Is your stomach growling yet?
Seasoned with Paula’s practical kitchen hints and her friendly, no-nonsense observations,
Paula Deen’s Kitchen Classics is the perfect gift for experienced cooks, budding chefs, and anyone who loves comfort food.
Customer Reviews:
Southern delights.......2007-09-20
Paula makes cooking easy and fun. Let's face it folks........this is NOT Cordon Bleu! The recipes are very good and makes use of plenty of 'helper' ingredients like canned cream style soups, cake mixes and self rising flour. Boy, does she ever use lots of butter!! It is a book I'll use often cuz it makes sense in our busy lives. The 'helper' ingredients were a surprise but so sensible. Plus, you get two of her books in one binding.
My wife loves it........2007-09-14
My wife is addicted to the Food Network, and her favorite hostess/chef is Paula Deen. I bought her this book for her birthday, and she proceeded to read it like a novel. She quickly picked out her favorite recipes and made a shopping list right away. She hasn't told me when I get a taste of the new recipes, but I can't wait.
Just wonderful with a stick of butter!.......2007-07-05
I started watching Paula Deen and like so many folks just thought she was wonderful. Her Food Network Chefography was great and showed she had an idea and a need and went for it. I purchased these book for my cooking challenged cousin as I had tried a couple of her recipies and they were fabulous, just no way of messing up. I just recently tried her Red Velvet cake for a cousin and he was thrilled. What really made me look at her books was a friend who baked Paula's sour cream pound cake with caramel topping, this was wonderful!!! As a cake baker, myself, I really don't eat a lot of cake but I'm always willing to have a slice especially if I didn't have to bake it, THIS CAKE WAS WONDERFUL! I had a couple of slices!!! I went to library and got all of her books that I could find and now I am going to buy a couple of them for myself! I unfortunately did not like the format for her friends cookbook and would rather just watch Paula's Party then read it but the recipies are still great. I hope you'll enjoy her TV shows and books too! and keep a stick of butter handy.
Paula is so entertaining...........2007-05-14
Along with those decadent recipies, Paula is so funny and entertaining. Recipies are easy to follow....tasty and an eye pleaser. Enjoy using the book on a regular basis....favorite recipie....Shrimp stuffed wrapped with bacon....Delicious!!!!
Great Book.......2007-05-13
Its a good Book but not what we thought it would be. But worth the money.
Book Description
Includes nearly 200 family recipes from America's heartland, a culinary folk history of the Indiana Amish and Mennonites. This celebration of farm life is a companion volume to the PBS series hosted by Adams.
64 full-color photographs.
Customer Reviews:
Terrific Cookbook!.......2007-07-29
The recipes are hearty and filling, taste and look great too. My husband raves each time something new comes from this book!
--Very enjoyable--.......2006-04-20
COOKING FROM QUILT COUNTRY is a pleasure to read. The title comes from the fact that Amish and Mennonite people are famous for their quilt making skills.
This book gives a little background of the Mennonite and Amish sects and how they came into existence. The roots of the two groups originated with the Protestant Reformation and the Swiss Anabaptist movement. The leader was a Dutch priest by the name of Menno Simons.
This very informative book is filled with wonderful recipes and many photographs. Because the Mennonites and Amish have traditionally been farmers, they're also known for their wonderful foods. There are recipes for everyone here, but I was especially interested in the different vegetable dishes that are presented.
98% relaible.......2005-12-04
book received in great shape and took less then four days to receive
Cooking From Quilt Country is perfection.......2005-08-02
Cooking From Quilt Country is by far the best cookbook (and I have many) that I have ever seen. Whether you want to lose weight or gain weight , recipies can be adapted for your own use and taste . Best of all, recipies can be done "by the book itself". I would honestly say this could be the only cookbook one woulld ever need and definitely would make a lovely gift!
This is a wonderful cookbook........2005-06-18
There are dozens of recipes I want to try. I tried the custard cornbread and there will be no going back---this is my new favorite cornbread recipe. And I had an excellent recipe which was often requested, but this is head and shoulders above it! And what a beautiful book! The photos are superlative. Wonderful for both reading and cooking.
Book Description
Reading this remarkable cookbook-cum-scrapbook by Jake Tilson is like encountering a wonderful friend you haven't seen in years, and setting off together on a culinary journey through four countries to cook and have myriad happy experiences, and meet scores of fascinating people along the way.
It might be a monk singing an awe-inspiring rendition of "Ave Maria" in a family-run restaurant in Cortona, Italy, or a master pancake flipper at a breakfast haven in New York City. Or a recipe for the divine gnocchi-like spinach dumplings served in Tuscany.
With eighty recipes that are far-ranging and delicious, you'll learn to make black beans the Dominican way, couscous in the Tunisian fashion, and burritos flavored with Mexican beer and a chipotle chile.
