I am a cookbook reader. I bring home cookbooks from the library. I read through them and analyze the content and pick and choose some recipes that seem to suit my tastes.
Not many folks purchase cookbooks these days, probably because the recipes are so easy to find on the internet. I use the internet myself to find some dish I want to make that isn’t in the 200 cookbooks I currently own.
I use the cookbooks from the library for inspiration for meals. Some of my favorite cuisines are Greek, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Caribbean. I have cookbooks of these genre, but there are even more on the internet including very obscure ones that are from small regional areas within a country, dishes that are not often made outside of their ethnic local.
My library is a county library covering Island County (where I live) and Snohomish County, across the water. It is small compared to the big city libraries and it is hard to order books that must come from an interlibrary loan, so I am limited to what is available here.
Since I read so many cookbooks, and since I experiment from those books and learn new ideas, I decided to write about the ones I am perusing when I check them out from the library. So from time to time I will post a comment about a particular cookbook, just in case you would like to purchase it or borrow it from your local library.
So today I have the first, of what I hope will be more, Lemon, Love & Olive Oil, written by Mina Stone, pub. 2021, $40 (ISBN 978-0-06-297236-9). Primarily this is a Greek genre cookbook with many recipes that are taken straight from her friend’s mother. She has a background as a restaurateur serving Greek Style foods in her cafe. Recipes include grape leaves, chickpeas, phyllo dough, egg lemon sauces, and many other traditional ingredients indicative of Greek cuisine.
It is a large format, almost coffee table style of book with photos that are inviting, though not all of the recipes show the finished product. The skill levels of the dishes are probably about medium-low. If you are a beginner, but follow recipes accurately, you should have no problem recreating most of the dishes.
I did notice, however, that not all the recipes are traditional, or even very Greek, such as Oatmeal Banana Pancakes, Chocolate Olive Oil cookies, Braised Red Cabbage with Apples (German dish), etc. There is not a preponderance of these in the book, so you need not worry about redundancy with other books you may already own.
Most of the ingredients in the dishes are readily available in any good-sized city or on Amazon and the internet. Even the groceries, on the island where I live, carry grape leaves and phyllo dough.
I own many cookbooks including a half dozen that are Greek. For me this book would present a real redundancy. I also have highly developed tastes and cooking skills, so this was not what I would call a challenging selection. For the general household chef, this is a nice selection of ethnic dishes and would be a good basic book to have if you are going to limit the number of books you own in the genre.
A nice collection of recipes, great photos and recipes that are not too complicated.
If you like Greek food, then it is a great choice for your home.
Tonight we are having Turkish Manti for dinner. I had made a very large batch of these and put some in the freezer, so tonight is the night.
Manti is a pasta dish stuffed with lamb and served with browned butter, garlic yogurt, and a reduction (carmelized) tomatoes. It is a native of Turkey.
We did have some left over artichoke from Easter Sunday, so we will finish those today with the garlic yogurt sauce.
Manti is a pasta dish that is stuffed, roasted in the oven and then boiled like a pasta. I had taken these to the roasted stage and then frozen them. They have kept well in the freezer, even being knocked around, they have not broken. These are stuffed with ground lamb, but you may choose any filling you would like.
I will boil them till tender and then plate them on the tomato and douse with browned butter. A dollop of the garlic yogurt and a dash of sumac on the top. Yum. Are you hungry yet?
Today is Easter 2024. It is also Sunday, so Sunday dinner. Wanted to make roasted rabbit, but other than the ones that wander around my yard, the ones in the stores are too expensive. I use to raise rabbits and we would eat them. I love rabbit.
But what to have that we only eat once in a while? Duck! We are making duck breasts for dinner tonight. I use to make it with a sour cherry gastrique, but at the moment, I don’t have sour cherries. I do have blue berries, I do have dried craisins.
Gastrique? Well in our house this is caramelized sugar taken to a fairly dark shade into which we add red wine. Be careful with that part as it bubbles and flares and takes a while for it to be incorporated into the caramelized sugar. Then a little more red wine, cider vinegar, and dry vermouth in this case, but you may use brandy, whiskey, etc.
