Cake and Commerce

Cookbook Monday: The New York Times Cookbook

The very first cookbook I ever owned was a dog-eared copy of the New York Times Cookbook, one of the best 'basic' cookbooks for people who are new to cooking or have more enthusiasm than skill. My mother had worn out the binding of her copy as she made her way through the chapters over the years of my childhood. She gave me a copy - my own pre-Molly O'Neill-edited version, circa 1961 - when I went to college.

Originally published in 1961, The New York Times Cookbook  was compiled by Craig Claiborne, who, along with Julia Child, James Beard, and Richard Olney, was the vanguard of American food in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s. The 1961 edition features recipes that represent childhood to anyone raised in the 70s and 80s - there are 'international' dishes like Tempura and Sukiyaki and Gazpacho, cocktail fare like Rumaki, pate, and step by step instructions for baking break, making croissant, and mixing cocktails. It is as much lifestyle tome as it is a how-to for curious cooks.

I don't know how much there is to say about The New York Times Cookbook, but, like Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and Simone Beck, it has had a profound influence on my generation - either because our parents used the book or it was one of the first books we owned. It is a classic cookbook that everyone should own, much like the Joy of Cooking or any of James Beard's cookbooks.

The 1990 updated New York Times Cookbook includes more contemporary recipes, though fans of nostalgia will miss some of the 'old fashioned' dishes our moms prepared for holidays during childhood. I won't be updating my 1961 edition anytime soon.

Cookbook Monday: Cooking With Shelburne Farms

Have I ever mentioned to you that I spent two years of my life in Vermont, while I was a student at New England Culinary Institute? Actually, that's a bit of a lie. I only spent a year, cumulatively, in Vermont, but winters have a way of slowing down time, and I can still remember my frozen breath, my crystalline eyelashes, the endless cold that pierced my warm, scarf-covered intentions.

I spent the summer of one year at the Essex Junction campus, close to Burlington but just far enough away from Shelburne Farms to make it inaccessible, but for special occasions, like the visit of my parents. Other students spent internships at Shelburne Farms, using cheese from the dairy, vegetables and herbs from the gardens, and meats from other local farms. A meal at Shelburne Farms, a former Vanderbilt Estate and current land trust and working farm, was elegant and expensive. It wasn't particularly exciting cuisine, but it was made from great ingredients, minimally prepared.

The drive through the gates of Shelburne Farms took my breath away. Cliched though it sounds, there's nothing like driving through a gate - a beautiful one, but a gate nonetheless - and see a working farm opening up in front of you, with buildings recalling teutonic castles, and a landscape reminiscinet of the Rhine, with spectacular Lake Champlain in place of the river.

The cookbook, appropriately, is folksy and approachable. There are only about 24 color plates with fairly old school photography and art direction (read: props in the background, full focus, very little 'porn'). The font is large and easy to read. The recipes are fairly simple, seasonal, and classic. There are folksy profiles of individuals who work at Shelburne Farms and others who provide game, wild foods, etc, true to the full title of the book: "Cooking with Shelburne Farms: food and stories from Vermont".

The chapters are a departure from traditional cookbooks. Sections are broken out by vegetables, fruits, meats and fish, milk and maple syrup - foods local to Vermont. Chapter from from Savory Milk and Cheese and Savory Maple to Sweet Milk and Sweet Maple, with just about everything else in between. There's a chapter on spring and summer greens, root-cellar vegetables, wild mushrooms, lamb, game and fish, pork, and apples.

I can't really fault this cookbooks its simplicity or retro look (the font, the bound cover with a pasted on front and back instead of a jacket) as it reminds me very much of the menus we put together at NECI. The recipes are comforting and crowd-pleasing. Who wouldn't be delighted to chow down on pub fare like Shepherd's Pie with Caramelized Onions and Cheddar Smash (p 99), Scalloped Potatoes with Mushrooms and Canadian Bacon (p 118), Orange-Yogurt Coffee Cake (p 236), washed down with Rhubarb-Citrus Tonic (p 74).

Cookbook Monday: Eric Kayser's Sweet and Savory Tarts

Tarts intimidate most bakers I know. Perhaps it is the requirement that some tart shells be blind baked before filling, perhaps it is the delicate nature of the tart dough. Perhaps it just seems too complicated, too advanced, too time consuming.

