…I had a hard time winnowing my picks of best books for giving this holiday season to the gourmets, gourmands, gastronomes, oenophiles and home cooks in our lives
By: Pat Tanner
The year 2006 has been a good one for food and wine books, with real treasures in each category. So good, I had a hard time winnowing my picks of best books for giving this holiday season to the gourmets, gourmands, gastronomes, oenophiles and home cooks in our lives. Herewith, the best of the best. Happy holidays!
CELEBRITY CHEF: Each year I become less and less a fan of the celebrity chef cookbook. One notable exception for 2006 is Jimmy Bradley’s "The Red Cat Cookbook" (Clarkson Potter, $35).Mr. Bradley, the chef-owner of that acclaimed Chelsea restaurant (and now The Harrison and Mermaid Inn, as well) sets his book apart from the first line: "Let me get this out of the way right up front, just so there’s no confusion: This is not I repeat not a restaurant cookbook."
In fact, not all the recipes are even from his restaurant, but they are the food he loves and they reflect his signature style of big, bold flavors derived from tweaking the standards. He describes his style as an idiosyncratic synthesis of his personal background: Italian-American classics, sensible New England influences, and the fearless mentality of New Yorkers. So he adds rum to split pea soup, makes eggs with asparagus and bacon tempura, and invents a sweet and salty risotto with peaches and pancetta.
As promised, all are easy to prepare and irresistible.
CHILDREN OF ALL AGES: "Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook" (Random House, $16.95) is well concocted by cookbook author Georgeanne Brennan and whimsically photographed by Frankie Frankery. Its 40 recipes, each accompanied by the Seussian excerpt from which it is derived, are designed for adults and children to make together, mostly from scratch.
Dishes such as "Who"-Roast Beast, Cat in the Hat Tub Cake, and Pink Yink Ink Drink manage to be fun, tempting, nutritionally sound and true to the Seussian spirit and style. Keys to the title dish, by the way, are clever: covering the yolks of fried eggs with guacamole and slathering cooked ham with apple jelly and then patting on minced cilantro and parsley.
WINE AFICIONADOS OF ALL LEVELS: "A Hedonist in the Cellar" (Knopf, $24) is the second compendium of wine essays by Jay McInerney, the novelist ("Bright Lights, Big City"), who also writes a wine column for House & Garden. He confesses to disliking most wine writing, and disarmingly claims to be surprised that he was asked to write a wine column in the first place, so he consciously chooses to avoid arcane or overblown wine-speak.
The result is simply good writing entertaining and informative. His metaphors and analogies most often come from the worlds of music, movies and sports. Here is his description of the Italian wine, amarone: "Amarone is an anomaly: a dry wine that mimics sweetness; a relatively modern creation that seems deeply primitive and rustic …Drying does for the grapes what a turbocharger does for a V-8 engine."
Topics range from "The Forgotten Whites of Bordeaux" to "What I Drank on My Forty-Eighth Birthday" and "No More Sweet Talk, or How to Impress Your Sommelier."
NEW OR INTERESTING ETHNIC: Here two volumes shine equally brightly.
"Into the Vietnamese Kitchen" (Ten Speed, $35) is a visually stunning, minutely detailed introduction to the Vietnamese-American home kitchen. First-time cookbook author Andrea Nguyen was seven years old when she was airlifted from Vietnam with her family in 1975 a mere week before the fall of Saigon. The family brought very few possessions but among them was her mother’s small orange notebook filled with handwritten recipes.
Ms. Nguyen is a charming and meticulous guide to this increasing popular cuisine. She does for Vietnamese-American cooking what Lidia Bastianich has done for Italian-American cooking, which is to heighten appreciation for both its roots and its clever adaptations. With clear and detailed instructions and information on sourcing and using ingredients, the book’s mouthwatering recipes, including the classic beef noodle soup (pho) and those quintessential-fusion baguette sandwiches of cold cuts, liver pate, daikon, and chilies (among other things), are made accessible to home hooks.
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Even superstar chef Ferran Adria proclaims that nobody understands the Spanish food scene better than Anya von Bremzen, who has been covering the Spanish food and travel scene for 10 years.