Reduce this to concentrate the flavors. I soaked the craisins in red wine and added to the mix. If your mix is too thin you may thicken with a dab of cornstarch. Just before serving add a good dollop of butter—or better still—some of the fat from cooking the duck. One special treat is to strip off the skin, cut in thin pieces and fry in the duck fat until crispy and curled. Sprinkle over the dish for a crunch, wonderful, delightful flavor. (see below) I sprinkled the dish with toasted black walnuts
The duck—Cold cast iron frying pan. Skin side down on med-high for 8 minutes. Flip over and 3-4 on the other side depending on your preference for med-rare or med.
Diagonally slice the duck and place on wild rice as we are doing today and pour the gastrique over the top. I have roasted black walnuts to dust on the top.
Wow! What a meal with a hearty red as an accompaniment. Happy Easter!
How true it is. 100 years ago folks ate foods we will never see again. In the case of this article, they are focused on apples, but there are many foods that were eaten then and even when I was a girl that aren’t eaten today.
I think that society has started to focus on only a few popular dishes and many of the older dishes have become less popular. Restaurants are an example of this. Unless you go to an ethnic restaurant, you will be offered the same fare over and over again. These are the dishes that are popular and sell easily and are familiar to most families. In the case of Mexican restaurants, they purchase packages and menus from Sysco and they all are alike. There are two or three menus they may choose from so you can go to almost anyone and have the same meal made with the same ingredients. Italian restaurants all have Alfredo, Marinara, and the like that are sold to them as packaged menus. A few high end restaurants make all their dishes and this makes them unique, but also harder to stay in business.
I know, some restaurants are going to extremes to be different, but seldom do they last long with foams and schmears (smears?). How much food value or taste is in a two teaspoon schmear of artichoke heart? It is hardly enough to taste and the foams are mostly tasteless. See, even I find these exotic dishes to be hype and won’t pay the big bucks for foam.
When I was small we ate something called Indian Pudding. I was never very fond of it and haven’t made it as an adult, but it is a heavy, thick custard like dish thickened with cornmeal and baked for a couple of hours. Apparently it was a tradition in Pilgrim times and a recipe is found in the Betty Crocker Cookbook from the ‘50s. When was the last time you made scalloped potatoes? Have you ever seen it on a restaurant menu? We ate this all the time as a kid. Both dishes were our comfort food and often the main dish in a meatless meal.
Chestnuts were common as a starch. Breads, cakes and many baked items used chestnut flour. Wheat flour in old Italy was only for the rich. The commoners used chestnut flour. It is still available, but have you ever used it to make a pudding or a cake or flatbread? I know, the trees have mostly died off, but the chestnut flour is still available, but an obscure product seldom used today.
Pickled Pigs feet, most would go YUK! These have been eaten forever, but not today. Today a jar of pickled pigs feet tastes only of sharp vinegar. They are unappetizing and truly acidic. Recently I made my own from an old Mennonite Cookbook. They are wonderful and like I remembered my father introducing me to in the early 1950s. These are unctuous, gelatinous, not too sour with a hint of sweetness. They are as I remember. Why did we become so picky that we no longer eat offal?
There is only one tongue in a cow. I can get tongue (lengua) at food trucks and some obscure Mexican restaurants. I may purchase it in the grocery 45 miles from my house where there is a larger Chicano population. But—since there is only one per cow, I must pay $30 to $50 for a tongue. I do consider it a delicacy, but this is well out of my price range for a dinner for two. These use to be given away or thrown away just a few years ago. How many folks do you know who eat it today? I would eat it once a week if I could afford it.
Kidneys? As a young woman and very poor, my first real job out of college kept me way below the poverty level. I ate beef kidneys. I know fifty ways to cook beef kidneys. I purchased chicken backs and kidneys for 5 cents a pound and I ate a lot of both. I cannot purchase chicken backs, even from the chicken farm because they sell them for crab bait. Kidneys are even more rare.
When was the last time you ate scrapple? Do you even know what it is if you aren’t from Pennsylvania? Chilled cornmeal mush, sliced and fried. Traditionally it has such things as ground liver, or ground sausage, lots of heavy herbs and appears to be very grey. In some areas it contains lungs or fried brains. It may not sound particularly exciting, but it tastes delicious. If you see it these days it is usually just cornmeal. We use to fry it until crisp on the outside and eat it with cane syrup. Where do you find cane syrup?