Eric Kayser, a 4th generation baker (a fact revealed in the book description, the introduction, and just about any where M. Kayser's name is mentioned), has put together a marvelously simple, easy-to-follow cookbook that reveals the secrets - and simplicity - of making great tarts.

Usually when I see a cookbook like this, where the author's name is larger than the name of the book, I'd have something sassy and mocking to say - I don't really care for cooking celebrities. But Eric Kayser is not yet a household name here in the states, despite the presence of three of his baking ventures in the Los Angeles area. And this cookbook, published by Flammarion, is more an exercise in enthusiastic tart how-to than it is an exercise in culinary posturing, which is often the case with celebrity cookbooks.

There's no goofy introduction here, no mention of 'authentic French baking' (thank you, chef). Kayser is first and foremost a baking evangelist, spreading the gospel of good bakery items through his bakeries in France, Japan, the US, Greece, Lebanon, Russia and the Ukraine. Kayser doesn't affect an attitude in his introduction, rather he soothes and reassures the reader that his rustic tarts and their enjoyment are simple and enjoyable, both to make and eat.

The first chapter is the most essential, and many baking enthusiasts will be delighted by the easy step-by-step instructions for making and using various tart doughs. Organizationally, this chapter could not be easier to use. Under each recipe is a photo and the name of a tart recipe, along with the page on which the recipe appears.

Recipes range from the mundane to the fanciful. There's a Normandy Apple Tart, a blueberry tart, a chocolate hazelnut tart. But then there's a salted caramel tart, a pink caramelized almond tart and various savory tarts including an onion and sausage tart with beaujolais wine. If anything, this cookbook demonstrates that an enthusiastic and ambitious home baker can put anything into a tart, and the results will be almost always delicious.

Cookbook Monday: My Sicilian Cooking by Nino Graziano

If you've seen my cookbook posts, you know that I don't necessarily review cookbooks and the cookbooks that I don't necessarily review aren't always new. Last week I talked about two Japanese cookbooks published 25 years apart. This week I'm going to talk about a newish cookbook that I've never actually cooked from but love to read: Nino Graziano's My Sicilian Cooking. Graziano is the Chef-Proprietor of Il Mulinazzo, a Michelin two-star outside of Palermo, Sicily. One of several new restaurants in Sicily to revel in its traditions, its local ingredients, and its local talent, Il Mulinazzo served "New" Sicilian cuisine that was barely related (even through marriage) to the stuff served in U.S. restaurants passed off as food of the old country. Marian Burros wrote a good piece in the New York Times in 2005 on new Sicilian cuisine and writes about her New Year Eve 2005 dinner at the restaurant.

In 2005, the year the cookbook was published, Graziano apparently closed up shop to open up a new restaurant, Semifreddo Mulinazzo in Moscow. Semifreddo, get it? A three-hour flight from Italy, this new restaurant features just-flown-in ingredients served at the peak of freshness in the new traditional Sicilian style. A meal there will set you back a pretty penny unless you happen to be there for lunch - 36 Euros will buy you a three course meal.

But what of the cookbook? Probably the best part of the cookbook, like most contemporary cookbooks, is the photography, food porn images that will leave you breathless and sweaty. The introduction, written by Fabrizio Carrera, has the adoring tone reminiscent of record liner notes of the 1960s and reads like a disingenuous press release touting the brilliance of the chef as he traces the Mr. Graziano's steps from novice to proprietor. The words are juxtaposed with photos of the Chef waiting in the barber's chair for a haircut, sitting on the street pensively, a la Rodin's The Thinker, with an elderly couple and then inspecting produce at the local market.Turn the page and he's supervising a young cook in the kitchen. Look in the back and there's a portrait of his kitchen staff, including two young Japanese cooks (the Japanese seem to be spreading out all over the world in its greatest kitchens, no doubt returning with golden resumes and the clout to open up their own simulacra in some posh district of Tokyo or Osaka. The mention of 'tempura' and 'sashimi' in some recipes seem to indicate that the Japanese have likewise influenced the chef).

Recipes are simple and elegant and focus on fish. Many recipes have multiple components and need to be plated to be appreciated. No doubt you can replicate these recipes in your kitchen, but is it worth it? Because the food is so much a reflection of availability and product quality of Sicilian ingredients, even the best efforts outside of Sicily will yield something that is just a weak approximation. Better to look at the pictures and fantasize about a reservation at his restaurant next time you are in Moscow.