And as you cook your way through his book, you'll fall in love with Jake's artistic family and their obsession with cooking and eating. Great characters all and, like many of us, as likely to spend their vacations wandering food markets as museums, then returning home with overweight luggage crammed full of local foods.
Anyone who thinks twice about tossing out a food can with a great label, who treasures stubs and receipts from travel for the experiences they evoke, or who feels nostalgic for kitchens of the past, will find a kindred soul in these pages.
And if you're someone without an urge to collect, or who'd just as soon stay and cook closer to home, you will be every bit as delighted with this dazzling collection of recipes.
Tilson presents his recipes in a remarkably original way. Subtly embedded in his wonderful descriptions, in tales told in his very engaging prose, is the reminder that cooking, sharing and eating meals with family and friends is of utmost importance in our lives.
Customer Reviews:
Inspiring.......2007-02-20
When I purchased this book (online) I thought it would be a kind of Peter Mayle food-essay book. Warning: This book is Peter Mayle on steroids. And it is fabulous. What intriguing recipes! But this book is so much more than recipes. The writing is evocative and the stories transcend cultures. The art, of course, adds an interesting element. But my favorite images are the photos of real family kitchens, cluttered with real life and objects used to nourish a family.
Amazon.com
You can hold this book the way you hold a child's hand. And you can let this book show you a whole new world, the way a child will reveal the secrets of a secret world if you take the time to stop and watch and listen. God bless Mildred Council and the time she took to get it all down in Mama Dip's Kitchen. And it's not just the recipes that come out of a life of good cooking--there's a great deal of Mildred Council in these pages, and we are better off for the reading, the cooking, and the sharing.
In her acknowledgments, Mildred Council thanks a woman who helped with the book. Then she thanks the woman's children, "Shawn and Chelsea, for playing so nicely while we flipped so many pages." She ends her cookbook with a recipe for a child's birthday party. Her enthusiasm for life growing through all its stages can be found on every page. "I realized my name was my earthly soul," she writes, "which needed to be tended like the pumpkin seed--tended, tilled, fed, and harvested, to have a good life. And that's what I tried to do ever since for my family and myself."
Part of that tending has been owning and operating Dip's, a popular Chapel Hill, North Carolina restaurant where she serves the kind of country food she grew up cooking. Mildred Council calls her style of cooking "dump cooking" because she scoops up ingredients without measuring and "dumps" them in the bowl or pan. It took her a good deal of time to measure out what she was doing so instinctively to be able to share her work as written recipes. But she encourages every cook to use her recipes like a sewing pattern, to experiment, to stretch here and cut there to make the food you like.
Mama Dip's Kitchen is a compendium of straightforward, simple, southern American foods in chapters devoted to "Breads and Breakfast Dishes," "Poultry, Fish, and Seafood Dishes," "Beef, Pork and Lamb Dishes," "Vegetables and Salad," and "Desserts, Beverages, and Party Dishes." In simple foods as in a simple life, the complexities run deep. --Schuyler Ingle
Book Description
For nearly twenty-five years, Mildred Council—better known by her nickname, Mama Dip—has nourished thousands of hungry folks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her restaurant, Mama Dip's Kitchen, is a much-loved community institution that has gained loyal fans and customers from all walks of life, from New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne to former Tar Heel basketball player Michael Jordan.
Mama Dip's Kitchen showcases the same down-home, wholesome, everyday Southern cooking for which its namesake restaurant is celebrated. The book features more than 250 recipes for such favorites as old-fashioned chicken pie, country-style pork chops, sweet potatoes, fresh corn casserole, poundcake, and banana pudding. Chapters cover breads and breakfast dishes; poultry, fish, and seafood; beef, pork, and lamb; vegetables and salads; and desserts, beverages, and party dishes.
The book opens with a charming introductory essay, a savory reflection on a life in cooking that also reveals the story behind Council's nickname. It is both a graceful reminiscence of a country childhood and the inspiring story of a woman determined to make her own way in the larger world.
Customer Reviews:
Great down home southern cookin.......2007-02-18
If you like down home southern cookin this is the book for you!! I bought this and her other cookbook. Love Them!
absolutely devine.......2007-01-09
I would recommend this cookbook to anyone searching for some real down home soul food. The recipes are simple and easy. The food is beyond delicious. This is my firt mama dip's cookbook but it won't be my last. I look forward to ordering her other cookbooks soon. The other night I cooked the creole shrimp with rice, and my husband and I loved it. He is a LOUISIANNA native so it was home for him. There are so many great things that I can say about mama dip's cook book, but what i want to say to people who are skeptical and not sure if they want to purchase her book, GET IT, you will not be dissappointed at all.
Home cooking at it's best.......2006-04-28
I have the luxury of living fairly close to Mama Dips restaurant and it's always a real treat to go for lunch or dinner. It's the kind of cooking we grew up with in NC. I was so excited when she published her cookbook. I bought it and have read it cover to cover. I not only love the recipes but the story itself is inspirational. If you ever go to her restaurant - don't skip the banana pudding. Like the recipe in the book, it's served warm and it's TO DIE FOR!!
