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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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#2 ·
I'm currently alternating between a number of books
- Pok Pok (bought yesterday as the kindle version was affordable). I'd been eyeing the book for a long time.
- Hot Sour Salty Sweet and
- Burma, rivers of flavor. Both from Duguid and Alford. I made a couple of recipes from "Burma" and I liked them.
I like their writing style as well.
- How to brew hy John Palmer. My go-to brew book ;)
 
#3 ·
I'm currently alternating between a number of books
- Hot Sour Salty Sweet and ;)
I love that one! Have it as kindle and keep coming back to it. It's a wonderful story of an (American I think) family living throughout the region over the years and the recipes are much more accessible than, say, David Thompson, but don't feel dumbed down in the least (which is sometimes euphemistically called ''adapted for ... "). It just feels like homey food from the region. Definitely one of the all time best for me, of any cuisine.
 
#4 ·
Indian and Chinese Cooking from the Himalayan Rim by Copeland Marks. Most of this book is based in ethnic dishes of groups in Calcutta with some other adventures into more distributed groups. The first group is Hakka Chinese and is pretty Chinese. If Hakka diaspora cooking is of interest to you, The Hakka Cookbook is an excellent resource, this book less so, though the local context with the more Buddhist view of the Hakka was interesting. The author says the Buddhists among the Hakka do not use garlic, onion or scallions which is similar to restraint among the Marwari Jain the author also writes about. I've read elsewhere this is to not arouse the passions (for food I assume). I wonder if that's where it came from. The Marwari dishes frequently called for asafoetida which does have a sort of onion-truffle flavor when cooked. The other interesting food restriction was that egg whites were allowed and the yolk not.

Then a section on Jewish pickles, though they are distinctly Indian to my view, just sourced from the Jewish community in Calcutta. Maybe there's more going on there in Calcutta but it didn't come through to me as a reader the ties that were particularly Jewish about this.

Fourth, a Christian immigration from Armenia that had a lengthy stopover in Persia along the way. This was distinctly Eastern Meditteranean ideas that had picked up some tweaks along the way and from their new homeland. A clear variant of Tzatziki does appear called Jajik.

Next a section British-Indian cooking though again it was a bit lost on me how the British influence played through compared to the Indian influence. Perhaps its a heavier meat emphasis.

Now, leaving India he discusses the food of Bhutan, Sikkim, Kashmir and another Jewish group, the Mizos. I was a bit surprised at the number of offal dishes here as those usually get skipped over.

I'm not excited about the food here really. I enjoyed the cultural explanations more as shown in the food than the food itself. I think there are probably better books on all the topics--though I've never seen as much about the Jain in one place before, and that was still pretty minimal. But if you want an overview, this would serve the purpose.
 
#5 ·
Sheet Pan Chicken by Cathy Erway. I liked her earlier book, The Food of Taiwan, particularly her use of black vinegar which is not referenced so often in other books. I like black vinegar as much as balsamic, maybe more because of my preference for Chinese food. So when a sample recipe popped up in my feed last year--when I say feed I mean the News app by Google which you can configure to supply new content from various sources--probably from Bon Appetit, this book quickly got added to my list.

So the gimmick is clearly chicken and a sheet pan.

She pulls ideas from all over the world. Russia, Japan, China, Thailand, India, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, Europe... You'll probably find a recipe that appeals to your preferences.

I like how she treats various greens on the sheet pan, particularly the Kale Crown idea. She strips out the ribs, rubs with oil, seasons and onto the pan for the last 15 minutes of a fairly high heat roast to finish. I mean, that's how your roast most anything on a sheet pan, but figuring out the timing is a bonus I reap the benefit of.

I like her method of cooking a sauce at the same time, though I'd just put in a small sauce pan or 8 inch skillet in the oven along side rather than bother with the parchment separation she uses.

I was disappointed how many of the dishes didn't lend themselves to a sheet pan meal, a practice I've adopted from books like Sheet Pan Suppers by Molly Gilbert.

