And the Winner Is… Our Cook the Books Winner for “Climbing the Mango Trees”

Our judge for this round of CTB, fellow foodie and blogger Ann Luke from Split Pear-sonality  – A Cooking Journey, has carefully read and drooled over all of the wonderful entries inspired by Madhur Jaffrey’s “Climbing the Mango Trees” and has selected a winner–in her own words below.

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First of all, many thanks for inviting me to be a guest judge for your Cook the Books club. I’m honored  to have been invited to the virtual party and it never ceases to amaze me how so many of us from far flung places can get to connect with each other through blogging and the Internet.

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While I cannot claim to be a complete Indian food expert, I have eaten a good share of it growing up and wanted to advocate how there are many other different flavors and types of food from India as a result of the different ethnic, religious and geographical regions that make up the sub-continent.

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Many people have an exposure to Indian restaurant food which typically profiles the food of Northern India/Pakistan, which was a point well noted by Foodycat in her book review. Typical restaurant curries are usually non-vegetarian and Moghul-era influenced with rich, cream based gravies. This, however, is not the typical fare eaten on a daily basis at many Indian homes.

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Jaffrey has done a quite a commendable job translating curries away from typical restaurant fare to the regular home kitchen and she is one of the pioneers among Indian cookbook authors. However, I hope the Cook the Book Club members, who if they have truly been intrigued by Indian cooking after reading Climbing the Mango Trees, will take the opportunity to try and savour regional delicacies from India like the Portuguese influenced foods of Goa, or the Syrian Christian and Muslim delicacies of the state of Kerala, to the spicy seafood preparations from Bengal or the traditional South Indian vegan thalis of Tamil Nadu.

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It goes without saying that I had a difficult time coming up with one winner for this event, everyone brought their own fantastic representation of the book to the dining table and I had a great time virtually savoring the entries.

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There were also those of you who wrote about your own personal experiences coming from a different culture to the US and looking at your classmates lunchboxes to see the different foods they had brought, to those of you who successfully used locally sourced ingredients or foreign cheese that may have never been used before in an Indian dish.

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To round up, I picked Kelly of It’s A Food Life as the winner for her humorous account of going shopping at an Indian store (oh dear, what are you going to do with that twenty pound bag of flour?!) and her fantastic recreation of a complete Indian meal – Rotis, Raita, Rice, a vegetable dish, a legume dish and a protein dish. Her meal of –Rotis, Cucumber Raita, Basmati Rice with Dill and Cardamom. South Indian Style Stir-Fried Green Beans, Chickpeas Cooked in Tea, and Salmon with Mustard Seed and Coriander is a veritable medley of flavors and textures and a great representation of an Indian feast, something I could easily see a family or group of acquaintances sitting down to for a special dinner. Aside from complex spices, Indian cooking can also be fairly labor intensive with its typical spice grinding, roasting, pan-frying, gravy-making and baking steps. One of my major gripes with all this activity is the overflowing kitchen sink that you end up with, which luckily can be blissfully forgotten when you reward yourself with the actual food! So hats off to you Kelly, I do not even want to imagine what a hive of activity your kitchen must have been for you to churn out this number of dishes!

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I also wanted to send a special mention to Foodycat for her equally elaborate and full course meal of mutton and spinach curry, spiced cauliflower cheese, dhal andnaan. Again, this must have been a lot of effort to put together all these dishes and they all made for great menu choices for a complete Indian meal.

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Finally, I wanted to also give a shout-out to Heather of Girlichef for the eloquent way in which she recounted the book. Her description of what a monsoon may entail was beautiful and lilting. And to top it all off, she made monsoon inspired jelebis which while not from Jaffrey’s book itself, are a common and well-loved but very-rarely-attempted-at-home sweet!

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Thank you all for letting me be a part of your Book Club this month! Here’s to more splendid books and the untold inspirations that await us.

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Ann

www.splitpearsonality.blogspot.com

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So congratulations to Kelly who wins her second Cook the Book challenge! (Kelly, along with Heather of girlichef and Joanne of Eats Well With Others) won for “The School of Essential Ingredients,” our last CTB selection). Kelly can proudly fly the coveted Cook the Books Winners Badge two times on her blog now!  Congrats also to Foodycat and girlichef, our runners up for this round. And of course, many, many thanks to Ann for being such a wonderful judge!

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I now pass the hosting torch on to Johanna of Food Junkie not Junk Food as we explore life behind the scenes in Mario Batali’s kitchen in “Heat” by Bill Buford.

