Hatmaker's "For the Love": my new favorite book

The first thing you should know about this book and this author is that she's hilarious. If you're tired of boring and dry, this is the antidote. However, if you're like me and consider yourself a serious thinker, you might worry where the opening humor, light hearted self-deprecation and self-helpy prose are leading you. Happily, there's depth and wisdom and maturity bubbling beneath Hatmaker's big personality.

What's striking about pastor and popular blogger Jen Hatmaker's newest book For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards is that she blends personal stories, theology, humor, and practical tips for child rearing, marriage and Christian community so seamlessly. There's even recipes for Roast Lamb and Pad Thai in there. In this way, it's somewhat like a blog. Yet all the parts send a cohesive message, which I think is summed up in these freeing words Hatmaker gives to her five children: "God measures our entire existence by only two things: how we love Him and how we love people. If you get this right, you can get a million other things wrong" (189).

Clean, care-free eating: a review of "A Modern Way to Eat" by Anna Jones

My happiest meals are the ones where vegetables take center stage; they're full of color, textures and nutrition. Food stylist and student of Jamie Oliver, Anna Jones has compiled a comprehensive book of not only vegetarian recipes, but also information on individual ingredients and idea generating charts of how to combine foods for maximum impact and flavor. The understated cover and philosophical title of A Modern Way to Eat, I think, was meant to signal that this book is more about promoting a life-style of simple, clean, creative eating that takes advantage of our current knowledge of the benefits of plant-based diets and our access to global ingredients and cooking techniques. And it's right up my alley.

Reasons I like this book:

It has a good variety of dishes- from breakfasts, to snacks, to light lunches to food for a crowd to desserts and condiments.

The Swede in me: "Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break"

Fond childhood memories and my affinity for all things Swedish drew me to author Anna Bronnes' and illustrator Johanna Kindvall's Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, an illustrated guide to the Scandinavian tradition of taking a mid-morning and/or mid-afternoon break to sip a restorative beverage and nibble tasty treats. While most Americans see coffee as fuel to speed through their day, Anna Bronnes explains that her coffee-loving homeland sees it as a reminder to pause, savor and converse with friends.

Some readers might be surprised to find a modern cookbook without full-color photographs with every recipe. In fact, there are no photos in this book.
Instead, Kindvall's fresh, minimalist artwork perfectly includes just enough detail to illuminate techniques and equipment while giving the book an airy, uncluttered feel in tune with the idea of simplifying and slowing down.As for text, the book is divided into five sections, walking Fika-novices through historical and contemporary fika culture, sweet treats for summer fika and holiday fika, and savory fika fare. Each section begins with several pages of explanation and insight. I found Bronne's analysis of the Swedish love-affair with foods from afar-- namely, coffee, chocolate and exotic spices like cardamom, ginger and cinnamon-- especially interesting. Often, when a cookbook author advocates for homemade, unprocessed and organic, they also champion locally sourced ingredients. But Swedes have happily absorbed many exotic ingredients as foundational flavors in their national cuisine. As someone who values both environmentalism and multi-culturalism, it's a contradiction I'm happy to live with. I was also inspired by the idea of getting out the fancy china and making ordinary moments special, even if that means packing the indoor spread for enjoying outdoors.

And, of course, the 150-page hardcover contains plenty of from-scratch recipes for traditional and contemporary Swedish pastries, breads and sandwiches, all of which had me daydreaming of how I might start a fika tradition in my own home. Notable recipes include: vetebullar (cinnamon and cardamom buns), syltgrottor (jam thumbprint cookies), kladkaka (sticky chocolate cake), rabarbersaft (rhubarb cordial), mjuka pepparkakor (soft ginger cookies) and pannkakor (Swedish pancakes).

For those who enjoy Swedish cookies and are curious about Swedish culture, I highly recommend this book. Or, even if you haven't given much thought about Swedish coffee break, but would like a reason to slow down and savor the little things in life, Fika is a fun excuse to help you do just that.