The recipes that made it into my to-try list on the first time through
Bang Bang Crispy Chicken-a Chinese idea that includes black vinegar
Paprika Chicken-the Kale Crown's first appearance
Chicken Schnitzel My mom did oven fried chicken and I liked it growing up. Lets see how this adaptation works in comparison.
Roasted Ceasar including roasting the Romaine.
Soy Chicken-A roasty glaze for this dish seems like a good idea.
Saltimboca Just to see how it compares.

There are some ideas I already did before hand such as the Sumac and Za'atar dishes she does. Mine are similar though her tahini yogurt sauce sounds good.
 
#6 ·
A Chinese Street Food Odyssey by Helen and Lise Tse. Street food usually is harder than it looks. If it's easy then you'll make it yourself and they don't have a business. They have to walk the line between hard enough you won't make it and easy enough to turn a profit on with a compelling price. They might use a long simmered broth or a specialized skill to make great dumpling skins or something. So I wasn't really expecting to make much from this book. And I didn't, but more because they dumbed things down so much, the best part was often lost.

Rou Jia Mo or Chinese Hamburgers for example. I've made this a couple. of times. I've even cheated on the Mo bread with a thin sandwich roll though it did lack some of the quality of the original. Here are three worthwhile versions of this from my Chinese Youtube mainstays:




These guys went with ground pork, no soy sauce or rice wine and did more of a stir fry than a braise. I can see where this could be pleasant enough, but it's quite a departure from the real thing. They also fry the bread kind of like it was an oily english muffin rather than the dry toasting step it usually is. They seem to cut corners like this all the time in recipes where I have experience enough to recognize it. So I don't really trust the recipes that are new to me.

It's also pretty clear in the Shrimp wonton soup using chicken stock with a drop of soy sauce just really doesn't cut it.

I did like the idea of eating scallion pancakes with XO sauce. I'll have to give that a try. But really, skip this book.
 
#8 ·
I'm now in to The Adobo Road Cookbook by Marvin Gapultos. Not as far in as I'd like. I'm really not familiar with Filipino cooking so I have a tougher time thinking through the flavors and a number where I really can't. Even the ingredient discussion section has been quite new to me. Coconut vinegar, OK, I've seen that, I thought it was more of a Thai thing--clearly I'm not well versed in Thai cooking either. Cane vinegar. I think i've seen that (I have). Mutant Coconut. That's new. A coconut variant that is jell-like through out, no liquid center, usually Jell Coconut.

I want a picture of can that says Mutant Coconut if I can find it. And Google will suppy something if I can't find it in person.



The Asian grocer that has all those nice Phillipine vinegars, does have Jell Coconut in the can. but no Mutant Coconut labeling. However, they all carry The California Proposition 65 label for lead and cadmium.

I can't qualify why that bothers me more than the usual prop 65 cancer label I see on my seaweed, but it does.

My Philippine dining is limited. I've eaten some greasy lumpia, some lackluster pancit and some good turkey tails. I look forward to better things.
 
#11 ·
Finished Adobo Road last night. I was glad he included a sisig recipe though I'd have liked to have the pork belly/jowls version he supplies as well as one that gave amounts and directions for the ear, snout and jowls traditional version. Not sure I could source those easily, but learning how to use those ingredients would have been interesting in their own right. And Mike Chen speaks highly of the ears in the versions he's eaten on his Youtube channels. There is another dish that uses ears in the finger food section so it seems it's a long simmer to soften the collagen/gristle of the ear, then grilled in that dish. I like tendon so I suspect I'd enjoy ear too. I bet a pressure cooker would simplify cooking ears.

The various adobo look pretty good and I think I'll be trying some of that soon. I was pleased he supplied a version of longganisa to make at home. That will be useful.