Cookbook Monday: Classic Armenian Recipes, Cooking without Meat

In college I was actually a passionate, curious cook. My culinary training was limited to one-and-a-half years of home economics in middle school and although I was comfortable in the kitchen, I was an uncertain improvisational cook. Embracing my lack of knowledge, I began buying cookbooks from the used bookstore under my house and reading them at night in an effort to understand the food that I enjoyed eating.

Close to where I lived was a neighborhood filled with Armenian shops and restaurants. On a shopping trip out there, I picked up Alice Antreassian and Marian Jebejian's Classic Armenian Recipes: Cooking Without Meat, published in 1981. It is, hands down, one of the greatest Armenian cookbooks ever written, vegetarian or not. Recipes are simple and easy to follow. Results are flawless, and exactly what you might find if you went to the corner "Middle Eastern" store.

There are no photos in this cookbook, just simple, decorative line drawings. There are no charts or step-by-step explanations about the Armenian kitchen. Instead there is an introduction by the authors urging readers to adjust recipes to their individual tastes, to move pages around at will (the first edition was a loose-leaf binder) all the while understanding that Armenian cuisine is a living cuisine and is still evolving.

Here's a recipe from the cookbook that I used to make a lot:

Wheat Pilaf with Lentils -Mudjadera

1 cup brown lentils, picked over and rinsed

3 cups water

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon middle eastern red pepper

1 cup cracked wheat, large

2 tablespoons chopped red or green pepper

2/3 cups olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

Directions:

1. Add lentils to water, bring to the boil, and cook gently 5 minutes, covered. Add seasonings, wheat, and red or green pepper. Bring to a simmer again, and cook about 15 minutes longer or until liquid is absorbed and wheat is bite-tender.

2. Heat olive oil in a skillet until a haze appears over it. Remove skillet, quickly stir in onion, reduce heat, and cook onion until lightly browned, stirring frequently.

3. When pilaf is done, pour skillet contents over it and stir to mix. Taste to adjust seasoning. Spoon into serving dish, garnish with scallions then add several grindings of pepper.

Yield: 5 to 6 servings.

Unfortunately, the cookbook is now out of print. There are, of course, a number of Armenian cookbooks that are still in print. Take one home if you can.

Appreciation: Quentin Bacon

Quentin Bacon deserves props. Although he seldom receives top billing in any of the cookbooks he contributes to, his impact is undeniable - he's a food porn photographer extraordinaire and a hired hand in many works that you've likely touched, opened, looked at, and maybe even own (do you have Batali, Morimoto, Ina Garten in your collection? Maybe something from Williams-Sonoma?). But more likely than not you have no idea who he is or that he's one of the main lensmen responsible for making food look so good that it makes you feel, well, dirty.

Food photographers, even ones as in-demand as Mr. Bacon, rarely get the big font or author credit in a cookbook. Search Amazon for Quentin Bacon's name and you'll find 19 co-author citations. But that's just the tip of the iceberg - there are even more books where he receives but a simple nod in the intro - or a tiny font credit on the title page.  Just today, for example, I was looking at a vegetarian cookbook, and after guffawing over some of the over-the-top photography, had to search the book's (usually ignored) acknowledgments to find the photographer - Quentin Bacon.

Food porn may sometimes rub me the wrong way, but in the right hands - like the hands of Quentin Bacon - it adds the necessary and needed dimension of sensuality that text alone lacks.

Cookbook Monday: Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking

Elizabeth David's classic cookbook French Provincial Cooking (1960) has more in common with the quaint homemaker's cookbooks of the 19th century than the lush, sexy coffee-table cookbooks spewed forth by contemporary chefs. Practical and encyclopedic, French Provincial Cooking documents in loving detail the traditional foods of the country. The book includes an extensive bibliography of 18th, 19th, and 20th century French cookbooks and 100 pages at the beginning explaining the nuanced cuisines of the different regions of France, important ingredients, units of measure and their translation, cooking terms and processes, and kitchen implements. It is an essential cookbook for every serious cook's collection. My copy, from the 1983 edition, has several amusing introductions from Elizabeth David, including one in which she warns of the coming flattening of all cuisine due to the scourge of the Cuisinart/Robot Coupe. Twenty-four years later I can happily report that the food processor has not destroyed cooking.