Cookbook Review.......2006-03-18
I have thoroughly enjoyed the cook book and have used it many times and share recipes with several friends. The recipes are quick, easy and delicious... My family has loved everything that I have fixed from the book.
Mama Dip's Kitchen Cookbook.......2006-02-26
Excellent book. Recipes are not difficult to prepare. Reading this book is an enjoyable as making the delicious recipes presented in it. This book enables us to make food like mom or grandma used to make!!
Book Description
In this much-anticipated follow-up to her bestselling Mama Dip's Kitchen, Mildred "Mama Dip" Council serves up an abundance of new recipes for home-style Southern cooking that is sure to please. From catfish gumbo to breakfast pizza and peach upside-down cake, Mama Dip's Family Cookbook offers recipes for more than three hundred dishes, including many Council family favorites. Also featured are party and celebration foods for family and community gatherings--a reflection of Council's belief that friends and family are essential to a rewarding life. To help novice cooks, Council includes basic information about staple ingredients, kitchen utensils, and important measurements, as well as diagrams for setting up a buffet.
In a charming introductory essay, Council intertwines food-related reminiscences of her rural North Carolina upbringing with a wry recounting of her experiences since the remarkable success of her first book. With this book she passes along to new generations the practical advice and wisdom that have made her a treasure to her family and her community.
Customer Reviews:
Mama Dip.......2007-02-21
Mama Dip is a legend in NC. Her recipes are wonderful. This was a gift for my brother-in-law in who lives in the Pacific Northwest, but loves Southern cooking. His family will certainly benefit from some TRUE Southern recipes from a TRUE Southern cook.
TRY MOMMA DIP KITCHEN COOKBOOK.......2007-02-05
I WAS VERY DISAPOINTED IN THE FAMILY COOKBOOK ,I WAS EXPECTING GREAT RECIPES LIKE HER OTHER BOOK MAMA DIP KITCHEN IT WAS FOOD REAL CAROLINA PEOPLE COOKED.
Mama Dip's Family Cookbook.......2006-02-26
As in the first book, this also is fun reading and even more fun making the recipes. Definitely recommend this for you all if you want to make things like your mom or grandmom did!
"EXCELLENT" .......2006-01-15
Excellent as every recipe mama dip has provided for us. love her cookbooks and her recipes.
A superb cookbook for creating meals and festive trays with down-home Southern flavor.......2005-12-06
A follow-up to the popular "Mama Dip's Family Kitchen," Mama Dip's Family Cookbook is a treasury of more than three hundred recipes for savory, homestyle Southern cooking, from traditional meals to festive party foods and dishes ideal for community gatherings. An introductory essay by author Mildred "Mama Dip" Council, winner of the 2004 North Carolina Restaurant Association Neighbor Award for her role in Chapel Hill's annual community dinner, offers memories of her early life and her experiences as her exceptional cooking style became increasingly well-known and appreciated. Taste-tested dishes such as Spoon Bread, Chicken Noodle Pie, Apple-Nut Squares, Candied Carrots are presented with easy-to- follow instructions. Mama Dip's Family Cookbook is a superb cookbook for creating meals and festive trays with down-home Southern flavor.
From the Publisher
The Back-Country Kitchen will appeal to all outdoor enthusaists who prepare meals in the wild. It contains over 150 tested, unique recipes including camp breads, hearty chowders, easy one-pot main dishes, and adaptations of international favorites as well as a special chapter on preparing fish and game at camp. Emphasis is on easy-to-pack, easy-to-prepare lightweight foods. Many recipes use dried foods that are readily available at grocery stores or camping stores; complete, easy instructions for home drying are also included. Cooking methods are explained thoroughly, so even the novice cook is assured of success.
The Back-Country Kitchen was written by Teresa Marrone, whose previous writing credits include two other outdoor cookbooks as well as
Outdoor Life. An avid outdoors enthusiast, Teresa spends many days each year camping and cooking in the back country, from the hills and high desert plains of Wyoming to Minnesota's Boundayr Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Customer Reviews:
Superb handbook for the outdoor enthusiast who is packing light!!.......2006-06-27
This is a superb compact cookbook for those who enjoy the outdoors and like eating home cooked eat'en while enoying the great outdoors! Well organized with easy read rating icons, this book lets you know at a glance what and how much preparation is needed to cook and serve each dish, the best and alternate cooking techniques, required grocery store ingredients, or baked at home recommended instructions. I enjoyed this book because we camp alot and I'm always looking for ways to cut down on our baggage, clutter, and weight. This book was worth it's weight in gold! It benchmarks most of it's recipes on dried foods or powder substitutes. It suggests premeasuring and placing in marked baggies ingredients to meal preparation. Weight cutting measures, such as, using powdered milk, powdered eggs, and dried ingredients can dramatically size down the amount of uncut or bulk items! This cookbook would be best matched with someone who owned and master a dehydrater, altough, it isn't necessary for most of the recipes. One can pick and choose the ingredients to dry and supplement based on their space or carrying capacity and purchase those ingredients at a grocery store near your camping location. The recipes included are basics and should give you enough to work with to possibly create your own renditions! Included are rehydrating techniques to use at camp for those lightweight dried ingredients to bring them back to life at the campsite. This book is compact, it does have a few pictures, some color, but small sized to accommodate the hand size of this must have trail and camping cookbook.Don't miss these selected picks I've found to be worth the purchase, Campfire Biscuits, Upside-Down Sloppy Joes, Grits With Egg And Cheese!