I'll pass on the grilled chicken feet. I'd certainly eat them, but they're one of those things I would rather let someone else do the work for. Braised Oxtail in Peanut Sauce struck me as iffy. First, most of my family doesn't like peanut sauce things. I do, but it means I skip most peanut oriented dishes. Second, the non-traditional addition of cocoa powder sits off kilter with me. Maybe it's like chili where it can work and its only a minor amount. But the other hurdles for family acceptance mean I'll likely not know.

For a first entry for Filipino cuisine in my collection, it seems worthy. I'll let you know how I think it stacks up as I read others this year.

Next up is The Best of Singapore Cooking by Mrs. Leong Yee Soo.
 
#12 · (Edited)
The ebook conversion of The Best of Singapore Cooking is worthless.

It seems the book was laid out with ingredients in the left column and a marking line and letter in the right column to show how those ingredients are grouped for cooking. She'll then say to combine or maybe stir fry A. Sometimes there is a B section too.

On most recipes you can kind of figure it out by some spacing breaks, but not always.

Another time the ingredients list includes some pork ribs and tails. They might be part of A but it doesn't seem likely. The instructions say to add them back in at one point. They were never obviously added in the first place and never instructed for removal at all even if they were added with A.

Ok, I reread the recipe yet again. If they're part of A, then you do strain them out. The rest of the straining is not returned. The formatting made me think they were not part of A, but they must be. Very confusing conversion.

And just to niggle some more. The char kway teo recipe uses cockles, no shrimp. The photo is with shrimp.

So this is pretty much a disaster, at least in ebook form. And i suspect the physical form is problematic at best.

Did not finish.
 
#13 ·
Now I'm into Homestyle Malay Cooking by Rohani Jelani. It's going much better. And right early in there's an interesting congee type dish but it's very out in the ordinary in my experience of congee.

Bubur Lambuk (Savoury Rice Porridge)
200 g (1 cup) uncooked rice
2 ½ litres (10 cups) water
1 cinnamon stick (4 cm/1 ½ in)
1 star anise pod
4 cloves
3 cm (1 ¼ in) fresh ginger, scraped and bruised
150 g (5 oz) lean beef, minced or very thinly sliced
100 g (3 ½ oz) boneless chicken, diced
150 g (5 oz) fresh medium prawns, peeled, deveined and diced
185 ml (¾ cup) thick coconut milk (optional)
¼ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons deep-fried shallots, to garnish
1 spring onion, sliced, to garnish

1 Wash the rice in several changes of water until the water runs clear. Place in a pot with the water and bring to a boil.

2 Add the whole spices, ginger and beef. Reduce the heat, partially cover with a lid and simmer gently, stirring several times, for 1 hour until the rice is very soft and mushy. Add a little hot water if the porridge threatens to dry out.

3 Discard the cinnamon, star anise and ginger. Add the chicken and simmer for 10 minutes. Then add the prawns and simmer for 5 minutes.

4 Add the coconut milk, if using, and season with the salt. Simmer for another minute, then serve hot, garnished with fried shallots and spring onion. The rice should be cooked until the grains are broken and the texture is smooth and very soft.

Serves 4
Preparation time: 15 mins
Cooking time: 1 hour 15 mins

The spices, the coconut milk, the trio of meats, is all a departure from what I think of for rice porridge. If my family will help me eat it, we'll have to give it a try.
 
#15 ·
I don't know a lot about this kind of cuisine. One thing I've noticed about Malay/Singapore cookbooks is they call out different sorts of curry powder as though they commonly available such as fish curry powder. But I've only seen recipes for these online. The books never give them nor have i seen any for sale.

The braised pepper chicken looked particularly accessible.a couple of different fish curry caught my eye. I wish they would have included a chili crab. They give a chili shrimp, I wonder how similar they are?

Anyway, it's not a big book but there were things i noted to try out and look forward to.
 