The delicious apple, which the article says is the most sold in the U.S. is an atrocity. When I was a kid it truly was a delicious apple. Now it is this dark red fruit with tough bitter skin. It was a mutation on an apple tree here in Washington and was sold as a special apple. Then wholesalers decide it needed to be modified to make it more shippable. They needed it to have a tougher skin so it wouldn’t bruise or spoil in storage or while shipping. Why is it more important for a product to be shippable that taste worthy? Many of our fruits and vegetables have become unpalatable thanks to becoming shippable!
Tomatoes aren’t shippable unless they are hard, but folks don’t want green tomatoes, so we fume the green ones while they are not ripe, to make them look red. So the stores have red tomatoes that are immature. You have to bring them home and let them sit on the counter until they ripen into the flavorless product that we then eat. We have lost the truly flavorful, vine-ripened taste of a great tomato.
There are many other fruits and vegetables that are subjected to being picked well before their prime to make them shippable at the retail location. Why do we purchase these? Maybe they are the only option? Because many folks have never tasted the real thing and do not know how inferior these products really are. We grow our own fully ripened, fully fragrant, fully flavorful tomatoes. The ones in the store are a mere shadow of the real thing. But most folks today wouldn’t know that because they have never experienced it.
Offal: have you eaten any recently? Most third world countries use every portion of the animal. Most offal here is turned into dog food or protein mix or some other morphidite product, an inferior combination of two substances. Sweatbreads are one of my most favorite foods. Do you think I can find it? I ask at the meat market and they tell me that they don’t have it because it is destroyed in the killing process. No, these are not sweet rolls or bread, they are the thymus of cattle. Truly they are an unusual item, but they are very elegant in a special dinner. Try to purchase them. Good luck.
I guess I am old fashioned. I can find a few unusual goods at ethnic markets and in ethnic restaurants. Some of them very old style in nature, tongue in some Chicano food trucks, some in Greek restaurants that cater to old world Greeks (traditionally egg lemon soup has lights and liver and other offal), or possibly Russian restaurants. But living where there are fewer people, these cuisines are unavailable to us. The Greek restaurant here on the island failed after many years in business, but they offered a more “modern” taste and didn’t use lights and liver in their egg lemon soup. If I want to make it traditionally, the ingredients are no longer available to me. Such a shame as it makes for a delicious dish.
If you are one who hasn’t enjoyed some of these products, you may be missing out. On the other hand you may be very satisfied with burgers from the fast food joint down the road, or eating pita pockets from the frozen food section at the grocery. More power to you. At least if I can find some of these ingredients I will have less competition.
If you would like to pursue this further here is a good reference website:
Ethiopia-Recipes and traditions from the horn of Africa
By Yohanis Gebresus Published 2019 ISBN 978-1-62371-963-0 Suggested retail is $35. 122 pages
I found this book to have a lot of information about the traditions, both of lifestyle and cooking. I have eaten Ethiopian food in Seattle where there is an Ethiopian community and several ethnic restaurants. Injera is one of my favorite things about their cooking style. Teff flour is not readily available to me on Whidbey Island, but it is available through Amazon. The recipe herein, the traditional one, takes 5-6 days initially as it is similar in process to sourdough. First you must age the mix for the “sourdough” like base. After that you will save some for the next batch and it will be quicker in future meals.
I did find that some of the ingredients in the book have no substitutes and are not readily available in the U.S., such as fermented honey. Berbere is used a lot and I make my own and keep it in a quart jar in the cupboard, we like it so much. Try it on scrambled eggs or mixed in unseasoned sausage.
Many dishes are fairly common to any country, such as lentil soup, pumpkin soup, scalloped potatoes, and Sliders with Fresh Sausage. Though I didn’t try making it, the Moringa Teff Lasagna using injera instead of pasta sounded intriguing. Moringa is a leaf that isn’t available to us, but they say to substitute spinach instead. The injera does have all purpose flour to stabilize it for the layers in the lasagna.
Some of the more uncommon dishes use goat meat, lamb, shiro (a paste made from grain flour and herbs). I do own an Ethiopian cookbook and it is good, but I did find this one even more complex in the recipes and the flavors and seasonings used than the one that I own. There are good photos of the finished product and a very detailed presentation in photos and written instruction about how to make the injera. Since this is basically the plate in that country, and most foods are served on and with injera for the meal.
