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Phil's Cookbook Reads of 2021

30K views 177 replies 9 participants last post by  chrislehrer 
#1 ·
I've amassed a backlog of cookbooks--mostly of Asian influence--to read. I thought a thread might be of interest and if nothing else is a shared catalog of what I'm reading and thinking of these books. I'd be interested in seeing such lists from other members in their own threads as well.

  1. Cooking South of the Clouds by Georgia Freedman. I heard of this book through a marketing email I get from Mala Market last year. They're a good source of specialty Chinese ingredients and share interesting recipes, They spoke highly of the book and so I added it to my list. It languished there for quite a while particularly as it was slow to come to market in the US. I got motivated to read it because of another Yunnan regional cookbook I'll talk about below. Overall, I liked this one better for it's greater variety of flavoring approaches. Yunnan is known for it's air cured hams and includes the region we call Tibet in the rise to the Himalayas. Thus the South and Clouds. Seasonings seem to focus more on preserved/pickled foods and chilies though the common soy sauce and oyster sauce do make appearances, just less than you might expect. Fried and boiled squash leaves dishes stuck out to me. I'd not seen those cooked before. I didn't know they were edible. I've eaten the blossom, which are just a specialized leaf so it makes sense. This is the better of the two Yunnan focused books in my opinion.
  2. The Yunnan Cookbook by Anabel Jackson. I get weekly cooking emails from the South China Morning Post as well. One of those emails included an interview with Anabel Jackson who has written more on the food of Macao than most anyone else and how that cuisine is fading away. So I've been looking for her books on Macau and she's written some on Vietnamese food and a few on China. And so now I had two Yunnan focused books to read and contrast each other. This is a pretty and elegant book and is missing page numbers on pages with recipes. Where she's talking about a region or category of food, those pages get numbers. This is annoying to me. I usually write notes in the front end-papers with a recipe name and page number that I'm interested in trying out. Couldn't really do that here. And no index either, but without page numbers I suppose that is reasonable. The recipes are very simple and short for what you may have come to expect for a Chinese recipe. Not as much caught my eye as in Cooking South of the Clouds. A zucchini and dried shrimp dish stood out to me and a pumpkin soup. I've seen hard squashes steamed but not made into soup in Chinese cuisine.
  3. Chinese Cooking: The Food and the Lifestyle by Anabel Jackson. This one sat strangely with me. She covers most of what you'd expect, usually with a bit more exotic content. However there are dishes overly simplified--Hot and Sour Soup-- for a non-Asian reader, but others that were surprisingly unadapted. The Egg Fu Yung, Fu Yung just means eggs, is a fried rice dish and not an omelet in gravy as Westerners might expect. Considering its publication in 2004, I think it runs behind the times even when published for sticking closer to traditional ingredients. This feels like it was from 10 years earlier or more. I found her vegetable section the most interesting with some dressed cold vegetable dishes (cabbage and cucumber one looks good) and even a stir fried potato and cilantro one. There's a scallion pancake recipe that just reads wrong to me. This isn't the flour based one (she includes one of those too) but the more rolled eggy style. The picture shows what I think to be an 8 inch non-stick skillet rolling up a pancake. The instructions say to put in 1 tablespoon of batter, cook it, roll it up and cut in three pieces. I just don't see the pancake shown coming from 1 T of batter. Based on the volume of ingredients and suggested yield, it must be more. Not a must have unless you're an Anabel Jackson completist.
On Tuesday 1/19, Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food is released. The original Chinese Soul Food is a good Chinese cookbook and is worth trying out. I don't think this new one will land right on top of my reading pile though.

Expect updates.
 
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#133 ·
A press piece on Mooncakes and Milkbread. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2021/10/17/books/book-reviews/mooncakes-milk-bread/ Not a review by any means.

I'm finding I'm not really clicking with Coconut and Sambal at the recipe level. I'm thinking the writing and content is fine, I'm just lacking context for the flavors. Heavier ground spice content than I was anticipating and coriander at that. I like ground coriander seed, but it's heavy proportion is surprising me. Lighter on the fermented flavors I'm more familiar with.
 
