Release Date: 27/06/13
Publisher:
SYNOPSIS:
Yuki Gomi's Sushi at Home is a beautifully designed cookbook that will show, for the first time, how easy it is to make sushi at home. Do you love buying sushi for lunch, enjoy eating at Japanese restaurants for dinner, but think sushi is too difficult to make at home? Well, think again! In Sushi at Home, Japanese chef and sushi teacher Yuki Gomi shows you just how easy - and inexpensive - making delicious and beautiful looking sushi can be. Learn: everything you need to know about how to buy and prepare fish, from salmon to scallops, from tuna to mackerel; the joys of cling film and the technique of rolling step-by-step and why a hairdryer is essential for making the all-important perfect sushi rice; clever alternatives to traditional sushi styles (handball sushi; vegetarian sushi; soba sushi); and, fresh twists on classic recipes (miso soup with clams; prawn salad with tahini mustard dressing). Sushi at Home is all you need to master the art of making light, delicious and healthy sushi in your own kitchen. Yuki Gomi is a Japanese chef who has taught thousands of people how to make their own sushi. After studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago, she trained under a master noodle chef, before moving to London and beginning to teach Japanese home cooking classes. Sushi at Home is her first book.
REVIEW:
I’m the type of person that loves to learn about different cuisines, sometimes I really want to spice things up so I go for Mexican or a good Indian and other times I want something that whilst healthy is very tasty, so I was quite pleased to pick up a book that explained quite a bit about Sushi so that I can make myself something that I just love to devour.
Whilst a lot of the techniques within all come with practice, for the uniniated who are only used to seeing the snack packs of sushi in the mainstream supermarkets, this book will open their eyes to a whole world of possibilities. It has great flavour combinations, a whole range of things you can make (including some vegetarian ones) and all round goes to show that you can make something not only beautiful when presented but something that you just can’t wait to devour.
For me, sushi is a treat that can be eaten at any time and whilst this may seem like a strange thing, I did actually make a load up earlier in the day and saved a few for my film night. It was great just to have a plate of this wonderful meal in front of me to dip into when the mood took me. Great idea all round and definitely something I’m going to take the time to master.
Release Date: 04/10/12
SYNOPSIS:
Published for the first time in the UK, Laurie Colwin's much loved kitchen essays are perfect for fans of Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater. Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, "Home Cooking" is Laurie Colwin's manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. From the humble hot-plate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Never before published in the UK, this is hilarious, personal and full of Colwin's hard-won expertise. "Home Cooking" will speak to the heart (and stomach) of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover. Praise for Laurie Colwin: 'Everything food writing should be: funny, profound, inspiring and unaffected' Nigella Lawson 'I have in my kitchen a book called "Home Cooking". And, in between following the recipes for Extremely Easy Old-Fashioned Beef Stew or Estelle Colwin Snellenberg's Potato Pancakes, I would frequently sit down on a little stool in my kitchen and read through one of the essays in that book. I never read through Joy of Cooking, and I can read "The Silver Palate Cookbook" standing up, but I always sat down to read these' Anna Quindlen Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels - "Happy All the Time", "Family Happiness", "Goodbye Without Leaving", "A Big Storm Knocked It Over" and "Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object" - three collections of short stories - "Passion and Affect", "The Lone Pilgrim" and "Another Marvellous Thing" - and two collections of essays, "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking". Laurie Colwin died in 1992.
REVIEW:
Whilst I wasn’t familiar with Laurie, over in the US she is a household legend on the cooking circuit with columns in food magazines and an approachable way that each of the dishes within this book can be accomplished by cooks of all ages. It has some wonderful ways to take what you know and adapt it to a new level and when added to personal insights and a witty chat style makes this a book that is something out of the norm for many fans of the cuisine world.
Sadly Laurie passed back in 1992 but her cooking lives on and with a wonderful British adaptation here it really will give you something new to try that you may not have thought of. There’s quite a few recipes’ I’ll be making and when you’re at an odd end, you’ll be surprised at what you can whip up. Great stuff.
Release Date: 06/09/12
SYNOPSIS:
Margot Henderson's first cookbook will completely change the way we think about entertaining and family food - perfect for anyone who loved Nigella Lawson's "How to Eat", or Simon Hopkinson's "Roast Chicken and Other Stories". Want to cook dinner for fifteen? Have fifty people for drinks and canap??A?s? Feed your family comforting food at lunch time? Make an elegant dinner for eight? Transport quantities of food to a picnic so it doesn't spill and crumble? In "You're All Invited", Margot Henderson, who cooks for between 30 to 200 people every day, shows you how: using her panache as a caterer for Arnold & Henderson and restaurateur at London's Rochelle Canteen, and drawing on her family life with Fergus Henderson and their three children, she provides 165 easy and delicious recipes for all occasions.
