vamysteryfan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vamysteryfan) wrote2012-07-11 01:33 pm
vamysteryfan) wrote2012-07-11 01:33 pm
Entry tags:
Book post
It was a food-ish kind of week for books.
A Sea of Trouble and Willful Behavior by Donna Leon. Still reading my way through the series. Brunetti always solves the crime but the perpetrators often don't face consequences. One feature common in the books are scenes where he and his family share meals which are carefully described. Beyond that we don't see much of his children. Donna Leon collaborated on a cookbook with her Venetian friends, Brunetti's Cookbook by Donna Leon and Roberta Pianaro. It includes essays and excerpts from the books. The essays are fun. I don't know if I could make any of the dishes.
Julia's Kitchen Wisdom by Julia Child. One hundred pages of concentrated tips and techniques.
Best Food Writing of 2011 by Holly Hughes. It was a nice collection of essays on all aspects of cooking - politics, recipes, more.
The books tied together for me. Several of the essays talked about cooks working their way through the recipes in one cookbook or another. It gave them the confidence to tackle harder dishes. One writer said the cooks on TV who seem so slapdash about adding or measuring ingredients have the confidence that comes from making recipes often enough to be able to call them their own. As Julia wrote, once a technique is mastered, it's easy to make related dishes.
I get one kind of pleasure from reading cookbooks and another kind from making the dishes. I'm working my way up to more elaborate techniques.
A Sea of Trouble and Willful Behavior by Donna Leon. Still reading my way through the series. Brunetti always solves the crime but the perpetrators often don't face consequences. One feature common in the books are scenes where he and his family share meals which are carefully described. Beyond that we don't see much of his children. Donna Leon collaborated on a cookbook with her Venetian friends, Brunetti's Cookbook by Donna Leon and Roberta Pianaro. It includes essays and excerpts from the books. The essays are fun. I don't know if I could make any of the dishes.
Julia's Kitchen Wisdom by Julia Child. One hundred pages of concentrated tips and techniques.
Best Food Writing of 2011 by Holly Hughes. It was a nice collection of essays on all aspects of cooking - politics, recipes, more.
The books tied together for me. Several of the essays talked about cooks working their way through the recipes in one cookbook or another. It gave them the confidence to tackle harder dishes. One writer said the cooks on TV who seem so slapdash about adding or measuring ingredients have the confidence that comes from making recipes often enough to be able to call them their own. As Julia wrote, once a technique is mastered, it's easy to make related dishes.
I get one kind of pleasure from reading cookbooks and another kind from making the dishes. I'm working my way up to more elaborate techniques.
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