#134 ·
I haven't got the book, so can't say if the amounts are disproportional.
Indonesian food is quite varied as they have loads of islands, all with their own regional food/habits etc
Generally, Indonesian food uses soy sauce, not fish sauce. Quite a bit of trassi (shrimp paste), not much coriander leaves. I've not noticed it being high on coriander seeds (some dishes are, but mostly not)
 
#137 ·
I've been doing better with the meatier sections of Coconut & Sambal. But there are what seem to me to be some odd westernizations. In the description, she talks about the tradition.

SPICED BALINESE ROAST CHICKEN

AYAM BETUTU

For this dish, traditionally a whole bird is rubbed with a Balinese spice paste, then wrapped in leaves before being buried in the earth or a claypot and covered with hot charcoals and burning coconut husks. When ready, the charred green parcel is opened to reveal steaming, tender chicken that is succulent and smoky with Balinese spices.

My version uses these traditional flavours but an easier technique, just like my grandmother Popo used to do. The rendered chicken fat with the kale and the spiced crispy skin makes it one of my favourite dishes. Serve with Red rice and sambal matah.



Origin Bali

Chilli heat Moderate

Sambal suggestion Fresh Balinese sambal matah

Serves 4



4 skin-on, bone-in chicken legs

400g kale, woody stems removed and leaves sliced

Sea salt and black pepper, to taste

Coconut oil or sunflower oil

For the spice paste

8cm piece of ginger (about 40g), peeled and sliced

6 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

2 small banana shallots or 4 Thai shallots, peeled and sliced

3 long red chillies, sliced

¼ tsp ground turmeric

¼ tsp ground black pepper

¼ tsp ground white pepper

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground coriander

¼ tsp sea salt

½ tbsp coconut oil or sunflower oil

Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan/gas 7. Rub oil, salt and pepper onto the chicken legs. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat and lay the chicken legs skin-side down in the pan (you may need to do this in batches, depending on the size of your pan). When the skin is crispy and golden, which will take about 12-15 minutes, turn the chicken over and cook it for a further 4 minutes on the other side. Reserve any of the rendered chicken fat for the kale.

Meanwhile, place the spice paste ingredients in a small food processor and blend to a semi-coarse paste. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the paste until fragrant, about 10-15 minutes. Set aside and allow to cool.

Blanch the kale in a pan of boiling salted water for 3 minutes, then run it under cold water to cool. Squeeze out any excess water and press it between paper towels. Mix a quarter of the spice paste with the kale, along with the chicken fat and a sprinkling of salt, then spread onto a baking tray.

Brush the remaining spice paste on the chicken; it should spread nicely over the skin. Place the chicken legs on a wire rack above the kale (if you don't have a wire rack the chicken can sit directly on the kale).

Bake on the top shelf for 30-35 minutes. If the spice paste starts to burn on the chicken skin, cover any blackened bits with foil and continue cooking. To check if the chicken is cooked, the legs should reach 82°C. (If you do not have a probe thermometer you can also check by making a small slice into the thickest part of the chicken. The chicken is cooked when the juices run clear and the meat is fibrous inside, with no opaque pink flesh.)

Once cooked, arrange the chicken legs and kale on individual plates and serve immediately.
It would seem to me that a covered dutch oven would be the more reasonable westernization, Or wrapping in greens and then foil or such. And I'm not sure what part the kale is supposed to play as it doesn't seem you normally eat the leaf wrapping?

She does this often, discussing a traditional approach in passing then talking about her version that simplifies and departs.

There was an early Peanuts comic where Linus asks Charlie Brown what he's reading. It's a more famous book that's been "adapted for children". He then compares it to drinking adulterated root beer and tosses the book. I'm kind of feeling that.
 
#138 ·
In this case, the kale is supposed to be eaten ;)
The more standard version is with duck, but i've found plenty chicken variations.
Not with kale though, but with young cassave leaves. I understand the substitution. Some recipes don't use any leaves.
What I don't understand is why she wants to go for chicken legs, instead of a whole chicken. In that case, the leaf-spice paste is the stuffing!
The leaves she talks about initially have to be banana leaves as thats the traditional way of cooking, the chicken/duck is wrapped in banana leaves and cooked either in a hole in the ground or on a small charcoal fire.
I fully understand your confusion ;)
 
#139 ·
I agree with you both. The only saving grace here is her remark that this is the way her grandfather used to make it. Nevertheless it seems like an odd reinterpretation.

