Announcements! Annoucements! (And Our Next 4 Books!)

It is hard to believe that Cooks The Books began four years ago this month! It all started when a few comments about how great a virtual foodie book club would be were traded about on the Foodie Blogroll and three book-devouring foodies; Rachel, The Crispy Cook, Joanna of Food Junkie Not Junk Food, and me (Deb at Kahakai Kitchen) formed a friendship and were off and running with a bi-monthly foodie book-inspired blogging event. Whether you joined us in the early days, or discovered us more recently, we value your participation and the sharing of thoughts and dishes inspired by the 24 books we have shared.

Rachel and I are very sad to announce that our co-host Joanna is stepping out of her hosting role at Cook The Books, needing to concentrate on her family and personal life right now. From the early days of setting up our CTB site and picking some really wonderful books to host, Jo will always be interwoven into the heart and soul of our group. We hope that she will pop in and visit us as she can in the future, and we thank her for all she has done to make this little blogging event a success.

As hard as it is to lose our good friend and co-founder Jo, we are very excited to introduce two new Cook The Books hosts—although they really don’t need much of an introduction as they have been among our long-time dedicated CTB participants. Please welcome Simona of briciole and Heather of girlichef, taking us from a trio to a quartet, starting this month, as Simona takes over the hosting duties for our current pick, Heartburn by Nora Ephron. (Note: We have extended the Heartburn deadline to Monday, December 3^rd).  Both fabulous bloggers, Simona also hosts her own virtual book event, Novel Food if you can’t get enough of reading and cooking! Heather’s passion for books, film and food caused her to create the monthly Food ‘n Flix event which some of you participate in and which we will be tying into our December/January CTB round.

Without further ado, we have our next four book selections—taking us through July of 2013, giving you plenty of time to locate them or add them to your holiday wish list! We have a great assortment—a dystopian thriller blockbuster, a Sicilian murder mystery, a macaron and pastry filled novel set in Macau, and a classic book of foodie essays from an icon in the food world.

December 2012/January 2013

Heather of girlichef is leading us of with the thrill-a-minute mega-best seller, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, adding a fun optional opportunity to share some foodie book and film fun. She says, “Imagine if you will, a post-apocalyptic world in which the select few dress, eat, and live extravagantly.  The rest?  They hunt, forage, and farm to put foods in their bellies.  Also imagine having to send your child between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight to the death, with only one winner, alongside 23 other children.  A tale of survival set in the Nation of Panem sometime in the future, this novel may have been written with a young audience in mind, but I think that people of all ages can (theoretically) relate.

*Special edition: This book was recently made into a film, and we will be announcing an optional feature this round - combine reading the book with watching the film-adaptation.  We will be joining forces with Food 'n Flix for an extended dose of The Hunger Games.” (Details to come but you can learn more about Food ‘n Flix here.)

 

The deadline for The Hunger Games is Monday, January 28^th.

February/March 2013

Chasing those winter doldrums away, Rachel, The Crispy Cook takes us back to Sicily with her pick of The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri. Rachel says, “Our very first Cook the Books pick focused on Sicily (we read Lily Prior's novel "La Cucina" and I propose we return to the "scene of the crime" by reading the first book in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano mysteryseries by author Andrea Camilleri. "The Shape of Water" is the book and in it, the scrupulously honest Inspector searches to uncover the facts behind the death of an engineer that local bigwigs, including Montalbano's police chief, don't want investigated. However as the rear cover blurb on my copy of the book notes, "Picking his way through a labyrinth of high-comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendetta firepower, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can
be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter."

 

The deadline for The Shape of Water is Monday, March 23^rd.

April/May 2013

From the Sicily and The Shape of Water, we journey to over China for The Color of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe, hosted by me (Deb at Kahakai Kitchen). I am just now immersing myself in this descriptive foodie novel about Grace Miller, an English expat moving with her Australian husband to the tiny island of Macau in China. A stranger in a strangle land, Grace, escaping the realities of the shattered dreams of her life, uses her passion for baking to open a café—serving coffee, tea and pretty-colored macarons to the women of Macu. There should be plenty of food and baking inspiration in this lovely book about boldly creating a new life and blossoming in a different place.

 

The deadline for The Color of Tea is Monday, May 27^th.

June/July 2013

Back to Simona of briciole with a foodie classic, How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher. Simona says, “Where can I start to talk about M.F.K. Fisher? Probably the best way is to choose one of her books and invite you all to read it. This will give you a good sense of how wonderful she was as a writer. Of the books written by M.F.K. Fisher (1908-92) that I have so far read, my favorite is How to Cook a Wolf, which, I believe, illustrates well the qualities that make her writing enchanting. After spending three years in France with her first husband, she came back to the United States in 1932. Five years later she published her first book, Serve it Forth. In 1941 came Consider the Oyster, followed, in 1942, by How to Cook a Wolf, described by James Beard as “her brilliant approach to wartime economies for the table.”