#16 ·
I've seen that too, in some Singaporean cookbooks ("Singapore heritage cooking" There even was a call for Rendang powder!)
I haven't seen this in any of the Indonesian cookbooks I got.
There are a lot of similarities in Indonesian and Malay cooking, so maybe this has something to do with "foreign" influences on the different Malay styles (Perankan/Nyonya, Indian, European etc)?
 
#17 ·
Binging with Babish by Andrew Rea. I enjoy his youtube channels. I'm not a subscriber but I enjoy his technique and deadpan delivery. The food though has never made me want to replicate it. I haven't seen most of the TV or film the food is inspired by and so I have no particular resonance with it.

So this seemed sort of like a stunt cookbook, a performance of food styling. Nothing really stands out to me as something i must try or do differently than i do. I guess i was hoping for technique insight more than anything.

Better visuals than victuals, at least for my interests.
 
#18 ·
Chinese Feasts and Festivals by S. C. Moey. This book sits in my mind against another I read some years ago, Good Luck Life by Rosemary Gong. Both are guides to celebratory food and the cultural behaviors around particular events and holidays. It could be just the fading of my memory in time, but I'm liking Feast and Festivals better. I think it has better cooking information and more details about the beliefs of the celebration.

A quick scroll (most of the books I'm reading this year are epubs, as is my copy of Good Luck Life) through Good Luck Life shows it is less about cooking and more about the ritual and meaning and calendar structure. More of the myths and legends too. So my memory wasn't super accurate.

An example from the cooking front, most of the whole fowl preparations also include an accenting sauce recipe for use at the table. Usually this gets a short cut of just plum sauce, hoisin sauce, or commercially prepared duck sauce and often no suggestion at all. Moey offers interesting sweet and sour dip and many other combinations for accenting the eating.

On the traditions regarding eating the whole fish, the senior at the table who gets first pick of the fish, also has the duty to properly prepare eating the other side of the fish after eating the top part. This is by removing the skeleton from the fish rather than simply turning it over. Turning it over is bad luck, perhaps spilling your fortune or overturning the fishing boat.

As this is celebration food, the recipes are more involved and usually involve more expensive ingredients, so I don't have a particular set of dishes I'm planning on. I do plan on using some garnishes and dips for other purposes.

If you want to learn some more about Chinese New Year and other celebrations, both of these books are worthwhile. If food is more to your interest, Chinese Feasts and Festivals strikes me as the better of these books.

The Lunar New Year celebrated by the Chinese occurs this year on 2/12. My plan is not to cook from this book, but something like a Grill Pot and some dumplings.



If you're looking for some ideas for your own celebration, a few have come through my feed recently that are worth looking at.




 
#19 ·
I made the Classic Chicken Adobo from the Adobo Road cookbook above. Very good and easy.

Everything is thrown into a pot and simmered, the sauce is boiled and reduced, done. It is adobo in its simplest, most basic, and perhaps best form.
But don't confuse basic with bland. As the sauce for this dish finishes and boils, the bubbling helps to emulsify the liquid with the chicken fat in the pan, creating a simple yet flavorful glaze. And even though the chicken isn't browned or seared, it still achieves a beautiful brown sheen from the luscious sauce.

Serves 4-6 as part of a multi-course meal
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 45 minutes

¼ cup (65 ml) soy sauce
½ cup (125 ml) white Filipino cane vinegar, or distilled white vinegar
6-8 cloves garlic, smashed with the side of a knife and peeled
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
6 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs

Place the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, black peppercorns, and bay leaves in a large, nonreactive sauté pan, and then nestle the chicken thighs, skin side down, into the pan. Bring the liquid to a boil over high heat, and then cover and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Turn the chicken over, and then cover and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Uncover the pan, and then increase the heat to high and return the sauce to a boil. While occasionally turning and basting the chicken, continue boiling the sauce, uncovered, until it is reduced by half and thickens slightly, 5-7 minutes. Serve with steamed white rice.