I have made the chicken and hard boiled egg stew which is delicious. There is one very odd recipe called Cascara Coffee Husk Infusion that I think I will pass. Cascara was collected in our woods commercially when I was growing up. It is used as a remedy for constipation. Ouch! Maybe this is a different tree. It does say you may substitute the dried husks from the outside of coffee beans. I think I will pass even though I have the cascara growing in my yard. Another recipe tells you to smoke a pot with olive wood twigs before proceeding to boil a spicy dish in it. Did I say there was a lot more variety in this tome than in the one I own?
If I didn’t have over 200 cookbooks already, I would probably purchase this as I am always looking for unusual cuisines and dishes to make. As I get older I want things more and more spicy and this book fits the bill.
Well the book is overdue at the library, so I had better close and return it.
A few years after I moved to the island, a bakery opened in a nearby town called The Daily Bread. I baked Baklava weekly for them.
When I first moved to the island I baked bread every weekend for people where I worked and for the neighbors. I sometimes bake a couple of dozen loaves. Later I became the “Pie Lady” at the local farmer’s market. I worked in town four days a week and on Fridays baked pies and muffins for the Saturday Farmers’ Market. I gave that up when I moved to Beijing.
Now, many years later, I bake bread almost weekly. I probably don’t need to eat that much bread, but I do give some to neighbors and others. I love baking bread, the smell of it baking, the texture of the dough, the chewy crustiness of the loaf. Bread baking is a sensuous experience.
Today I am looking at a cookbook that is a little disappointing for me. A gorgeous loaf on the cover prompted me to check this one out from the library. I have a lot of baking books, and certainly don’t need to purchase any more, but I am always looking for new inspiration.
Poilane looked inviting. A very large format, almost coffee table quality, book released in 2019 (ISBN: 978-1-328-81078-6) is written by Appollonia Poilane and subtitled “The secrets of the world-famous bread bakery,” retailing for $35.
Since I was looking for something new and different to bake, I was a little disappointed. Many of the recipes are sourdough based, which is fine. Only a small percentage is really about baking bread with the remainder being recipes that use bread, such as Savory Pan Perdu, Smoky Cauliflower Gratin and Winter Vegetable Crumble with Citrus Bread Crumbs. Many recipes do not include bread. I guess you eat it on the side.
I did find two recipes for “Oat Milk” which I will file away. I occasionally find oat milk (not really milk) more flavorful and better than cream in my coffee.
I thought her variation on Chicha Morada a widely deviant version of the original. As a substitute for purple corn she uses yellow corn and cocoa. I cannot see that this would be anything like the original Peruvian drink.
A number of the recipes would not be added to my repertoire, however. Brioche Whipped Cream sounded and looked unappetizing, as did Beer Granite with Brioche. I think she is stretching to reach folks like me who are looking for the new and different, but I am not sure that this is what I meant.
If you have no bread baking cookbooks, this is not for the beginner baker. A few of the salads and sandwiches will be useful. There are a few vegan and vegetarian and gluten free recipes for those who want to try something different.
I will say it is beautiful, but not what I will add to my collection and use.
Why do I think that I am invisible? Why do people completely ignore me as though I didn’t exist? I am not in-your-face-aggressive, nor am I a shrinking violet. But for some reason, I feel invisible many times.
Example: Several—maybe numerous times—I have been waiting in a line to be helped with something. There are numerous folks milling around me. I have stated my information at the proper location, but for some reason all the folks who spoke with the appropriate person after me have gone ahead of me and I am still sitting there waiting, sometimes for several hours. I have gone up the to the person at the desk and they indicate that they know I am there, but I am ignored as long as I am seated across the room. I guess that I need to stand by their desk until I am helped.
Example: This has happened three times in recent history. I am in a restaurant with my husband. We have been seated. In one case we sat for an hour (the time we both decided we would wait as it was humorous at first) before I tackled a waitress and said to her, “What is going on, we have been sitting here for an hour and no one has come to help us!” Well she went to check. She asked another waitress if anyone was in charge of our table. The other waitress did not know. It was probably another twenty minutes before someone came to ask us if we wanted anything. We said a menu would be nice. I assume that because we had no menus at our table they thought we had already ordered. If you sit there for an hour and nothing happens you would think one of the waitresses passing by would stop to say, “Has anyone helped you?” No they just continued to ignore us as though we were invisible.
