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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Mon May 02, 2011 2:25 am 
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Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:55 am
Posts: 516
Location: Cordillera, Luzon, Philippines
I like the link to Powell's bookstore. Great place and I've haunted its aisles many times. A second pleasant aspect was the Sur La Table store across the street from it. Then they opened an Italian Ice Cream store just a few steps from SLT. Yep, Plus the free "fareless" square for the Portland Trolley made getting there without worrying about parking really nice.

I have a copy of Kulinarya: A Guidebook to Philippine Cuisine which is sumptuously photographed. It is aimed at promoting the development and display of Filipino foods to world class heights. I don't know that it particularly succeeds, but it is interesting and when my wife talks about a dish I'm unfamiliar with and she doesn't really have a good explanation for, we turn to Kulinarya first for an idea of what it is or how it is made.

I will keep my eye open for The Cooking of Indonesia and the Philippines to add to our small library of cookbooks. Sounds like a worthwhile read for those of us interested in SE Asian cuisine.

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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Mon May 02, 2011 9:44 pm 
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Location: Portland, OR
Tatoosh,

Seems like you could do better, locally. Although not maybe in English.

What's kept me away from Phillipino food is that it seems like all of the more interesting dishes are meat, deep-fried, or both.

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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2011 5:26 am 
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Location: Cordillera, Luzon, Philippines
Well, in general, you are spot on. In terms of food, I've been fairly disappointed with the Philippines. That doesn't mean there aren't things here that are good to eat, but the major consideration is price with quality almost a non-existent point of consideration. But the abject poverty in the main cities such as Manila and Cebu means that they take food waste, clean it, reheat it and sell it. I mean the stuff in the refuse bin at the local KFC or McD.

Given it's placement in SE Asia, near China, not far from Thailand, Vietnam and so forth, I arrived in the Philippines expecting a somewhat more worldly appreciation of food. Not only due to its geographical placement, but because so many Filipinos work overseas. From Dubai to Singapore, from Australia to Canada and most places in between. With that sort of exposure, it seemed to me that finding recipes brought back or adapted from their travels would be common. I was wrong. Oh, if you have money you can find some nice restaurants with various influences in major cities. But once you wander away from the tourist track, food takes a fast dive.

And you have to really haunt the place to find some of the stuff that would seem common. A large Indian (sub continent India) population live here and there are usually one or two stores that carry some of the spices and herbs they want. However, with a large Chinese population that works at staying very Chinese, common Chinese food ingredients are no where to be seen.

But deep fried meats, cooked until crispy is, as Fuzzy notes, quite common. Luckily, I do like meat and I don't mind deep fried foods. So I can survive. And I do my little bit to enlarge their food experience here. Today when I went to the bank to transact some biz, I made sure all the tellers got a free Toll House Chocolate Chip cookie. Tasty and unheard of here. They were all smiling when I left. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2011 3:16 pm 
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There you go, spreading American Imperialism again. (joke) is it hard to get chocolate chips in the Phillipines? You could be setting those poor people up for a life of frustration.
Keep up the good work!


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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2011 6:11 am 
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Location: Cordillera, Luzon, Philippines
Heh, yeah, sorry 'bout that! Interestingly, no, it isn't hard to find chocolate chips if you are in a medium sized city or larger. They are Filipino chips and not top quality, but sufficient none the less. The Philippines produces some good chocolate but the economy generally doesn't support (or demand) higher quality processing. Dark chocolate is almost unheard of outside of Manila and maybe Cebu City where foreigners and successful Filipinos with overseas tastebuds are a large enough group to motivate merchants. Which is too bad, because they could easily be making high quality chocolate and selling it all over Asia with a little development, but the quality stuff is all imported.

Same for vanilla beans. They grow them here, but almost impossible to find. I have a few I bought in Manila grown somewhere in Asia, but not actually the Philippines. So the vanilla beans were grown somewhere near here, shipped to the USA, packaged, then reshipped back to SE Asia for sale here. Color me perplexed.

They have started working on becoming consistently good coffee producers, but it will take awhile. They have to overcome a history of somewhat less than honest business practices so that their product will be accepted as what they claim. I hope this happens. China is surging ahead, other SE Asian countries are developing but sadly the Philippines seems to be slipping behind.

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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Sun May 08, 2011 2:11 pm 
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All,

This week's cookbook is Fish Indian Style by Atul Kocchar:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781906650063-0

So far, 4 of 5 stars, I'm considering buying this one.

I haven't made anything from it yet, but it looks really good. While somewhat overproduced (2-page photo spreads, multiple mixed typefaces) the recipes look really good and are nothing I would have discovered anywhere else. Not only are the recipes clearly written and easy to follow, but they even give seafood alternatives for each recipe in case you can't find the exact fish the recipe was written for.

Mind you, Atul is British. This is "new Indian food", not traditional. Not that that's bad, just so you're expecting it. The recipes do expect that you have access to a well-stocked Asian grocery; most of them require several spices, fresh coconut, kaffir lime leaves, and similar Indian staples.

Of course the cookbook has fish curries. But it also has salads, appetizers, and even something called Mumbai Fish Pizza. Amusingly, Kochhar is a Michelin-starred chef, but the publishers didn't see fit to include a bio in the book. I had to Google him.

More when I actually cook a couple recipes.

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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 10:49 pm 
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All,

This week's Random Cookbook is:

The Vegetarian Table: North Africa by Kitty Morse*
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwo ... h%20Africa

A volume in The Vegetarian Table series I was previously unaware of. This was a series of books published by Chronicle during the last big vegetarian fad period, which included Thai, French, Indian, Southern, and other cuisines. All the books had different authors and varied greatly in recipe quality; previously, I'd only found the Thai volume worthwhile.

The book includes Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian foods. There's a good variety of soups, salads, appetizers, stews, pasta, and pastry. It's a bit light on the desserts, but that's not surprising with this cuisine. The recipes are mostly clear and well-explained. There's only a few exceptions I can see, where either the author glosses over a difficult cooking techique (like folding turnovers while they're boiling in oil), or makes some vegetarian substitutions which are suspect (like sweet potatoes & carrots for lamb).

3.5 out of 5. I'm going to cook from it tommorrow, we'll see if that goes up or down. I'm making an artichoke, pea, potato and saffron tangine, and a grilled pepper salad.

(* Yes, this is her real name. A woman born in Morocco. Go figure.)

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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 9:16 pm 
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Just a brief:

A Real American Breakfast, but Jamison & Jamison:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060188243/

If you wanted to own one and only one breakfast/brunch book, and you wanted that book to contain almost every single breakfast dish you might want to make, this is that book.

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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2011 9:06 am 
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Joined: Thu Dec 18, 2008 7:37 pm
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Location: Telluride, CO
I know Dave has mentioned this book before, but has anyone else cooked from Cradle of Flavor by James Oseland? I took this book out of the library, and it is extremely comprehensive and well-written. Of course, I'm going to have to order half of the ingredients, but it looks well worth it. I just bought a copy of the book off eBay.

Amy


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 Post subject: Re: Random cookbook of the week
PostPosted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:38 am 
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Not a cookbook, but McGee's Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes. I checked this out of the library, and true to McGee form, a very useful reference. It's not based on the science of the kitchen per se, but nonetheless contains enough scientific info to be really informative. Much of it is stuff we all know, but every once in a while I get one of those "really, I didn't know that" moments to make it very worthwhile.

I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

Amy


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