VARIATIONS: While the sauce is reducing, transfer the chicken thighs, skin side up, to a foil-lined sheet pan. Brown the chicken thighs underneath the broiler for 3-5 minutes.
Use freshly ground black pepper instead of whole peppercorns. For a "drier" chicken adobo, you can reduce the sauce until it is almost completely evaporated. The chicken will then begin to fry in its own fat that is still left in the pan. This is how my grandmother finishes her adobo.
For a saucier adobo, double the amount of soy sauce and vinegar.
To make this adobo as an appetizer, use 2 lbs (1 kg) of chicken wings instead of thighs.
I made it with ground pepper, double sauce, and broiled the thighs, all ideas from the variations list. I did skim some fat from the sauce as i know my digestion wouldn't do well with the full fat dose. There was no shortage in the finished dish still.
 
#21 ·
Today's entry is Gok Cooks Chinese by Gok Wan.

I thought this was a pretty good Chinese cookbook. It has a distinctly modern slant drifting into fusion. So instead of salt and pepper pork, you get salt and pepper pork chops. And while I know the Chinese do use fish sauce, I've never seen it show up so often, even in the mapo tofu and also some ostensibly vegetarian dishes as well.

The Garlic Chicken and Sichuan Chicken both struck me as simple and worthwhile approaches to those flavors.

There are odd things like 4 chicken breasts that manage to only weigh 500 grams total for Dad's Drunken Chicken. His hot and sour soup is unlike most anything else of that name. Happiness in a Bowl is just shrimp wonton soup but that naming needlessly complicates finding what is otherwise a common recipe. And bonus points for making shrimp shell stock for that soup.

Organizational choices mean all categories of cooking are scattered throughout the book. I did enjoy the one-pot chapter as that's a different but useful way for a westerner to think about a Chinese meal for simple cooking.

There are some occurrences of sexual language and ethnic perjoratives that strike me wrongly for a cookbook. Perhaps that's part of his public UK persona but it was in poor form I thought.
 
#22 · (Edited)
I forgot to mention two other recipes i wanted to call out, both steamed eggs. He does a regular version of steamed eggs with shrimp. It's good to see this dish cropping up more frequently.

The other was eggs cracked into a bowl, not mixed or whisked, topped with meatballs and steamed. This was a new variation for me and I look forward to trying it.
 
#23 ·
Been out sick. Covid test was negative. Hope to get back to my reading again soon. Still caught workingin my backlog of life that builds up while sick.

Xi'an Famous Foods is almost done. It was on many best of 2020 cookbook lists last year.
 
#25 ·
Xi'an Famous Foods by Jason Wang (and others).

The food of Xi'an has become more mainstream in the last 5 or so years. Probably more than that, but I live in a culinary backwater. Sure, we have a disproportionate representation of cuisines for our size -- I credit the Mormon Missionary program for people bringing back a love of a foreign cuisine and some related immigration as well. But hand pulled noodles have penetrated America's Test Kitchen so it must be more mainstream.

The organization of the content is fairly biographical. They start in Xi-an, move to America, move around a bit while Dad works the Chinese restaurant circuit. You can read about this circuit in Jennifer 8 Lee's Fortune Cookie Chronicles. They start a food cart, They grow. The author returns to Xi-an and realizes they're cooking a snapshot in time as Xi'an cuisine has evolved as Xi'an has grown and become important.

In the middle, he gives recipes and directions for a number of popular dishes they serve at the restaurant. A lot of this relies on some seasonings they make in bulk and dole out in various amounts to other recipes. Chili oil, XFF Noodle Sauce, XFF Liang Pi Sauce, XFF Dumpling Sauce. These mostly riff on black vinegar, soy sauce, oyster sauce, star anise, bay leaves, sugar and so on in different proportion to each other. This makes a lot of sense for restaurant production. It makes a lot less sense for a home cook making a single recipe here or there.

