Foreign Cinema Cookbook #AbramsDinnerParty

This cookbook season, I've been lucky enough to be involved in the Abrams Dinner Party, which is a clever way of saying that I get a whole lot of cookbooks for free.

Some of them, I was drooling over. Some, I'd never heard of, and probably would not have taken a second look at. But that's fine, because some of the ones that I wasn't originally fond of turned out to be pretty good.

One of the most recent books to arrive was The Foreign Cinema Cookbook by Gayle Pirie and John Clark. The subtitle of this one is Recipes and Stories under the stars.

I'll have to admit that this one wasn't on my radar at all. I didn't know the authors, and even if I had seen it in passing, I probably would have passed, since I know very little about foreign films.

Turns out I was a bit wrong in my assumptions. Foreign Cinema is the name of a restaurant in San Francisco. Oopsie. So, instead of finding recipes dedicated to movies I'd never seen or recipes by stars I never heard of, this is a book full of recipes from the restaurant. There's everything from Strawberry Bourbon to Crab Cakes with a Curiously Scented Butter Sauce (I just love that name!) to Creme Fraiche ice cream.

Like a lot of cookbooks written by folks near a coast, there are quite a few recipes featuring fresh fish that isn't available to us folks in the middle-ish of the country. And like many cookbooks based on restaurants, there are ingredients you might not find at your local grocer. But that's okay. It's a big book ... and heavy - did I mention that it's heavy? ... so there are plenty of recipes to choose from that can be made with common ingredients.

And of course you can substitute. If you don't have that fresh fish available in your market, you can always pick up the bag of frozen white-looking fish from the freezer bin and make sure that the rest of the recipe is done right.

Even if you skip past the full recipes, this book has a pretty darned good selection of extra things that you'll find very handy. There are spice blends, condiments and pickles, sauces, vinaigrettes, and some simple things like stocks breadcrumbs, and other things that can dress up an otherwise plain dish.

Photos in this book are pretty, yet achievable. The ones on baking pans or in pots certainly are what you should see, but even the plated dishes look doable - if you choose to do them that way. And, I have to say, I really appreciate that.

It irks me to no end when I see a recipe that calls for (for example) avocados to be mixed into a salad and the accompanying photo has pristine cubes of avocado. I mean seriously, either that avocado is rock-hard and not pleasant to eat, or the photographer cut it and placed it into position without mixing it in, as the recipe says you're supposed to. Yes, it's a pretty photo. But no, that's not what it's going to look like when served. And sometimes that matters. Like when the inlaws are coming over.

But ... I digress. The Foreign Cinema Cookbook is not a book of foreign recipes, folks. It's from a restaurant right over there in California, making American-ish food.

In case you missed it up top, I got this book for free. Gratis. Nada cost.

Mincemeat

It's a little bit weird for me to read the autobiography of someone I don't know.

I mean, usually when I'm reading a biography or autobiography, I'm doing it because I'm interested in the person. Maybe it's someone in history or someone currently somewhat-famous, but generally I know something about them. I mean, at least I know what they're famous for.

I mean, the average person would never get their autobiography published. Because average isn't all that interesting.

Mincemeat is the autobiography of Leonardo Lucarelli.

Never heard of him, right?

Probably because he's an Italian chef. In Italy. The book was translated from Italian. Well, he might be a chef, but we don't know that (unless we happened to read the back flap first) because we're not Italians in Italy. The book talks about his earlier years in the industry and how he bounced from one restaurant job to the other.

He wasn't an immediate success. He did some drugs, got in some trouble. Had girlfriends or not ... and along the way he learned more about cooking and running a restaurant. And he moved a lot, mostly to places I really didn't know much about, except in the broadest sense.

I suspect that his experiences in Italy aren't all that different from what might happen in America. Or not. Since everyone's path is different.

It was a good read, not too long. I think I might have enjoyed it a bit more if it was a chef I "knew," but it was still it was a good story.

I received this book from the publisher at no cost to me.

Anna Mae's Mac n Cheese

Are you a mac and cheese freak?

Are you looking for new and different recipes to spice up your mac and cheese experience?

Then Anna Mae's Mac n Cheese by Anna Clark and Tony Solomon might be the perfect little stuffer for your stocking. It's not a tiny book, by any means, but it's a tad smaller that some. But it's loaded with cheesiness, that for sure. And mac.

The book is written by the owners of a British mac and cheese food truck, so there are plenty of Britishisms. Like calling ground beef "mince" or asking for American mustard or burger cheese or mature Cheddar. There are also a few oddities, like asking for "a jar" of red jalapeno chilies, but never specificing the size of that jar.

But the book points out that its perfectly acceptable to swap cheeses to use what you have on hand or what you like, and that it's also fun to mess with the flavors. So if you're not sure what burger cheese is, just use whatever it is you'd put on a burger, I guess.

There are recipes here for different types of mac and cheese, but then it gets really crazy, using mac and cheese in nachos; using mac and cheese in a breakfast dish that includes sausage, hash browns, and eggs; making a mac and cheese ... creation ... that tastes like a Big Mac; or making mac and cheese fries.

There are also recipes for things that go with mac and cheese, like guacamole, hot sauce, quick kimchi, and desserts.

It's a fun little book.

My ONE quibble is the font used. It looks like a typewriter and it reminded me of old-school community cookbooks, which at first make me think the book was going to be cheap or not well-written. Once I got over my initial dislike of the font, though, I started liking the book a lot.

I received this book from the publisher at no cost to me.

Eating Clean in Costa Rica

The recipes in this book are from a retreat and spa in Costa Rica called Blue Osa. They aren't necessarily traditional Costa Rican foods. In fact, as I browsed through the book, it seemed like the recipes could be from just about anywhere.