Elizabeth David, a Brit who discovered French cuisine during two years of homestay with a French family while she was studying at La Sorbonne, was one of the pre-eminent food writers of the mid-20th century and set the stage for Julia Child, whose own cookbooks are legend. Before her death in 1992, David published 7 cookbooks, all remarkable for their attention to detail and adherence to authenticity.

I purchased this book when I was an intern at a French country restaurant in Boston, MA. It helped me understand what we were doing and the basic principles behind our menu. Though I haven't used it much since, it is a great reference when fresh vegetables are in season and inspiration is at a premium. Almost continuously in print since its publication, this cookbook is easy to find and isn't pricey. Sure you won't want to leave it out on your coffee table, but you'll actually be using this one, and isn't that what cookbooks are for?

Cookbook Monday: Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking

Is there anything really new about Morimoto's Japanese cooking, or does this book have a title that is grammatically pleasing but otherwise meaningless? I tend to think the latter, and certainly after reading this cookbook, I wish the author had renamed it, "Morimoto: The Evolution of Japanese Fusion Cooking", a title which would have been a more accurate representation of the recipes and ideas within.

As JJ Goode, the food writing prodigy and editor at Epicurious.com, indicates in his over-long introduction that includes quite a bit of P.R.-style fawning biography, Morimoto's cooking is new yet authentic because the very lexicon of Japanese cuisine is informed by the adoption of foods from other cultures. Here's my favorite excerpt, an argument crafted to shake the reader's confidence in the meaning of 'authenticity' and to allow the cynical to accept Morimoto's fanciful cooking as something legitimate - perhaps more legitimate than the stodgy old Japanese cuisine of authors like Elizabeth Andoh, who tend to be more orthodox in their execution:

The very notion of authenticity stands on shaky ground, too fluid to be useful as a way to characterize cuisine. Things change, cultures meld and shift, foods travel across oceans. Many of the ingredients so associated with a particular cuisine...were themselves at one time imports, centuries ago.....

Cuisine, according to Masaharu Morimoto, is specific to time and place. Tastes, cooking methods, and technology change over time - what was once impossible is now quotidian, what used to delight is now unappealing - and diners and ingredients differ depending on where they're from.

I do not entirely agree that 'authentic' isn't useful to use in the context of cuisine. Does a newly introduced ingredient render a dish inauthentic? If I make a tempura batter, but choose to tempura a hot dog, is it no longer tempura? No, it is still tempura, but now it is kiddie food that is distinctly untraditional. It may not be an authentic way to prepare tempura, but it is still, by definition, tempura.

Last night, during a discussion with a friend about Morimoto's cookbook and JJ Goode's introduction, my friend wondered out loud who at DK made the decision to focus on 'authenticity'. After all, it is hard to make an indefensible argument about authenticity in the context of a chef whose signature recipes are, by definition, unconventional and creative. The recipes may draw on tradition and are authentically "Morimoto" but that's it.

If we are going to specifically pick apart Japanese cuisine, the first question to ask is what makes something authentic. Is it style? Is it the ingredients? Is it the recipe? Is it the person who is cooking? I don't know, but I do know that most of the time, when people describe something as authentic, they are actually referring to style or method of preparation, coupled with specific base ingredients, rather than who is cooking it or the specific 'neutral' ingredient (meaning an ingredient that doesn't alter the fundamental flavor of a dish) used.

As an example, let's say I had a restaurant that served fanciful Japanese bar food. I decide I'm going to serve dengaku, which is usually eggplant or tofu covered in a miso-based sauce and broiled. But instead of using tofu or eggplant, I use a crab cake. Is it authentic? No, not really. Now I'm just using the miso as sauce, not so much as a way of making the base ingredient (tofu, eggplant) more expressive. I'm tasting the crabmeat less and the miso more. But the reason I eat crab cakes is because I love the flavor of crab. One flavor doesn't complement the other. It is like pairing a big Zin with John Dory in beurre blanc. Just a bad, bad idea.

I'm not saying Morimoto's cuisine is a bad idea or isn't a real cuisine - I'm just saying that it isn't accurate to describe what he does as "New Japanese Cuisine". What it is is Masaharu Morimoto's fusion cuisine - a cuisine with profound and inextricable basis in Japanese culture and cooking.

But what of the recipes?