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Happy reading, cooking & eating! (Don’t forget to check out our next three book choiceshere!)

Announcing Our Next 3 Cook the Books Picks!

Aloha Cook the Booksters!

We will have the announcement of our winner from “Climbing the Mango Trees” very soon, but before I announce that exciting news and pass the hosting torch over to Johanna for our entertaining  October-November selection: “Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany” by Bill Buford, we thought we should let you know our next six months of book choices. We have another three wonderful books to read, be inspired by and cook from, and we are excited to share them!

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Cook the Book Selection: December-January 2010

First up from Rachel, The Crispy Cook, we have an excellent choice to tuck into when you need to calm down from the holiday hustle and bustle and move into January;“Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojurn in Kyoto“ by Victoria Abbot Riccardi. “Untangling My Chopsticks” recounts the American author’s year spent in Japan, learning about the art of kaiseki. Kaiseki is the traditional and highly ritualized series of foods to accompany green tea ceremonies and involves a series of small dishes of exquisitely prepared and garnished foods. Rachel says, “I have read Riccardi’s book and want to delve into it again and bone up on Japanese cooking.“  We will able be able to find our zen happy place with this beautifully written memoir.

Deadline to read and post your entry for this selection is Friday, January 28th

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Cook the Books Selection: February-March 2011

For me, Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, and my selection, we will sail away to the tropics, with “An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude” by Ann Vanderhoof. In the mid 1990′s Vanderhoof and her husband rented out their house and set sail for the Caribbean in a 42-foot sailboat to chase their dreams. During their two-year adventure, they visited sixteen countries and ate their way through all of them, so this book is a fun foodie-travelogue–with plenty of recipes for the delicious island-style food and drink they enjoyed sprinkled in. Crack open the rum, crank up the Bob Marley and get ready to chase your winter doldrums away with some Caribbean spice.

Deadline to read and post your entry for this selection is Friday, March 25th

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Cook the Books Selection: April-May 2011

Finally we head for Paris with francophile Johanna from Food Junkie not Junk Food and her pick of “Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes” by Elizabeth Bard. In Paris for a weekend visit. Elizabeth Bard sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman–and never went home again. “Lunch in Paris” is Bard’s memoir, the story of a young American woman who fell in love not only with a man but with a whole culture. Through learning to cook French recipes, shopping in open air markets and battling bad-tempered butchers she discovers the beauty of a city and explores the secrets of the French psyche. Speckled with sexy recipes and a passionate love story in the world’s most romantic city, Lunch in Paris is sure to make your heart beat a little faster. Ahh…Paris in the spring….

Deadline to read and post your entry for this selection is Friday, May 27th

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So there you go, our next three selections and your reading list for the next six months! We hope that you join us in reading these great foodie books, cooking and eating some wonderful food inspired by them and of course sharing it all with good friends.

Your hosts,

Deb, Rachel & Jo

Note: If you are new to Cook the Books, welcome! We are a bi-monthly virtual book club, reading great food-related books and cooking and posting dishes inspired by them. Anyone is welcome to join our group. If you have any questions, you can find the details here, or leave a comment and we’ll get back to you.

Climbing the Mango Trees: A Round Up of Delectable Indian Dishes

If ever there was a time to wish for a real potluck for our talented Cook The Books members, it would be after seeing all the delicious Indian food dishes that were inspired by Madhur Jaffrey’s “Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India.” With every post that came in, my mouth watered just a that much more! If only we really could sample each others cooking and enjoy a fabulous meal… I was happy to see and hear how many of you enjoyed Jaffrey’s tales of her childhood and especially the descriptions and recipes for some of the wonderful food she enjoyed growing up. Whether you chose a recipe from the book, adapted a family favorite, sourced one of Jaffrey’s numerous cookbooks, or searched the web, you were inspired to create some amazing dishes. It is my pleasure to round them up, and get the tissues ready for more drooling! 

An early entry came from Wanda from Poppyseeds and Tiger Lilies joining in her first cook the Book’s event and making Jaffrey’s Cheese Vali Gobi. Wanda says, “I remember my own childhood as a newcomer to this country, bringing my lunch to school where it was different from the lunches of my friends. Like Jaffrey, I thought their lunches were much more interesting than mine. I loved reading about the spices and flavors detailed in this book. I wanted to make one of her very own recipes rather than developing one of my own.I was particularly drawn to the cauliflower dish. … I especially loved it reheated the second day when the flavors had mellowed and blended.  When I make it again, I’ll prepare it the day before and reheat it for a meal.

