Seductions of Rice - Softcover

Alford, Jeffrey; Duguid, Naomi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1579652344 ISBN 13: 9781579652340

Publisher: Artisan, 2003

Synopsis

With a depth of passion and experience, and an ability to embrace and convey richness of place and taste, the authors of the groundbreaking Flatbreads and Flavors and the later award-winning Hot Sour Salty Sweet embarked on a far-reaching excursion to find the world's most essential and satisfying food. Along the way, they experienced firsthand dozens of varieties of rice, offering unimaginable subtleties of taste, as well as a staggering array of foods to accompany them, all providing a simple way to get flavor and variety on the table.

Seductions of Rice is the glorious result: two hundred easy-to-prepare dishes from the world's great rice cuisines, illuminated by stories, insights, and more than two hundred photographs of people, places, and wonderful food. Cherished dishes--Chinese stir-frys, Spanish paellas, Japanese sushi, Indian thorans, Thai salads, Turkish pilafs, Italian risottos--are shared not just as recipes, but as time-honored traditions.

Seductions of Rice will change the way we eat, the way we prepare and appreciate our food. It's as easy as putting a pot of rice on to cook!

About this title

Review:

Chinese stir-frys, Spanish paellas, Japanese sushi, Indian thorans, Thai salads, Turkish pilafs, Italian risottos, Senegalese yassas, American gumbos: if rice isn't the heart and soul of all these diverse dishes, rice can be found piled right there at the side of the plate, or in a bowl. To say that Alford and Duguid, authors of the award-winning Flatbreads and Flavors, deliver the world of rice is much too simple an understatement. Your days of buying one rice to serve all purposes will end with even a cursory reading of this lovely book.

The authors are photographers as well as writers, but their greatest skill may be to travel the world at the level of the culture they visit. They seem able to drop away from Western culture and hunker right down with rice vendor or cook, no matter where.

Seductions of Rice opens with all the basics of rice, everything a reader would want to know and then some. Then on to the cultures of rice: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Central Asian, Mediterranean, Senegalese, and North American. Recipes either made from rice or to accompany rice range from Chinese Congee to Thai Green Papaya Salad to Japanese Quick Morning Miso Soup to South Indian Lentil Stew to Cuban Black Beans to Mexican Green Rice.

And in between? The authors fill in all the space between these diverse grains of rice with traveler's tales from the road. It is a luxurious book, a delicious book, a ripe combination of travel and taste. You leave off thinking that the world must be the shape of a rice ball. --Schuyler Ingle

From the Inside Flap:

IN 1995 Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dunguid published a cookbook that defined a new genre. "The first of its kind," raved The Boston Globe. "If you buy only one cookbook this year, make it Flatbreads and Flavors" (USA Today); "a certifiable publishing event" (Vogue); "a rich and rare effort" (The New York Time). It received not one, but both major cookbook awards the year it was published.

And now, they're done it again. That depth of passion and experience and the unique ability to convey richness of place and taste that the authors brought to Flatbreads and Flavors, they bring to Seductions of Rice: an essential book about the world's most essential food.

Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid traveled to the major rice-eating regions of the world and experience firsthand dozens of varieties of rice with unimaginable subtleties of taste, as well as the staggering array of foods that traditionally accompany them. In Seductions of Rice, they bring it all home--hundreds of delectable dishes from the world's greatest rice cuisines, illuminated by stories, insights, and photographs. Chinese stir-fries served with steaming rice, smoky Carolina low-country pulaos, Japanese sushi, Indian thorans, Thai salads, Turkish pilafs, Italian risottos are shared not just as recipes, but as time-honored traditions.

But Seductions of Rice is more than a collection of fabulous recipes surrounded by a wealth of precious information. It is more than an enthralling journey with photographs--taken by the authors--of peoples and places, many of which we can barely imagine. It is a "new" way of putting food on the table that is as old as the ages.

You will marvel at how food this simple can taste this good and be so satisfying--Thai sticky rice with grilled beef salad, Indian basmati with curry, Cuban black beans and rice, Louisiana gumbo, Persian kebabs with saffron-tintted rice, Spanish paella, Mexican rice pudding. Hundreds of recipes from around the world attest to the adaptablilty of this endlessly appealing food. Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid understand our yen for these vibrant flavors and have writtten a book that satisfies our every craving.

About this edition

• Publisher: Artisan
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1579652344
• ISBN 13: 9781579652340
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 472