Home Cooking Around the World: A Recipe Collection - Hardcover

Ricketts, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 158479092X ISBN 13: 9781584790921

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 2001

Synopsis

In this intriguing collection of recipes, food journalist David Ricketts offers an international riff on home cooking. Starting with basic recipes that are familiar to all American home cooks, he presents variations of these dishes as they are prepared in other cultures. Chicken noodle soup becomes Vietnam-ese Chicken Noodle Soup with Fresh Herbs; beef stew, African Beef and Kale Stew with Pumpkin Seed Sauce; and rice pudding, Asian Black Rice Pudding. The resulting dishes-from Peru, Thailand, Greece, Scandinavia, and Morocco, among other countries-are tantalizingly familiar, yet enticingly exotic, with new flavor combinations that make each recipe a delicious adventure into another cuisine.

Many of the wonderful comfort-food recipes in Home Cooking Around the World are ideally suited to our hectic pace of living. They are prepared in one pot or skillet and can often be left unattended while simmering. Beginning cooks can use the book with ease, while experienced cooks will find new variations on familiar themes to expand their repertoires.

About this title

About the Author

DAVID RICKETTS has written about food for more than twenty years-first as a staff editor for Food & Wine magazine and now as a contributing food editor to Family Circle, recipe editor for McCall's, and freelance food writer. Through his culinary travels, he has explored cultures and home cooking from Vietnam to Peru and places in between.

MARK THOMAS's photographs appear regularly in magazines such as Bon AppÈtit and Better Homes & Gardens. He has photographed many books, including Sweetie Pie by Richard Simmons, Mary Engelbreight's Outdoor Entertaining and Let's Party!, and the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook.

Reviews

This compendium of international recipes emits a homey amateur air, and readers will find themselves longing to sample Ricketts's cooking. An editor and food writer, Ricketts has familiarized himself with many native cuisines and here offers simple, delicious recipes with flavors originating from locales as diverse as Albania, Ecuador and Bali. The book is organized in broad categories: Poultry, Seafood, Pork & Lamb (a combination which may estrange certain orthodox readers), etc. Each chapter contains a cheerful amalgam of world recipes Caribbean Sweet Potato Soup with Scallops appears alongside Bavarian Fish Stew with Vegetables and Vinegar. Ricketts, who seems fondest of Southeast Asian cuisines, practices a conscientious culinary affirmative action, dutifully including Irish Mashed Potatoes with Cabbage and a mostly-American Tuna Noodle Casserole, complete with cornflakes. With a few exceptions (pecans in the Chicken Pot Pie, star anise in the Czech Short Rib), he strives to reproduce authentic flavor combinations. The book is loaded with stews and braises, dishes that are both easy to embellish with complex ingredients and forgiving to struggling home cooks. Mark Thomas's gorgeous photography (even the redoubtable Tuna Noodle Casserole looks glamorous) partly compensates for the book's kitchen-unfriendly format. With a minuscule typeface and over-designed pages, the book doesn't have the trappings of a straightforward tribute to the soul food of many nations, though that's exactly what it is. Readers willing to brave the incongruous production values will be gratified to discover a fine down-home cookbook behind the gloss.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 158479092X
• ISBN 13: 9781584790921
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208