Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Well, a bit late, but I just made:

Sautéed prawns in pastis with lemon and cherry tomatoes
Baked garbanzo beans

For the garbanzos, I took the shortcut of using canned; they were still quite good and I'd make them again. The shrimp dish was excellent but very soupy, even with the butter cut in half. I'd make rice with it next time.

I recently picked up a copy of Red Hot and Green by local food writer Janet Hazen, for free, meaning to pass it on to a friend of mine who just got a vegetarian girlfriend. The cookbook is exclusively "spicy" vegetarian dishes. Creatively, by "spicy", Hazen means four different things: ginger, mustard, horseradish, peppercorns, and chiles. The result is a very eclectic collection of 50 recipes -- including the dreaded stuffed cabbage roll -- many of them culled from Hazen's other writing. Still, an unusual and well-thought-out cookbook, and I'll be happy to hand it to my friend.

My sweetie read Demolition Desserts by the former Citizen Cake chef/owner Elizabeth Falkner. While Falkner was a terrible businesswoman, she is one of the top dessert chefs ever in San Francisco. At first, she was impressed by how serious Falkner was about providing recipes which Falkner really did test in her own home kitchen. But then the desserts started getting more complicated as the cookbook progressed.

"She sucks you in with the easy stuff, and then you get into the wierd, hard stuff -- the six-recipe-section fancy plated desserts with basil oil and garbanzo cake," said Kris.

So, probably recommended for the dessert-fiend on your cookbook gift list, but not for anyone else.

Fuzzy, I just saw your "sautéed prawns in pastis" and have all the ingredients mentioned on hand. Can you share the recipe?

fitzie

Fitzie,

Feh, I'm travelling right now (Portland), and don't have the cookbook with me. Amy owns it too, though ... Amy?

Thanks, Fuzzy. I was able to find it online. It's coming up for dinner tonight,

fitzie

Well, it was coming up for dinner but when I opened the Pernod it had strange odor. It didn't taste quite right either. So I left it on the counter thinking I'd take it to our friendly liquor store and ask them what they think of it. Instead I made Smitten Kitchen's farro with tomatoes and onions. Highly recommend it. It's delicious. Recipe's on her blog.

Today my grandson requested potato salad. So I made potato salad. I boiled, peeled and diced the potatoes. I always sprinkle white wine on the potatoes while they are still warm. Guess what - they got sprinkled with PERNOD! Only about a quarter cup before I realized it. That's what you get for trying to make potato salad and watch the Tour de France at the same time. I'll never learn.

fitzie

Potatoes with Pernod are seriously good, but if your Pernod was bad, they may not have been so...especially in a potato salad.

Amy

This week's cookbook is Asian Dumplings by Andrea Nguyen. I borrowed this from the library before, but didn't get a chance to use it; hopefully now I will.

The reason I borrowed it a second time is that this is an excellent cookbook for learning to make your own Chinese, Japanese, Phillipino, Indian, etc. dumplings from scratch, if you've never made dumplings before. It's organized around 6 essential types of dumplings (plain flour, egg, buns, flaky pastry, and pure starches) with another 30 pages of one-off dumplings (like taro puffs and sticky rice balls). For each of the core types, she starts with a couple master dough recipes and pictograms of various ways of folding/shaping them. The book is designed to take the place of hands-on teaching, but if you're more of an interactive learner, she has a website: http://www.asiandumplingtips.com/ (She also teaches classes near Santa Cruz; I'm tempted)

EDITED TO ADD: After trying this book for a couple of weeks, I've discovered that the book makes significant omissions in instructions in places. As a result, I no longer recommend the book. More on that in a different thread.

Amy, could you please post your recipe for potatoes with Pernod? I have a brand new bottle of Pernod just itching to be used. Thanks.

fitzie

Wow, haven't posted one of these in a while. Well, a two-fer:

I requested Eat Your Vegetables from the library so long ago I don't remember why I asked for it. Probably it was in Lindsay's blog or something. Anyway, it's been an interesting breakfast read so far; it's a rather unique cookbook aimed at single vegetarians. The recipes are inventive and highly original without being complicated; more of the book is devoted to salads and sandwiches than to serious "entrees". While it would have been better to get this book in the summer when there's more stuff in season, I still plan to try a couple of recipes. Recommended for vegetarians and single cooks.

Everyone has received the email recipe for the microwave mug cake and tried it, with varying results. But Leslie Bilderback decided to put together an entire cookbook of Mug Cakes, 100 in total. The problem with doing that many is that they aren't all winners (the Brown Sugar cake was a complete loss), but most of the ones we've tried are better than that emailed recipe. And even if a few are failures, hey, you can try another recipe in about 10 minutes. Possibly a good gift cookbook for a friend who is "too busy to cook".