The first 15 pages show Morimoto gloriously cutting fish and show, step-by-step, how to put together a show-stopping sashimi platter. The pictures, by the deliciously named Quentin Bacon, are food porn perfect, with the sharp focus/soft focus dichotomy characterizing even the most instructional of photos.

The recipes that immediately follow are undoubtedly fusion - Buri Bap (a yellow tail sashimi served in a piping hot stone bowl in the style of Korean bi bim bap), Stuffed Lotus Leaves (in the style of Chinese dim sum favorite sticky rice), Sushi Rice Risotto (which isn't such a stretch except that the chef incorporates sushi vinegar and cooks it with eggs in the style of chawanmushi, steamed egg custard), Za Jan noodles (reminiscent of a Chinese dish), Squid Ink-Salmon Gnocchi, and Crab Naan and Bagna Cauda Morimoto Style (India meets Italy meets Japan).

The fusion is a thread linking all the recipes in the book together - and though I am unenthusiastic about fusion, I have to say that many of the recipes are both simple and delicious-looking, even if more Morimoto than Japanese. For example there's lobster Masala - seasoned with Morimoto Special Spice, made from chili, paprika, salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, ginger, garam masala, and cayenne.

Unfortunately, the cookbook also contains grandstanding recipes like Blowfish Carpaccio - a dish that no home cook can prepare unless, by chance, they are licensed to prepare fugu, the potentially deadly (but mild) fish of legend. Remember that Simpsons episode? There is are also recipes incorporating Ayu and Kinki - two Japanese fishes that most American cooks will be challenged to find at any fishmonger, local or distant. There are a few Iron Chef recipes - great for those who get off on copying what they see on TV but rather unappealing to the rest of us - Squid Strawberry ice candy, anyone?

Dessert recipes are more novel than classic. Pichet Ong's recipes (see this Cookbook Monday review) are far more appealing than those featured here. As a devotee of Japanese-language dessert cookbooks that include many fusion-type recipes, I found Morimoto's recipes remarkably unappealing, although fanciful and creative. Sugared Salmon with Beet Sorbet and Yuzu foam may be a huge hit with the Iron Chef crowd, but I'll take a pass. I'm particulary mystified by the asparagus pocky recipe  - not because it sounds unappetizing (it does) but because its use of asparagus runs counter to both the ideas of seasonality, simplicity, and the tenets of Japanese cuisine. If I eat asparagus, I want to taste asparagus, not some cooked-in-simple-syrup-for-hours-until-it-becomes-a-mystery-cellulose vehicle for chocolate.

In general, the most challenging part of Morimoto's cookbook may be tracking down the ingredients, some of which will be impossible to find unless you happen to live on one of the coasts or live near a major Japanese supermarket.

More a keepsake for Iron Chef Morimoto's legion of fans than a cooking classic, Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking is a gorgeous looking book that will look great on any coffee table. And maybe that's where it should stay.

Cookbook Monday: Pichet Ong's The Sweet Spot

Lately I've been avoiding cookbooks by star chefs. Usually the pictures are better than the recipes and in five years the cookbook is little more than a reminder of a food fad that you wished you had slept through.

Pichet Ong's The Sweet Spot caught my eye and made me break my promise to myself for several reasons. I had read Frank Bruni's review of P*ong in The New York Times and I'm obsessed with pastry, having been a pastry chef once upon a time. I also am fascinated by chefs who make fusion their signature as it is usually a feeble attempt to create something new that usually leaves no lasting positive imprint on my palate memory.

I had some hope for Pichet Ong's cookbook. He's of Chinese descent and grew up in Singapore with more than a hobbyist's knowledge of the food of Asia. He's also pretty darn bright and creative - he went to Brandeis and Berkeley before deciding to head into the kitchen. So he brings background, smarts, and skills to his cooking. That sounded good to me. So I bought it.

These days I have been paying special attention to forewords in cookbooks. The Sweet Spot's forward is unintentionally hilarious as well as hyperbolic. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Ong's former employer, calls The Sweet Spot, "a tremendous contribution to the world of cooking literature" and calls some of Ong's techniques "groundbreaking in the world of pastry and fine cuisine." Note to Jean-Georges: the technique of creaming butter with spices for cookie dough (or any dough) is not new at all. I've been in kitchens where that was just part of what we did, and no one patted us on the back for it.