RECOMMENDED!
Can't leave home without it.......2006-03-19
I started wilderness camping a few years ago and I have used this book for wonderfully tasty meals. When weight and space are an important consideration (portaging can be ugly) this book makes me look like a pro. Dehydrated store-bought food can be expensive and disappointing in taste and portions. This book has a simple approach to everything. I like the ease of preparation rating system, suggestions for packing the recipe as well as preparation in camp. Pictures make it easy even for a novice. I usually make a copy of the recipe and put it in the baggie with all the ingredients for the recipe. I like this book well enough to give it as a gift to our friends.
If I could only have one book on camp cooking, this is it.......2004-07-29
I read many reviews and purchased a couple of books on camp cooking, and if I were only allowed to have one, this is it.
When looking for books on camp cooking, one must align their type of camping with that addressed by the book. This book is subtitled CAMP COOKING FOR CANOEISTS, HIKERS AND ANGLERS. The rather varying needs of these types of people are well addressed. The canoeist, or someone camping by car, will carry more pots and pans than the hiker, but with over 150 recipes, all can find something. My wife and I currently only camp by car, but hope to start camping by kayak, and this book was right down our alley.
The recipes are good and are rather "normal" foods like you'd have at home. (Some camping books promote some pretty strange things.) The emphasis is on preparation at home, using ingredients that are light, easily packed and travel well. Most of the recipes require a little more preparation time and are more sophisticated than what you'll find in other books. (If you want quickly prepared, but plainer (stranger?), meals for hiking, see BACKCOUNTRY COOKING by Miller.) The opening chapters discuss the selection of camping food ingredients, and includes a substantial description of home drying which rivals the information in books devoted exclusively to the subject such as HOW TO DRY FOODS. You will probably find having a home dehydrator will be beneficial to get the most from this book. The author describes selection of camp cooking equipment such as stoves, cookware and eating utensils, and briefly discusses camping over an open fire, or with some of the camp ovens available, although most of the recipes are for a camping stove. Then there are ten chapters of recipes, such as "Soups," "Breakfast," "Main Dishes," and "Beverages." Each recipe is marked by icons indicating how many pots are needed, if the ingredients are readily available at grocery stores, whether it requires home drying, or if it requires canned foods. Clear black and white photos are interspersed throughout the book, and there are two sections of color photographs.
I found the first part of the book to be very valuable on its own. By knowing how to prepare ingredients for camping, such as clarifying butter, you can adopt your own recipes or dry mix foods for camping. I tried the upside-down sloppy Joes and beef stroganoff, and later, my wife informed me that mixes were available in the grocery store, so rather than collect all of the ingredients called for in the recipe, I adopted the prepared mixes. Unlike some other camp cook books that rely heavily on freeze dried foods sitting in some general store in the wilds of Colorado somewhere (or require mail ordering), most ingredients are available at the average supermarket (although despite seemingly having EVERYTHING by Knorr, my local Publix does not seem to have the mushroom SAUCE [not GRAVY] called for by the beef stroganoff recipe!).
If you only want one book on camp cooking, want to be rewarded with a satisfying meal, and don't mind a little preparation in camp, this is the book to have. It will take many years of camping to try all of the recipes in this book that interest us.
A must for anyone who likes to camp........2000-04-25
After a lot of research, I bought this book. From first glance, I knew I had the right book. Recipes run the gamut from simple and tasty Maccaroni and Cheese to more complex Sweet and Sour Chicken. The book contains recipes for breakfast, breads, soups, main & side dishes, fish & game, international, beverages, and desserts & snacks. One chapter covers equipment and camp cooking techniques. At just over 200 pages, it's chocked full of great camp cooking ideas.
Many of the recipes call for dried foods, some of which may be hard to find in smaller towns. However, there is a chapter that explains the basics of home food drying.
This is a great resource for anyone who enjoys camping. Whether you camp in a backwoods primitive camp or a more modern setting, you're certain to find plenty to enjoy from this cookbook!
A excellant book to start a back-country cooking libriary.......1999-01-28
I was looking for a book to start out a libriary for back-country cooking. I stumbled upon this one. I even use these recipes at home and they are very good, so you can amagine how good they taste on the trial. Simple and easy to prepare from start to finish.
