Inside The Mind of A Great Chinese Cook

By Herb Gardener. Factors Americans typically consider when choosing a place to live include property values, school quality, cultural resources and proximity to a good Chinese restaurant. Well, the last may be a stretch, but we do hold strong opinions about and yearnings for this inexhaustible gastronomic tradition. For the ambitious cook seduced by the thought of preparing an authentic Chinese meal and understanding the...

Entertain With Confidence

By Marsha Fottler. The last two years have seen an increase in home entertaining partly because most of us have felt too poor to do anything else. Game night, Sunday brunch, cocktail party, book club, movie night, dinner for eight – we’ve all been doing it with optimism and tiny budgets. But for many young people new to living independently, the thought of inviting people over and negotiating the role of host is daunting....

Recipes as a Cultural Profile

By Anna Dantoni. For three decades Southern Living magazine has annually published a cookbook composed of all the recipes that the appeared in the monthly issues of the magazine over the previous 12 months. The recipes are organized chronologically by month but the book also includes special sections devoted to other categories of cookery. For instance, the newest one, Southern Living Annual Recipes 2009, includes a whole...

A Saucy Affair

By Herb Gardener. The French Enlightenment philosopher and playwright Voltaire observed: “England has 42 religions and only two sauces.” Cooks from Cornwall to Carnoustie, then, may find relief in George Geary’s 500 Best Sauces, Salad Dressings, Marinades & More (500 Sauces). One imagines that successful restaurants refer to similar dog-eared and oil-splattered compendia for creative nightly specials. But, does 500...

The Meditative Pleasures of Cold Weather Cooking

By Marsha Fottler. Even if I didn’t love to cook and to savor new recipes, I’d still buy Diana Henry’s book Roast Figs Sugar Snow just for the sheer romance of the title. It’s completely poetic and evocative of “winter food to warm the soul,” which is her subtitle and the intent of the recipes she chose for this book. There’s a private meditative calm about preparing ingredients and cooking winter recipes in a...

When Murder and Gazpacho Are on the Menu

By Anna Dantoni. The title A Plateful of Murder speaks for itself and communicates volumes to a reader with an insatiable appetite for a juicy food mystery. But, this paperback by Claudia Bishop is actually two complete novels under one cover, A Taste for Murder and A Dash of Death. They are the two initial novels in the series of more than a dozen light mysteries emanating from the fictitious Inn at Hemlock Falls. The...