2 comments about Southern Cookin'.

1. It's been a long time since someone had the ingenious idea to combine a well written novel with a cookbook... this novel is what Soul Food should have been... McCullough has the ability to make you laugh and make you cry in the same chapter... I eagerly await his next project



2. Love meets soulfood, who could as for a better combination.
   
   I give this book 2 thumbs waaaayyy up!

4 comments about Rufus Estes' Good Things to Eat: The First Cookbook by an African-American Chef (Dover Cookbooks).

1. Dover Publications has reprinted Rufus Estes' Good Things to Eat: The First Cookbook by an African-American Chef, the first cookbook by an Afro-American chef, returning this time-lost 1911 culinary classic to print. It's refreshing to read a title from the past which doesn't skimp on the lard or the fats, and intriguing to read about Estes' Southern childhood and early years as a railway attendant, while the easy recipes for Baked Milk (an early form of custard), or Parsnip Fritters.



2. This is a good book to add to your collection if you are into collecting cookbooks or African American collectibles. There is a very brief introduction by the author of his life. It doesn't go into a lot of detail of his experiences as a chef but names a few places where he worked. Some of the recipes may be familiar to the seniors out there. I remember my grandmother preparing dishes that were similar in nature to some of the recipes listed.
   
   Obviously, this isn't a cookbook like the ones of our generation. The recipes are very brief, don't always list proportions, and are skimpy in preparation detail. If you purchase this and decide you want to try something, make sure you read the recipe over a few times to ensure that it flows and will work. For example, the fried chicken recipe instructs you to steep the chicken but there isn't enough liquid mentioned in the recipe for that, and the instructions on cooking the marinade are vague as they only specify that the liquid is heated. Since the marinade or steeping liquid includes carrots and turnips (yes, really) you have to assume that either water or broth was used and the mixture cooked until at least those vegetable were softened.
   
   I suppose the recipes are in the tradition of the cooking like Grandma used to do, a pinch of this or a spoonful of that with most of the detail being committed to memory!
   
   The title says that this is the first cookbook by an African American Chef. However, there is another book (available at Amazon), "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking" that was published in 1881.



3. This is more than a cookbook (because most recipes you can't recreate), it is a historical account of life as a slave cook.



4. It is an honor for me to purchase a cookbook written by the first published African American chef. I am looking forward to duplicating the dishes... He made it so easy to follow so anyone can do this.

3 comments about Food of Morocco: Authentic Recipes from the North African Coast (Food of the World Cookbooks).

1. If you love Moroccan food but have never made it, this is the book for you. The steps for preparation are easy to follow and the food is delicious. However, the recipes are not as well categorized as they should be. Recipes seem to follow a certain indexing, but once you flip through the pages they are all over the place. I want all my main dishes under main dishes ... not the case here.



2. If you love lamb, this is the cookbook for you. But if you are looking for more, and in particular if you are searching for side dishes or vegetarian recipes, you will be disappointed. Some of the recipes call for ingredients not readily found in the US.



3. This is a good book to start learning how to cook Moroccan food. Nice pictures to go along with the recipes. But if you are cooking for a Moroccan some of the recipes aren't what they are used to eating.

4 comments about Casa Moro.

1. A must have book for anyone with an understanding of good ingredients. The recipes are fantastic! Love it!!



2. For those who are familiar with the books of claudia roden and penelope casas on middle eastern food and spanish food, this book has definitely a few new things to offer. The recipees are basic, with few ingredients, emphasis on good taste and relatively simple to prepare. Do not expect elaborate "Michelin restaurant" style type dishes. The authors like spiced (not hot)food, so if you like that too, then stock up on your cumin, coriander and paprika, and start pickling your own lemons.
   The book starts with a curious chapter on dishes prepared with wild ingredients (herbs) from the area in spain where the authors live (Andalucia). The four seasons are each presented with 2-3 dishes. While it is apparently meant to set the scene, I found this chapter a bit out of place and too much "Jamie Oliver" with pictures of happy family and tales of friendly neighbours; the dishes are sometimes less easy to prepare with the ingredients listed. What follows is a short chapter on bread which i did not find particularly intersting. Despite the encouriging remarks of the authors, (it only takes 10 minutes!) making bread by hand the classic way takes time, is messy, and the results is always a bit disappointing.
   The next chapters on soups and on mezze and starters however is very good with many good recipees. Other chapters are on slads, fish, meat and vegetables (!). The meat chapter has 6 nice lamb, 2 pork, 2 beef and 4 chicken recipees. They are rather classic (roast lamb, sirloin steak) but again of good taste. However, you will find a much wider selection in both Roden or Casas. The authors admit that they only recently started to get interested in desserts, and the book therefore is relatively short on this item, with a few good cakes, ice and fruit desserts. In conclusion: its not a real restaurant book with complete menu suggestions, and it has frequent accounts of personal life and travels (it is a bit romantic, organic and jamie oliver style), but the few recipies i have tried so far where easy to prepare and tasted very much oke: 4 stars..
   One last remark to the publisher: the list of suppliers and reference to particular brands of flower is usefull for UK readers but of no use to readers outside the UK. Would it be a better idea to include websites of suppliers in europe and USA where foodstuff can be ordered?