In "The New Spanish Table" (Workman, $22.95), this James Beard Award-winning author has collected recipes both traditional and cutting edge from home cooks, taberna owners, farmers, fishermen, nuns, and, yes, Michelin-starred chefs. She captures the essence of what makes Spanish cuisine the epicenter of excitement today, namely, the "fusion of tradition and innovation. The divide between high and low, haute and homey, classic and iconoclastic, rustic and refined can be deliciously blurred."
Thus, the book’s 300 recipes include the classic tapas dish Patatas Bravas but also one of Eggplant Stacks with Tomato Jam, Basque Fisherman’s Stew as well as Grilled Razor Clams with White Truffle Oil, and Classic Valencian Paella alongside Toasted Pasta "Paella" with Shrimp.
HOME ENTERTAINING: The two books I recommend in this category are especially useful for novice party-givers but they are also spirited, individualistic and stylish enough to appeal even to veteran hosts.
Earlier this year I profiled Jennifer Rubell’s "Real Life Entertaining" (Morrow Cookbooks, $27.50) and that column clicked with many readers. Ms. Rubell, who writes for the Miami Herald’s Home & Design magazine and who happens to be the niece of Steve Rubell, the founder of Studio 54, provides a blueprint for stress-free but stylish entertaining that lives up to the book’s subtitle: "Easy Recipes and Unconventional Wisdom."
Each chapter focuses on a particular theme, such as a New York-style brunch, an evening of red wine and bruschetta, one-pot meals, or dinner for a crowd. Every aspect is covered, including the ideal number of guests, what mix of guests works best for each type of party, how to set the appropriate mood, and what to drink.
Thai Chicken Wings, Sesame-Mint Pita Chips, and Grilled Shrimp with Garlic and Citrus are representative of her flavorful recipes, all of which take minutes to prepare utilizing a few easily accessible ingredients.
In "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence"(Warner, $27.99) Amy Sedaris, the sister of humorist David Sedaris and a fine comedian-actress in her own right, has produced a laugh-out-loud satire of a how-to book from, say, the early ’70s, that manages to also dispense helpful advice and real recipes, albeit recipes typical of that era.
Her menu for Ladies Night, for example, includes lady slipper cocktails, green goddess salad dressing, steak Diane, and Lady Baltimore cake. Sounds like fun to me.
Fans of Jon Stewart’s "Daily Show" will appreciate Ms. Sedaris’s style and knowing humor, but this is not a book for the easily scandalized. Advice ranges from "Try filling your medicine cabinet with marbles. Nothing announces a nosy partygoer more successfully …" to "Pre-crack all your liquor bottles. No one wants to be the first …" Hilarious retro photos and illustrations are alone reasons to give this book.
FOOD MEMOIR: I am far from unique in extolling the virtues of "Climbing the Mango Trees" by Madhur Jaffrey (Knopf, $25). It is on just about every "best" list this year for its superb, thoughtful writing that masterfully evokes growing up in Delhi, India, in the ’30s and ’40s as a child in an affluent family.
Ms. Jaffrey, whose given name means "sweet as honey" is a triple threat: Her cookbook "Madhur Jaffrey’s Taste of the Far East" won a James Beard Award and she is also an award-winning actress. I have little doubt that this book will make her an award-winning memoirist.
The vignettes she shares often employ food and family as an underlying, or sometimes central, theme. "As a child it did not occur to me that families came in sizes smaller than 30 people," she writes, stating that 40 or more family members routinely sat down together for dinner.
HEALTH FOCUS: After the FDA released its revised dietary guidelines in 2005, more people reported wanting to add whole grains to their diet than anything else.
In "Whole Grains Everyday, Every Way" (Clarkson Potter, $32.50) award-winning cookbook author Lorna Sass has taken up that challenge, providing the what, why, where, and how-to for 25 different grains, from amaranth to wheat berries.
Recipes go beyond the healthful-but-dull norm. Farro Risotto with Butternut Squash, Ham, Sage and Toasted Walnuts, and Whole-wheat Yogurt Waffles with Blueberries are two examples. Ms Sass includes the familiar (cornmeal), the exotic (teff) and the maligned (sorghum).
One I was not familiar with is Job’s tears. She recommends buying the organic variety by mail order and describes them as "chewy and creamy with a mild corn taste. Use as you would hominy or barley."

