Review: Cooking for Two

Cook's Illustrated has been my favorite cooking magazine since issue 1 way back in 1993 — in fact I'm a charter subscriber. I own a few of their cookbooks but not many because I don't use cookbooks very often any more. Nevertheless, when I was sent a free review copy of the recently published Cooking for Two 2009: This Year's Best Recipes Cut Down to Size by the editors of Cook's Illustrated I jumped on it.

You can read the compete review at
CookingforTwo.About.com...

Technorati: Food | review | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | book

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Review: Frommer's 500 Placesfor Food & Wine Lovers

Damn! Why didn't this book exist five years ago - or ten? I used to travel a lot for both business and recreational reasons. Each trip, whether business or fun, was preceded by lengthy internet sessions as I attempted to decide where to eat and what (food-wise) to visit. A trip to New York required a stop at Zabars, Philadelphia meant Pat's King of Steaks, and London wouldn't be London without a visit to Harrods.

But such trips were often a crap shoot. Two weeks in Spain or Italy might justify a half dozen guide books and a month of research, but an extra day in Tuscon didn't.justify such an effort. So I rolled the dice. Not a bad choice, but not an ideal choice because I hated the idea of missing a restaurant, farmers' market, brewery, or vineyard I simply didn't know about. So when I got an opportunity to review Frommer's 500 Places for Food & Wine Lovers I jumped at it.

The book was compiled by Holly Hughes, the editor of the Best Food Writing series of books and it is exhaustive. In it's nearly 500 pages of extremely fine print (you may need reading glasses to use it) it covers restaurants, wineries, farmer's markets, tea and coffee houses, and almost anything else you can imagine related to food and wine. Specific places include Zabars, Pat's, and Harrods as well as far more obscure locations like The Puffin Place in Iceland, Bedell Cellars in Cutchogue, New York and Filadelfia Coffee in Guatamala.

The descriptions of places I have been, such as The Varsity in Atlanta, are fairly accurate so I would assume the others are as well. And just the sheer number of places discussed makes the book worth getting - or would if my traveling days weren't pretty much over with.

Technorati: Food | review | kevin d weeks | seriously good | book

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Spot-On: Review Spanish Road Trip

I first fell in love with Spanish food while attending a programming trade show in Washington, DC. Some friends and I had dinner At Jaleo's, a tapas bar. Prior to that I'd had Americanized paella, which my mother occasionally made when I was growing up, but that was the extent of my experience with Spanish food. Then in 1997 two weeks with my family in a villa on the Costa del Sol confirmed my passion for this simple cuisine.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | spot-on | book review

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Spot-On: Literary Tapas

When I started writing about food I immediately started reading what other people wrote about food - primarily as a way to learn how to write about food myself. One of the first books I picked up was Best Food Writing 2001 and I was amazed at how many different ways there are to write about food, how many different ways there are to think about food, and how food can be such an easily conveyed metaphor for thinking about the rest of our lives. I've been studying the masters ever since.

Read the complete article at Spot-On.

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Spot-on:Elements of Cooking

During a recent episode of Next Iron Chef America Michael Ruhlman, serving as one of the judges, criticized one of the chefs for serving a consommé that wasn't perfectly clear. "Technically, consommé is a clear soup or broth," according to Ruhlman and in this case the liquid showed the red coloration of the watermelon it was made from. Picky? Yes. Technically correct? Yes. Important? Not in my view.

You can read the complete article at Spot-on.

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Spot-On: Southern Belly

John T. Edge is a member of the food writing culinoscenti, although he would blush to read that assessment — perhaps not least because of the awkward neologism. But how else should I describe someone who combines a knowledge of food and culture with insight into the combination and an ability to articulate that knowledge and insight? He, along with Calvin Trillan, Russ Parsons, Michael Ruhlman, and a few others, is one of the best food writers in the business and his latest book, Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lovers Guide to the South, reflects that skill.

You can read the complete article at Spot-On.

Technorati: Food | review | kevin weeks | seriously good | book | southern belly

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