Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I wish more recipes had subs for exotic ingredients. I bought a cookbook in Hawaii that is going to be a challenge when it comes up in my project. I did manage the pineapple infused vodka.

Mary

Actually, I did those pizzas on the grill, since it was a warm night, and I could get the grill up to 600F.

This week's cookbook is Memories of a Cuban Kitchen by the imposingly named Mary Urrutia Randelman. Part memoir, party cookbook, it devotes as many pages to Mary's reminices about her teenage years in Havana in the 60's as it does to recipes. This would be a good "reading" cookbook for anyone interested in that period; since I used to live in South Florida, I've already heard these kinds of stories firsthand.

The recipes are standard Cuban fare, with a heavy slant towards the "upper class". This means a light hand on the spicing, and a lot of recipes which are more upper-class Spanish than particularly Caribbean. Still, I got a good shrimp recipe out of the book: Shrimp in Spicy Rum Marinade. I changed the recipe a bit ... cooking some of the marinade with the shrimp instead of throwing it away ... but it was good enough to be worth jotting down.

So, buy it if you're particularly interested in pre-revolutionary Cuba, or if you happen to find it used/on sale/at the library. But not an A-list book.

Time for disappointing cookbooks again. This time, it's my sweetie being disappointed.

First, she was less than enchanted with this week's tortilla press, The Bouchon Bakery Cookbook. She found the recipes overly fussy and involved. And, while it's nice that the writer supplies all measurements in both weights and volumes, he doesn't do it for all ingredients. Butter, particularly, is only given in weight, leading to fun measurements like "6.8oz". Yes, I realize that many people, including several on this board, adore this cookbook. Just know that if you found it less than useful, you're not alone.

A friend gave her Breakfast For Dinner, thinking it would be the ultimate "her" cookbook -- she's always making waffles for dinner when I'm not home. However, the authors (Landis & Hackbarth) run out of "dinnerified" breakfast ideas about halfway through the book, and substitute straight-up dinner food recipes. Also, they succumb to the current trend of putting bacon in everything, including wildly inappropriate places (a bacon old-fashioned? really?). It does have a few really good recipes -- the shakshuka in particular -- but is not a recommended cookbook overall.

This actually seems to be a general issue with "theme" cookbooks. Authors can never make their page counts without going completely off the theme, or becoming ridiculous to stay on it (macaroons in a jar, for example). There's a tip to the rest of the board: whatever you do, don't sign a contract to write a theme cookbook.

This week's pick, Every Grain of Rice, is the first cookbook I've considered buying in a while. It's homestyle Sichuan Chinese food, modernized and made accessible to American/British cooks by Fuschia Dunlop, an improbably named Brit who studied for three years at the Sichuan Culinary Academy. Dunlop strikes a nice balance between making the recipes authentically Chinese and requiring too many obscure ingredients. Best of all, the book has numerous vegetarian recipes or recipes with vegetarian variants.

I'll need to cook a couple things from it first, but I might buy this one and ditch my other, less useful, Chinese cookbooks.

Question for Dave: is there a real flavor difference between Chianking black rice vinegar, and no-name black rice vinegar?

That book does sound promising. It gets raves by Amazon reviewers. And as luck would have it, our library has a copy of it. Thanks Josh!

Amy

I tried several black vinegars years ago, including Koon Chun, which makes some of the best hoisin, bean sauces, and thin soys, but none had the same flavor as Chenkiang, IMO.

Did Dunlop come out with another Szechwan book? I have her first one - Land Of Plenty - which was good, but not a replacement for my other Chinese cookbooks.

Dave,

Yes, Every Grain of Rice is new.

Thanks...not that I really need to buy another cookbook!

So I went ahead and picked up some Chinkiang rice vinegar (also, through the joys of transliteration, called Zhenjiang). It's interesting stuff ... tastes like a mix of cheap balsamic, sherry vinegar, and rice vinegar. Definitely worth keeping around; I might even see if I can use it outside Chinese cuisine. I got the $2 bottle; I wonder what the $7 bottle tasted like?

Anyway, I made some stuff from Every Grain of Rice tonight. I make the Stir-Fried Tofu with Black Bean and Chili, and the Stir-Fried Greens with Dried Shrimp. They both turned out pretty well:





I think the tofu suffered from needing to cut back on the amount of chilies for my sweetie's taste, but it was pretty good. The dried shrimp in the greens were interesting; fried crispy first, they were like seafood bacon bits in the greens.

Overall, the meal did accomplish the goal of finding Chinese food for me to make which wasn't the same ginger & garlic stir-fry I always end up making. So, still considering a purchase ...