It sounds to me as though the original of this dish is not actually unapproachable, as compared with, say, Yucatecan pibil, where you have to dig a pit in the ground. I think if I were writing this cookbook, I might add a long paragraph just before the big about the grandfather, and explain in precise detail how to do the original dish. Then I'd say, "This is quite a production; fortunately for those who'd like to try the dish in a simpler, more approachable manner, my grandfather came up with...." Something like that.

How old is this cookbook? Seems like the kind of thing I expect in the mid-90s and back to the 80s, though I suppose it also depends a lot on the publisher.
 
#142 ·
Ah well, I can take that one of my wishlist ;)
I did find a couple of the recipes online and wasn't very impressed. Also the substitute for kecap manis (sweet soy) was just given as soy + sugar. Since kecap manis is quite an portant ingredient in Indonesian cooking, I would have expected a bit more info or at least soy + palm sugar or syrup as a sub.

When you go to the older Indonesian ookbooks (esp the Dutch ones), you'll find a lot of substitutions as a lot of ingredients wete not available. It actually became a different "kitchen", Indisch vs Indonesian.
I suppose something similar happened with Indian food in the UK.
 
#143 ·
Wanted to let you know that I'm really enjoying this thread! Your conversations about the books are as worthwhile as the reviews. I've learned so much.
One little aside from me -- I got some Red Boat salt the other day. It was pricey, even for a fancy salt, but good. Useful for those times when I need a dry hit of that fish sauce taste.
 
#148 ·
One Pan, Whole Family by Carla Snyder

I have three standby books in a similar vein. The Best Skillet Recipes--Cook's Illustrated, Cover and Bake--Cook's Illustrated, Sheet Pan Suppers--Molly Gilbert

So my attitudes and practices going into Snyder's book are already set to a degree. Indeed, certain dishes like Skillet Lasagna appear in both Cook's Illustrated content and in Snyder's. I prefer the less prepared ingredients approach of Cook's Illustrated personally. Snyder uses jarred pasta sauce, bags of precooked rice and similar convenience items quite often to keep it to just one pan and cut time.

And she likes sweeter counterpoints and additions to meals than I do.

I did find a few things I saved to try at a later time. A curried carrots and lentils dish with orange yogurt sauce. And a potato chard custard/gratin sort of thing.

The recipes are all pretty accessible. No odd techniques or equipment necessary. Every recipe gets three enhancements. A suggestion for a simple side to help feed Extra-Hungry Kids like rye bread for flavor and filling power. A tweak for Adult Taste Buds like cherry tomato halve, balsamic vinegar, fresh herbs. And an In The Glass suggestion for adult drinking and another for the youths.

She varies things from the skillet to the sheet pan to the dutch oven and soup pot. All types of one vessel cooking.

The book is fine. My cooking preferences are just divergent from the target audience.
 
#149 ·
Looks like Xiaoying Cuisine made the dish with meicai I mentioned in post 108https://cheftalk.com/threads/phils-cookbook-reads-of-2021.109407/post-621210

It's a dried pickle. Kind of involved process but interesting to see, beyond just reading about it.

 
#150 ·
The Vietnamese Market Cookbook by Van Tran and Anh Vu

This pair run a Banh Mi stall in the UK. The cooking strikes me as adapted and streamlined for daily European life. The beef pho is shortcut with beef stock (I too commit this shortcut) and simmered with the spices and charred aromatics. There are also some dishes that strike me Vietnamese influenced, but just using up old things around the kitchen. Pumpkin braised with coconut milk, and not much else in the way of seasoning. Similarly, a few eggplant dishes struck me as thrown together convenience food they happen to enjoy, but not with any real history in the cuisine.

The big learning points for me were gia vi and a language barrier mistake on my part.

This is my first encounter with gia vi which they describe as a basic spice mix. They give quick mix instructions when they call for it: 1 tsp gia vi (or a mix of 2 parts sugar, 1 part sea salt, 1 part ground black pepper, 1 part garlic powder) Googling for it turns up something similar. but usually seems to be intended more as a pho spice. Or maybe as a generic term for a spice mix for different dishes? And they do use theirs in the pho recipes and many other places as well.

Varying use of gia vi
(look at the fourth product image for the ingredient list

In the US at least it doesn't seem as standardized or sugar-salty as they use. I'll have to see if my asian grocer carries something similar to their usage.

The language barrier cropped up early on in the first recipe. They were talking about and then making a shrimp and marrow soup. I was thinking beef marrow, they were thinking the squash marrow. It wasn't until they mention substituting courgettes that it dawned on me.

