Mollie Katzen 4 out of 5

Taking a look at the photos of the small restaurant in a converted gymnasium of a closed down school in Ithaca, New York back in 1977 it’s hard to believe that the food from such a humble venue would generate such an influential cookbook for vegetarians world wide.Although it looks like a “hippy” cook book, with it’s rough cream paper and “charming”, hand-written text and drawn illustrations, the content of this book is a long way from the over-cooked under-seasoned “brown” food so often found in vegetarian cafes in the eighties…..I’ve often thought that the problem with many vegetarian eateries is that the primary motivation of the proprietors was the concept of vegetarianism and not how good the food tasted….and it’s strange to think that some of those dull café proprietors may have been inspired by this book which is full of fresh ingredients and flavours.

With many international inspirations from Italian, Indian, Mexican and Chinese cuisines, which lend themselves well to vegetarianism, there are also many influences from all corners of the globe. Not a single recipe from this book has disappointed me and my particular favourite is the Lemon Mousse, which cleverly uses cornflour as the gelling agent instead of the more usual and animal derived gelatine. The perfect present for someone choosing to become a vegetarian for the first time as there is so much variety within the pages of this veggie classic!

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This is a very useful book, perfect for translating menus on holiday or seeking out special ingredients when back home..With 12,000 entries Rodney Dale’s dictionary translates a huge range of foreign foods and dishes, menu items, drinks, cooking techniques into English….making it an invaluable and inexpensive resource for frequent travellers and foodies alike. Entries are of course alphabetic in the native language….and there are a lot of languages, French, Italian…of course, but also Finnish, German, Polish, Dutch, Czech, Swedish, Hungarian, Greek and Indian etc. Also definitions of obscure cooking terms in English and American English.I have used this book extensively and it’s very handy but of course by no means exhaustive, you’d need a pretty big dictionary to cover the whole world, also it’s only a “one way” dictionary translating foreign words into English, it will not help you translate your favourite dish into Italian or other foreign languages.

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This book is massive, apparently it took twenty years to compile and the amount of information about food in it is unbelievable.The Oxford Companion to Food is an encyclopaedia laid out in alphabetical order from “aardvark” to “zucchini” and covers all manner of foods, nutrition and culinary subjects….it really is one for major food fans. However as with more general reference books no matter how big, it’s still not going to be comprehensive, I mean food is such a huge subject, you couldn’t make a book big enough! So I have a strange feeling about this one, it’s too big (you couldn’t read it cover to cover), yet it hasn’t got enough in it! There have been plenty of times I’ve looked up something in this huge tome only to find there is no entry, frustrating! And despite the many references to international cuisine  I find “Dictionary of menu and culinary terms” by Rodney Dale far more useful for translating foreign food terms into English. Buy this book : UK USAIllustrations are sparse, black and white, drawing style images with no photos. Major items such as “rice” have their own multi-page sections dedicated to them and more obscure items may have just a few lines….entries are informative and obviously authoritative.So what you’ve got to think about is are you looking for a general reference book, or would you be better off buying two or three more specialised books in the subjects you are particularly interested in?It does make a great “I’m a serious foodie” status symbol coffee table / kitchen library book if you’re that way inclined though!

Paul Gayler 4 out of 5

This book has been on my want list for some time, so I was pretty chuffed to spot this in a discount book store (£4.99) while walking home after checking out a new(ish) Taco café in Notting Hill today (Great flavour, big prices, small portions) and I’ve been reading it since I got back, obviously I haven’t tried out any of the recipes yet but…already it looks like a great book.As mentioned in my previous review of “Flavours“, Paul is my favourite chef so I’ll spare you all the hero worship and concentrate on the book, which is surprisingly the US edition and not the UK version so all recipes are in imperial (cups and ounces). I have no idea whether the UK edition differs in any other way, I doubt it.

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Alice Waters pretty much kick-started the “California cuisine” revolution. When I working as a chef in “Californian restaurants” in both London and Paris in the early nineties, this book was our major reference to what we were supposed to be doing…along with Coyote café that is….not that we were copying the recipes inside but we were trying to recreate her style, flavour combining, fusion ideas and her philosophy of organic, local and high quality produce although we of course had difficulty sourcing produce readily found in California!

I can’t tell you much about the history of Chez Panisse but I can tell you about the book, just reading through the recipe titles in this book makes your mouth water as you imagine the recipes that might follow and nod in appreciation of the combinations Alice and Paul use…..yet the layout of this book is very plain, hardly any graphics or photos and simple text with no diagrams and all recipe titles are just a few words in English simply describing the dish (tomato, green garlic and herb soup or ravioli of pancetta, browned garlic and rosemary oil) and no fancy foreign titles except where the dish is a particular classic like “ratatouille”. The method descriptions are just as simple and easy to follow, making you believe it really is easy to create delicious food if you love what you’re doing…..that’s what you get from this book a real feeling of love and appreciation of food.