Another restaurant for a set meal celebration: We arrived, had reservations, but could not be seated as our table was not available yet. We waited half an hour for the table, while other couples who came in later with reservations for the same period of time, we seated. We sat. The owner apologized for the delay and suggested we order a cocktail as the kitchen was behind and they would not be ready to take our order for a while. Ordering cocktails and waiting for them was another half hour. Finally a waitress came to take our choices for the four courses we were to have for the set meal. We dutifully gave her the orders. My husband order a dish which was no longer available which further delayed our dinner. Shortly later the starter course came. We enjoyed it as by that time we were hungry and it was getting late. Now we were waiting yet again. Our waitress is standing at the next table chatting with friends looking directly at us. An hour later the waitress came and asked if we were ready for dessert? Dessert! We hadn’t even had the salad. By the way while we were sitting there we noticed many of the starter that my husband ordered being delivered to tables all around us. The salad appeared almost instantaneously. We had a bottle of wine delivered and enjoyed this very much. At this point in time, my husband walked up to the wait station and told them to pack the rest of our dinner to go, we were leaving. When the bill came, needless to say, we did not give the waitress a tip. However, we did notice that there was a 20% gratuity added to our bill which came to more than $220. I told my husband he should subtract it from the total, but he wouldn’t. I guess you don’t get any service at that price. Not to be catty, but I hope they fired that waitress as she was incompetent.
Another episode, our meal didn’t come and didn’t come. When I went to check on it, it had been lost.
This is very frustrating.
When I am out running errands in my SUV I am frequently ignored. My car is a gold color and not invisible, but I guess because I am driving, no one can see me. Every trip from home entails a close encounter with another car pulling out in front of me. I am an aggressive driver and mostly keep my cruise control on to stay within the posted speed limit. It’s not like I am tooteling along well below the speed limit.
The other day a bicyclist nearly hit my car as he cut the corner at an intersection. Did he not see me stopped at the stop line? He cut into my lane and almost clipped the fender. If I had been moving, even in the slightest, I would have wiped him out as he blew by me.
Why is it when I am traveling down the highway at 55mph that someone pulls out in front of me causing me to jam on the brakes when there is no one anywhere behind anywhere in sight? Couldn’t they have waited, maybe three or four seconds and pulled out behind me? This happens almost every trip I take down the highway.
True these incidences may not be invisibility, but rather expressions of the me-first attitude. I can’t completely blame driving episodes on invisibility. If I had a grey car, I might have a reason to believe they can’t see me.
The fellow in the bright and shiny red Caddy said I was at fault. I wasn’t. It was at the post office parking lot. I was waiting in the aisle for a car ahead of me. He backed out of a stall and put an 8’ crease all the way down the driver side. It was a car off the used car lot across the street and not even his. Guess there went the profit margin.
I was in another parking lot and we had pulled out into the aisle between parking slots when an older gentleman backed into our quarter panel and smashed it. He was very polite. Said he didn’t see us. Yes, he would happily pay for the damage. In reality, he told his claims agent that we were the cause. Since we didn’t take photos, how could we prove anything? Our insurance company paid, which really burned me. They didn’t even contact us to say they were paying. Didn’t they want to know what had happened?
I am having a conversation with someone and they just walk off in the middle of it, for no apparent reason. Sometimes it is to join another conversation or sometimes they just leave. Not a word to excuse themselves, just turn and walk away, as if I weren’t there, walking away in midsentence.
I feel invisible. “I didn’t see you at the meeting.” “I didn’t see you in the restaurant.” Etc. No wonder I feel invisible!
Today the cookbook review will be for The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook by Brian Noyes, 2022, Clarkston Potter Publishers, ISBN 978-0-593-23481-5, Retail price $28.00.
Noyes is apparently based in Orlean, Virginia. Seems he as become pretty famous for his baking and even has had writeups on a number of national publications, has had “57,000 hits on his website in one day.” A glossy hardcover book with many excellent photos of the finished products gives us help in seeing what we would like to have as an end product, with local scenes thrown in here and there.
