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Book Reviews

30
Dec 2012
Book Reviews Main Course Recipes

Cooking from ‘Jerusalem’: Roasted Butternut & Red Onion w/ Tahini & Za’atar

  ottolenghi jerusalem butternut onion After one last sip of champagne, we’re collectively about to lay down the cheesy appetizers and cookies that sustained us through December and trade them in for big bowls of salad, platefuls of roasted vegetables and after work trips to the gym.  If that transition seems tough, there’s hardly a book better than Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s Jerusalem to inspire you. Currently ranked #57 on Amazon’s bestseller list, it’s clearly a book a lot of us got for Christmas and Hanukkah. Everything, and I mean everything, in this book looks fantastic.  Even vegetables I don’t usually care much for, like eggplant and okra, are enticingly photographed.  Not knowing where exactly to start, I took Emmy’s (of Emmy Cooks) advice and started with the roasted butternut squash and red onion with tahini and za’atar. Spoiler alert: It’s DELICIOUS.
05
Sep 2012
Book Reviews Dessert Restaurants

Ono Dough Fo’ Sho — Malasadas @ Issaquah Farmers Market

Since I was a kid, I've loved donuts. Wednesday mornings on the way to school, my mom would stop at the donut shop in my home town. I'd hop out of the car and drop a couple of quarters into the newspaper machines for the LA Times and Examiner food sections and sometimes we'd get a dozen donuts in a pink box. Sugar-raised, glazed, chocolate-topped, a crumb cake (always the last one left in the box) and a plain cake for my grandpa. Other times, on weekends, we'd go to Dunkin Donuts and get a bunch of Munchkins in an orange handle box. The chocolate cake ones were my favorite. Fast forward 15 years. The first time I had a malasada might have been at Komoda Store in Makawao, Maui. It was good, but just seemed like a donut. Later, on the Big Island we got some malasadas fresh from the fryer at Tex’s, and a new obsession was born. Rolled in sugar, these yeast-raised donuts are tender and sweet, and they’re as key to a visit to the Islands as plate lunch and good shave ice. Everyone always says Leonard's in Honolulu is the gold standard, I can't say, I haven't had theirs yet.
28
May 2012
Book Reviews Dessert

Humphry Slocombe’s Ice Cream Book and Butter Beer (at Home!)

There's really only one thing to say about Humphry Slocombe's Butter Beer ice cream: OMFG. It's not hyperbole. It's not even sucking up, this ice cream is really that good. It's ridiculous. And hold the phone, I didn't get this scoop at the shop, I made it. At home. From the new book - the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book. Now, if you're already a Humphry Slocombe fan, I know what you're saying, "What, you didn't start with Secret Breakfast?" I love me some Secret Breakfast and Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee, but I said, "We gotta go for one of the deep cuts. And it shall be Butter Beer." This isn't the Butter Beer you're thinking of, it's a combo of their Stout and Brown Butter ice creams, and it's not one for the kiddies.
29
Mar 2012
Baking Book Reviews

Banana Date Cake (Vegan)

This week, I've been in overdrive catching up on Mad Men so that I'm up to speed for season 5. And now I've got '60s-era food on the brain. But rather than torture myself with some kind of terrible aspic with vegetables in it, I decided on a date cake. Flipping through some of my vintage cookbooks I discovered we used to eat a lot more date cake and date bread than I realized. It's even in an episode of Mad Men, one where Don Draper is having a tete-a-tete with Sally's teacher in season 3. She's made three loaves of date nut bread for a school bake sale.
06
Feb 2012
Book Reviews Recipes Side Dishes

Bulghur Pilaf from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty

Getting more whole grains in your diet is easier than ever with the wide availability of bulghur, quinoa, barley and spelt, but it's also easy to fall into a rut with the most basic preparations for these grains. My regular bulghur pilaf is pretty simple, relying on onion, crimini mushrooms and chicken stock for its flavor. That simplicity makes it a great side dish when your main, say baked chicken, has a more dominant flavor profile. But why should a side dish have to take a back seat?
15
Oct 2011
Book Reviews Recipes

Coffee-Chipotle Brisket Sliders

It felt good to be back in the kitchen this week. And it felt good to switch gears and really get into some cool-weather cooking. We're already in our pattern of rainy (or overcast) days and we're barely getting into the 60s. But I can't complain, it's time to break out the sweaters and turn on the oven. That's why this week's project was Lisa Fain's Coffee-Chipotle Brisket from The Homesick Texan Cookbook. I can already tell this book will get a place of honor in the kitchen and that some other is going to get kicked down to our bookcases downstairs.
14
Oct 2011
Baking Book Reviews Recipes

Milk Bread Yeast Rolls: Yeah, I Made This!

About 10 years ago there was a PBS reality show, Frontier House, where a bunch of modern day Americans were taken out to Montana to live as frontiers-people did in the 1880s. And other than the guy who built a house from the ground up for his bride, the woman I remember best was a baker. If there's a skill that's valuable and will keep an early settlement going (other than building shelter!), it's being able to grind wheat into flour and bake loaves of bread by feel, by memory. I'm not a baker by instinct, I'm a baker by following instructions, particularly when it comes to breads. Wolf has always been the baker around our house. I've found myself better at biscuits, my patience suited to a quick knead and cutting out biscuits.