Rachel, The Crispy Cook and one of my CTB co-hosts, used home-grown beans to make her dish  from Jaffrey’s “An Invitation to Indian Cooking.” Rachel says, “I found the perfect recipe to make: Green Beans with Onion Paste, which really deserves a much more glamorous name as it is redolent of so many spices. The beans are infused with so many levels of flavor as they slow cook in their tomato and onion gravy and it makes a hearty vegetarian meal over rice. Try it over basmati rice for extra fabulousness. I have made the recipe twice now to rave reviews from my family. It is a slow food dish, requiring a good bit of time in the slicing of the beans, the sauteeing of the onion paste and spices, and then a bit of simmering, but the result is exquisite.“

Andreas from Delta Kitchen chose to adapt one of the many delicious recipes from“Climbing the Mango Trees” for his entry, selecting Jaffrey’s Potatoes with Tomatoes, full of exotic, warming spices. Andreas says, “For the current edition of Cook the Books Club I chose yet another dish featuring tomatoes. Visually it’s a bit uh.. unpretentious, but it makes up for this on the taste side.“

Natashya from Living in the Kitchen with Puppies chose a recipe from Jaffrey’s “World Vegetarian” to soothe a sick hubby and says, “India is a milky country” Madhur Jaffrey… They also know a thing or two about cooling the body. Which is a good thing as I have one body at home with a cold and fever. To soothe his heated and parched throat, and in celebration of her autobiography Climbing the Mango Trees, this month’s Cook the Books bookclub selection, I made Madhur Jaffrey’s Kelay ki Lassis. Sweet banana lassi. Cool, sweet, and nourishing.”

Claudia from Honey From Rock chose a recipe from the book, Meatballs (Kofta) in Curry and a Potato Tamarind Raita from an old cookbook she owns. Claudia says, “The meatball curry turned out to be a good illustration of the one disadvantage of even great cookbooks, and learning by doing. Some things you can pick up by watching, which just don’t communicate in a recipe. … Now, doing that as prescribed, makes for a very runny curry.  Perhaps it is supposed to be.  Who knows?  The chef was not there to question. The taste was fantastic and full of spicy flavors, but next time I will know to adjust for what is perhaps a Western liking for more thickened sauces.“

And about the raita, “This dish makes a tangy, sweet adjunct to the spicy meatballs and crisp green and white salad.“

Foodycat made a bevy of delicious recipes for her entry and says, “This is what inspired the dishes I cooked. I made mutton and spinach curry following Ms Jaffrey’s recipe (very different from the one I usually make) which she describes as being like the curries her Muslim school friends had brought for lunch. I made her grandmother’s delicious spiced cauliflower cheese. I made dhal (she says that at a pinch you can substitute Mexican black beans for the whole urad dal. It really isn’t a great substitution and not one I would repeat). And I made naan. Delicious, homely food with a history. You can’t really ask more of a dinner; a fascinating story with wonderful recipes, you definitely can’t ask more of a memoir.“

Simona from Briciole knew immediately what she wanted to make, saying “It’s that as soon as I read the title, Grandmother’s Cauliflower with Cheese (Cheese Vali Gobi), I knew I would make it, because I like cauliflower and I am always looking for recipes where i can use my homemade cheese (formaggio fatto in casa). As you can see in the photo of the dish, I used some white and some purple cauliflower, so the dish was quite colorful (both cauliflower and peppers were acquired at our farmers’ market). I don’t know how different my rendition is from the dish mentioned in the book. What I know is that I loved what came out of my oven and will certainly make it again. In fact, I already have some peppers in the fridge that I have roasted with the idea of adding them to my next realization of this recipe.“

Joanne from Eats Well With Others chose the Chicken Cooked in a Yogurt-Almond Sauce (Murgh Korma) from the book and says, “The thing that I find hardest about cooking Indian food is finding an authentic recipe.  One that is not Westernized and completely altered to suit our maladapted American palates. This is where Jaffrey comes in.  Her reverence of her culture is so great and made so obvious in the book that I am sure the recipes she offers are no less than the real McCoy. And after tasting this Murgh Korma.  You will be too.  Never have I created a dish that is so rich in flavor, so spot on, so intensely delicious that you just.  Can’t.  Stop.  Eating it.  Whole chicken pieces stewed with a creamy yogurt sauce that, although rich in texture, is actually quite light.“

Heather of girlichef went for a sweet treat making the squiggly Jalebis along with someGaram Chai. Heather says, “I can imagine how perfectly a cold glass of milk tasted alongside the jalebis in the heat, but I was craving another treat mentioned in the book…one that I’ve only ever ordered from coffee houses…or tasted from a weak, boxed blend.  I definitely wanted a cup of homemade chai alongside my jalebis… I made the chai a day in advance, and then re-heated a cup to eat with my jalebis once they were hot and ready.  I also tried it with a cold cup of chai, which was equally good…but a whole ‘nother taste sensation.”