Wartime brings special challenges to anybody trying to eat “with both grace and gusto.” Fisher refuses to allow all pleasures to disappear from the wartime table and provides advice and recipes that creatively make the best of what can be obtained and prepared at a time of tight budget and scarcity. As usual with Fisher’s books, the food at hand provides the springboard for reflections on topics ranging from the balanced diet to the choice of a drinking partner. Each chapter of How to Cook a Wolf presents Fisher’s thoughts on a topic: “How to Boil Water,” “How Not to Boil an Egg,” etc. Expounded principles are applied in recipes inserted in the text. The recipes are interesting (they include the aptly named War Cake, in which bacon grease can be used, “because of the spices that hide its taste”), though the main pleasure of reading the book is to listen to Fisher philosophize, muse, get passionate, gently satirize (herself first), and tell stories, where she describes people and events of her life.”

 

The deadline for How to Cook a Wolf is Monday, July 2^9th.

And there you have it—our reading list for the next several months. Simona will be back shortly with a post  on our current October/November pick Heartburn. Until then, happy reading and cooking to you all!

Our “Home Cooking” Winner!

There was so much wonderful home cooking happening for our Cook the Books August/September selection “Home Cooking” by Laurie Colwin, that our judge for this round; avid reader, book lover, blogger (at Year of Magical Reading and The Ultimate Bridesmaid Guide), J. Crew copy editor and free-lance book editor Caitlin Kenney, had a tough time choosing a winner. Caitlin was up for the challenge however, and without further ado, here is her announcement:

“Thanks again for the fun opportunity to judge Cook the Books! After much thought, I’m happy to announce the winner: Claudia of Honey From Rock!

One of my favorite quotes from Colwin regards how closely tied food is to friendship. She says:

“It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life.”

I was happy to see that so many of the Cook the Books entrants shared their recipes with family and friends. I’m sure Colwin would approve. After reading through all the adventures with simple bread, fried chicken and wonderful lentil soup, I had to choose Claudia of Honey From Rock as the winner. It seemed like destiny since she already has Colwin’s most time-consuming and intriguing recipe—West Indian Black Cake—stewing away in preparation for the holidays. Colwin says that chicken salad “has a certain glamour about it,” and though I personally find it more homey than chic, I will admit that it’s a versatile and delicious dish. I love that Claudia chose to serve her friends the curried chicken salad that Colwin recommends for a ladies luncheon. It truly feels as if she brought a little moment of the book to life. Well done!

All best,

Caitlin”

So congratulations to Claudia for your elegant Curried Chicken Salad on Watercress! (This makes her a four-time winner I believe!). Wear that winner’s badge proudly over at Honey From Rock.

A big mahalo (Hawaiian for thank you) to Caitlin Kenney for being a fabulous judge, and an open invitation for her to cook along with us any time she likes!

We will be back soon with our next book selection–Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn” plus our upcoming book picks and some exciting Cook the Books announcements.

Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen” Roundup

I am so glad that everyone enjoyed Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, the little treasure of food cooking essays by the late Laurie Colwin. We have some wonderful posts and recipes inspired by the book and I’ll get to those in a minute. First, I would like to introduce you to our judge for this Cook the Books round, fellow blogger and copy and book editor Caitlin Kenney. While searching for a perfect judge for this book, I stumbled across Caitlin’s review of Home Cooking on Goodreads and then found herblog and was struck by her passion for books and pestered her until she agreed to be our judge. (Actually she succumbed easily as she thought it would be fun!)

About Caitlin:  Caitlin Kenney is a copy editor at J.Crew and a freelance book editor. She has worked with a diverse group of authors on books ranging from YA fiction to adult history, pop culture, fashion and, of course, cookbooks. (On her first experience with recipe testing for a cookbook author, she quite badly bungled his pumpkin kugel.) She records her journeys through literature on her blog Year of Magical Reading [link:yearofmagicalreading.wordpress.com] and also dishes out bridesmaid advice and planning tips at The Ultimate Bridesmaid Guide [link: ultimatebridesmaid.com]. She lives in New York City and her kitchen is too small for her cooking ambition.

So welcome to Cook the Books Caitlin and a big thank you for agreeing to judge the fabulous Home Cooking-inspired creations our CTB participants came up with for this round!