REVIEW:
Food for me is all about making a star of one ingredient but accompanying it with others that compliment and build upon that flavour profile and this is the approach that Margot Henderson takes in this title. The reader is treated to various options for different times of the day with rich flavours and foods that may seem simple but let you know about making the most of the items within.
It’s a great read, it has so many different choices with items that will compliment the star with my personal favourite being the Lemon Potatoes that seems magnificently decadent with a roast chicken. Add to this simple instructions, wonderful flavour profiles and all in this is a book that will definitely make its way into my Christmas menu.
Release Date: 06/10/11
SYNOPSIS:
By the end of the First World War, Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel had revolutionised women's dress. But dress was the most visible aspect of more profound changes she helped to bring about. During the course of her extraordinary and unconventional journey - from abject poverty to a new kind of glamour - Chanel would help forge the very idea of modern woman.
Unearthing an astonishing life, this remarkable biography shows how the most influential designer of her century became synonymous with a rebellious and progressive style. Her numerous liaisons, whose most poignant details have eluded all previous biographers, were the stuff of legend. Witty, strange, mesmerizing, Chanel became muse, patron or mistress to some of the century's most celebrated artists, including Stravinsky, Picasso and Dali.
Highlighting the designer's far-reaching connections with modernism and its artists, this book explores the origins, the creative power, and the secret suffering of this exceptional and often misread woman.
REVIEW:
With so much being written about Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, you do wonder what so many authors have been discovering in order to feed the mill about her other than new discoveries about hidden designs for the fashion collection and whilst I have to admit an interest in one of the most controversial as well as clever business women of our age, I haven’t read any books about her before, so it was a story that I was interested in reading based more on what the woman had to say rather than the public figure.
What was revealed within this title was a story from her humble beginnings through to her time in a convent and then onto the streets of Paris alongside her love affair through previously unpublished letters from Arthur “Boy” Capel and extracts from the diaries of Dmitri Pavlovich (one of the surviving Russian Nobility.) It’s candid, it has some heart felt moments and the reader gets to see what made Chanel tick as well as her grief at the loss of various loves. All in a decent book and whilst I can’t comment on other titles about her, this one gave me a rounded view and allowed me to glimpse the human beneath the myth.
Release Date: 04/08/11
SYNOPSIS:
How can I make deliciously squidgy chocolate brownies? Is there a fool-proof way to poach an egg? Does washing mushrooms really spoil them? What's the secret of perfect pastry? Could a glass of milk turn a good bolognese into a great one? Perfect will answer all these questions and many, many more. Having rigorously tried and tested recipes from all the greats - Elizabeth David and Delia Smith to Nigel Slater and Simon Hopkinson - Felicity Cloake has pulled together the best points from each to create the perfect version of 68 classic dishes. Never again will you have to rifle through countless different books to find your perfect roast chicken recipe, mayonnaise method or that incredible tomato sauce - it's all here in this book, based on Felicity's popular Guardian columns, along with dozens of invaluable prepping and cooking tips that no discerning cook should live without. Whether you're a competent cook or have just caught the bug, Perfect has a place on every kitchen shelf.
REVIEW:
OK, I admit it, I love to cook and I love to get my hands on decent recipes to turn the mundane task of making a meal into an extravaganza for the taste buds. Yet the major problem with a lot of the books out there is that there’s a large percentage of recipes that you really either won’t try and really don’t attract your attention enough to make you want to try them.
What this title by Felicity does is trawl through recipes from a multitude of established books and chefs and brings the tastiest to the reader in one easy to access title. Add to this a whole host of everyday recipes and it’s a title that will get more than a little use. Recipes include all sorts of dishes that I want to make better and whilst some are simplistic, it’s the key to getting them right that has eluded many a home cook. If you want to know how to obtain that top notch crackling on your Pork Joint, that’s here, you want great Yorkshire Puds, yep that’s there as well. Your Roasties are failing, not any more. There’s also a section for desserts, a section on vegetables as well as many other recipes that you really can’t afford to turn down.
Finally add to all this glory a wonderful introduction that gives you the basic items required for any kitchen, some that are useful but not essential as well as key ingredients that make sense to have in stock (and we’re not talking Nigella’s pantry that has about £5K worth of food items in) such as flour, eggs, bread as well as other basics that most people have and the whole thing is a title that you can learn along with as well as pass along to the next generation.
All in, this book is not only useful but for me, perhaps the best cuisine title that I now own as I can ensure that the basics I create are to the best of my ability which will not only make the meal something to celebrate but also turn the everyday into something that you can’t wait to enjoy. I really am inspired to go and create something shortly and with this little gem in hand and whilst I have an early print its ring bound which will keep it all the easier to reference, the only thing I would change would be to get the pages laminated so that any food spills can be wiped clean. With luck hopefully the publishers will look into something like that for future editions.
