Food – Page 2 – BooksPlease

Weekend Cooking

Published on April 10, 2011 by Margaret8 Comments

I love Italian food, so Two Greedy Italians by Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo looks like a book that I would love to have!

This book accompanies a new series on BBC2 which starts on Wednesday 27 April 2011 at 8 pm.

Carluccio and Contaldo are old friends. They return to Italy to reconnect with their culinary heritage, explore past and current traditions and reveal the very soul of Italian gastronomy. Containing over 100 mouthwatering recipes, this book goes beyond the clichÃ©s to reveal real Italian food, as cooked by real Italians. It includes an intriguing combination of classic dishes and ingredients as well as others showcasing the changes in style and influences that have become a part of the Italy of today. (Description adapted from the Product Description on Amazon.)

Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Quadrille Publishing Ltd (18 April 2011)
Language English
ISBN-10: 9781844009428
ISBN-13: 978-1844009428

We do have one of Antonio Carluccio’s books – Passion for Pasta, which is a beautiful book, full of recipes for making your own pasta and sauces. He writes:

… I would like you to forget about bottled sauces, ready-made pasta dishes, and pre-packed Parmesan cheese. Instead indulge yourself by trying the amazing soft texture of your own hand-made pasta, the bite of fresh Italian cheeses, the flavour of cured meats such as Parma ham, and anchovies and fresh basil. (page 7)

There are also lots photos of mouth-watering food, such as this which shows Pasta Per Tutte Stagioni – Pasta For All Seasons, made with fresh shitake mushrooms, fresh oyster mushrooms, chanterelles and small dried fusilli. It includes double cream, smoked ham, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, parsley and truffle oil, which Carluccio says is very expensive and very sophisticated – a dish for special occasions!

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: BBC Books; 2nd Revised edition edition (24 July 2003)
Language English
ISBN-10: 9780563487616
ISBN-13: 978-0563487616
ASIN: 0563487615
Product Dimensions: 25.8 x 18.2 x 1.4 cm
Source: I bought it

This is my contribution to this week’s Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads

“Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.”

Weekend Cooking: Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home

Published on January 22, 2011September 1, 2019 by Margaret17 Comments

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page. For more information, see the welcome post at Beth Fish Reads.

Nigella Lawson’s programmes and books never fail to entertain and inform. Her latest is Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home.

Click to watch this video

In the Introduction she writes about what the kitchen means to her and says:

A real chef would have an apoplectic fit and a nervous breakdown simultaneously – if forced to cook in my kitchen. The surfaces are cluttered, the layout messy and getting messier by the day (and, overall, I’ve no doubt my kitchen would fail many a health and safety test and law of ergonomics). But I love it, even if it is more of a nest than a room. (page xv)

Thank goodness for that , not only is Nigella a real woman she has a real kitchen too. I like the way she writes, with no fuss or nonsense and I like her mouth-watering recipes, that are easy to follow and a pleasure to cook. In this book she begins with a list of kitchen equipment that she regards as essential and non-essential too.

I previously posted a recipe from this book – Blondies, which my husband made. I bought him the book for Christmas and yesterday he made Strawberry and Almond Crumble, which is so delicious! We had friends round so I didn’t take a photo and we ate it all up! Here’s a photo from the book:
Strawberry crumble

The recipe is online at BBC Food Recipes.

Nigella writes:

The oven doesn’t, as you’d think, turn the berries into a red-tinted mush of slime, but into berry-intense bursts of tender juiciness. This is nothing short of alchemy: you take the vilest, crunchiest supermarket strawberries, top them with an almondy, buttery rubble, bake and turn them out on a cold day into the taste of an English summer. Naturally, serve with lashings of cream: I regard this as obligatory. (page 131)

I love that description of crumble as an ‘almondy, buttery rubble’, and I love this recipe. This book is one of Nigella’s best.

Weekend Cooking

Published on December 5, 2010 by Margaret2 Comments

Time now to think about cooking for Christmas. I’ve made the Christmas Cake and that is maturing nicely (I hope). Whilst out shopping I found this book with more ideas for Christmas Cakes and Cookies:

It’s a flip-over book that is also free-standing, so you can stand it up whilst looking at the recipes as you cook. There are recipes for Shortbread Snowmen, Gingerbread Reindeer, Snowflake Delight, Festive Fudge, Christmas Crunchers and Christmas Toffee Pudding and many more delicious temptations.

I’m very tempted by the Christmas Toffee Pudding which is made with dates:

(click image to enlarge)

For more tempting cooking posts have a look at Beth Fish Reads

Weekend Cookery – Blondies

Published on November 20, 2010August 28, 2021 by Margaret8 Comments

I haven’t done a Weekend Cookery post for a few weeks, so I thought it was about time I did.

My husband likes to cook and often cooks dinner, but he doesn’t bake. He’s a fan of Nigella and and also of Blondie. So, he couldn’t resist making Nigella’s recipe in the pullout in the Radio Times of Nigella’s Simple Treats.

Here are Dave’s Blondies – they are absolutely delicious.

He made them by combining 200g porridge oats, 100g plain flour, and ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda in a bowl. In another bowl he beat together 150g soft unsalted butter and 100g light muscovado sugar until pale and then stirred in 1 can (397g) condensed milk, then add in the oats mixture. When this was well mixed he added in 1 egg and 170g of dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces.

He then put the lumpy mixture into a 9in square cake tin and baked it in a preheated oven at 180°for about 35 minutes. As Nigella describes it, it was ‘quite a pronounced dark gold around the edges and coming away from the tin’ and was still ‘frighteningly squidgy, not to say wibbly.’

He let it firm up in the tin and then cut it into pieces. You can see in the photo below that they are a lovely consistency and the chocolate pieces are softly melted into the chewy oaty mixture.

Weekend Cookery is a weekly event hosted by Beth Fish Reads, where you’ll find more cookery related posts.

Edited 28 August 2021: The recipe is in Nigella Lawson’s book, Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home page 314.

A Plethora of Plums

Published on October 2, 2010 by Margaret9 Comments

We have an old plum tree in our garden. This year is the first year we’ve been here and we didn’t know what to expect from the tree. It’s been absolutely blooming, full of fruit. The boughs are weighed down to the ground with the weight and I’ve picked many kilos of plums. I don’t have any jam jars so I’ve been cooking the plums and either eating them with ice cream, or making crumble, or freezing the fruit.

I made crumble with some of these, a simple recipe made with plain flour, sugar and butter, rubbed in until mixture resembles breadcrumbs and then cooked on top of the plums for about 30 -40 minutes at 190°C.