June 20, 2006

Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell ***

Not long after food blogging first cropped up on my radar, I discovered Julie Powell's blog, the Julie/Julia Project. I thought the idea was great - to document her attempts to cook the recipes in Julia Child's classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in just one year - but I didn't much like Julie's blog persona and I never went back. How times change. A couple of years later, I couldn't put down the book that she wrote, much of which was taken directly from her the same blog entries that had annoyed me.

While the episodic nature of her adventures in cooking and the concomitant tears and tantrums was - to me, at least, if not to many of her numerous 'bleeders' (Julie's name for her blog readers) - more exasperating than not, her book is far more entertaining than just the sum of its parts. Through her blog, Julie developed her own, very distinctive, voice and her account of the 365 days she spent cooking 524 recipes in her small apartment kitchen has also changed her life.

When Julie started the project she was miserable, an anonymous temp in a New York government office. Twelve months later, having, along the way, learned how to split marrow bones, kill lobsters without a second thought and cooked for New York Times restaurant critic Amanda Hesser, she was an online celebrity with a book deal. It's an online Cinderella story of the kind dreamed about by anyone who has ever wanted to turn their passion into a job and, for that alone, Julie has to be applauded. She's also deserving of acclaim for writing such a funny, exasperating and enjoyable book. Julie & Julia is well worth investing both money and time in.

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell is published by Fig Tree.

Posted by Caroline at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2006

Georgina Campbell's Ireland: The Best of The Best ****

While the internet has undoubtedly simplified the matter of finding holiday accommodation, it's never at hand (unless, of course, you've got your portable internet device nearby) when you're on the road, looking for a decent bite to eat and somewhere to stay at short notice. Situations like these that make you thankful for having a guide book into the glove-box of your car and Georgina Campbell's guides to Ireland are useful tomes for such eventualities.

Ms Campbell's latest publication, The Best of The Best is described by her publishers as being "for the more discerning traveller and diner". Like the Bridgestone Guides, the selections in Campbell's guides are based on merit alone rather than the establishments actually paying for inclusion.

With useful maps aplenty to assist your navigation, Campbell informs readers of the finest restaurants, accommodation, pubs and cafés throughout the country. It is more comprehensive and less idiosyncratic than the Bridgestone Guides but there are still enough mouth-watering accounts of dinners and breakfasts enjoyed to keep even the most rampant foodie happy.

With places to stay and eat in every price range, you can easily avoid greasy garage shops and unwelcoming B&Bs while traveling around Ireland by keeping The Best of The Best and the Bridgestone Guides in your glove-box. You know it's worth it.

Georgina Campbell's Ireland: The Best of The Best is published by Epicure Press.

Posted by Caroline at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2005

The Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants 2006 & The Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay 2006 by John and Sally McKenna ****

With 15 years of eating and sleeping the length and breadth of the country in a tireless quest for the best of the best, John and Sally McKenna have it down to a fine art. This year's editions of The Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants and The Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay are as wonderfully opinionated and idiosyncratic as ever. And also, very importantly, they are independent. The McKennas and their travelling editors pay for their own meals and accommodation, refusing - as they note at the start of each book - any offers of discounts or gifts.

In the introduction of the Best Restaurants there's a clear declaration of intent when the McKennas talk about "facsimile food, served in grand rooms where menus read well, and then eat badly because they are trapped in pretentiousness, or some crazy idea called "fine dining", a concept, which as far as we can see, is just petit-bourgeois." There's a similar air about the introduction to Best Places To Stay, with an attack on "4-star joints that sit high on the top of a hill, without a tree in sight…lavishly tarmacadamed up to the door with a brightly lit fountain that doesn't work, inappropriate decking beside the heli-pad, and PVC windows".

The most expensive places - for eating or staying - aren't necessarily the most praised. I would have to agree with the McKennas when they say that "you discover value when you discover the work of talented people who are passionate about what they do and who do it in an original way." Sometimes it's better to have one amazing, if expensive, meal in a month than eat your lunch out five days a week in one of Dublin's rubbish cafés. There are bank-breakers in both these books - a penthouse at the Clarence is €2,500, the hotel described here merely as a "work in progress", and a night out at L'Ecrivain is never going to come cheaply. But there are other price options too. Grove House in Schull is €80 per room in low season, and Donegal's wonderfully relaxing Coxtown Manor does very reasonably priced gourmet breaks while many of the venues mentioned also have early bird menus.

The wonderful thing about the Guides is their celebration of the kind of host and hospitality that Ireland should be famed for - but often isn't. there are great quotes from Patricia Farrrell at Iverna Cottage in Spiddal who doesn't write a breakfast menu but invites people to "have what ever they want, and they usually have everything!" from a spread of fruit, cereals, fish and breads; Grove House's Katarina Runske - "I want everyone to feel comfortable, at ease and welcome"; and about Pam Mulhaire's elegant Knockeven in Cobh where she makes people feel "not merely welcome, but extra-welcome, double welcome, triple welcome."

While the prose sometimes goes a little over the top (although I did love the mention of "rollicking Roly's") it's not many people that will be sitting down reading these books from cover to cover. If you're planning a special night out or weekend away, you could do a lot worse than resort to consulting the McKennas. Just the thing to perk you up after Christmas!

The Bridgestone 100 Best Restaurants 2006 & The Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay 2006 by John and Sally McKenna are published by Estragon Press.

Posted by Caroline at 9:58 PM | Comments (2)

November 20, 2005

Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World by Gina Mallet ****

Although cursed with an uninviting cover, Last Chance to Eat, with its investigations into the history and eating of a variety of foodstuffs, is a fascinating read for anyone with even the barest interest in food. For foodies, it should be essential.