My other wonderful co-host Johanna of Food Junkie not Junk Food, although a a big fan of Jaffrey’s writing was enamored of the chicken dish in the book and says, “The recipes at the back of Climbing the Mango Trees looked really enticing, and I decided to try thechicken curry, as it is a staple in every Indian restaurant. I was intrigued by the use of whole spices instead of the more common powdered “masala” and since I had all the ingredients at hand I set off to bring Delhi into my kitchen. Thickened by yoghurt, onions, and garlic, this curry is relatively light in calories, although it feels and looks substantial. It made the whole kitchen smell delicious and tasted completely different from what I used to have in England.“

Kelly from It’s a Food Life found that she didn’t have servants or could order in food from her kitchen so she made up for it by cooking an entire Indian feast–Rotis, Cucumber Raita, Basmati Rice with Dill and Cardamom. South Indian Style Stir-Fried Green Beans, Chickpeas Cooked in Tea, and Salmon with Mustard Seed and Coriander. She says, “I find it quite ironic that Madhur Jaffrey has made such a success out of cooking and did not learn to cook until she had left home.  Her mother taught her to cook by “air mail” when she found herself longing for the tastes of home and had no kitchen or servants to order her food from.  She had to do it herself if she wanted to eat in the manner which she was accustomed. I tried to order some food from my “kitchen” but nobody listened so I had to do it myself.“

Finally over at Kahakai Kitchen, I made a simple dinner from one of my several Jaffrey cookbooks, “Quick & Easy Indian Cooking“–Fish Fillets in a Curry Sauce, Simply Roasted Tomatoes and Rice with Peas and Dill. Everything went together easily and tasted delicious. I used a local opah, (moon fish), which was moist and delicious, local tomatoes and fresh dill from my garden. Great flavors and a healthy meal that even my visiting Mom enjoyed.

What an incredible array of yummy dishes! Thanks to everyone who joined in this round of CTB.

For our judge for this round, I’d like to introduce you to a new friend and fellow blogger Ann from Split Pear-sonality  – A Cooking Journey, joining us from Texas. Ann is a member of  another great virtual foodie book club, This Book Makes Me Cook. Since her group read “Climbing The Mango Trees” back in January, we thought it would be fun to have her judge our take on this foodie memoir. Ann cooks a variety of International cuisines at her site, and  knows her Indian food so we can expect that she will use her discerning eye and passion for good food to pick a deserving winner of the coveted Cook the Books Winners Badge!  Go by Ann’s blog and read her “Climbing The Mango Trees” book club post and her funny story about spending Hurricane Ike, copying the recipes out of Jaffrey’s book! Then take a gander at her version of Cheese Vali Gobitoo.

We’ll have our winner posted at the end of the week (and we will get our next three book picks posted too!) before I turn things over to Jo with our next selection, Bill Buford’s “Heat.”

Hope you are enjoying your week!

“Climbing The Mango Trees” — Let’s Travel to India with Madhur Jaffrey & Cook The Books!

Time to pick up the hosting torch from Rachel and her wonderful pick of Erica Bauermeister’s “The School of Essential Ingredients.” For my selection, I am taking us on a journey to exotic India  with “Climbing The Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India” by the multi-talented (author, cook, actress and Indian cuisine guru), Madhur Jaffrey. A huge fan of Indian food myself, I have several of Jaffrey’s cookbooks and was excited to pick up her beautifully written story of growing up in the large family compound in Delhi. I love books that allow me a glimpse into someone’s life, in another time, and in another place, and especially reading about the details of the food and culture. Jaffrey’s book transports the reader to India, in the 1930′s to the 1950′s, and what it was like being from a prosperous and large extended family there.

From the book jacket:

“Climbing mango trees in the orchard, armed with a mixture of salt, pepper, ground chilies, and roasted cumin; picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint and tucked into freshly fired ‘pooris;’ sampling the heady flavors in the lunch boxes of Muslim friends; sneaking tastes of exotic street fare–these are the food memories Madhur Jaffrey draws on as a way of telling her story. … ‘Climbing the Mango Trees’ is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to evoke memory.”