3. This is an excellent book, however many of the ingredients are very hard if not impossible to find. If you don't have access to a Spanish cooking supply shop, I would pass on this book. In addition, some of the recipes need a bit of work. I've tried several soup recipes and all of them were lacking in flavor and needed additional work to repair.



4. This book is SO inspiring. We use this book more than any other. Moro really inspires us to challenge our taste-buds and when we have people over for dinner they always want to know where we got the ideas.

5 comments about Neo Soul: Taking Soul Food to a Whole 'Nutha Level.

1. I saw Lindsey Williams featured in Newsweek and I went immediately and bought this book for a friend of mine. She's been trying to find ways to lighten up her down-home cooking and I thought this was right up her alley.
   
   We paged through the book together and checked out the recipes - which are fantastic. Mr. Williams' personal story was also a highlight, as were tidbits like celebrity favorites. My friend recognized familiar recipes immediately and was pleased her new cookbook.
   
   Naturally, being health conscious, we looked at the nutritional information. That's when we started to get confused.
   
   For one, the calorie and fat counts for some of the desserts were very high. I know - it's DESSERT! If the re-done version was still bad, I figured it must mean the "original" version must have been far worse. And I know you don't eat it all the time, anyway. But I've never seen a "light" cookbook feature a recipe with 4 sticks of butter in the ingredient list. As tempting as the pound cake sounds, I'm afraid it would be something I couldn't eat on my plan.
   
   Secondly, I'm convinced that the nutritional counts are inaccurate. Some recipes had 40 or 50+ grams of fat in them - which is just astronomical for one serving. The calorie count would seem appropriate for a serving, but fat (and sometimes sodium) seemed like it might actually apply to the whole dish. There were so many great LIGHT recipes that we looked at, scanning the ingredient list only to find healthy ingredients but non-attractive nutritional counts. It didn't make sense.
   
   It's such a good cookbook with really great re-mixes of traditional recipes. Even after the confusion, my friend still liked the book. I just wish I could pick Mr. Williams' brain over some of the recipes & techniques.........Why not reduce the amount of high-fat coconut in the coconut cake recipe? Why actually FRY the fried apples when there are other ways to cook them without 3 cups of oil? Do we really have to use 4 sticks of butter in the pound cake or is there a way we can sub out some calories? Why would chicken & peaches have 24g of fat?
   
   Bottom line: the book has some fantastic recipes. I would just recommend for those who are nutritionally aware to do your own calculations (and maybe make a few more of your own substitutions) and I'm sure the numbers won't look so bad.



2. Book gives good ideas but nothing new - recylced old ideas - the author gives too much personal information - good for him that he lost weight but enough already ~!



3. Lyndey Williams is a remarkable person who has come a long way. His journey from unhealthy and obese to fit and eating well is fantastic. His word is just as good as anybodies because he has been "there." I purchased two cookbooks, 1 for me and 1 for my mother. We tried numerous recipes and they turned out great. With these recipes you can substitute the high fat without substituting the great flavor. If you aren't looking for low fat try regular Syvlia's Soul Food in Harlem, hands down some of the greatest soul food available.



4. Other books have been written on soul food but here's something with a difference: it comes from the godson of Harlem's soul food cook Sylvia Woods and adds a healthy twist to a cuisine often associated with unhealthy fats. Author Lindsay Williams struggled with weight all his life and had to make some drastic changes when at 400 pounds he found food affecting his health. NEO SOUL reflects these changes, which caused him to lose more than half his weight, and provides readers with a new brand of healthy soul cooking which retains the ethnicity without the dangers.
   
   Diane C. Donovan, Editor
   California Bookwatch



5. This book was very encouraging. I've eaten in Sylvia's Restaurants in Atlanta and New York and the food was GRRRRREAT!!!!!!! Being a Southerner I know the challenges of resisting good old down home stick to your ribs cooking! I love books like this one and Pattie LaBelle's Lite Cuisine because many of the recipes offer good options for making food that taste good and at the same time is good for you. I think that this book can stimulate the thought processes regarding changing how you prepare the standard recipes you typically eat at home. Most people cook a standard rotation of menus in their homes. Books like this make you think about healthy options and how to substitute ingredients for your meals at home.

