Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Fuzzy,

I would highly recommend Pok Pok, but, in addition to the usual SE Asian ingredients you will need access to, here are two more ingredients: puya chile peppers and Korean salted shrimp. While puyas may be found online, you will need access to a with Korean food for the salted shrimp, as it is a refrigerated item. Many of the recipes call for a shrimp paste made with the salted shrimp ground up with some regular Thai shrimp paste, to approximate the milder paste used in northern Thailand.

Every recipe I have made from this book has been delicious. I even have some puya peppers growing in the garden this season! I'll find out if growing and drying them myself can make them even better, though that would be hard to imagine.

Dave,

Although presumably, shrimp paste could be shipped frozen. I wonder if any online merchant does so?

Having had a crappy cookbook and a superb one, here's a middle-of-the-roader: ¡Cuba Cocina! by Joyce Lafray. This book is a well-stocked recipe book with over 200 Cuban-American recipes from the restaurants of South Florida. On the up side, it covers pretty much the full gamut of Cuban standards, staples and fancy dishes, and the recipe writing quality is good and clear. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that most of the recipes came from restaurant chefs: several recipes have you make a sauce which requires a saucepan, blender and strainer just to put 2 tablespoons of it on something, and even the "Easy Can't Fail Black Beans" wants you to use 2 pots. Still the recipes I've tried so far were pretty good, so recommended as a used/sale item.

Here is a link for Hmart.com that says you can buy the salted shrimp there, so they probably have to ship it w/dry ice or something like that. Fortunately, I have an Hmart about 10 miles from here, in Cherry Hill.

http://www.hmart.com/shopnow/shopnow_ne ... 0809080649

Another week, another "meh" cookbook.

Saltie, a cookbook named after a restaurant in Williamsburg which is named after a nickname for sailors, is more interesting to read than it is good to cook from. While the dishes in the cookbook sound innovative and interesting (and have overwhelmingly nautical themed names), sadly the actual recipes suffer from "cut down restaurant recipe" problems; proportions are off and cooking steps are missing or mistimed. Borrow it from the library to read, but don't buy it.

More cookbooks:

Japanese Farm Food is a massive tome, enough so to be quite intimidating. It's a cookbook by a woman who married into a Japanese farm, and learned all of the basics, like pickling umeboshi, making tofu, making udon, etc, etc., all of which are in the book, as well as numerous recipes for "simple food" -- which is only simple if you have all of the prepared ingredients detailed elsewhere in the book. Even if you're not feeling like shaving your on bonito, it's a good reading cookbook because there are a bunch of little stories. Recommended for anyone who is seriously into Japanese food, or who likes reading cookbooks.

This one looked interesting, but my local library didn't have it. I like learning how to make new things like that.

--Lisa

So, a good and a bad on the ethic front today.

Jewish Holiday Baker (Joan Nathan) is a an older cookbook, but a good one, with a broad array of Jewish breads and pastries from all over the world ... from Rugelach to Syrian Crescents. Lots of good stuff for folks looking to broaden out their Jewish food beyond challah and hamentashen.

On the other hand, Moorish (Malouf & Malouf) is a bit too broad. So the cover of the book and the introduction says pure Moorish (North African) food, and the first chapter of dips, spices and pickles is spot-on. And then ... it slides off into pan-Mediterranean mishmash with no central themes and straying far beyond any territory the Moors ever claimed. Returned to library after a quick page-through.

The farm food one intrigues me; I've always wonder what Japanese 'peasant' cooking was like, or if what we are told is Japanese food is peasant food, or the like. I might have to find a copy to browse.

Eggs on Top: The main reason to get Andrea Slonecker's eggy omnibus is the 55 pages of basic egg cooking instructions covering everything from sunny-side up to eggs poached in wine or breaded and deep-fried. The only thing she doesn't cover is sous vide eggs. As such, this would be an excellent cookbook to a 20-something you know who's just getting started cooking. The recipes otherwise run the gamut of stuff topped with eggs, from flannel hash to sopa de ajo, including some Asian recipes. Recommended for a buy or a borrow.