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My favorite 5 books about the vast culinary world.

1. The Professional Chef compiled by the Culinary Institute of America
2. On Food and Cookery by Harold McGee
3. Culinary Artistry by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page
4. Simple French Food by Michael Olney
5. Nancy Silverton's Breads from the LA Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur by Nancy Silverton

Books I want. (Drool)

1. Michael Mina: The Cookbook
2. Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme
3. Tea: Aromas and Flavors Around the World
4. A Tale of Twelve Kitchens
5. The Ritz London Book of Afternoon Tea: The Art & Pleasures of Taking Tea Helen Simpson

So if you compare my last top 5 and current top 5, you'll notice that I bought Nancy Silverton's Breads from the LA Brea Bakery. It's such a great book on how to make sourdough breads from natural yeast floating around your home. Hmm...while reading it, I was wondering if I could get some great yeast cultures if I went to some great places like a pristine forest and started the culture there. Imagine, yeast from the Amazon, yeast from Mount Everest, yeast from space! (To make green bread to go with green eggs and ham.) Okay, there are limits.

Recently, I went to Maruzen bookstore in Oazo and found a book that was just put on the shelf. Michael Mina: The Cookbook. This guy's work and recipes look and sound amazing. He has some really interesting tasting menus and the presentation is absolutely wonderful, very good eye. In order to make his foams, he throws lecithin in everything. Lechitin is just a protein, and it makes foams stable. Think of the foam on top of cappucinos, that's possible because of proteins like casein in milk. However, I'm not sure if I like the idea of using lecithin. Not that lechitin is bad but it just seems like a shortcut, like how some people use MSG to flavor everything. But I really like his foams.

Here's a write up on Amazon

"San Francisco chef Mina, who has franchised himself to Las Vegas with the backing of tennis star Agassi, declares that all the recipes in his book have been "designed to be prepared in the home kitchen by a single cook." The home cook with a day job is unlikely to regard this as a practical guide, however, unless similarly driven by Mina's obsession with the core concept: the trio. Each of his New American dishes, from starter to dessert, is presented with three different interpretations of the key ingredient. For instance, his Summer Berry Cobbler, Berry Sundae with Mascarpone Ice Cream, involves creating a raspberry cobbler with vanilla streusel, a blueberry cobbler with lavender scone and a blackberry cobbler with candied ginger shortbread, in hot and cold variations to be eaten in alternating bites. "

The Trio...cool!
by ekwok | 2007-02-22 01:28 | The Written Word
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