5 comments about Feast for 10.

1. This book has been around for a long time, but it continues to be a favorite in my classroom. It's one of those simple books that sparks so many different curriculum paths! Counting, number groupings, nutrition, cooperation, family activities, word choices, story writing, and more. It has also initiated collage art projects, quilt making, and paper mache vegetables! FEAST FOR 10 is a goldmine. I see that it's coming out in a board book soon, too. We have both the hardcover and several paperbacks in my class.



2. 
   A sweet 1-10 counting book that has a nice rhyme scheme and builds its story by counting to ten, not once, but twice. The art designs feature a black extended family, however, this is not central to the story. What is emphasized is the feeling of family warmth and cooperation throughout as everyone pitches in to create the feast for ten. Children can also count the items in each picture that correspond to the poem. Well done.



3. My son actually pick this book out by himself in a bookstore when he was 18 months old. He fell in LOVE with it. We had to read it every morning. We loss it transit and I finally remember to get it from Amazon this summer. At 2 1/2 it is still his favorite book. He loves the counting and the actvities reminds him of when "Granny-Gran" comes to visit. Thank you so much for this book.



4. A very sweet and very simple book. Nice to see a family of color in a book for a change.... so my daughter gets a nice variety. My daughter's teacher requested books for the classroom as her Christmas Gift this year... so that should be a selling point! So sweet that the teacher wanted it! :)



5. Or about living in Africa, or living in the past, or some sort of troubles (modern or historical). It's so nice to just see a family doing what families *do*. (They even recycle!)
   
   My nieces ask me to read this book to them often. It's a very fast book, suitable both for very young children and for slightly older ones. We love looking at various details - like the fact that "five kinds of beans" includes JELLY beans, or the fact that the baby sits on a lap at dinner. It's just a quick, sweet book.

5 comments about The Century in Food: America's Fads and Favorites.

1. This is probably one of the worst books on food history I've ever read. One would think that since the publisher released the book several months late, they might have used that extra time to proofread. The number of typographical errors truly astounded me, and made the book difficult, if not agonizing, to read. There is very little actual text, as this is primarily a picture book. While the pictures are of fine quality and brought back many memories, I noticed that the captions didn't always match up with the pictures. And while the brightly colored pages did make a visually interesting background, it also made the tiny type rather difficult to read. Overall, there is very little to learn from this book, and anyone who is interested in food history would be better served by one of the many other books already on the market.



2. I was appalled and dismayed to read the tacky little review of Ms. Bundy's book, The Century in Food. Thanks to this book, I was led on a delightful romp through the foods and foolishness that defined us as American eaters during the past century.
   Not only are the pictures entertaining and nostalgic, but I found myself quoting this book daily after devouring it one night.
   I found The Century in Food to not only be a worthy addition to our American cultural discourse but the best conversation-enhancer I have come upon in years.
   Our memories, our taste buds, and our buying habits are chronicled here and I, for one. am thrilled that Ms. Bundy has given us all this fodder to ponder.



3. I eagerly anticipated this book because I am very interested in food history. As another reviewer mentioned, it is largely a collection of photographs, organized by decade, highlighting popular recipes, prepared foods, applicances and advertisements. As someone middle-aged with bifocals, I found the small print in this book extremely difficult to read. This difficulty is exacerbated by some of the color arrangements, which do not provide enough contrast between the color of the type and background. I know that I would really like this book -- if I could see the tiny print well enough to read it. Too frustrating. I would not buy this again.



4. I bought this book the same day it got a nice plug in the Washington Post's food section. This may have been a professional courtesy, as Beverly Bundy is food editor at the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram. However, as a longtime collector of books and pamphlets on American food history, I was shocked at the slapdash quality of this overhyped large-format book, which lists for the [$$$] I paid at my neighborhood bookseller.

   The type is hard to read, especially when it appears over dark color screens. Full pages are are devoted to banal recipes for things like pineapple upside-cake, or clam dip, that just about everyone has already seen. The author has plenty of space for graphics, but despite the generous page size, many of the ads reproduced are too small to read without squinting, surrounded by overgenerous margins. The design of this book is kitchen-table awkward, unusual for a book of this price.

   The images include such non-food head-scratchers as a U.S. Navy recruiting poster and a photograph of prospective immigrants at Ellis Island having their eyes inspected for trachoma. Granted, women in the workforce and immigration have had an impact on American food, but American food is what we bought this book, ostensibly, to read about. Such padding is frustrating considering the incredibly rich subject matter, much of which is still hanging around our mothers' kitchens, if not our own.