As to Liang Pi, knowing how to make my own gluten is interesting. You do use the starch water leftover from making the gluten for making the noodles. And I've watched Souped Up Recipes do it on Youtube a few years back. But I can buy gluten/seitan. I can buy wheat starch, how about some simplification here? https://misschinesefood.com/the-wheat-starch-cold-noodle/ for example. But as I've not eaten Liang Pi from scratch, maybe the difference is worth the extra work. I respect preserving the traditional knowledge. But some modernization options would have been appreciated by me at least.

When Jason returns to Xi'an, the cooking simplifies to more approachable home cooking levels and the is the part of the book that most interested me. Soup, hash, a sort of spaetzle noodle I'd never seen in Chinese cooking before. This Liang Pi skips washing out the gluten and just steams the batter directly and is dressed in sesame sauce. I'm not chasing down lamb heads or spines...

I do think this is an important cookbook. Both for capturing that snapshot of what Xi'an cuisine was and the core techniques, but also for recognizing that things change. Both are good. There's not a lot here that I've seen in elsewhere in print. What I've seen of this regional cuisine is mostly Youtube cooks. I don't know for sure what to try out. It's all quite new and the flavors and unclear to me in many ways. I should Mix up some core sauces and try out some hand pulled noodles and cold skin noodles it seems.
 
#26 · (Edited)
# 14: Chinatown Kitchen: From Noodles to Nuoc Cham - Delicious Dishes from Southeast Asian Ingredients by Lizzie Mabbott.

The subtitle has more to do with this cookbook than the main title. Except that you go shopping in Chinatown to find the ingredients. This is a pan-Asian cookbook with a bit more focus on the spicy cuisines of Southeast Asia. Japan and Korea do make appearances. Further, this is highly modernized and adapted, and in a number of cases diverging sharply from what you might expect of a dish of a particular name.

Lizzie grew up eating primarily Chinese food in Hong Kong but didn't learn to cook it in her youth. She self-educated herself on the topic later while living in England. Her book is organized by ingredient category, but this sometimes creates an odd mishmash of dishes in a particular chapter with savory and desserty sweet type items side by side. I can respect the organizational approach though as the cuisines of Asia tend to mix sweet and savory in ways uncommon in the West.

Lizzie likes her spicy hot dishes more than I do and this can manifest in weird ways. She offers a Red-Braised Ox Cheek for example. Red-cooking is usually about a master stock heavy with spices, soy, sugar, rice wine and dried tangerine, a sweet-savory simmering technique where you re-use the stock over and over and develop an ever richer base. She offers up a recipe based in doubanjiang and yellow bean baste, a bit of rice wine and minimal star anise. And I think it would taste pretty good but I don't see the red-cooking connection really. It would certainly kick with heat and fermented bean taste in a way unlike red-cooking.

Where she got her Bo Kho idea is completely lost on me. Kho usually indicates a Vietnamese savory caramel cooking base, or at least a good dose of sugar. Here it become a beef curry based in curry powder and no sugar to be seen. Again, it seems a perfectly fine dish, but it's not what the name would indicate.

The book strikes me as highly personalized and adapted rather than representative of any particular cuisine or experience. I'm likely the wrong audience for this book as I'm more interested in tradition and practice than she is. If you want something pan-asian with fusion-ist ideas and a modern approach to the tastes, this seems pretty reasonable.
 
#27 · (Edited)
Beans, Greens, & Sweet Georgia Peaches: The Souther Way of Cooking Fruits and Vegetables by Damon Lee Fowler.

Fowler is my preferred author for topics of Southern Cooking. Not that he has covered everything there is to cover or knows it all, but he digs pretty deeply into the past and has a good palate.

In this book he argues that produce is the backbone of southern cuisine rather than the meat the produce surrounds. And really any cuisine really. I was once taken to task for lamenting the sad sides at a particular barbecue restaurant. The people I was talking to said that you go to barbecue for the meat. In my mind, I went for the meal. Most meals are produce-centric for economics, optimal nutrition and yes, taste. Except for salt, our seasonings and aromatics are plants or parts of plants. Fowler doesn't have to convince me of the claim.