*I received a complimentary copy of this lovely book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.*

"Salad Love" by David Bez a visual feast

David Bez writes at the beginning of Salad Love that it isn't a cookbook. Instead, this is collection of 260 of the most photogenic salads he made over the course of three years of preparing lunch at his desk as part of his personal goal of eating more vegetables, which eventually gave way to the challenge to document it in a blog called Salad Pride.  The recipes in the book, which cater to vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian and omnivorous tastes with an emphasis on crunchy raw produce, are simply lists of ingredients that Bez assembled at his desk. 

In addition to not being a cookbook--as there’s not a whole lot of cooking going on in the recipes--there’s also not a lot of text in this book. The first 30 pages feature the author’s guidelines for the proportions of produce, proteins, toppings and dressings that make up his ideal salad, the back story of how his personal dietary vision became a blog and then a book, and a cubicle tour of how he was able to prepare all these culinary feats at his desk as office mates salivated in the background.

Review of "In Her Kitchen" by Gabriele Galimberti

At only 22, Gabriele Galimberti's first real gig took him on a photography expedition around the world. Because he'd never traveled much beyond his small Italian hometown of Castiglion Fiorentino, Galimberti's grandmother expressed concern about his pending adventure. What would her grandson eat, and who would cook for him, she wondered aloud as she served him her homemade ravioli. Galimberti writes that this was the moment he hatched his plan to find, cook with and photograph grandmas from each place he visited, capturing their signature dishes and stories. The result was In Her Kitchen: Stories and Recipes from Grandmas Around the World.

What this book is:

I first sat down with this 250-page coffee table book with my 6-year-old son, Stephen, who has a thing for maps. The inside cover is printed with a world map index pinpointing all the locations Galimberti visited. Stephen enjoyed picking a location from the map then flipping to the corresponding page to learn about cultures and food so different from his own. Each entry includes a full page portrait of the cook posing with the ingredients for her dish in her kitchen or dining room.The facing page features a close up of the finished cuisine. The following two pages provide a brief story about the cook and her family as well as the recipe for the dish. I enjoyed reading through the entire tome, trying to guess the country of origin from the photographs before flipping the the extended caption on the next page. I love that I now know a little bit about Latvian cooking and that I have a Greek grandma's recipe for making phyllo dough from scratch. There were a number of recipes I was eager to try, such as Galimberti's own grandmother's Swiss Chard and Ricotta Ravioli with Meat Sauce. And with the amusing exceptions of recipes requiring moth maggots and fresh caught iguana, most of the dishes involved easily accessible ingredients and common kitchen tools.

What it isn't:

Though it provides recipes from five of the seven continents, the book is not a definitive introduction to the world's cuisines, nor an expertly written cookbook. I tried the recipe for Empanadas Criolla from Argentina, and was surprised that the pastry crust didn't use any oil or fat. (The filling was very tasty though!) Additionally, having studied basic Chinese while living in Taiwan, I questioned the author's translation for the word "rou" as "meat cooked again in the wok," when in fact, it simply means "meat." However, considering that Galimberti cooked and ate with 60 grandmothers in nearly as many countries over a two-year stint, I can cut him some slack. Combine that with the fact that the author and his subjects often communicated in a language that was neither's native tongue, and I know that some details could have easily been lost in translation.  

This is also not award-winning photojournalism. The images are nicely composed and lit, but they follow a predictable pattern: each woman stands or sits behind a table on which the ingredients are symmetrically arranged. Because they aren't candid, the photos give the impression that each grandma had plenty of time to dress for company and stuff her clutter into the coat closet just outside the frame. Few of the photos include additional family members, which means we don't get to see the grandmothers interact or loved ones enjoying the food. At first, I thought that this detracted from the storytelling, but upon second musing, I felt that Galimberti was sending a message of solidarity and unity through his use of uniformity. Through repetition, he triggers our collective consciousness of the importance of food and family.

My take-away:

I'm more than impressed with this project because I can imagine the work that went into travelling to so many far-flung places, connecting with host homes and collecting the stories and recipes. This isn't an expert-vetted cookbook or the most poignant photo essay I've seen. But taken as a whole, these 60 grandmas and their food stories are a powerful testament that people the world over are connected by their communion over a good meal and good company. In Her Kitchen is a great way for an arm chair or kitchen table chair traveler to sample some home cooking that might not appear in typical cookbooks. Each photo story was like an appetizer; it just enough to whet my appetite for exploring more of their cultures, countries and cuisines.