The book's organization strikes me as gimmicky.
  1. Sweetness and Happiness
  2. Sourness and Change
  3. Spiciness and Adventure
  4. Bitterness and Perspective
  5. Saltiness and Healing
Then further section on Kitchen Essentials such as stock and such. I've noted before that I like the moving of these topics to the end of the book. Anyway, this organization reflects some cultural things, but it doesn't make finding a recipe or topic helpful. And the food follows the topics only loosely to my taste as well. They have a pretty lengthy discussion of sweet flavor that reminded me a lot of Betty Liu's discussion of pure flavor. The other topics are not as explored.

The Market aspect of the title is explored a bit in the introduction and then dropped.

I like the various banh mi and rolls the best of the recipes. Much of the rest didn't really stick out to me. I think I've come away with more confusion than clarity on what Vietnamese cooking is. If you want a glance in a diaspora Vietnamese kitchen, this is that.
 
#151 ·
Made Betty Liu's Shanghai braised pork belly. Came out pretty good. I like her additions of boiled egg and tofu skin knots. There isn't enough liquid to simmer for three hours, at least as low as my burners go. But you do monitor it and stir it around to catch those things. Neglected to take a pic.

There's a whole variety of gia vi at the Asian grocer. From whole spice blends to ground powder cubes for different dishes.

Shelf Shelving Convenience store Food storage Retail
Food Ingredient Recipe Dish Prepackaged meal

This one seems pretty close to what they mixed up.
 
#153 ·
I wrote a reply some days ago, but it has gone missing :(
I have been eying the market place cookbook, but decided I have too many cookbooks already!
My favourite Vietnamese cookbooks are (don't laugh) Australian woman's weekly "Vietnamese" and Andrea Nguyen's "into the Vietnamese Kitchen"
 
#156 ·
Sambal Shiok by Mandy Yin.

Once again, a regional (Malay) expat now in the UK starts a restaurant and then a cookbook. I'm not complaining. I enjoyed this one pretty well, The cooking and flavors make sense though there is some adaptation. Her cooking is the source of my wondering about petis udang earlier as I'd not encountered that ingredient before (that I recall). Maybe I just hadn't seen it spelled out as prawn molasses.

She mentions adapting dishes here and there, though it seems that using coconut milk is one of her preferred changes. Particularly in the beef rendang where she goes for coconut cream for a more velvety sauce over the use of desiccated coconut, reserving that for garnish. It seems to be less chile intensive than some others, and that's likely reflecting the target audience.

I was struck by the use of garlic powder in a few places. She lists it as one of the ingredients in the section on ingredients and describes it as a convenience and a time saver. Those things are true, but I think she has some other ideas about using that may not be fully formed in her mind. Usually, it turns up in a dry spice blend--a reasonable place for it. But the Golden Fragrant Prawns it shows up alone just to marinate the shrimp before they go in to the pan. She also uses fresh garlic in the spice paste for the dish. So it just seems like using fresh garlic would be an improvement to cooking the shrimp than the powder where we're already dealing with fresh garlic. And the cooking time is short enough that fresh garlic should work.

GOLDEN FRAGRANT PRAWNS
Whenever I'm back in Malaysia I always schedule time for dinner at Meng Kee, a restaurant halfway down Jalan Alor, one of the great food streets in Kuala Lumpur's Golden Triangle. Meng Kee has a large menu with over a hundred dishes, from which you would first choose the type of seafood you want to eat, then choose a sauce to go with it. You will also find chargrilled chicken wings and an excellent version of stir-fried butter prawns (shrimp) with egg floss.

This recipe pays homage to their kam heong sauce which goes wonderfully well with lala sweet little clams. Kam heong means 'golden fragrant' because of the many aromatics used: dried shrimp, curry leaves, garlic, yellow bean paste and black pepper.

Don't be deceived by its ugly, dark appearance. Once you've tasted it, you won't be able to stop eating the sauce alone with rice - the prawns in this recipe becomes a bonus!

This recipe can be used with a whole host of different proteins and seafood, such as clams, prawns, thin slices of chicken, pork or beef, and even lots of sturdy veg and/or fried tofu puffs. To make this vegan, replace the oyster sauce with mushroom sauce, and replace the dried shrimp with blitzed up nori seaweed and a touch of tomato purée to add more umami.