With produce as the topic, he logically organizes the book seasonally for when the food is in season. There are a few stretches to this concept. He gives some accompaniment such as corn bread and grits that aren't seasonal. And the South covers a broad geographic and climate range so there are things that struck me oddly because I sometimes don't think of Florida as the South, though it clearly is. That particular dish was Grapefruit and Avocado Salad. Something about that combination knocked me out of a Southern mindset entirely and that is my bias on display as they are grown in the south though not natively originally.

I was introduced to a broader range of cooking for many vegetables. The artichoke options included an interesting braise and an artichoke and oyster soup. That is not a combination I'd have come up with. I was surprised at the number of ways he offered for edible flowers. I wouldn't have thought that was particularly southern, but it seems to be practiced more than I knew.

A gumbo for Okra of course, but a few other stews and soups also. I struggled with its use in a salad. He points out you need young pods so that there is no goo/slime. I only ever see mature or frozen in my market so this option never occurred to me either.

Peanuts get some interesting entries, but again some require a fresh peanut I'll never see in my area. That's OK. It's good to know what's possible with optimal ingredients or what to look for if you're traveling in the right season.

I've made and enjoyed some fruit soups and salsa before. He calls out a particular Georgia Peach Soup in a more savory approach than I've ever seen before.

Georgia Peach Soup SERVES 8

Fruit soups are not intended to be sweet. They are served, not as a dessert, but as a first course in much the same way as a fruit salad. This particular one is popular in Georgia hotel dining rooms and in restaurants that cater to visitors. Though it is sometimes served warm, and I've given directions for serving it that way, it's more usually served well chilled, and is best that way.

6 medium, ripe yellow peaches (about 2 pounds)

1 lemon, cut in half

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

¼ cup chopped shallot or yellow onion

2 cups Chicken Broth (page 21) or 1 cup canned broth mixed with 1 cup water

2½ cups heavy cream (minimum 36 percent milk fat)

Nutmeg in a grater

1 tablespoon bourbon

1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint

1. Put the peaches in a large heatproof bowl or a stockpot. Bring a large teakettle of water to a boil and pour it over the peaches. Let them stand in the hot water for 30 seconds and then drain. Rinse them with cold water, slip off the peelings, and then halve them and remove their pits. Cut into thin wedges and put them into a glass bowl. Squeeze the lemon juice over them, then toss to coat them well.

2. Put the butter and shallot or onion in a heavy-bottomed 3½- to 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Sauté, tossing often, until softened and transparent but not in the least colored, about 4 minutes. Add all but 1 cup of the peaches and stir until warmed through. Add the broth and let it come to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the peaches are tender, about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat.

3. Puree the soup in batches in a blender or food processor, and return it to the pot. Cut the remaining peaches into small chunks and add them to the puree. The soup can be made several days in advance up to this point. Let it cool uncovered, and then cover and refrigerate it until needed.

4. To serve it cold, stir in 2 cups of the cream and season to taste with a few generous gratings of nutmeg. Stir until smooth. To serve it warm, gently reheat it over medium-low heat, stir in the cream, and just let the cream heat through. If it's too thick once it warms (which may happen because of the acid reacting with the cream), thin it with a little milk. Just before serving, stir in the bourbon.

5. If serving it cold, whip the remaining ½ cup cream until it forms soft peaks and garnish each serving with a spoonful. If serving it warm, don't bother to whip the cream, but simply drizzle a spoonful into each serving. Top with a sprinkling of mint and freshly grated nutmeg.
He retreads a few ideas he's used before. He recycles mayo-based potato salads in a baked casserole. And that's not a bad dish, just one he's talked about in other books.

I think this book will introduce new ideas and treatments to most cooks. I fully recommend his other books, particularly Classical Southern Cooking, Essentials of Southern Cooking and New Southern Baking. He also wrote the Ham book in the ever-increasing topical set of books in the Savor the South series.
 
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