First up,  Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla used her family vacation plane ride from San Jose to Seattle to work her way through the book. She enjoyed the writing and sentiments in the book and decided to do her own “Bread Baking Without Agony” and make a Baguette a la Home Cooking. Camilla says, “I baked the bread, with some adaptations, thinking that I could get breakfast and lunch out of the same loaf. But relentless requests for seconds – slices smeared with marscarpone and dotted with fresh raspberries – dashed those hopes. Thankfully it’s easy enough that I will definitely be making it again soon.

Glennis of Cant Believe We Ate… was first inspired to make roast beef after reading about it Home Cooking but it was the Fried Chicken that ultimately called to her. She says, “My family is particularly fond of my fried chicken, however, I’m usually willing to try a new technique.  I didn’t think there would be all that much difference. … One distinct difference I noticed between Ms. Colwin’s method and mine, is that she’s right…the crust on her chicken gets soft once it’s refrigerated.  Mine, however, doesn’t.  We still have crunchy chicken the following day, and if I let it cool really well before packing it into the fridge, it’s crunchy for a couple of days.  We enjoyed this batch of fried chicken with potato salad.   I’m not saying mine is better than hers…I’m saying it’s two different methods with two different outcomes, and one should expect two different results.”

Kaye from In Kaye’s Kitchen is a long-time fan of Home Cooking who was more than ready to reread the book with us. She says, “Just the excuse I needed! And it’s still a lovely book, rather like chatting with a good friend over a cup of tea in your own kitchen.” Kaye has been wanting to bake more bread so she tried Colwin’s One Simple Loaf and says, “This baked up into a lovely oblong loaf. We found the crust a bit tough, maybe because the temperature didn’t come down all that far for the second part of the baking. Nevertheless this is a very tasty bread that I’ll likely make again.”

Simona of briciole says about Home Cooking, “The style is sparkling, the voice fresh and engaging, and the book is a real pleasure to dive into.” Finding her cooking style to be very different from Colwin’s she finally decided on something they both like–homemade pasta, making this Fusilli al Ferro (Handmade Fusilli with Browned Butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano). Simonae says, “Ms. Colwin was open to trying new things to decide for herself whether she liked them or not. I am sure she would have been open to learn to make the pasta shapes with which I have been experimenting recently and she would have commented on her experience with the wit she shows throughout Home Cooking. So, to her I dedicate my last adventure in pasta making: fusilli al ferro. And based on the recipes in the book, I know she would have liked the burro e parmigiano dressing.“

Foodycat says she had mixed emotions about the book–she thoroughly enjoyed every page of it, but was saddened to know that Colwin had passed away too soon. As for what to make she says, “It took me quite a while to decide what to make…  Then I saw Felicity Cloake use Laurie Colwin’s Fried Chicken recipe in her How to Cook Perfect… series, and decided that I would give it a go. My previous best endeavours with fried chicken have all been in seasoned flour, rather than batter or breadcrumbs, so I felt OK about that bit. What was a total departure for me was shallow frying, crowding the pan and covering it. … But you know what? I am a total convert. The chicken (I used bone-in chicken thighs) was tender and moist inside, with a really properly crunchy outside. And because for the majority of the cook time the lid is on the pan, the whole house doesn’t smell like frying.”

Claudia of Honey From Rock found the book to be lovely and says that it “reads like an extended, laid back conversation between a couple of good friends. You won’t agree with everything anyone says, but the dialogue is never boring.” After  wanting to try a lot of dishes from the book, she says,  “Finally, it was Curried Chicken Salad that came through for this occasion, inspired by a Birthday party.  Two friends were celebrating, with a Girls Day overnighter in an oceanfront B & B, to which another friend invited us. With Food.  Supplied by us.  Things we’d been wanting to try. Linda made a lunch of toasted, sprouted 7 grain bread, topped with pesto, tomatoes, cucumber and avocado. Just delicious.  For supper we had a yummy Tomato Pie, made by Nancy, which you can see above, and this Chicken Salad which I brought, surrounded by watercress.  Quite good if I do say so.“

Debra of Eliot’s Eats found Home Cooking “humorous but melancholy. I kept thinking about Colwin’s sudden death at such a young age. Perhaps (not perhaps—most assuredly) it has something to do with an approaching birthday that inches me toward the age of forty-eight, the age of Colwin’s death.” Her husband’s travels had Debra eating alone and she took inspiration from Colwin’s Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant essay, saying, “When mom was visiting recently, she found a recipe in Sunset and said, “Let’s make this for breakfast!”   She had found “Caprese Skillet Eggs” in the August edition.    We made the recipe  and had them for breakfast served on some toasted English muffins.   Not only did it remind me of those long ago lost suppers with mom, but it was also very close to Colwin’s recipe for “Sauteed Vegetables and Poached Egg in One Pot.”