So many recipes in this book inspired me in those days and encouraged me to use ingredients, methods and techniques new to me, “grilled asparagus with Parmesan and olive oil” became a standard and taught me to use a potato peeler to shave Parmesan! “Confit of ceps” became a favourite, a recipe I adapted by cooking the ceps straight in the olive oil rather than steaming them first as Paul suggests. Green garlic was seasonally plentiful in Paris markets and “Green garlic soup” was one of my favourites too. Yet this book is not just a recipe book there is plenty of discussion of the ingredients used, techniques, ripeness, seasons, equipment and nearly every recipe has a description of the dish, how they create it and how it should feel and taste.

The vegetable section alone is worth the cost of this book and an inspiration for vegetarians and meat eaters alike. Other favourite sections are those on making your own sauerkraut (yes I tried that too because of this book) pasta and breads (sourdough again!).

Alice Waters is considered to have been a major influence on chefs and food culture world-wide and she was way ahead of her time with many of today’s modern trends of traceabilty, organics and freshness, even way ahead of Jamie Oliver with her “Edible Schoolyard” and “edible education” programs. In 2004 Alice Waters was invited by Raymond Blanc’s “Le Manoir aux Quatre Saisons” restaurant for a three day demonstration / seminar along with Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud, high praise indeed from a UK perspective, wish I could’ve afforded to go!

I have only one small criticism of this fantastic book…the copy that I picked up from Dean and Deluca in New York many years ago had a novel “corrugated” effect on the paper edge, making it difficult to flick or browse through the recipes as I like to do…You always come across the same ones! Don’t know if it’s still bound like this though.

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A collection of Jeffrey’s writings as food critic of Vogue USA….and definitely not a selection of expense accounts write-ups of swanky Manhattan and L.A. restaurants, some of the food discussed is miles away from the world that the Vogue brand epitomises.

From travels to European and Asian locations to discover perfect examples of local delicacies to subsisting for a week on peanut butter, brown bread and dried milk, this book has a lot of variety, from gourmet, through health and nutrition to domestic food industry and the products the corporations are trying to force on us (Olestra).

His writings are insightful, thought-provoking and above all hilarious, he’s also not scared to say exactly what he thinks or ask difficult questions.

I loved reading this book and couldn’t put it down, the opening chapter about baking home made sour-dough bread sounds pretty mundane but it was impossible not to get caught up in his enthusiasm and as a result I too went through the same frustrations and rewards, inspired to make my own sough dough bread.  (Sour dough bread or more specifically “Poilane” is one of the latest trendy exclusive foods in “nice” areas of London….when I lived in Paris, I was lucky enough to have Poilane as one of my local boulangeries and “fait au levain, cuit au bois” signs were everywhere.)

Favourite articles on the French anomaly (they eat loads of saturated fat and rich food, but have a low mortality rate from heart disease) bottled water, salt and it’s true affect on your health and sauerkraut are constantly recalled my me in conversations and my copy of this book is full of dog ears ( I don’t look after my books very well) where I want to not forget some essential piece of information, cooking tip or soundbite.

Reading the book I began to Trust Jeffrey Steingarten’s opinion and paid quite a lot of money to have “Japanese cooking: a simple art” and Marcella Hazan’s “The essentials of Italian cooking” sent over to the UK (they are available here now…damn!) and they are two of the best cooks books I’ve ever owned.

If you are a foodie and want to read something more than a recipe book, something that will make you think, laugh and go  and try something new this is definitely the book for you.

Jeffrey has a new book out, “It must’ve been something I ate” which is a further selections of his writings….my copy is already ordered! we’ve listed both these books in our amazon store, click below:

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Why don’t we see Paul Gayler on the TV more often? Could it be that he just doesn’t have the star quality of such “characters” as Jamie and Ainsley? He’s far too down to earth and straightforward to be a celebrity.  He is, however my favourite chef and without doubt one of the most talented and pioneering contemporary chefs that Britain has produced.  He has great understanding of food and flavour combining and has been a great innovator in vegetable / vegetarian cuisine despite not being a vegetarian himself.  If I could afford it, I would eat at the Lanesborough Hotel (where Paul is Head Chef) far more often than the three times in the last nine years that I’ve been there.  Of course I don’t believe he’s in the kitchen when I’m there but the food created by his chefs is always spot-on, even something as simple as penne with broad bean puree and truffle oil was sublimely perfect last time I went.

