The year’s best books on food that teach, inspire, and make you hungry for more. Because you’re an adult now, and it’s time to start cooking like one.
D.O.M.: Rediscovering Brazilian Ingredients by Alex Atala
Admittedly, there’s probably not one recipe in here you can actually make. The ingredients that Atala, one of the most innovative chefs in the world, forages for in the rainforest and catches in the Amazon’s waters are hard to come by even when you live in Brazil. So D.O.M. is not so much a cookbook as it is a fascinating exploration of the flavors that appeal to the human palate—wherever you live. Take for instance, suáva ants, which have been used by the Tucano people as a spice for centuries. They taste something like ginger and lemongrass. Atala serves them crawling on cubes of pineapple, a dish that simultaneously shocks and makes perfect sense.
L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food by Roy Choi with Tien Nguyen and Natasha Phan
L.A. Son is a frenetic and foul-mouthed cookbook for unapologetic outsiders. That’s Choi story, the son of new arrivals from South Korea who scrape their way to success just as Choi hits his messed up teen years. Choi looks back with penitent nostalgia: The dehydrated octopus his mom made that embarrassed him, the pungent kimchi that stunk up his clothes, and the dumplings he had to stuff for the family restaurant for hours on end, he now recognizes as the foundation for his cooking. So much changes when you finally grow up—and completely reinvent L.A.’s food scene. Choi includes recipes for Korean fried chicken and short-rib tacos, the messy, exuberant, and totally weird food that made him and his food truck, stars.
The A.O.C. Cookbook by Suzanne Goin
A.O.C. has all the beauty of an art book while managing to be practical enough for a diligent home cook to actually use. Goin’s elegant Los Angeles restaurant of the same name is part wine bar, and the wine and cheese notes she includes make this a perfect primer for setting up a solid dinner party game plan any month of the year. She groups main ingredients--fish, salads, meat, vegetables, and dessert--by season, so you know when it makes sense to eat Veal Saltimbocca (spring) or Grilled Quail with Couscous (fall). The House-Smoked Black Cod with Endive, Persimmon, and Lemon Cream is something to make right now, every day, for the rest of your life.
A Work In Progress: Notes on Food, Cooking and Creativity by Rene Redzepi
At the end of 2010, Redzepi’s Noma earned its first title as world’s best restaurant. With the overwhelming accolades came crippling pressure, which Redzepi took to chronicling in a secret journal. How do you continue to create when everyone tells you not to change a thing? Redzepi tries to figure it out in the three books that make up A Work In Progress—a journal, a collection of snapshots, and recipes from his test kitchen. The pleasure of reading this work comes not from the final recipes but in understanding how they come about. As you trace Redzepi’s inner monologue, you share the anguish as he loses his creative drive and the elation as he finds it again.
Via amazon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment