Truc are tips, tricks, techniques - the inside scoop from those in the know. In this book, truc are everywhere, from the “What the Pros Know” sidebars to the detailed intructions and preliminary chapters on outfitting your kitchen and getting familiar with the workings of the baker’s craft. Topics range from the basic ingredients in the baker’s pantry to creative ways to finish and garnish your desserts - this book is comprehensive in its scope. 

But of course this book has plenty of recipes, and that’s a good thing, because how else would you test what you’ve learned? I had a hard time choosing test recipes from this book. Finally, I opted to combine two recipes into one. First, I chose a pie crust - a good standard, bellwether sort of recipe from a baking book. I selected the Flaky Pie or Tart Dough (pages 177 and 178), a classic.

Then, I decided to fill my crust with a slightly modified version of the Apple-Cranberry Crisp with Oatmeal Topping (pages 243 and 244). To adapt this recipe, I halved the amounts of flour and butter in the topping, and I used half old-fashioned oats and half quick cooking (not instant). In the filling itself, I used 6 good-sized apples (Cameos, Stayman-Winesap, and Northern Spy - because those are what I had on hand). I used only 1/3 cup of sugar becauce I replaced the tart fresh cranberries with sweetened dried ones.

How did this marriage of crust and crisp turn out? Wonderful, I’d say. This is one of the best crusts I’ve ever tasted. The flavor is superb, due to the butter, and the texture is perfect. (Be sure to follow directions - no cutting corners on the chill time!) My taste-testers all agreed: one of my best pies, ever. And they would not generally be shy about indicating otherwise!

It’s definitely worth a trip to Cindy Mushet’s pie crust post to check out her detailed discussion on the recipe, especially if you feel like you could use a refresher course in handling pie pastry. If you want to see my experience with the Flaky Pie or Tart Dough, check out my post on our sister site, Just Baking. I highly recommend picking up a copy of this book - it’s a keeper. You can go here for a signed copy, or you can find The Art and Soul of Bakinghere.

Opton includes interesting information on honey production and history, whetting the appetite for the featured ingredient, which is explored in recipes that fill the bulk of the book. A Sources section is provided to help readers find honey and honey-related products.

The recipes themselves are not difficult. There are recipes for breads and other baked goods, main dishes, vegetable dishes, desserts, and syrups and toppings. I was immediately attracted to the recipe for Aunt Van’s Oatmeal Bread, which proved to be wonderfully straightforward and simple to prepare. This bread is sliceable, keeps well, freezes excellently, and it’s even better toasted.

Aunt Van’s Oatmeal Bread*

*Recipe from Gene Opton’s Honey (p. 43)

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 11/3 cups boiling water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground dried ginger
• 51/2 cups unbleached white flour, divided
• 2 tablespoons raw sunflower seeds (my addition)
• 2 tablespoons millet, dehulled (my addition)

Place the oats in a medium-size heat-resistant mixing bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Stir in the salt, butter, and honey; cover with a tea towel; and let sit for 1 hour.    

When the hour is almost up, stir the yeast into the warm water in a small mixing bowl, add the sugar and ginger, and set in a warm, draft-free place until the yeast begins to froth.

Once the yeast has bubbled, combine it in a large mixing bowl with 5 cups of the flour. Add the oatmeal mixture, the millet, and the sunflower seeds, and stir well to incorporate.

Turn dough out onto a board and dust it with the remaining 1/2 cup flour. Knead well, until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Form the dough into a ball and place it in a greased bowl. Turn the dough once to grease the top. Cover with a cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Spray two 8 by 4-inch loaf pans with nonstick cooking spray or brush with melted butter. Punch down the dough and knead for a couple of turns. Divide the dough in half and form into two loaves. Place the loaves in the pans and let rise until double in size. [Recipe notes: I like to use one 8 x 4-inch pan and one 9 x 5-inch pan. We eat the big loaf fresh, and cool and freeze the smaller one.]

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake loaves for 40 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when thumped. Turn loaves out of pans onto a wire rack.

Makes 2 loaves.

The Internet is one of my absolute favorite places to go recipe hunting, so I was eager to scan through my trial subscription of Taste Italia. On the one hand, I love the accessibility of downloading recipes from the Internet, so this format was extremely appealing to me. On the other, I wasn’t sure how a cooking magazine would play online. There are certain aspects of food magazines that just seem to work better in the paper dimension. You can’t stick an online magazine in your briefcase or read it on the subway or park it next to the stove and cook away, paying little mind to flour dust and wayward minced garlic bits. Well, you can if it’s in laptop form, but there are many reasons why you wouldn’t want to (e.g., flour dust and garlic bits).

But I was pleasantly suprised by how convenient this format is. You have an entire magazine - and with your subscription, all the back issues - laid out before you. You just click on a page to browse, expanding and collapsing pages at will. Unlike ad circulars, you don’t have to progress in a linear fashion. You can skip around, even search keywords or specific ingredients. What I especially loved about this was no clipping and filing of recipes. My recipe files are enormous and unwieldy, the somewhat distressing task of organizing them looms large. So this feature feels liberating. I know where the recipes are, they don’t take up any physical space, and I can access them if I need them.

Having said that, what then? If I want to cook the dish, I’ll have to print out the recipe. And then what? Throw it away? Filing it would only defeat the purpose of having it online. I could pass along the printed copies to friends and relations. I could use them for scrap paper. But the question remains. Other than that, it seems like a good system. The printouts, via Adobe Acrobat, look great, just like photocopied magazine pages. You can even decide whether you want to print whole pages or just parts of pages.

As for the magazine content, it’s broken down into the following sections: “In Season,” “Recipes,” “Features,” “Every Issue,” and “Tried and Tested.” A fantastic feature that follows the contents section is the Recipe Index, which organizes the recipes by meal course, a real boon for those wanting to plan a menu around the recipes in the issue. The recipes are, from the issues I sampled (September, August, June, May, and February 2008; December and October 2007), spectacular. There is an emphasis on freshness and seasonality, with regional Italian cookery being the overarching focus. Spinach Dumplings with Walnuts (Canederli di spinaci con le noci), Sardines with Fennel and Lemon (Sarde al Finocchio), Asparagus and Poached Egg Bruschetta (Bruschetta con asparagi e uova in camicia), Apple Crumble with Ricotta Cream (Mela croccante con crema di ricotta) . . . these are just a few of the recipes that caught my eye and seemed eminently doable.

One caveat - since this is a British magazine, the measurements for the recipes are given in metrics, with no avoirdupois conversions. If you have a kitchen scale or are willing to do a bit of good old-fashioned math*, it’s worth looking subscribing, especially if you already get more than one cooking magazine and you’re up to your ears in drifts of recipe clippings.

To obtain pricing information and view a trial digital edition of the September 2008 issue of Taste Italia, click here.

*Note: A good online metric converter can be found at OnlineConversion.com.

So, proceeding with that definition of ourselves, let’s dive right in to How to Be a Better Foodiewith a napkin tied around our neck and a notepad and pencil at hand. 

If you desire to know more about the kind of foodie you are, you can take the quiz that begins on page 10. This is an interesting exercise, but since I already know the kind I am (guided by taste, not fashion; if I make a visceral, sensual connection to a particular food - if it moves me - I don’t care if it’s culinarily cool), I skipped the quiz to satisfy my more immediate craving.  I love food lore; food trivia, food facts, random bits of savory food knowledge are totally my thing. I went right for the meat of the book, flipping through the pages - which are all in delectable shades of pink and brown, by the way, stuffing myself with tidbits in the vein of, “What kind of fowl is Bombay Duck?” (p. 46); ”Who was the author of the earliest recorded cookbook?” (p. 214); and “Who first gave the cranberry its name and why?” (p. 272). Satisfied for the moment, I flipped back to the table of contents.

The book is divided into 8 chapters: One, ”Getting Started”; Two, “At Home with the Better Foodie”; Three, “How the Better Foodie Entertains”; Four, “Culinary Fashionability”; Five, “Out and About with the Better Foodie”; Six, “The Festive Better Foodie”; Seven, “The Intricacies of High Foodism”; Eight, ”The Better Foodie Almanac.” These pretty much cover everything you need to know about evolving in your quest to become a better foodie, or at least enough to put you on the right path.

You’ll learn what the foodie kitchen requires, from goose fat and honey varietals in the pantry to gadgets ranging from the indispensable (good-quality saucepans) to the indefensible (truffle shaver) . . . what the better foodie wears (an elastic waistband), never serves to guests (salted pistachios), and keeps as a pet (chickens, bees, pigs).

There’s so much more packed into this little book! I could go on and on, but I won’t. I have other things to eat. I mean, do. Instead, I’ll give you a few section titles to whet your appetite, and let you pick up your own copy to devour: “The Foodamental Issues: How to have your ethics and eat them too” (consumption with conscience and compassion!); “The Better Foodie Movie Guide to the Ultimate TV-dinner: Carefully premeditated edible and visual sustenance” (dinner-and-a-movie pairings!); ”Better Foodie Foodementals: Core gastro-knowledge for full Foodie credentials” (what you came for!).  

How to Be a Better Foodieis fun, informative, and small enough to tuck inside a briefcase or large purse. This is just the sort of book that’s great to read in small bites, a perfect take-along for a train commuter, a solo restaurant diner, or a work-at-home mom who does most of her reading while stirring dinner on the stove (ahem). Need a gift for someone who considers him- or herself a foodie? You can’t miss with this amuse-bouche of a culinary tome. Bon appetit!

The New Food Lover’s Companionis not a cookbook, but a cooking guide. As the front cover says, its entries (more than 6,700 of them) “describe foods, cooking techniques, herbs, spices, desserts, wines, and the ingredients for pleasurable dining.”

If you are a food writer, a food blogger, a chef, a culinary student, a waitperson, or simply an inveterate chow hound, you’ll probably find this book indespensible. You can also think of it as your personal ordering assistant. The next time you’re at a restaurant with a menu featuring unfamiliar ethnic terms or ingredients, you can consult the Companion. (Take nothing for granted! “Fries” are not always potato in origin, friends! And “melt” does not necessarily refer to a lovely toasted tuna sandwich served open-faced with melted cheese.)  

Want to know the difference between a feijoa and and feijoada? It’s here. Need to know what a Colbert sauce is and who it’s named after? Dig in. Find yourself with a bottle of wine whose label features the term “Meritage” and want to know if that’s a good thing? Check the Companion!

I could go on and on, literally, because this is my kind of book - chock-full of fascinating and useful information, easy to pick up and put down when you have a few moments of spare time, and immensely helpful as a reference book. And just think how clever you’ll seem at your next cocktail party, dropping terms like “bath chaps” and offering up fruit descriptors of the Chardonnay.

“. . . And the calf that you carve with a smile
Is MURDER
And the turkey you festively slice
Is MURDER
Do you know how animals die?”

So sang The Smiths back in 1985, inspiring a legion of teenage vegetarian-converts to verbally abuse their mother’s pot roast with Indie-pop stoked passion. A forward-thinking teenager at the time, I flirted briefly with the meat-free way of life myself, but it didn’t last long. (I had a passion of my own, and it involved the siren song of bacon and cheese and char-grilling.)

But these days, as a forward-thinking adult, I find myself again contemplating the vegetarian life. Not because of rousing, overwrought lyrics about “beautiful creatures” going under “screaming knives” to fill our kitchens with the smell of “sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder” (gulp). This time, there’s something a little more sobering motivating my unease.

Some time ago, shortly after midnight, I found myself in my garden, picking nocturnal slugs and bugs off my bush beans and basil plants and dropping - that is (cringe) drowning - them in a cup of soapy water. Honestly, I’m squeamish about killing anything. I don’t squish spiders I find in the house; I trap them in Dixie cups and send them back outside. But as much as I hate killing leaf-decimating insects, I hate having lost all seven of my basil plants even more.

This experience led me to think about the fact that this is really the closest I’ve ever come to killing anything for food. I’ve never even caught a fish worth keeping, let alone eating. And that being the case, I had to ask myself the hard question: If I had to kill a cow or a pig to eat its flesh, could I? And further, if I could not, should I rightfully be eating it? I mean, if the animal is making the supreme sacrifice, shouldn’t I be prepared to give a little something up too? Step outside my comfort zone and acknowledge that sacrifice with a sacrifice of my own? Tough questions.

In Meat: A Love Story, Susan Bourette asks herself essentially the same thing, whittling the question down to its core: “Isn’t there a way to have my meat and clear conscience too?” And she travels quite a path to find the answer.

She works undercover in the “by-products” department of a meatpacking plant, divesting pigs’ heads of their jowls. She embarks on a traditional whale hunt with Inupiat Alaskans. She dresses chickens in a New York butcher shop, makes sausage in Cajun country, and hunts moose in Canada. And, bless her, she eats things both cooked and raw that would probably make a hyena a bit dyspeptic.

Bourette emerges from her short stint (she doesn’t last the week) at the meatpacking plant with some seriously unpleasant memories and the realization that the experience, as grotesque as it was, had not turned her into a vegetarian, but “rather a kinder, gentler, more thoughtful carnivore.” And with this insight, she sets off on her quest to make peace with the food that requires the end of one life to sustain another.

And although I’ve never eaten whale meat or been in attendance at a raw-meat potluck, I found that much in Bourette’s book resonated with me. Especially one line, near the end, where she concludes that all that she’s learned on her quest leads her to the conviction that, “If I were to eat an animal, to take another creature’s life in order to nourish mine, I had a responsibility to do it in good conscience.” And for her - for many, if not most, of us - that means a sea change in shopping and consumption habits.

Meat: A Love Story is not a diatribe either for or against eating meat, though it does have passages that inspired me, briefly, to tip in either direction. Reading through this, I was forced to think again about whether I could kill an animal to eat it. But as Bourette shows us alternatives to factory farming and industrial slaughterhouses, I began to think that maybe it’s okay if someone else - someone equipped philosophically and physically - takes care of the respectful, humane slaughter part. Maybe my part is something different . . . maybe I’m not strong enough to kill a cow, but perhaps that’s okay. Perhaps my job is just to buy my meat from the right source.

Thought-provoking, humorous, and accessible, Meat: A Love Story is an enlightening and enjoyable read.

Image courtesy of Penguin Group.

This book, The Great American Bake Sale by Alison Boteler, is one such book for me. It’s my go-to for chocolate chips, for pecan tassies, and most of all, for the Bangor Big Fat Fudge Brownies featured on p. 37. This is the only, repeat ONLY, brownie recipe I make from scratch. I love it that much. And I don’t touch a thing in it. If I feel like shaking things up, I might add a handful of chocolate chips or a peanut butter streusel, but the recipe itself is golden.

Sadly, this book has a 1991 copyright, which means that if you go into your local bookstore trying to find it, you’ll likely come up empty-handed. On the other hand, you can score a cheap copy on Amazon (I don’t know who’d part with this gem–maybe someone who received an extra copy?). Failing that, check your local library. Yeah, it’s worth it. Try the brownies, you’ll see!

Bangor Big Fat Fudge Brownies

 from The Great American Bake Sale by Alison Boteler

• 3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, melted
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 eggs, slightly beaten
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla in mixing bowl. Beat in eggs. In another bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Blend dry ingredients into egg mixture; do not overbeat. Spread batter into ungreased* 8-inch square pan. Bake 40 to 45 minutes, until brownie begins to pull away from edges of pan. Cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar and cut into squares.

Makes 16 brownies

(*Recipe notes: I usually grease the bottom of the pan to make cleanup easier. The best way to cut brownies is to use a plastic knife. Even moist, fudgy brownies like these don’t stick to a plastic knife!)

Although there are plenty of books about how to make homemade ice cream that feature cute, catchy titles capitalizing on the gold mine of puns related to the subject, David Lebovitz refreshingly demurs. Instead, he takes a more straightforward path, bringing us, simply, The Perfect Scoop.

