Posts Tagged ‘cook books’

The Silver Spoon

Friday, February 10th, 2012

With Valentines Day approaching, the world is aflurry with red roses, hearts and chocolate. We thought that you might need a break from all the festivities so here’s a little red book that will keep you in good stead all year ‘round.

The Silver Spoon is a comprehensive collection of Italian cuisine. One can only liken it to the wiles of The Art of French Cooking by Julia Child because its systematic logic guides the cook through various categories including separate chapters for eggs, vegetables, fish & crustaceans and our personal favourite, cheese.

The weighty volume includes menus for festive occasions as well as menus designed by celebrated chefs, which will give you hours of reading, cooking and inspired time.

The Geometry Of Pasta.

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

The perfect shape + The perfect sauce = The Geometry of Pasta. Well, that’s what it says on the label and that’s exactly what the 100+ recipes inside do: perfectly pair up the various pasta shapes with sauces that make the combination work like magic. Like the pasta and sauce pairings, the book is also a collaborative effort, this one being between chef Jacob Kennedy and graphic designer Caz Hildebrand.  Organised in alphabetical order by the various types of pasta, there’s also an intro to each pasta to add some history. Together with the minimalist black and white pasta designs and the classic recipes, it’s a joy to look at and even better to cook from. Or you can just think of it as “mathematically perfect deliciousness,” as it says on the back cover. Available in hardcover at Chefs Warehouse for R250.

Schmatz!

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

Schmatz! (Karen Hansgen & Rudiger Schellong) is an innovative book that is part art book, part cook book. Look at it as a cookbook that includes art, or an artbook that includes recipes, either way it’s an enchanting and unusual book that stands out for being completely different. It’s based around the celebrated published and printer Gerhard Steidl who collaborates with artists from around the world to produce art books. During heavy work days, the only respite is the lunch, cooked by chef Rudiger Schellong and served at a long table in the offices.

The book presents artists’ poignant memories of their lunch, menus from the table, recipes, a feel for the overall experience and artworks from the various books that have been produced by Steidl Publishers. Complimented with some beautiful photographs of the guests and dishes, it makes for an entertaining book with a handful of beautifully simple recipes. Dishes like tomato risotto with sauteed asparagus, carrot curry soup with croutons or the steamed fish on julienne radicchio with orange vinaigrette.

Available at Chefs Warehouse for R350.

Recipes from an Italian Summer (Phaidon).

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

By the authors of the comprehensive Italian recipe book, The Silver Spoon, this is an enchanting look at how Italian’s truly make the most of their summer. From the produce to the people to the regions and their various festivals, the book covers a lot. Chapters outline how food is eaten, from picnics to barbecues to light lunches, and the recipes are written in a short and succinct manner, but easily understood by anyone that knows their way around a kitchen. Even if you never use a recipe, it’s a beautiful book to have, but that would be a travesty, since there are some great recipes in here, and they’re beautifully photographed. If you know someone that has a weak spot for Italian, you could do a lot worse than get them Recipes from an Italian Summer as a gift.

Noteworthy New Books.

Friday, February 25th, 2011

Our library is growing every week here and we’ve had a selection of great new books arrive. We’ve highlighted a few here, but do recommend you come by the shop and browse through some books if you have the time. There’s no comparison to holding a book, feeling the texture of the paper and the weight of it in your hands versus seeing images on your screen.

Some of the new arrivals include Secrets of the Sommeliers (Rajat Parr & Jordan MacKay), a book designed to get you thinking like a top sommelier when it comes to wine. Then there’s My Sweet Mexico (Fany Gerson) which provides a guide to pastries, breads, candies, frozen drinks and more from this largely under-appreciated country. Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe (Joanne Chang) has the potential to become your new baking staple, with its baking tips and recipes for delicacies like pop tarts, brioche au chocolate and lemon raspberry cake. On the same note, Chewy, Gooey, Crispy & Crunchy (Alice Medrich) and Field Guide to Cookies (Anita Chu) could become your all-you-need-to-know guides to understanding and perhaps more importantly actually baking perfect cookie.

Lastly and certainly not the least given that it’s a favourite amongst the team here is Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way (Francis Mallmann), a captivating and beautifully photographed book that illustrates how our neighbours across the Atlantic get their hands dirty over the coals in the back yard. Great traditional recipes and some simple tips to make brilliant meals outdoors, this will add a superb twist to your outdoor braai/grill/barbecue season.

There’s plenty more too, so pop round and have a look, or get more details via rachel@chefswarehouse.co.za.

The Commonsense Kitchen.

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

This book is not your average cookbook. Yes, it’s large, holding over 500 recipes, but it has no photographs. And it isn’t written by a celebrity chef, nor is it from a well-known restaurant. Instead, it’s written by a graduate and former chef from Deep Springs College in California, probably the hardest cooking college to get into in the US. A few men, yup, men only, get accepted to work at the school each year, which is on a working cattle ranch in the Sierra Nevada. Basically, they do manual labour, farm vegetables and animals and learn everything there is to know about food, from the earth to the plate.

The book is packed – 500 recipes, remember – with great dishes. It’s not fancy stuff, hence the title, but rather soul-satisfying dishes that require fresh seasonal ingredients. Things like asparagus mushroom frittata or the fennel, blood orange, and toasted almond salad.

Come by Chefs Warehouse and have a browse… you’ll like it.

New Books for a New Year.

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

So Chefs Warehouse wasn’t sleeping during the holidays. We were actually working. Or more correctly, we’d done our work so that when we got back to the shop this month a whole bunch of new stuff started to arrive, including a bunch of brilliant new books. Seriously, every single one of these books deserves a special mention…

Pork & Sons – Stephane Reynaud

A book devoted to our pink friends with trotters, Pork & Sons is the story of the Reynaud family as told by third-generation pork devotee, Stephane. His grandfather was the village butcher as was his father and Stephane is the owner of a restaurant specialising in pork. The book is beautifully laid out and has some great pork recipes, from roasts to terrines. R400.

Salted – Mark Bitterman

“Salt can be a revelation,” urges the author, “no food is more potent, or more ancient. No other food displays salt’s crystalline beauty, is as varied, or as storied.” And that’s exactly what makes this books so interesting. Full of interesting stories and detailed pieces of information on the various salts, as well as over 50 recipes, it’s a real treasure for any chef or home cook. R380.

Tartine Bread – Chad Robertson

Written by the baker behind the renowned San Francisco bakery, Tartine, it’s as close as you’ll get to a Bread Bible. It starts with an introduction on Bread in Time and goes on to give away all the secrets and recipes that have made Tartine a bakery that sells out within an hour of the bread leaving the oven. R410.

Susar, A Culinary Life – Susur Lee & Sara Angel

His reinterpreted Chinese cooking has been dubbed nouvelle chinoise. Mastering the technique and nuance of French cuisine and the using the flavours and textures of Chinese, Susar and his namesake restaurant in Toronto have drawn praise from almost every food magazine and critic around. This book is divided in two halves: the first tells his story of life between Hong Kong, France and Toronto, and the second is a collection of his most sought-after recipes. R500.

REINVENTING FOOD: Ferran Adria, the man who changed the way we eat – Colman Andrews

A tale that captures you from the first page, respected US food writer Colman Andrews takes the reader through Ferran Adria’s rise “from dishwasher to creative genius behind el Bulli, the world’s most influential restaurant.” A meticulously researched book that is full of anecdotes and insights from the author’s time spent with the great chef. R320.