Toronto-based Gina Mallet uses her particular memories - a post-WWII childhood in egg-less Britain, life in a Connecticut fishing village, dates at a New York steakhouse - to expand on the universal food issues. The daughter of a food-loving Englishman and his free-spirited American wife, she quotes from obscure experts and modern scientists in her quest to discover where the good food came from - and where it has disappeared to.

Using her evocatively sensual descriptions of food from the past as a counterpoint, she picks her way through the nutritional minefield of the present, exploring the issues of raw milk cheese, the importance of the egg in cooking, BSE scares, the demise of vegetable and fruit varieties, and exploring the vagaries of the fishing industry.

Erudite and entertaining, Last Chance to Eat is a thought provoking read.

Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World by Gina Mallet is published by Norton

Posted by Caroline at 10:53 AM | Comments (4)

June 19, 2005

Never No More by Maura Laverty *****

When I was a little one, with a voracious appetite for books and cooking, one of the books that I devoured was my Nana's well-used copy of Full and Plenty by Maura Laverty. The distinctive blue and yellow covers contained a treasury of old Irish recipes but the icing on the cake for me were the stories with which Laverty started each chapter. The woman whose fine soda bread was more praised by her future daughter-in-law than her smug neighbours cake, the boiled onions that effected a marriage, looking for cuppeen and platter mushrooms in the early morning - these were all well-loved and frequently read tales of old Ireland. After a long and fruitless search through second-hand bookshops and charity shops I eventually found a copy of Full and Plenty over the internet and it now sits proudly on my cookbook shelf alongside many more recent books.

But it took a New Zealand author to let me know that Laverty had actually written more than a cookbook. I had been reading my way through my copy of Christine Dann's A Cottage Garden Cook Book - Recipes from a New Zealand Garden when I came across a stray remark about Laverty's other books. That was enough to send me looking in the library which, wonder of wonders, stocks her first novel - originally published in 1942.

Set in the Ireland of the 1920s, Never No More is the story of a young girl and her relationship with her beloved Grandmother. They live in an old farmhouse outside the village of Ballyderrig in County Kildare and the book is full of tales of and from the Irish countryside - the cutting of the turf, weddings and wakes, the solemn ritual of pig slaughter, family nicknames and stories of possession. Laverty has a wonderful grasp of the texture of country life and great powers of description. As with Full and Plenty, food plays a great part in Never No More and the book is packed full of mouth-watering images.

"White bread, brown bread, Indian meal bread and bran loaves. Short cakes, butter cakes and scones of all kinds. She made seedy cakes and Sunday cakes and prune cakes. And an enormous rich fruit cake with a whole glass of brandy in it. My arms ached from beating the dozen eggs that went into the cake, and from cleaning and preparing the pounds of currants and raisins and candied peel and nuts. She made apple cakes and Carrigeen shapes and flummery and jellies, and Mike Brophy carried over to Nolans' a big basket of Grandmother's famous preserves - haw-and-apple jelly, sloe jelly, blackberry jam and damson jam and a half-dozen bottles of spicy mushroom ketchup to add piquancy to the cold meats. "

With an original glowing introduction by Sean O'Faolain, a later one by Maeve Binchy as well as a quote from an imprisoned Brendan Behan, Never No More is an unexpected treasure. Binchy is also kind enough to fill in the biographical gaps between my much-loved Full and Plenty and Laverty's other work. As well as writing a handful of cookbooks, another three novels and a pair of children's books, she worked as a newspaper journalist, a radio agony aunt and wrote the scripts of a legendary Irish television series from the 1960s called Tolka Row.

Despite all her achievements, in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland Maura Laverty seems to have been all but forgotten. We're too busy celebrating new imported cultures and foodstuffs to appreciate the native bounty that still surrounds us. It might be difficult to get your hands on a copy of Full and Plenty but her novels are still in print, courtesy of Virago Modern Classics, and they're well worth searching for.

Posted by Caroline at 5:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 11, 2005

Cooking for Mr Latte by Amanda Hesser ***

Unlike many foodie memoirs that add recipes on to the end of each chapter, Amanda Hesser - a New York Times writer - actually understands the many meanings of food. Cooking for Mr Latte, subtitled A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes, incorporates food as seduction and comfort, a means of binding together families at difficult times and celebrating the good occasions.

Ostensibly a diary of her relationship with a certain Mr Latte - aka New Yorker journalist Tad Friend - from first date through courtship, meeting each other's families and friends, to engagement and marriage, Hesse weaves food into the warp and weft of this book in a most intelligent way. The recipes that you end up with are not so much a collection of dishes as a journey through her life. While the story of the romance is flimsy enough, what enlivens the book and gives it substance are the recipes. It's the opposite of Nigella Lawson's Feast, not least that Cooking for Mr Latte only contains a handful of recipes while Feast is choc-full of them. While Hesser's interest in food makes this book interesting, the story of Lawson's life - and the reader's awareness of it - infuses the recipes in Feast with meanings far beyond that of a normal cookery book.

Cooking for Mr Latte is also an answer to that question "what does a restaurant critic eat when she's at home?" and shows how the job impacts on her life - not too badly, it has to be said. Whether you're interested in Hesser's fabulous New York life - dinners with Jeffrey Steingarten, eating at the French Laundry - or not, you can't but be grabbed by the recipes. From Peach Tart, adapted from her mother's recipe; Arborio Salad with Pine Nuts and Lemon Zest from an idea she got when she was working at a restaurant in Italy; a recipe for Ginger Duck which originally came from her mother-in-law's housekeeper, BaBa; to Mr Latte's Couscous with Celery, Parsley and Red-Wine Vinegar, from his cooking debut for her, they're all precious to Hesser and may become as valuable to the reader. All the above have made it into my file of things to try. Stay tuned for more details!

Cooking For Mr Latte is published by WW Norton.

Posted by Caroline at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)