Amazon.com
Lynne Rossetto Kasper's authoritative first book, The Splendid Table, explored the food and culture of Emilia-Romagna, Italy's culinary heartland. In The Italian Country Table, a collection of 200 regional recipes gathered from farmhouse cooks, Kasper once again provides cultural investigation and authentic, workable recipes. The resulting cookbook-cum-chronicle will appeal to anyone seeking delicious, down-to-earth dishes and an introduction to cherished culinary traditions.
Covering every course of an Italian meal--from antipasti through pasta to vegetables and, of course, dessert--the book weaves recipes with vignettes exploring, for example, Puglia's ritual drying of winter tomatoes. Included also are notes on buying tips, special cooking techniques such as glazing, and discussions of culinary moment, like the nature of a true risotto Milanese. The immediately inviting recipes include such temptations as Mushrooms Stuffed with Radicchio and Asiago, Hot and Spicy Eggplant Soup, Leg of Lamb Glazed with Balsamic and Red Wine, and Espresso Ricotta Cream with Espresso Chocolate Sauce. Kasper also offers a chapter on focaccia, pizza, and bread, as well as menus, shopping sources, and a useful discussion of ingredients. (Taste before you buy, and then pause, she advises. "Aftertaste can reveal how a food's been stored, careless production, or foods going from mature to over the hill.") Concluding with a guide to Italian guest farms, folk life museums, and places to eat and shop, the book is a comprehensive introduction to basic but inspired home cooking and the traditions that both contain and nurture it. --Arthur Boehm
Book Description
If you dream of Italy -- and who does not? -- be prepared to fall in love with this extraordinary cookbook. Written by Lynne Rossetto Kasper, author of The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food (winner of both the James Beard and Julia Child/IACP Cookbook-of-the-Year Awards), it is every bit the equal of its celebrated predecessor.
Read its exuberant pages, eat its lusty dishes, and you enter a landscape vibrant with rural life. You are one with the terrain. In some sense, you are home. That, of course, is the miracle of Italy -- no matter where we come from, we want to be a part of it. And the miracle of The Italian Country Table is its ability to take us there.
And what a journey! You will never be as impatient to get into your kitchen as when you are planning a meal from this book. Two hundred recipes, personally collected from home cooks throughout the length and breadth of Italy, will keep calling you back.
Who could resist the "Gatto" di Patate, a mashed-potato "lasagne" from the Neapolitan countryside? Or a Tuscan Mountain Supper of warm beans tossed with an herbed tomato sauce and eaten with tart greens? Or Pasta of the Grape Harvest, a Sicilian dish of grapes, red wine, orange zest, spices, pistachios and linguine? Or Chocolate Polenta Pudding Cake?
Kasper, host of Public Radio's The Splendid Table, is a master teacher who thinks about cooking in a way that is radically distinctive. Her chapter on tomatoes and tomato sauces, a treasure by itself, will change the way you think about them -- and cook them -- forever. Her guide to buying and saucing pasta contains more useful facts than many books that devote themselves to pasta exclusively.
Kasper, the grandchild of Italian immigrants, describes herself as someone with a love of lingering "in places where life changes slowly." This personal book abounds with stories of artisans, farmers and family. It is a portrait of Italian country life.
Where you read The Italian Country Table, cook from it or use it to plan a trip (there is an appendix that lists guest farms, country hotels, restaurants and museums), you have only to turn its pages to be transported to a rustic Italy that few of us know, but all of us long for.
* 16 pages of finished dishes in full color
* 50 black-and-white photographs of country life
Customer Reviews:
Just not that great.......2007-07-23
This book was recommended to me by an Italian friend when I asked for a cookbook recommendation that could serve as sort of an Italian cuisine bible. Over the last 4 years, every recipe I've tried as seemed to be time consuming to make and slightly disappointing to eat.
I'm planning to buy 1 or 2 Biba books to replace this one.
You've gotta try this one.......2007-03-07
My copy of this book, battered from much use, is one of the best cookbooks I've ever found. Full of wonderful recpies and variations of recipes, anecdotes and information about country cooks and food artisans,a great discussion of foods and pastas, several menu suggestions and a list of sources for hard-to-find items. Everything I've made from this book has been spectacular. I heartily recommend it.
great gift.......2006-01-13
I bought this cookbook for my recently retired father who has discovered a love for cooking (after 30 years of preparing the same 3 dishes). Just days after he recieved the book, he called me raving that he and my mother loved it, that the first dish he made (chicken balsamico) was an 11 or 12 on a scale of 10. Since then he has tried many more recipes and they've all been sucessful and delicioso.
My favorite cookbook, bar none. .......2005-10-31
GOOD READ, GREAT RECIPES
How I adore this cookbook. I have a lot of cookbooks, and I always reach for this one first. First of all, you can read it like a novel. LRK's stories are wonderful, and hearing the origins -- anthropological, agricultural, familial, anecdotal --is really fun for a literary foodie type (like me).
