Reading Copy Book Blog

Anyone ever eaten a toast sandwich? Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is reviving this Victorian dish of two slices of bread around a slice of toast. The BBC has the story. The food writer Mrs Beeton popularized this somewhat bland meal in the days before Coco Pops, Pop Tarts and Angel Delight. Mrs Beeton’s [...]

I always thought food was for eating, but a photographer called Carl Warner is proving me wrong. Apparently, food is ideal for creating photographic landscapes and Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes is hot property after an appearance on CBS TV yesterday. He uses fruits, vegetables, cheeses, breads, fish, meat, and grains, and the book offers a [...]

Michelle Obama has a new book on the way: “American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspires Families, Schools, and Communities” will be released in April 2012.

Restaurant guides are pretty dull on the whole and these days you are probably going to head online for reviews and write-ups, but things were different in Bohemian Paris in 1929. Where Paris Dines by Julian Street is a wonderful throwback with an amazing dust jacket. Here’s the entry for Cloche d’Or – “Opposite Moulin [...]

We have another video review from Heike, who always appears in a hat. Today’s it’s a chef’s hat as she is talking about In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. In this book, Pollan feels he is forced to defend real food because “we’re consuming ‘edible foodlike substances’ — no longer the [...]

My next cookbook is going to be this one – 1080 Recipes by Simone Ortega and published by Phaidon Press. Mouth-watering recipes from every region of Spain. Over 200 illustrations. A Spanish institution since 1972. Check out that cover artwork by Javier Mariscal. The recipe for potatoes with chorizo and bacon looks great. I went [...]

I’m late to discover this one but NPR has a list of new food memoirs. Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton looks like the one I would most likely read.

Mmmm… the Hungry Happenings blog has some chocolate books.

August’s Avid Reader is about regional cookbooks. My colleague Beth writes…. “Lemongrass, ginger, fennel and ghee, tamarind, prosciutto and so much more. The world is absolutely full of flavor, just waiting to be brought to life in any combination the human mind can dream up. For a self-confessed book junkie and culinary experimenter, cookbooks are [...]

American author David Sedaris does not like China or the Chinese. He penned this essay (called Chicken Toenails anyone?) for The Guardian earlier this month. And now a fan of Chinese origin is becoming a former fan rather fast – here is Jeff Yang’s essay in the San Francisco Chronicle. I’ll let you decide where [...]