As far as 'cooking literature' is concerned, I wonder what Vongerichten is thinking? That I should put this up next to my Larousse Gastronomique, my Julia Child, my Elizabeth David, my Ken Hom, my James Beard? Or does he mean that I should just slide this book next to my Claudia Fleming, Emily Lucchetti and Jacques Torres? Second note to Jean-Georges: there is no way The Sweet Spot is getting near Julia. If Mr. Ong is lucky, I'll take the cookbook home and stick it in my closet rather than leave it at work as a reference. Seems most of my cookbook shelves are full and I'm not quite sure who I would remove to add this one in.

Before I dive into the recipes, I do have one major complaint: the word "Asian" is used as a substitute for "pan-Asian" - an obviously gauche but more accurate term for the type of cooking Mr. Ong espouses - and occasionally he substitutes "Asian" for more specific term like "Chinese".

In describing loaf and sheet cakes (page 29) he states that

"Rows of sweet loaf and sheet cakes line the shelves of Asian bakeries... Also, Asian bakers tend to add traditional Asian dessert flavors - such as coconut, red bean, and green tea."

There is no such thing as Asian food or a unified Asian dessert flavor. Certainly you can generalize about Buddhist influence in East Asian countries, but to group so many countries into a single statement is lazy. In China and Japan, I have certainly seen loaf cakes. In Japan they aren't into sheet cakes the way they are in China. Here's a photo I took in Beijing a few years ago of a bakery going to town on some cakes.

You almost never see this in Japan, where the obsession is with French-style pastry. As far as the "Asian dessert flavors" - yes, the Japanese use green tea, but coconut is used in Japanese desserts much in the same way we use it here as it is not grown in Japan (except for Okinawa, which is to Japan what Hawaii is to the US). And I have never had a red bean or green tea-based dessert from an Indian bakery - and India is most certainly part of Asia. yes, I realize I am splitting hairs, but I truly despise when writers get lazy - presumably for the sake of marketing to the lowest common denominator cookbook audience and selling more copies - and make generalizations about the cuisine of an entire continent that has as many diverse food cultures as does Asia. To my mind, the dichotomy of Asia vs the West, which is a constant theme in this cookbook, looks back to the past when we routinely exoticized non-Western culture. There's a kind of politics of identity going on in the writing, but the claim Ong is trying to stake with the "Asian" moniker is trivial at best. Frankly I think Ong and his marketing buddies at HarperCollins should focus more on promoting him as a great pastry chef rather than as a great Asian pastry chef - but hey, that's their angle, right?

Let's talk about the recipes, shall we?

For all my grousing about the writing, the recipes are fun. And the photography is shockingly unpornographic and 'understated' (as Ong writes in the acknowledgments). The recipe layout isn't very easy to read, but at least there are measures in both imperial and metric. For someone like me who has never met a dessert she didn't like, this cookbook is an adventure. There are chapters on the sweet Asian pantry, Cakes, Cookies, Pies and Tarts, Puddings and custards, Candy, Fruits, Frozen Treats and drinks.

Randomly flipping open the book, I found a recipe for Shaved Ice with Summer Corn, Avocado, and Red Beans. This happens to be one of my favorite summer treats. I've heard it called ABC - an abbreviation for the Malay word for shaved ice - in Malaysian restaurants. To me it is the perfect foil to the heat and humidity of a southeast Asian (and northeastern US) summer afternoon. Ong also offers another shaved ice recipe - this time with something he calls Thai Jewels - water chestnuts colored in either red sala syrup or green pandan paste and coated in tapioca, jackfruit, papaya, coconut juice, and palm seeds. Pichet Ong, you had me at hello.

The recipes for ice creams and other frozen treats is equally intriguing. There's a recipe for Mangosteen sherbet, which, unless you are willing to shell out close to $45/lb and happen to live in New York where they actually sell the newly commercialized crop from Puerto Rico, will have to be made with the less fresh but perfectly legal and not so expensive canned product. There's also a Vietnamese coffee ice cream and a lemongrass frozen yogurt, along with a few other sherbets and ice creams. There's watermelon shaved ice served with salt and pepper, too.

I randomly flip open another page: Spiced Chocolate Pudding with Caramel Crisped Rice Cereal. This is a lovely recipe - a chocolate pudding spiced with cardamom, star anise and vanilla served with caramelized Rice Crispies. I swoon just thinking about the simple yet perfect marriage of East and West flavors.