Rachel, The Crispy Cook and fellow CTB host has had Home Cooking in her library for years and says, “Colwin was just a bewitching writer; she was witty, self-deprecating, passionate about the things she loved, and her descriptions of dinner parties (even the ones that went awry) are mouthwatering” For her dish, this colorful Cold Zucchini Salad, she says, “My zucchini salad was inspired by an essay in Home Cooking, entitled Red Peppers. In it, Colwin describes a favorite dish from an East Side restaurant that she didn’t get to often enough. It involved layers of sauteed zucchini slices and pimento strips garnished with olive oil, fresh garlic and lemon juice, which sounds great too.”

Finally, At Kahakai Kitchen I was happy to share what has become a favorite in my foodie book collection. Colwin’s writing really speaks to me–it’s comforting and relaxing much like a big bowl of soup. So, I took my inspiration from Colwin’s soup essay and made an adaptation of her Wonderful Lentil Soup (the recipe itself is actually from her second book: More Home Cooking). Colwin said “It was not until I was a teenager that I tasted lentil soup which became my lifetime companion. There have been periods of my life when I have lived on lentil soup…,” and this simple classic version would be easy to live on. Perfect for a rainy day.

Thanks to everyone who joined in this round of Cook the Books. We will give our judge Caitlin some time to deliberate and I’ll be back soon with the announcement of our winner of the coveted CTB “winner’s badge.”. Then, I’ll turn things over to Jo for our next pick Heartburn by Nora Ephron.

Our August-September 2012 Cook the Books Selection: Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

At Kahakai Kitchen, I (Deb), became enamored of a little book of food essays,“Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen“ by Laurie Colwin, a couple of years ago. The book still sits on my nightstand, ready to be delved into whenever the mood strikes me, so it gives me great pleasure to select it for the August-September 2012 round of Cook the Books. “Home Cooking” is a small and wonderful collection of stories and memories about food, interspersed  with recipes. This past May, The James Beard Awards added Home Cooking to their Cookbook Hall of Fame.

Laurie Colwin was the author of five books, as well as a prolific food writer and a contributor to Gourmet and other magazines, who died unexpectedly and tragically young, in 1992 of a heart attack at age 48. Colwin wrote in a casual, warm style and with such a sparkling sense of humor–laughing about herself and her experiences–both good and bad in the kitchen. If you haven’t experienced her before, I think you will fall a little bit in love with her writing. It’s a short book so if you are feeling extra ambitious, feel free to read her follow-up More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, as well. 

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.” 
― Laurie Colwin

I’ll be back soon to announce our judge for this round. To join in the fun, all you need to do is beg, buy, or borrow a copy of Home Cooking, cook something up inspired by the book and then blog about it by Monday, September 24th. You can leave a comment below to let me know that you have written your post or email me at debinhawaii@gmail.com.

Our Guest Judge Author Laura Childs Picks our Winner and Has a Surprise Announcement

Our June/July book selection here at Cook the Books was the first installment in author Laura Childs’ Tea Shop mystery series, Death by Darjeeling.  All of the submissions in our roundup (see previous post) showed a wide variety of explorations with different varieties of teas, tea table goodies and even a visit to a tea plantation in Hawaii!
Our featured author, Laura Childs, was also kind enough to serve as our Guest Judge to pick a winning post. Our Cook the Books winner will receive a blog badge AND a signed hardcover copy of Childs’ latest Tea Shop mystery, Agony of the Leaves. I will quote Ms. Childs’ to announce the winner:

“What an amazing assortment of recipes!  Reading through them – seeing the photos – was so inspiring that I wanted to dash into my own kitchen and get creative.

That said, I have to admit that I was super impressed with the Mint Tea Shortbread and Earl Grey Brownies with Lavender Ganache from Culinary Adventures with Camilla.  I think that’s our winner for a copy of AGONY OF THE LEAVES.

Many thanks to all who participated and for inviting me to be your guest judge – it was so much fun!

All my best,

Laura Childs

P.S.  If it’s possible to get the recipes for some of the entries (or all of them) I would love to include a few in my next book which I will be starting soon and is tentatively titled PEKOE MOST POISON.  Of course, I would give full credit to the bakers!”

Congratulations Camilla! Send me your shipping address in an email (info aT oldsaratoga Booksdot Com) and I’ll ship the book right out to you. And if anyone who submitted a Cook the Books entry would like to take up Ms. Childs’ offer to include their recipes in her upcoming Tea Shop book, Pekoe Most Poison, leave a comment below or send me an email with your contact information and I’ll relay it to our delightful Guest Judge and Author.

Effusive thank yous to Laura Childs for being so generous with her time, for providing the extra winner’s prize and for her offer to include some of us in her next book project.

I will now turn over the hosting of Cook the Books to my buddy Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, as we read a great book of food essays, Home Cooking by the late Laurie Colwin.