Book Reviews

Molly Wizenberg's delightful food memoir A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table will be released in paperback next month, so it seemed like a good time to revisit it.

In record time, a group of food bloggers from around the world collaborated to produce this gorgeous good cause cookbook. Proceeds go directly to the Red Cross and Doctors with Borders. 

Top Canadian Chefs share their favourite recipes

On the back of Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, Alton Brown, author of I’m Just Here For the Food writes: “Professional cooks and bakers guard ratios passionately so it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Michael Ruhlman is forced into hiding like a modern-day Prometheus, who in handing us mortals a power better suited to the gods, has changed the balance of kitchen power forever”. I don’t think he is exaggerating.

If you have a deep appreciation for those rare but memorable pieces of perfect fruit, and a curiosity about what it takes to coax them out of nature, then this is a fascinating read that will enlighten as much as it entertains. 

An obvious labour of love, Sushi: Food for the Eye, the Body & the Soul is an encyclopedic volume written by Danish academic Ole G. Mouritsen, and designed by his son, Jonas Drotner Mouritsen. 

This is not exactly hot off the shelves, having been released in November 2008, but in case you missed all the excitement last year, here is EAT's take on Nigella's Christmas bible. 

This elegant new series published by Reaktion Books offers the perfect stocking stuffers for those whose curiosity about particular foods will not be quenched. 

How can you go wrong with a cover that reads: "Fear and loathing in Bordeaux. A daughter and her dad hit the bottle and hit the road"?

From the eye-popping colour photography to the rainbow tabs running down the sides of the pages, this book is a celebration of all foods bright and yes - fresh, making for a tempting display. 

Grant Shilling reviews Brian Brett's Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life for The Tyee. 

Like clockwork, as fall gives way to the long grey stretch of winter, my mind starts to wander to far off places. Tessa Kiros’ latest cookbook is the perfect aid for any armchair (or kitchen) travel you may be inclined to venture on. Venezia, with its gilded page edges, velvet ribbon bookmark and gorgeous photography, is a sumptuous affair, and one that delivers on the subtitle’s promise of ‘food and dreams’. 

If you have enjoyed an autumn filled with mushroom forays, then here is a book to inspire you to take your foraging activities in new directions. Fat of the Land is Langdon Cook’s new book recounting his adventures hunting and gathering near Seattle, WA.

What happens when an award-winning illustrator goes to the French Culinary Institute in New York? Read the review to get an idea. 

Chef Michael Smith offers up a tempting new collection of 120 of his favourite recipes in The Best of Chef at Home.

If recent reports about BC wine imposters have left you feeling a little confused, then look to this week’s book as a beacon of clarity. John Schreiner’s The Wineries of British Columbia was completely revised and updated for this new edition, which hit shelves last May

The fifth book in Eric Akis’ Everyone Can Cook series tackles special occasions with panache. 

This month sees the anticipated release of the new cookbook from Araxi, the restaurant that has been voted 'Best Whistler Restaurant' by Vancouver Magazine no less than nine times.

It has been five years since the publication of Vancouver Cooks and the Chefs’ Table Society has returned with a second helping of recipes celebrating the BC Food scene.

Chef Jeff Crump of the Ancaster Old Mill garners accolades from Michael Pollan and Ruth Reichl for his new cookbook.

Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest celebrates both cheesemakers and their products. In her introduction, Tami Parr states that we are in the midst of an artisan cheesemaking renaissance, and she has compiled the book to prove it.

Retro motifs outfit this quirky-styled cookery book in honour of the London-based restaurant, Leon. Author and founder Allegra McEvedy serves up a feast with the two-sided book featuring sections on ingredients and recipes.

"The coconut is technically a fruit, and every now and then it grows a pearl. The pearl-bearing coconut is one of some 30 surprising fruits that caused me to pencil an exclamation mark in the margins of The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession..." Click here to read the full review of this book in the New York Times.

Chef and entrepreneur Matthew Kenney has built himself something of a raw food empire. With over a dozen plant-based eateries spanning from his native New York to Maine to Florida and now in Spain and Turkey, Kenney’s philosophy of “sustainable cuisine” is influenced by international flavours no matter where he cooks.

The Tassajara Zen Mountain Center is famous for its beauty, nestled in a valley near Big Sur, California; its retreats, which feature soaking in natural hot springs and teachings from some of the world’s most distinguished Buddhists; and its bag lunches.

When the heroine of our story starts out on her year of cooking dangerously, she is a dogged, worn-down woman of thirty whose thankless job as a secretary in New York threatens to drain her of joy and a sense of purpose...

The tapas of the Eastern Meditteranean countries, mezze is the sharing of small plates accompanied by wine, ouzo, and other anise-flavoured liquers.