Proper Hot Cross Buns caught my attention at once near the front of the book. Having grown up eating these treats all through lent, I have fond memories of all the wonderful candied fruits found in these gems, though he only uses chopped candied orange peel. We always had orange, lemon and citron in ours. The recipe may be a bit more than most unschooled bakers would want to accomplish unless they were looking for a challenge. Finding a small egg can be daunting if you don’t have your own hens. He does suggest scrambling a large on and only using a portion of it as a remedy. Most of the ingredients here are available in your kitchen, so no problem there.
Moving on, he does not limit his selections to bread or bakery products, with offerings such as Heirloom Tomato Bisque with fresh basil, Old School Chicken Soup, Corn Crab Cakes with Jalapeno Mayonnaise, and Peanut Ginger Chicken.
Noyes’ Atlantic Beach Pie is almost verbatim from my cookbook, An Artist’s Palate (1995). His major difference would be the use of saltines for the crust. I suppose in this day and age of salted caramels, etc., folks enjoy the salt (he votes against reduced sodium saltines in the recipe, only full sodium saltines), I found that a little appalling.
Perusing the book, in general, I found most recipes to be fine for the baker/cook with average skills. The pantry requirements are those most households have both in supplies and tools. I did not find any real challenges in this tome, nor did I find anything that I didn’t already have in other books I own. It is a good basic text with excellent photos, so be sure to check it out at your library before purchase to be sure the recipes are not too redundant.
Three variations: Thousand year egg, with Chinese crueler and pork floss, and and pork floss with chili oil and green onion.
Chinese Breakfast (my version)
The Chinese often eat congee for breakfast, which is a thoroughly boiled rice dish. The rice is cooked until extremely tender with as much liquid as the consumer desires—may be runny or may be thick, usually without salt. When we went out with students for breakfast in China, this dish was often served with many variations, mostly pickles and stinky dofu. Some versions included chopped pork (sausage), chopped Chinese sausage, onion, lily flowers (daylily), and frequently included a thousand year egg quartered, floating on the surface. I like thousand year eggs but only if they are “fresh,” that is without the ammonia taste. My favorite version is with stinky dofu mixed in.
We like to eat rice for breakfast and often make egg fried rice, heavy on the scrambled eggs. We also eat Portuguese sausage, on rice with a poached egg (Hawaiian) or Breakfast Burritos with rice, beans and scrambled eggs.
I have a new take on congee, however. We make Chinese oatmeal. I have Chinese friends that love oatmeal and when they visited the US, they discovered instant oatmeal and they were instantly in love with it. For me it is too mushy. It is kind of like the congee overseas.
So why not make a type of congee with oatmeal. I purchase the old fashioned in bulk and keep it on hand for bread making and for oatmeal congee. You can make up all the dry ingredients in an airtight container and take it camping with you. Just add water and boil.
Here is the recipe. Just enough for two.
Oatmeal Congee
1 cup of old fashion oats
2 cups water
2 t chicken broth concentrate and/or unami powder, and/or soy sauce or yellow miso—use your judgment regarding the amount of salt this would add to the dish
1 Chinese sausage, diced
1 T dried onion flakes
2 T dried black fungus (optional)
½ sheet nori broken into bite sized pieces (optional)
1 t parsley flakes
1 t roasted sesame oil (optional)
This is all up to you, but it makes a savory oatmeal—not sweet. Put all the ingredients in the water except the oatmeal. Bring to a boil and add the oatmeal. Boil for one minute and then set it aside, covered for another five. You may want more or less water depending if you like it loose or dry. I make the whole thing in the microwave and that way it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.
This makes two servings which go into two rice bowls. I add kim chee or gochujang (Korean Fermented Red Pepper Paste) to mine. My husband adds a little soy to his. Hoison is nice too. Stinky dofu is really good, but very salty. Furikake is good too. Toasted sesame seeds dotting the surface with chopped cilantro and green onion are the best. Experiment!
Enjoy.
P.S. Just made steamed pork ribs for dinner and now have a nice garlic, bone broth. Will make tomorrow’s with that in place of the water and chicken stock.
deonmatzen 