SERVES 4

500g (1lb 2oz) raw peeled king prawns (jumbo shrimp) - you can choose to leave the tails on for presentation purposes
1 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp dried shrimp, first rehydrated in 100ml (scant ½ cup) water then drained, reserving the water for the sauce
100ml (scant ½ cup) oil



SPICE PASTE
2 tbsp curry leaves
2.5cm (1in) ginger
4 bird's eye chillies (if you want it less spicy, use 1 larger chilli instead)
4 garlic cloves
100g (3½oz) onion, roughly chopped



SAUCE
1 tbsp yellow bean sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp ground black pepper
Reserved water from soaking the dried shrimp

1.
Marinate the prawns with the garlic powder for 30 minutes.

2. Blitz the rehydrated shrimp with 50ml/1½fl oz of the oil into a paste and empty out into a small bowl. Blitz the spice paste ingredients into a fine purée.

3. Heat up the remaining 50ml/1½fl oz oil in a wok on high heat until smoking. Stir-fry the prawns quickly until just cooked (this should take no more than 2 minutes). Empty them onto a container or plate.

4. Using the same wok, turn the heat down to medium and stir-fry the shrimp and oil paste until fragrant, which will take around 1 minute. Then add the spice paste and sauce ingredients. Stir-fry until the oil separates, which will take no longer than 2 minutes. Taste and adjust the salt/sugar to taste.

5. Finally add the cooked prawns back to the wok. Stir to incorporate and serve immediately.
My one other ingredient complaint is for the Bak Kut Teh, Pork Herbal Soup where she calls for

"2 sachets herbal soup herbs (I use the brands Teans Gourmet or A1 - some will also come with loose dehydrated herbal strips in which case just add to the soup to infuse with the sachets and remove with a slotted spoon before serving)"

I'd have liked having the herbs broken out for me in the amounts needed. I have seen similar recipes that use these pre-fab packets, I'm just not sure they're available, but the individual herbs should be.

Here's a list for a different recipe for bak kut teh just as an example (from https://tasteasianfood.com/bak-kut-teh/)
The herbs: B
  • 10g Angelica sinensis (当归 / dang gui)
  • 8g Rehmannia root (熟地 /shou di)
  • 10 g Ligusticum striatum (chuan xiong / 川芎)
  • 15g Polygonatum odoratum (玉竹 / yu zhu /Solomon's seal)
  • 20 g Codonopsis pilosula (Dang shen / 黨參
  • 1 tbsp goji berries


The spices: C
  • 2 star anise
  • 2 bulbs garlic
  • 3 cinnamon bark
  • 2 tsp white peppercorn
She opens the book about street food and promptly offers a string of intriguing dishes. A chicken satay that looks pretty good, then a chicken satay burger that sounds better, simply for the easier production imho. Next a satay cauliflower fry up, fried chicken and gado gado. All seeming winners.

Recipes are well linked (cross referenced) to recurring sambals/pastes. Usually, these are not standalone recipes, but given within the recipe that first called for their use. They're clearly broken out in the ingredients and instructions so this is no hardship, and even fairly reasonable.

She finishes the book with a tourist eating guide to her favorite spots in country, organized by city.

Cooking from this book is likely to stretch a Westerner's pantry and shopping habits. I think that's a good thing. And so is this book.
 
#157 ·
I'll have to check this one out ;)
Interesting remark about her using coconutmilk instead of descicated coconut!
In my opinion it is the other way around with coconut cream or milk being the more common approach!
It might be a Malaysia vs Indonesia diffetence.
The trick with Rendang is to reduce the coconut milk/cream till the meat starts frying in the fat. I've never done this with only descicated coconut....
 
#158 · (Edited)
Interesting remark about her using coconutmilk instead of descicated coconut!
In my opinion it is the other way around with coconut cream or milk being the more common approach
I think the Malaysian Rendang does usually contain toasted coconut (known as kerisik) but also coconut milk or cream. The recipe I've seen of hers on Great British Chef website does indeed contain both as do most recipes that I've come across including this one from BBC Good Food : https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/beef-rendang-turmeric-rice. This is a pretty reliable tried and tested UK website.

And here is another: https://www.singaporeanmalaysianrecipes.com/beef-rendang-daging/

So - whatever she says, I don't think what she is doing is exactly ground breaking or much different from the 'standard' approach.
 
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