Nina Planck’s first book, Real Food, went against the grain by promoting old-fashioned foods like butter, cream, and red meat that had inherited taboos from scientists and nutritionists and set a precedent for the discussion around industrial versus whole foods. Her second book, Real Food for Mother and Baby, is every bit as unconventional and enlightening.

With an introduction by Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini, foreword by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser and recipes contributed from chefs Daniel Boulud, Alice Waters, and Deborah Madison, The Pleasures of Slow Food is truly an all-encompassing and collaborative effort.

Elizabeth Levinson has done it again. Combing the sideroads and main streets of Vancouver Island and surruounding islands, she sifts like a miner for nuggets of local epicurean gold for her third edition of An Edible Journey: Exploring the islands’ fine food, farms and vineyards.

Just in time for sweltering summer evenings, Mark Miller has created Tacos: 75 Authentic and Inspired Recipes. Packed to the gunwales with creative, unusual, or classic recipes, Miller mines his years as the chef and owner of Sante Fe, New Mexico’s Coyote Café, to instruct on the rolling, frying, and filling of tortillas, the art of the side, and even includes a handy beverage pairing guide for each recipe.

Where are the old bars, the saloons, the watering holes, where a pontificating intellectual, thirsty cowboy, and a traveling musician can level the playing field by sidling up to the bar and imbibing in a fizz, a gibson, or a sidecar?

Kaie Wellman and her band of gypsy writers have crossed the guide book with the travel journal for a unique series of books called the eat shop guides. These sleek, bright guides with colourful, unposed photos gracing each brief (but thorough), witty review walk the reader through ninety carefully chosen eateries and shops per city.

Picking up right where he left us in his groundbreaking The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan is back at the table with In Defense of Food. Pollan’s style is to attack from many fronts —with sense of humour and humility intact...

Foul-mouthed, amply-girthed Kenny Shopsin has a reputation for turning overly polished customers away from his busting-at-the-seams grocery store/restaurant in New York City. It’s just one of the rules in his personal kingdom; if he doesn’t like the look of you, he reserves the right to kick you out —probably with profanity. And if he doesn’t do it, perhaps the waitress sporting the “Die Yuppie Scum” T-shirt will.

It's been called the "Silent Spring" of nutrition books for its detective work on one the modern eaters most confounding nutritional riddles: fat. There are good fats and bad fats, we've been told, polyunsaturated, trans fats, partially hydrogenated fats, animal fats, and vegetable fats. Susan Allport knows them all...

Alice begins, “My delicious revolution began when, young and naïve, I started a restaurant and went looking for good-tasting food to cook…When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.” And there you have it folks, simply put, the secret to Alice Waters’ and her extraordinary achievements.

I’ll admit it; I was wrong about raw food. For too long I snubbed raw foodists —who consume only uncooked, unprocessed, and usually organic food— as snooty extremists who made life difficult for dinner party hosts and chefs. Then I took a good, long look at chef Matthew Kenney’s Everyday Raw cookbook and now I’m eating my words...

Tony Aspler’s Wine Atlas of Canada is so thorough, so lovingly-detailed that you emerge from reading it with a wealth of knowledge —and a generous of heap of pride in our country’s vinification accomplishments.

Seafood can be one of the more intimidating ingredients for the at-home cook. Anyone can slice some lemon on a salmon and grill it, but try something a little more sophisticated —Periwinkles with Stinging Nettle Purée and Potato Chips, Bigeye Tuna Tataki, or Sablefish Caramelized with Soy and Sake, for example— and you may revert to the old tried and true.

The River Cottage Cookbook should come with the warning that you may be inspired to make some serious life changes after flipping through its pages. This anthem disguised as a cookbook is really a manual that makes growing and raising your own food look both fun and completely easy.

I've done a lot of book reviews for EAT over the past year, and recently noticed a pattern emerging. That is, some of the most fascinating cookbooks that combine travel, photography, storytelling, and recipe-sharing are the result of some kind of male-female relationship...

In ÄŒamus (chum-us), First Nations elders and families from the west coast of Vancouver Island and northern Washington share the wisdom and riches of their traditional territories.

I never let any friend or acquaintance of mine go to San Francisco without strongly advising them to make time for Tartine. This bakery in the heart of the Mission (one of San Francisco’s warmest and most colourful neighbourhoods) is a portal to a time and place where one immediately feels sophisticated, satisfied, and divinely happy. It’s basically pastry heaven.

Ten years ago I boarded the wrong bus in a tiny Northern Italian village and spent an hour and a half rambling through Tuscan hills on a crisp, sunbathed Autumn afternoon in full-on awe.