A long while ago I worked under one of Paul’s sous-chefs who seemed to be constantly saying “Gayler says do it like this” and a lot of what was passed on to me then made sense…..This knowledge and understanding shines through in “Flavours (of the world)”. 

Essentially this is a collection of twenty five of Paul’s favourite ingredients (I’ll list them at the bottom of this page!) each with their own chapter.  Each ingredient is discussed in-depth at the beginning of the chapter with descriptions, information on storing, preparation, culinary uses, other uses and even growing if the ingredient is a herb.  Paul provides a list of  complimentary flavours for each of the  ingredients before moving on to a selection of his fantastic recipes starring the flavours he has chosen.

All the recipes sound delicious and there are some combinations you might not expect, especially in the savoury / dessert crossover style! such as veal fillet with mocha porcini sauce.

As much a book to be read for inspiration and new ideas as an actual recipe book, I love flicking through the pages of this one.  Photography is mouth-watering with an image at the beginning of each chapter depicting the ingredient and then beautiful pictures of selected (not all) recipes. 

As I said, Paul is my favourite chef and I have many more books of his in my collection which I will review later..

Those ingredients / chapters in full:

Balsamic vinegar… Basil… Cardamom… Chillies… Chocolate… Cinnamon… Coffee… Coriander… Cumin… Garlic… Ginger… Honey… Lavender… Lemons… Limes… Lemongrass… Mint… Mustard… Nutmeg… Olives… Peppercorns… Rosemary… Saffron… Salt… Tamarind… Vanilla… 

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When the whole of Britain faced the nazi threat during the second world war and we were apparently all pulling together for the war effort, “upper class” Elizabeth David decided to go on holiday setting off on a merry jaunt around the Med in her married lover’s yacht. It didn’t quite go to plan and after spending time in Italy (weren’t they the enemy?) she continued to run way from the war, living the high life with well known bohemians in Greece, then moving on to Egypt where she dumped her beau and took a marriage of convenience with an English lieutenant eventually ending up in India. When the nasty, dirty business of bombing and manual work back in England was over she decided to return.  And so between 1946 and 1950, at a time when rationing was actually worse than it was during the war, when the masses of Britain were struggling with powdered eggs she decided that this was a perfect time to tell us that we were doing it all wrong and should actually be cooking with olive oil and courgettes. So followed her book “Mediterranean food” which espoused the use of fresh foods that simply weren’t available to the majority of British citizens.

Her “distinguished” background and good connections ensured that since then the perceived wisdom amongst the  middle classes is that she introduced such food items to Britain…..I guess firmly established Italian delicatessens such as Valvona and Crolla of Edinburgh who had been selling Mediterranean delicacies for nearly thirty years previously were well off the radar of those who write the unofficial social history of Britain.

However, whatever you think about the above there is no doubt that her books brought some southern European sunshine to a grey Britain and “Mediterranean Food” is still named by many famous chefs as either a huge influence or even a “bible” and a quick internet search will find thousands of gushing tributes to her books. With black and white illustrations throughout, the book is as much about culinary history of the regions she visited as it is about the recipes themselves, in fact some say that it is more of an interesting read than a book you prop up in the kitchen and cook directly from.The writing style in this book is very much of her time and many foreign words are left un-translated, Americans may have difficulty with the French words for zucchini and eggplant for example. Some may find that this adds to the enjoyment or reading this important book as you step back in time and into the life and travels of the author. 

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A book on French cooking written by an Australian…..don’t let that put you off, when I had to recruit chefs when working in London kitchens being Australian was certainly a plus point for candidates.  At that time Aussie chefs seemed to have more enthusiasm and understanding of food than young English cooks, maybe because of the influence of mentors such as Pignolet.

This guy loves food and it shows in his recipes, in-depth descriptions and details of the dishes he’s chosen for this book accompany great photos of food just the way I like it, simple and unfussy, without unnecessary garnish or flourish.

As he says himself in the introduction this book is written in a similar way to books written for professional chef training schools (such as Practical Cookery by Cesarini and Kinton) so why not buy just such a book instead of this one? Well if you’re looking for a dry reference book with everything you need to know and as much “basics” as you can handle then “Practical Cookery” is highly recommended. “French” is not that but it’s not a complete French cookery book either, the subject is vast and this book contains only those dishes that Pignolet himself has tried, tested and fallen in love with over many years.

Laid out in chapters similar to professional kitchen departments (entrées, eggs, soups, fish, meat, farinaceous, vegetables, pastry etc) each has it’s own introduction explaining the role of the food and discussing ingredients and their quality, especially recommended is the chapter on eggs.

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