Friday, August 31, 2007
Food, "Dish"
Shelf life
Three culinary cookbooks on the chopping block
plank grilling book cover
CREDIT: Courtesy of Key Porter Books |
By Kirsten Ott
In The Art of Plank Grilling: Kissed by fire, Licked by smoke (Key Porter Books, $19.95), Ted Reader, Canada’s barbecue kingpin, helps home grillers master the art of barbecuing with a cedar plank, which comes packaged with the book. Plank grilling infuses food with unique flavor and allows food to cook slowly in natural juices. Traditionally used for salmon and other fish, plank grilling is an increasingly popular method for grilling a variety of foods. Though Reader includes an array of meat-based recipes, including appetizing sizzlers such as cedar-planked Frenched rack of veal with apricot-bacon stuffing, his focus isn’t just on meats. Readers can chef up veggie delights or take grilling to new heights with planked sushi pizza. The book includes handy tips, such as the importance of soaking wooden grilling planks in cold water for a minimum of one hour prior to grilling, or how to soak your plank in beer, fruit juice, sake or wine.
For the past 14 years, Atlanta’s been home to the Flying Biscuit Café, an eclectic restaurant serving up Southern favorites, Georgia hospitality and, of course, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits. Restaurant founder Delia Champion introduces The Flying Biscuit Café Cookbook (Gibbs Smith, $12.95). The second cookbook from the restaurant features easy-to-follow recipes for regional favorites, including ginger crab cakes, creamy grits (the secret is in the half-and-half) and Southern succotash soup. Fans of the restaurant’s biscuits are treated to a myriad of recipes, such as “super easy cheesy” biscuits and cheddar and jalapeno biscuits. Champion writes that what makes her biscuits so special is that they’re “made with butter, light cream and a lot of love.” The encouraging chef also sprinkles inspirational notes throughout, such as “Unless you’ve made a mistake with salt, most of the time you can fix anything. What’s important is to not be afraid, and to make it happen.”
Think fast. What’s picón? It’s neither a type of nut nor a fish. Instead, it’s a Spanish cheese made from a mixture of cow’s, sheep’s and goat’s milk with a crumbly texture and nutty, spicy flavor. Caerphilly? A mild Welsh cheese with a lemony tang and a fat content of about 48 percent. The Cheese Lover’s Companion: The Ultimate A-to-Z Cheese Guide by Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst (William Morrow Cookbooks, $16.95) educates readers on the distinctions amongst more than 1,000 cheeses and their respective terms. Though the foodies do provide discourse on the differences between Brie de Coulommiers, Brie de Meaux and Brie de Melun, they also do a stellar job with simple navigation of comprehensive information, such as the country, style and milk types of cheeses; how to buy, cook, serve and store cheese; definitions of descriptions for taste and appearance; and, most importantly, pairing cheese with wine and beer. If only the book came with samples of all three. SP