   Bundy credits a scant 30 sources, and she appears to have borrowed heavily--very heavily--from several of them. There are disturbing similarities both in recipe selection and even in text to some of the pre-existing books. My copy of "The Century in Food" is plastered with annotated Post-Its after just one reading.

   [...]

   Both "Fashionable Food" and "Kitchen Culture" are meticulously edited, put together with loving care and LOTS more content than Bundy's book. ... I also recommend "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" (2001) by James Lileks, which is less comprehensive but extremely funny.

   "The Century in Food" is a big waste of money, with the exception of Bundy's photo of the seven-cent Doritos bag, an artifact of my childhood. Nice to see it again, but it isn't worth [$$$].




5. The Century In Food: America's Fads And Favorites begins a culinary history of America in 1900, a time when most of the cooking was done in fireplaces and a slim figure was considered a mark of ill health. Author Beverly Bundy (Food Editor at The Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper) proceeds to provide a fascinating and informative survey of the inventions, innovations, and evolutions in American food preparation, culinary tastes, and a steadily expanding roster of recipe ingredients available to Americans whether eating at home or dining out. Although there are a wealth of featured and illustrative recipes, The Century In Food is more than just one more cookbook, it is also an informed and highly entertaining history of American culinary culture spread out over ten decades and enhanced with 400 full-color images. The Century In Food is highly recommended reading for both students of American Popular Culture and cookbook enthusiasts.

5 comments about Moroccan Collection: Traditional Flavors from Northern Africa.

1. From fiery chillied fish to cooling, refreshing mint tea the Moroccan Collection by author Hilaire Walden is full of inspiration and atmosphere. The beautiful photos and book layout are evocotive of souk markets with their vibrant colours and aromas but at the same time give clear illustrations of what the food should look like when recreated at home.

   The recipes are well laid out with the majority accompanied by a photo. Ingredients are listed in bold type to one side of the page, the method is given in a clear numbered sequence, and best of all most recipes have a short explanation of the dish's history or some background to the ingredients. Ingredients used are those found easily in the west and explanations of traditional methods are given when they are no longer necessary to acheive the desired results today - for instance when using 'instant' couscous. Walden has also adapted the recipes, when necessary, to suit a western palate for example reducing the amount of oil used traditionally in some recipes. No Moroccan book worth its salt would be without lots of lamb and seafood (of many varieties) and chicken recipes, but there are also lots of grain and vegetable dishes and some luscious middle eastern sweets. Yummy!

   Sit back with this book and soak up the atmosphere - or - head straight for your (better equipped than the Moroccan home) kitchen and whip up a dinner of nutty couscous and rice salad accompanied by saffron chicken with apricots.




2. "The Morocco Collection" is authentic and accurate. The recipes are easy to follow and have ingredients most of us can find in the US. I really recommend "Moroccan Prawns with Spices". One of the couscous recipes works well with as does bread. The recipe for "Eggplants with Fruited Couscous" is also wonderful. If you're interested in Moroccan cuisine, you'll really appreciate this book.



3. The book itself is very well done. Nice pictures & well laid out. Not all of the recipes are to my liking. But others are quite tasty! Those are the ones that make this book purchase more that worthwhile...yum! yum!



4. I purchased this to help me use my new tagine. The photgraphy in this book makes you want to try the recipes. The recipes are flavorful. I don't eat meat, but there were plenty of seafood and vegetable recipes.



5. I am of Morrocan descent and was very much looking forward to learning how to cook authentic morrocan food. While the pictures are very pretty and ingrediants all look good none of the recipes I tried came out tasting quite right.

No comments about Month of Meals: Soul Food.

3 comments about A Spicy Touch Volume II.

1. Delicious East Indian/Africian menus of food. The receipes are laid out clearly and are very easy to follow. There are recipies from Chinese fried rice to African Ugali to Indian Biryani. Machuzi Ya Nyama Na Bhoga is included also. It is a meat and vegetable stew from Kenya. Just about anyone who loves African and Asian foods will absolutely love this book. People of all ages can cook these recipies. Another book to add to this collection is Volume I of "A Spicy Touch."



2. Wonderful book documenting the version of cooking by Indians in East Africa. The dishes come out tasting exactly as I remember them 25 years ago in Kenya.



3. I have tried lot of recipes from vol I and II and I can say the recipes are easy to follow, and turn out to be delicious. Everytime I have made something from these books I have had so many compliments. Thank you Noorbanu. I hope you can produce a third volume and one of the recipes I am looking for is Royal Falooda.