Thanks to Blogging for Books for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review of "Cooked" by Michael Pollan

A busy new routine with driving two boys to and from two different schools, the start of my tutoring schedule and a couple of new hobbies have kept me away from the blog. I've still been reading, but at a more leisurely pace. So, yesterday I mentioned to a friend that I had this little blog and blogger's guilt immediately set in... so I bring you a very belated review of Michael Pollan's "Cooked."

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Michael Pollan's name is well-known as a NYT food columnist (maybe even a food philosopher?), so I was a little surprised when I came upon his confession that he didn't really cook in the introduction of his newest tome, Cooked. But we journalists like to think we can teach people about things that we ourselves are just in the process of learning, so I figured I'd forge ahead with the nearly 500-page book about Pollan's adventures and experiments in barbecue, bread baking, cheese-making and fermenting. His core argument is that readers should, like he has learned, prepare their own food at home because of the way cooking connects us to our families, promotes healthful eating, supports local food producers and, well, because we're genetically wired to cook. Cooking is what makes us human, Pollan argues, using quotes from anthropologists who hypothesize that early humans distinguished themselves from the apes when they began to use fire to cook. But let's get on to the meat of the book. And the bread, cheese and pickles.

The book is organized by sections according to the four elements-- fire, water, earth and air. I didn't feel this gimmick really added to the book, so I'll avoid wasting your time going into more detail. Instead, I will organize my review by what I liked and what I didn't:

I liked:

I was surprised by how extraordinarily interesting pickles are. Real pickles, like kimchi and sauerkraut, that have marinated in their own fermenting juices, Pollan proposes, are a source of health today's Western-diet eating omnivore no longer enjoys. He quotes fermentation guru Sandor Katz to posit that humans are not the rugged individualists we assume we are. Instead, we live because of --and in symbiosis with--a vibrant microcosm of bacteria that colonize our guts, help us digest, send messages to our brains and defend us from bad intruders. His portrait of the invisible bacterial world is really brilliant. And it made me up my intake of yogurt. 

I was also entranced with Pollan's foray into ancient cheese making traditions with a forthright nun. Here, he explores the safety of unpasteurized cheeses and why humans like cheese, despite its sometimes heady (and sometimes footy) odors. The humor, history and science of this section make it an enlightening read.

There are plenty of DIY recipes at the end of the book. I liked that they were there, especially the instructions for colonizing your own bread yeast from scratch. But I must admit I did not test any of them out.

Take it or leave it:

Pollan spends a good chunk of the book microbrewing Pollan's Pale Ale with his teenage  son. I have zero interest in beer or brewing moldy batches of it in my basement. But I know it's kind of culinary craze right now, so there are probably plenty of readers who would enjoy this section of the book.

What I didn't like:

Pollan's opening chapter explores Southern pit barbecue. Here I found the author's privilege as a white, upper-middle class male came out in annoying ways. It seemed he spent a lot of time hinting that blacks were superior pit men, but didn't interview an actual black pit master until the end of the section. When he did, he made the man seem like a self-inflated, self-absorbed barbecue mascot who might have at one time been a great pit man but now cuts corners and entrusts the real work to underlings. Then Pollan exposes the dark truth: the black man uses industrial-ag pigs to produce his pulled pork sandwiches!!! So they aren't even authentic.  Maybe Pollan was just telling it like it was. But something about the subtly elitist tone of the whole bbq chapter just didn't sit well with me. A journalist of Pollan's caliber could have find a super-authentic, true to tradition, farm-raised, unpretentious pulled pork sandwich, and he could have unearthed a similarly impressive black pit master. Perhaps he needed to look into that wooden shack that all the locals (white and black) know, but hasn't made the guidebooks or yelp. 

In Sum:

Despite my quibbles, I think most foodies will like this book. But if food snobs or food agendas make you lose your appetite, just read the parts about cheese and pickles.