Once a week I work at a small shop that houses, among many other things, a few shelves of carefully chosen cookbooks. Most days, it is a familiar sight to watch a customer wander in, beeline to the books, start flipping through one and get completely lost in the luscious photographs of beautifully prepared food.

I’m not going to lie; I got a little teary-eyed reading this book. There is something about seeing kids with dirt-smeared knees, carrying a basket of eggs and sporting gigantic grins on their faces that makes me feel utterly hopeful.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if one could fly to Paris for Valentine’s Day and clink glasses with your darling in the City of Love? A close second is pouring yourself a glass of wine and flipping leisurely through the pages of Taschen’s Paris by Angelika Taschen.

Last week’s review, French Women Don’t Get Fat, took a magnifying glass to the culture of eating in France as a remedy to the bad habits that have come to define eating in North America. This week’s review, The Omnivore’s Dilemma turns the lens another degree and exposes the gritty details of North America’s food system. Author Micheal Pollan visits feedlots and factory farms, learns to hunt, tries on vegetarianism, purchases a cow, and slaughters chickens in this eye-opening critique of the way we eat.

The title of this book is a bit deceiving. This is not a fat-fearing diet book; au contraire, author Mireille Guiliano is a cheese-loving, champagne-sipping lover of her native France’s often rich cuisine. What her book patiently teaches is the lost art of eating. That is, savouring flavours, cooking in tune with the seasons, intimately knowing one’s farmers’ markets, and treating food as both a source of nutrition and pleasure.

Author Linda Long, a steadfast vegan of thirty years, had a moment of epiphany when dining out at the Ritz in New York. Served a vegan dish that went far beyond an over-cooked vegetable medley, Long realized she had stumbled upon vegan haute cuisine. The meal inspired her to contact some of North America's best and brightest chefs —like Dan Barber, Charlie Trotter, and Daniel Boulud— to compose a collection of elegant, inventive, and delicious vegan fare.

Cook the 'Hood is a not-for-profit organization that promotes local businesses and supports local programs that provide food assistance to those in need. Their cookbooks by the same name, are a collection of recipes from Vancouver neighbourhoods both renowned for their culinary excellence and home to a segment of the population in need of food assistance.

"My entry point to enlightenment was yogurt," writes Anne Mendelson, author of Milk: the Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages. So she begins her story there, in the Old World mediterranean homes where yogurt and fermented sheep and goat's milk foods were most enjoyed soured because this is how the climate naturally reacted to milk. Uncovering through her research the value of milk in the traditions and daily lives of cultures around the world, you'll never look at this humble food the same way again.

An appreciation for farm-fresh flavours characterizes her choice of recipes in this, her latest of ten cookbooks. A Taste of Canada reaches into the corners of our country for traditional recipes made with real, and as often as possible, home-gown ingredients. The recipes Rose Murray has chosen are often comfort foods with a touch of panache and elegance.

No mere collection of common breads and pastries, husband and wife team, Jeffrey and Naomi have unturned many stones in their search for traditional baking recipes around the world. In this anthem we are told stories of juniper-scented tandoors in Afhganistan, find recipes for Ukrainian honey cake, Spain's Rye Poolish, Brazilian Bolo, and Himalayan Dumplings

Through several incarnations West has kept a stronghold on its international reputation for excellence in fine dining. What started out as a gutsy venture in formal French dining (rabbit and oxtail were regulars on the menu) has evolved into a truly Pacific experiment. The menu, like the new cookbook, moves in time with the seasons, shining a spotlight on the best of local and fresh forages.

"Generally I don't like pretty food, but I am in awe of beautiful food. Plums in a bowl...what could be more beautiful?" Thus writes chef David Tanis of Chez Panisse in his utterly stunning cookbook that perfects the art of cooking with simplicity.

Since moving to Mexico in 1957 as the wife of a New York Times correspondent, Kennedy has been a conduit for English speakers into the highly sophisticated world of Mexican gastronomy.

Sitting with this photo-album-travel-journal cum cookbook butterflied open on your lap, you may get contentedly lost in the stories, maps, and photographs on your way to cooking dinner. But if Jeffrey's account of serendipitously bumping into renowned travel writer Ella Maillart and sharing a bowl of chile-hot tree fungus in Lhasa distracts you from choosing something for dinner, it's a welcome distraction.

These cookbooks are all written by parents, or the kids themselves, who understand that time bumping into each other in the kitchen, chatting in the garden, or washing dishes at the counter are family-time as much as the actual sitting around the table.

This is no ordinary cookbook. This is a paint-splattered, memoir-crammed, photo collage ode to the love of food, friends, and the great art of running a restaurant...