Ice-cream making is not something I have ever considered part of my bailiwick in the kitchen — actually, I imagined it somewhat intimidating and overly complicated, in light of the fact that so many excellent ice creams were available for easy pickings right down the street at my local grocery store. But lately I’ve felt that perhaps it was time to tackle the frozen frontier, and in that spirit, purchased a fairly pedestrian but serviceable rock-salt-requiring electric ice cream machine.

Equipment in hand, I set off to find a book that could show me how to do things properly, with a bit more verve than the manual that came with my machine. Oh, how glad I am that this is the book I came upon. With dairy prices being what they are, I am not about to experiment frivolously with recipes from a book that beguiles with pretty pictures only to mystify with obtuse directions and obscure ingredients. Right from the start, I trusted Mr. Lebovitz — primarily because this is a man who obviously loves his ice cream. I knew he would not lead me astray.

From ingredient and equipment basics to what makes some vanilla ice cream ”French” and other “Philadelphia,” this book has all the technical foreground covered. Following the preliminary discussion, we get into the good stuff; that is, the recipes. Mr. Lebovitz doesn’t just include ice creams. He offers recipes for sorbets and sherbets, frozen yogurt, granitas, sauces, toppings, and wonderful goodies to crumble up and mix into your ice cream as well as delightful cookies and wafers to sandwich your ice cream between.

And as for flavors, the variety is knee-buckling. From comforting traditionals like Milk Chocolate Ice Cream and Peach Frozen Yogurt to international favorites like Green Tea Ice Cream and Leche Merengada. There are even a few exotic lovelies with flavors like Roquefort-Honey, Avocado, and Black Pepper.

I have stocked my fridge with heavy cream and half-and-half, my freezer with frozen raspberries, and my pantry with chocolate chips, and I cannot wait to hear the sound of ice and salt whirring into reality the alchemical formulas written on these beautful pages. 

The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz (2007), is published by Ten Speed Press. It retails for $24.95.

Image from Ten Speed Press. 

I didn’t come upon this wonderful book in the usual way, which is to say drooling over it in a bookstore or browsing on Amazon. Instead, my sister sent me a forwarded e-mail with the subject line reading something like “Count Your Blessings.” Now I don’t typically open these types of e-mails, but my sister doesn’t typically send them, so I proceeded, curious to see what had piqued her interest enough to pass it along to me.

What followed was a series of maybe 6 photographs, each featuring a family surrounded by a week’s worth of food. That is, the food that family would consume in a typical week. Among those featured were a German family, an American family, an Italian family, and a family from Darfur. The variety, diversity, and quantity of food displayed was eye-opening, to say the very least.

With a little bit of back-tracking through the forward list and some research online, I found the source of those captivating pictures: Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio’s incredible book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. As the back cover says, the book covers “30 Families. 24 Countries. 600 Meals. 1 Extraordinary Book.” And it truly is extraordinary—the gorgeous pictures and engaging text take us to dinner tables from Bhutan to Cuba to Egypt to Poland and to the United Kingdom, and many stops in between. “Family Recipes,” “Field Notes,” and country profiles are provided for each country.

To me, there is just something so appealing about seeing what other people are eating (another reason I love grocery shopping). Here, folks from a broad assortment of cultural and ethnic backgrounds are photographed with their daily bread (and every other imaginable comestible, from musk ox to muskmelon) arrayed in rainbow-like profusion around them — absolutely compelling. Peppered throughout the text are word and photo essays (the “Street Food” photo assemblage features pictures of colorful bags of cotton candy directly above a shot of trays laden with silkworm pupae and seahorses-on-sticks).

The recipes themselves are local food favorites, provided by family members; many have details that are unique and sometimes poignant: “Ermelinda Ayme Sichigalo’s Locro de Papas” recipe, from Ecuador, calls for “Lamb, 1 bite-size piece per person (if available).”    

This is one “recipe book” that really belongs on the coffee table; it’s that beautiful.

Image from Just Hungry.