The author points out that she's cooking "in the middle of the jungle" so she can't get things that are common in supermarkets, so she has to rely on what's available locally. That makes sense. Then she goes on to say that she created a "original cuisine" with French flair.

So there you go. If you go to the spa, this is the sort of food you might expect to eat. Among other recipes in the book, there was quiche Lorraine, black bean soup, puttanesca sauce, vegetarian pad Thai, blinis, and lemon meringue pie.

There are some recipes that have more of an island flair, featuring coconut, mango, or other tropical fruits, but many of the recipes are from pretty far-flung locations.

The recipes are fairly simple, but there are some instructions that could be confusing. In some cases, oven temperatures are in fahrenheit, while others are centigrade. Many measurements are in grams or milliliters, but there are also teaspoons and tablespoons.

One recipe called for "one can" of tuna without specifying what size can and another asked for "one glass" of white wine. If you're used to cooking by taste, these sorts of things shouldn't be a problem.

Another recipe called for separating eggs, but the yolks were never used. That was a recipe for "macaroons." If it was supposed to be a recipe for macarons, they don't use yolks, so the instructions were correct. But it would have been clearer if the instructions had said to just use the whites and save the yolks for something else. Or perhaps there's something called a "macaroon" in Costa Rica that isn't either a macaron or the macaroons that have coconut in them. I'm really not sure.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad book. But if you're looking for Costa Rican food, this might not be the book for you. And if you do make these recipes, be prepared for instructions that might not be perfectly clear.

I received this book from the publisher for the purpose of a review.

America's Best Breakfasts

When I got a book called America's Best Breakfasts by Lee Brian Schrager and Adeena Sussman, I expected to see things like waffles, crepes, chilaquiles, pancakes, and lots and lots of eggs.

But no, this book has breakfast recipes from restaurants where breakfasts are much more creative. There are certainly egg recipes, but most of them aren't recipes I'd be awake enough to make first thing in the morning.

For example, an egg sandwich recipe called Yolko Ono starts with making the sausage that goes onto the sandwich. It notes that you can buy sausage patties, but it's still not a simple recipe, since there's a pesto you'd also need to make.

The sandwich sounds amazing, but I'd be more likely to make it for lunch or dinner than for breakfast.

Like I said, I'm just not all that awake first thing in the morning.

The good news is that I tend to like breakfast foods for dinner, and that's particularly the case with eggs. I'd rather have them for lunch or dinner than for breakfast. So Yolko Ono would be perfect for me later in the day.

There are also recipes here that you might not normally associate with breakfast, like pozole, shrimp and grits, spaghetti with clams and crab, and chicken fried steak. I'm not saying I dislike any of those recipes. To be quite honest, I'd rather eat dinner food for breakfast. I'm weird like that. But I wouldn't necessarily make dinner food in the morning so I could have it for breakfast. Like I said, I'm not perky enough to do that sort of cooking first thing in the morning.

But I'd be more than happy to have it as leftovers. Or for someone else to cook it for me. You know, if you wanted to come over here and whip it up for me. Then make coffee. Then wake me up.

But ... if you're looking for a book that's got recipes you're going to whip up on a whim on a normal day, there probably aren't too many of those sorts of recipes here. You can make components ahead of time to make the final cooking easier, or you could easily work these into a brunch menu. But you'd have to really be a morning person to get many of these on the table for breakfast.

On the other hand, the brioche cinnamon buns are probably worth making ... when you have the time.

There are a lot of recipes here that I'll make, eventually. Just not for breakfast.

I received America's Best Breakfasts from the publisher for review.

Milk Bar Life

The first thing I have to say is that Milk Bar Life by Christina Tosi is absolutely not the book I expected it to be. I have the book Momofuku Milk Bar, which she also wrote, and I expected something ... similar, but perhaps more homey.

Momofuku Milk Bar is a somewhat difficult book to cook from, because a lot of the ingredients aren't very common. And many of the recipes build on other recipes. So you can't just make the cake, you have to make the things that go into the cake. It's definitely a "project" book and not one that you open on a whim and start cooking from.

Milk Bar Life isn't a simplified version of Momofuku cooking, it's a complete 180 in terms of recipe ingredients. You'll find recipes calling for cake mix, canned soup, crescent rolls in a can, Cool Whip, and Velveeta.

Now, not all of the recipes use those ingredients, and some are completely from-scratch. But I was surprised at the number of recipes that included convenience foods.

And then I got off that high horse I was on and looked around. I realized that if you work in a restaurant all day long, a box of cake mix and some canned soup probably looks like a really good idea. And let's face it, a lot of people cook with those ingredients.

Even me.

Yup, I said it. I have a few recipes passed down from my mom that include canned soups, and they're just not the same without them. And one of the best mac and cheese recipes I've made recently had Velveeta as an ingredient. We all have a few of those recipes in our closets, right?

The lemon bars in this book start with lemon cake mix, and Tosi says she hasn't found a lemon bar recipe that she likes better. It's her grandmother's recipe, and it sounds pretty darned simple. I might try it one of these days.

And, like I said, there are recipes that are completely from scratch, like a ranch dressing that I've bookmarked. Some recipes are decidedly strange, like the Tang Toast that calls for margarine (it specifically says not to use butter) and Tang drink mix. Some are simple, like the egg soup, which is essentially soft-boiled eggs in a bowl. And some are more complicated, like the enchiladas or jerk chicken.

There's something for everyone, although I suspect some fans of Momofuku and Momofuku Milk Bar will be ... not pleased with the simplicity of some of the recipes.