THE SIMPLE-TO-COMPLEX CONTINUUM
But my appreciation of this book goes way beyond its bedside appeal. It's my first, best resource in the kitchen, too. I've noticed a few of the other reviewers found the recipes a little complex, and I'd like to address that. It's true that some are multi-step and use a lot of dishes. It's true that, say, the Tyrolean Pot Roast (*drool*) might take a couple tries before it comes out letter-perfect. But let me balance that by saying that:
SIMPLE
(1) there are plenty of recipes so simple you'll find yourself using them every night. Like string beans with olive oil, salt and pepper (optional raw garlic halved and rubbed on the sides of the bowl). It's one of those foundational recipes accessible enough for a novice cook, and the technique may be applied to many vegetables.
CLEAR
(2) Even in Rossetto Kasper's more complicated recipes are not tricky because she explains them so well. It's really hard to take traditional recipes passed down through generations without measurements, cooking by feel, and in another language, no less -- and translate them into a coherent step-by-step set of instructions. That's exactly what Rossetto Kasper has done, though -- she takes recipes a la nonna (grandma recipes) and converts them into accessible text that any home cook can achieve if they really try.
IDIOT-PROOF (SORT OF)
(3) Most of Rosetto Kasper's recipes are really forgiving. She'll point out where you can make substitutions. For example, if you have run out of rosemary, but your basil plant is temptingly available in sun-drenched glory, chances are good that Rossetto Kasper will point out that you can switch them just fine, and that traditional Italian home cooks often do, according to the seasons, regional differences, and the whim of the cook. I've screwed up so many of her recipes the first time, and all my mistakes have been not just edible, but good. Good enough that I was more than interested in trying a second time, for even better result. Example: The Polenta Chocolate Cake. I defy anyone to make that cake not taste incredibly good -- you'd have to do something really drastic, like omit the chocolate or pour ketchup over it. The first time I made it, it was for a giant family dinner. I was stressed and goofed up the cooking time (probably three or four other things). My family moaned like they were having a giant collective foodgasm. It's just really that good. Sure, I made it correctly after that, but it's good to know if you don't always manage to color in the lines, all is not lost.
AUTHENTICITY
More thoughts: her authentic recipes are really authentic. I made her ring-shaped currant/anise seed bread (forget the name) a few years ago for the first time and happened to bring it when I took my grandmother to visit one of her friends. This tiny, very old Italian woman flipped out when she saw it because it reminded her so much of something her own mother made, with a recipe "from the old country." (I know it's a cliché, okay, but that's what she said! She meant it!) The she tasted it and just about cried because it was JUST like her (long dead) mother used to make. Since she never knew the recipe, she hadn't had it since the last time the last (long dead) old woman in her family made it. That's the kind of food you get from this book. Making old ladies that happy is really, really special.
MORE AUTHETICITY
I had a similar experience with the Pane Dolce di Zucca (Pumpkin Bread -- nothing like American pumpkin bread, and actually, I generally use butternut squash, per Rossetto Kasper's suggestion). My husband had colleagues from Italy here in the United States for a month or so. They were kind of homesick. I sent some of this bread in to work with my husband one day and they went wild when they tasted it -- apparently it's a country recipe that they'd all had from their families, but wasn't available commercially, and that they hadn't had in a very long time since they lived in the city now for work. They were absolutely mystified as to how this American (me) managed to figure it out. Not until they met me and heard my lousy Italian grammar did they believe my husband wasn't secretly married to a little old Italian grandmother, heh. The book is like one giant Italian Proust Madeleine.
NUTRTITION
This book really emphasizes fresh, organic, whole foods.
FOR ALL LEVELS OF COOKS
I think this book would be excellent for a novice cook or a very experienced cook (or anyone in between). I loved it for the authentic recipes I've never come across in other texts, for the stories, and for the clarity of the directions. I would have loved it as a beginner cook because there's plenty to make that's not intimidatingly complex, and there are pictures. The sections on tomato sauce, broth, and sourcing/selecting ingredients would be extremely useful for a cook who was just starting out, or perhaps just moving from survivial cooking to loftier, more ambitious cooking.
RECIPES I LOVE
Crackly Apply Meringue Cake, Rosemary Pear Tart, Chicken Balsamico, Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes, Pork with Peppers, Marinated Trout, Melting Cavolo Nero (Kale), Chickpea All Souls Soup (a basic recipe that can be used for many different beans), different things with Farro (wheat berries) -- and my goodness, I can't remember what all else. Suffice to say, the spine is cracked, the pages are wrinkled and stained, and it's just the best.
Superior Survey of Rural Italian Cuisine. Not Simple!.......2005-07-26
`The Italian Country Table' is Lynne Rossetto Kasper's second book, a follow-up to the `won every award in the book' title, `The Splendid Table', which is also the name of Ms. Kasper's National Public Radio show which I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing.