I flip to another recipe - Sweet Potato Doughnuts with Roast Apple filling. Wonderful. There's even recipes for whimsical treats like Chocolate-Covered "Pocky" Sticks, almond fortune cookies, and Chocolate Kumquat Spring Rolls. Coconut "Twinkie" cupcakes with lemon filling combine two of my favorite flavors with one of my favorite forms.

For pastry chefs, this is a great resource. The recipes, which meld flavors of many Asian countries with traditional pastry of the west, are extremely inspiring to the innovation-challenged cook. I found myself imagining what other variants of traditional desserts I could create by using less common (in the US) ingredients.

My favorite recipes in the book are the ones that are less fusion and more authentic - steamed almond cake, steamed pandan layer cake, Castella, yuzu jelly rolls, green tea cake - all are things I've tasted before in 'ethnic' marketplaces or restaurants. That's not to say the other recipes aren't good. On the contrary, I think almost everything in this cookbook reads - what can I say? - deliciously. I can't wait to dig in.

If you don't mind the silly generalizations and can avoid reading most of the helpful blurbs and the introduction, you'll love this cookbook too.

Tartine's masterpiece turns one year old

   It may be too early to say what I'm about to say (because I haven't baked anything from it yet), but I think Tartine, by Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, based on recipes used in their amazing San Francisco bakery, is easily the best baking book I've read in years. This cookbook cries out to be used and abused, not put up on the shelf or stored under glass - it looks like a textbook, feels like a textbook, and has a minimum of uberporny food photography. Although Alice Waters' introduction is as self-serving and full of nods to her own exquisite taste and experience as one would expect, it is unintentionally funny. Here's an example:

"At the time I was summering in the fog of Bolinas, a seaside village not far from Point Reyes Station, where I was reading a wonderful memoir, Life a la Henri, by the French Chef Henri Charpentier. I was so caught up in Charpentier's vivid descriptions....that I couldn't help drawing negative comparisons between the food of then and now. But I made an immediate exception for Liz and Chad's bakery."

Hey Liz and Chad - good news. Alice liked you from the start. But not only did Alice like you, but "The Japanese Designer Eiko" did as well (funny how Ms. Waters drops "Eiko" as if she were a household name).  When they visited Liz and Chad's bakery, stacked with just-made treats, Ms Waters further remarks, "[t]he whole magic tableau said everything that needs to be said about food and the joy of living." Did she mean the joy of living as expressed through food, or food, period, and the joy of living, period? To me they are linked, but one is not the total of the other.

My favorite line from the introductions a terrible cliche, but rather true in the context of Tartine, the bakery:

"...Tartine is about as authentic - and indispensable - as a bakery and cafe can get. No wonder people are still lining up."

I have been to Tartine. I have lined up in the morning with sleepy denizens of the Mission to pick up a bag of fresh croissants and gougeres and grab my cappuccino, extra dry. And everything I have ever had there has been excellent. On a visit to a vendor in the Bay Area who is helping our company to develop some new products, they served us a breakfast spread of quiches, tarts, croissants, gougeres and other treats exclusively from Tartine. They thought the world of Tartine. So do I. But in no way does my bias toward their bakery taint my perspective on the cookbook. This is a great cookbook, and if you buy any baking book this year, Tartine should be it.

As a cookbook, Tartine is easy to use. Measurements are in grams, imperial, and American volume - so they are easy to execute at home or scale up in a professional kitchen. Recipes are laid out in a linear form, top to bottom, so they are very easy to read. For novice bakers, the recipes may be a little less clear; although written well, they are not numbered and in many cases, small steps may take an entire paragraph of instructions.

But I assure you, if you can replicate Tartine's recipes at home, you will be very happy you took the time to read the entire recipe.

There's nothing folksy about this cookbook. It is a serious baking book with detailed recipes for croissants, brioche, scones, cakes, quiches, tarts, cookies, custards, and bakery basics. Page after page is pure alchemy. Before each recipe is a brief explanation of the recipe and its provenance as well as a kitchen note that provides the home cook for a little advice about the execution of the recipe or the process.

There's nothing really 'innovative' or new about the recipes as they are all variations on the classics. But the range of recipes (really all the home cook needs to be considered an excellent and proficient pastry cook), along with the occasional photo, detailed instructions, easy-to-read ingredients, and helpful kitchen notes makes this a cookbook worth buying. I can't say it enough -- if you don't already, you need to own this cookbook.