In addition to the evocative food descriptions in the book, at the back are more than 30 family recipes–each sounding more delicious than the next. Between these recipes and Jaffrey’s many cookbooks, we will have a treasure trove of recipes and ideas to choose from when deciding what dish the book inspires us to cook.

The deadline for reading “Climbing The Mango Trees” and cooking and posting a dish inspired by it is Friday, September 24th. I will post a round-up shortly after and a winner will be selected.

Anyone is eligible to join in the fun. If you are new to Cook The Books–Welcome! Please check out the tabs above (Guidelines and Books We’ve Read) to see what we have read, look at past roundups and check out some sample CTB posts.

Once you have read the book, cooked your fabulous dish and posted it, leave a comment here or email me (debinhawaii@gmail.com) so I can be sure you are included in the round-up.

Happy reading & cooking!

Announcing a Reigning Triumvirate of Cook the Books Winners

Our Featured Author and gracious guest judge, Erica Bauermeister, has read our Cook the Books entries about her novel “The School of Essential Ingredients” and the writing teacher and word addict in her has picked three top entries.  Read on to see what she has to say in her own words:

“What a fabulous, diverse group of blog entries!   I always say that reading is an interactive sport — books are not static entities; their words lift off the page and mingle with our memories and associations and thus become a new and different book in each reader’s mind.  But I have never had the chance to see readers take their interpretations of a book and turn them into food.  Brilliant!  And in many ways so much more “essential” than any discussion of the book in a classroom…

Winners, eh?  Well, that is tricky, as every judge before me has noted.  There were bloggers who replicated and enhanced dishes from The School of Essential Ingredients, bringing their own emotions and/or ingredients to the challenge, and bloggers who roamed far and delightfully afield in their culinary choices.  There were bloggers who cooked with chocolate or veggies from their own yards, those who utilized ingredients brought to them by loved ones, those who injected color into words through food, or made new creations when ingredients weren’t to be found.  Lillian would have been thrilled with all of them.  Which dish is best?  Would it be the subtle shift from cranberries to lemon in the stuffed turkey?  The pork with apples that had me yearning for autumn?  That gorgeous tower of a white cake? The loving recreation of Isabelle’s dinner? The cool eggplant salad that had me glad for hot weather? Or the figs with Grand Marnier and whipped cream that seemed like seduction itself?

In the end, because I am as addicted to words as I am to food (and as all the dishes had me yearning for the kitchen, in any case), my top three had as much to do with voice and literary creativity as they did with food.  Forgive me.  I do love the taste of good words in my mouth.   Here they are, in no particular order…

Girlichef –  I think if you can create both a dish and a new character for a book you get double bonus points.  Girlichef’s character, Heather, took me into her kitchen and her mind and had me craving limes and chiles and the sharp crunch of radishes.  Her pozole is a thing of comfort and beauty — and I agree completely that garnishes should NOT be optional.

It’s A Food Life did a gorgeous job of digging into the book and pulling out the quote or two that epitomized each chapter – but even better, she took the essence of the book and created her own dish, a lush and sensual gift to her husband in the form of a wine reduction sauce.  That last paragraph (“Notes”), with its descriptions of why she included each ingredient, was full of insight about the connection between emotion, memories, meaning and food.

Eats Well With Others — Truly, I am impressed by any medical student who takes the time to make pasta from scratch.  And I agree with some of the comments that suggested Joanne should consider a career in writing.  What an incredible voice!  ”Buy locally.  If you will.”  Just wonderful, and the pasta was perfect for this time of year, the zing of lemon playing off the saltiness of the capers, the sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts and pasta holding steady underneath.  It could almost make you glad that it’s August and zucchinis are about to start exploding in gardens everywhere.

So thank you all — for reading, for cooking, for being so creative.  My next novel will be out next spring and is about seven women who all challenge one another to do one thing in the next year that is new or difficult or scary (and yes, one of the challenges involves food).   Perhaps you all could start a new blog club for challenges, culinary and otherwise?  “

Congratulations to our three Winners!  Girlichef and Eats Well With Others have already received their culinary laurels in previous Cook the Books rounds, and now It’s A Food Life will win the coveted badge of honor (winging its way to your blog after I type this up).

Deb of Kahakai Kitchen will now take up the hosting reins as we explore the pages of Madhur Jaffrey’s book, “Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India”.