It is a great pleasure to see a book this good in such a crowded field. Ms. Kasper has narrowed the field a bit by focusing on `country' recipes. By doing this, she is outflanking the Hazan / Bastianich / Batali / Bugialli / Scicolone crowd and even sidestepping the footprints of the great Elizabeth David's `Italian Food'. Instead, her primary competition is from Susan Herrmann Loomis, who has made a business out of `farmhouse cooking', Vincent Schiavelli, who concentrates on Sicily (and to whom Ms. Kasper gives an acknowledgment), and Elizabeth Romer of `The Tuscan Year'. As Ms. Romer and Senor Schiavelli spend more time on memoir material than they do on culinary content, the real comparison is with Ms. Loomis, who is at a disadvantage in that her home base is in France rather than in Italy.
As Ms. David discovered in 1954, Italian cooking in the hinterlands can be both utterly simple or it can be incredibly complex, especially for dishes designed for major celebrations. The star of this book may very well be its vegetarian timbale made for weddings. In Italian, it is even named as a wedding dish, `Timballo Matrimoniale'. The joker behind this recipe is that it is not a genuine rural Italian dish. It is the invention of the author based on the famous dish that typically contains three or four different varieties of meat. I have seen a timbale made twice. The first was on Mario Batali's show of three years ago, `Mario Eats Italy'. The second, and much more accessible version was in Stanley Tucci's movie, `Big Night', where the chef, played by `Adrian Monk' himself, Tony Shaloub, makes two of these monster pies or `molds'. Ms. Kasper's version is true to the heritage of this dish, as it involves six subassemblies, a page and a half of ingredients, and two pages of procedure.
This complicated dish is not a singularity in this book. There are genuinely rustic `enhanced' versions of many other Italian specialities, such as a very jazzed up version of the Caprese salad.
While `The Splendid Table' limited itself to Emilia-Romagna, the current book includes recipes from the Alps to Sicily, although the larger number seem to come from Lazio (Rome) and north of Rome. I am especially happy to find both simple and complicated recipes here, as it reassures me that the author is not limiting herself to just simple recipes. Although, she does offer some genuinely simple methods for some tasks which may appear difficult at first, such as making homemade soft pasta.
Ms. Kasper's method, almost identical to the one I have seen Sr. Batali do on numerous occasions, is the classic eggs in the well, with the added recommendation that we eschew the mechanical pasta roller and do everything by hand.
I am really hard pressed to find any general, substantive difference between the book by Ms. Loomis and the book by Ms. Kasper. I will give a small edge to Ms. Kasper for the wider range of recipe complexity, more genuinely personal connection to the material, and for the better digressions into the history of some Italian culinary traditions. Ms. Kasper also opens a window to a true taste of `Italian Kitsch' when she digresses on local museums of recently antiquated farm tools and homemade toys.
Both books cover the full range of subjects, although Ms. Kasper seems to be a bit more focused on important recipes. Ms. Kasper includes all the typical subjects in her chapters, which are:
Antipasti / Light Meals
Pasta (sauces without tomatoes)
Pasta Meets the Tomato
Rice, Grains, and Beans
Soup
Poultry, Meats, and Fish
Vegetables and Salads
Focaccia, Pizza and Breads of Ingenuity
Desserts
Menus
Ingredients
Both books also give very good press to the Italian practice of boarding tourists in farmhouses as a method to provide income to local farmers in the face of the new European Union agricultural regulations.
Ms. Kasper has excellent appendices on mail order sources for foods and seeds, plus the contacts for a wide selection of restaurants and farm boarding establishments in Italy. She also has a carefully identified `Partial Bibliography' which concentrates on personal and regional writings on Italian food. The `big' books from Elizabeth David, Marcella Hazan, and Giuliano Bugialli are not here.
If I were to be copy editing this book, the only suggestion I would make regarding it's layout is that it include a map of Italy's principle provinces and cites and indicate more clearly, with each recipe, from where in Italy the recipe comes.
I do give extra points for the great personal black and white snaps that decorate the sidebars on personal experiences in Italy. I also give extra credit for revealing something about broth making which is new to my understanding of both broth making in general and Italian brodo's in particular. I am not fond of the longish cooking time for this broth, but I take Ms. Kasper at her word that this is how they actually make `Brodo di Mamma' in Imola.
If you are already a big fan of Ms. Loomis' other books, get her `Italian Farmhouse Cookbook'. Otherwise, Ms. Kasper's book seems to be just a little deeper and more authentic, from a spiritual native of Italy.
Book Description
Features the remarkably delicious, healthful and nutritious food that is served in the Country Life Restaurants. 6 x 9 180 pages
Customer Reviews:
Country Life Vegetarian Cookbook.......2007-01-12
This is the best vegetarian/vegan cookbook that I have on my shelf! Rarely do I find a recipe that my family doesn't like. Last night we had the Oatburgers and they were wonderful! Even my picky 3-year old was asking for seconds (and thirds). We are changing our eating habits and trying to live a vegan lifestyle. This cookbook has made it very easy to enjoy yummy, good food without feeling deprived.
Simply the best cook book!.......2005-11-08
This book changed my life. I'm not a vegan, but these recipes are just so good, that without even noticing I started eating only healthy food. 99% of what I made from this book was great!
Country Life Vegetarion Cookbook.......2005-09-11
This cookbook has many great receips for vegan's. They are tasty and fairly easy to make. Would reccomend it to anyone looking for vegan receips whether they are experienced vegan cooks or not
Best Cookbook.......2002-09-03
This is the best cookbook I've ever used, vegan/vegetarian or otherwise. The recipes are simple, tasty, and economical. I'm not much of a cook myself, but, with this book cooking is easy. I wholeheartdly recommend this cookbook to anyone interested in eating more healthfully.
Complete, tasty and economical!.......1999-02-15
I've recommended this cookbook to many over the last 5 years. The recipes are tasty and economical. Living in the heart of dairy country and unable to consume dairy products, and for some time meat, I was delighted not to run into these over-used foods and still find tasty food. I use this cookbook as a reference often. Includes an informative article on dietary fat in the back. It's worth the purchase price.
Amazon.com
Taking a page from one of Heloise's household hints books and adding decorating tips, recipes, and homespun kitchen advice, Pearls of Kitchen Wisdom: Tips, Shortcuts, and Recipes from a Country Home offers useful, interesting, and sometimes odd nuggets of advice on how to make life in your kitchen more pleasant and how to add authentic country influences to your home.
The chapters in Pearls of Kitchen Wisdom are divided into "Country Kitchen Décor"; "Organization, Efficiency, Cleanup, and Safety"; "Baking and Cake Decorating"; "Cooking"; "Food Storage and Preserving"; and "From the Recipe Box." "Learning how to make many of the things your family loves and needs is so gratifying," says author Deborah Tukua. "Making things yourself guarantees the quality of the product and your personal satisfaction." For those who like home improvement and decorating projects, this book offers many tips on how to countrify your home using items you probably already have around. Tip number 32: "A snazzy way to dress up straight-back chairs in the kitchen is to place a colorful vest on each." While many of the hints help spark new ideas, many are gratuitous ("Never leave anything flammable such as a towel, potholder, etc., on top of any stove") or rather bizarre ("Don't make cheese and fresh bread in the same day as one will not turn out properly").
Pearls of Kitchen Wisdom gathers the homey advice your mother, aunts, and old neighbor lady keep telling you--some of it's good, some you already know, some is just plain strange. --Dana Van Nest
Book Description
Combining old-fashioned know-how and modern-day ingenuity, this indispensable book offers literally hundreds of ways to make time spent in the kitchen both productive and enjoyable. As an experienced homesteader and doyenne of her own country kitchen, Deborah S. Tukua has spent years collecting nuggets of wisdom from friends and neighbors who share her way of life in rural Tennessee. Pearls of Kitchen Wisdom represents the distillation of a community's tried and true techniques, many of which have been handed down through generations. This book also has dozens of recipes for preserved food such as dried tomatoes, corn cob syrup, canning chili beans, etc., as well as recipes for dozens of dishes, including baked maple chicken, blender quiche, and vegetable cheese chowder. Pearls of Kitchen Wisdom is perfect for anyone who wishes to bring a fresh country breeze into a city or suburban kitchen. (5 3/4 x 8 1/2, 324 pages, b&w photos, recipes)
Customer Reviews:
A Pearl of a Cookbook from My Cook.......2002-10-15
Two of my favorite recipes in PKW are the Pumpkin-Banana pancakes and Pumpkin-Pear Pie. Deborah won a statewide cooking contest with this pie she makes from the pears we have growing at home. It is a featured favorite on our holiday table. I feel really special because I am blessed to have this author and cook preparing these fabulous country dishes for our family. Yes, I am married to Deborah and do attest here to her good cooking. Hope you enjoy these recipes as well as the helpful tips she has combined to make life in the kitchen enjoyable and productive.
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- Pottery Barn Home (Pottery Barn Design Library)
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- Quick Guide: Stairs & Railings: Step-by-Step Construction Methods (Quick Guide)
- Romantic Home Sewing: Cottage-Style Projects to Stitch for the Home
- Scandinavian Modern Furnishing, 1930-1970: Designed for Life (Schiffer Book for Designers and Collectors)
- SOMEBODY IS GOING TO DIE IF LILLY BETH DOESN'T CATCH THAT BOUQUET: THE OFFICIAL SOUTHERN LADIES' GUIDE TO HOSTING THE PERFECT WEDDING
- Stone Houses: Traditional Homes of Pennsylvania's Bucks County and Brandywine Valley
- The American Townhouse
Books Index
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The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook
The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook Collection
