arts & entertainment

Food, Glorious Food!

Looking for the perfect Chanukah gift for a committed cook or epicurean?
Check out this selection of recent cookbooks from Jewish chefs.

Gail Zimmerman
Arts Editor

Melissa Clark: Cook
This Now: 120 Easy
and Delicious Dishes
You Can't Wait to
Make (Hyperion)
Clark, the author
of 32 cookbooks and
the New York Times'
popular "A Good Appetite" Dining Section
column, demystifies the principles behind
cooking seasonally with a broad range of
savory, sweet and satisfying recipes for an
entire year of good eating. Organized by
season and month, with recipes designed
to follow local farmers-market offerings,
she reflects on shopping, cooking and eat-
ing with her family and provides holiday
("Golden Parsnip Latices") and bonus reci-
pes, like "My Mother's Crispy Potato Kugel
with Rosemary and Fried Shallots:'

the

Deb Perelman: The
cookbook
Smitten Kitchen
deb perelman
Cookbook: Recipes
and Wisdom from
an Obsessive Home
Cook (Knopf)
Perelman believes
there are no bad
cooks, just bad recipes. In her award-win-
ning blog, Smitten Kitchen (smittenkitchen.
corn), she has dedicated herself "to finding
the best of the best recipes and adapting
them for the everyday cook — the person
"with little time to spare, little money to
burn on unpronounceable ingredients and
little help in the kitchen." Her first cook-
book — filled with the can-do spirit she has
developed cooking in her tiny Manhattan
kitchen — contains more than 100 recipes,
almost entirely new, plus a few favorites
from her site. Try her year-round "Big
Breakfast Latices:' the ideal breakfast potato
because "they hold together better than
hash browns ... and the bigger they are, the
more ideal base they become for the other
perfect breakfast, a fried egg:'

smitten kitchen

Leah Schapira:
Fresh ¢r Easy
Kosher Cooking:
Ordinary
Ingredients,
Extraordinary
Meals (Artscroll)
Schapira, the
co-founder of CookKosher.com , a rapidly
growing online kosher recipe exchange,

74 December 6 • 2012

JN

offers more than 170 easy-to-make recipes
for every day and holiday, with some mod-
ern variations on familiar themes using
ingredients you already have on hand.
Suggestions for side-dish pairings and tips
for food preparation and storage are useful
for new cooks. Try her "Square Doughnuts:'
fried in oil, for Chanukah.

Barbara Kafka: The Intolerant Gourmet:
Glorious Food Without Gluten and
Lactose (Artisan)
When Kafka, a
THE INTOLERANT
recipient of the James
GOURMET: GLORIOUS Beard Foundation
Lifetime Achievement
FOOD WITHOUT
Award, found that her
GLUTEN &'
childhood intoler-
BARBARA KARA
ances for gluten and
lactose had resurfaced
after several decades in the food industry,
she resolved to create recipes that wouldn't
leave her feeling deprived. Rather than rely-
ing on substitutes and focusing on just bak-
ing, as many gluten-free cookbooks do, she
suggests new ingredients and preparations
that enhance flavor and texture in more
than 250 original recipes for every meal and
occasion (like "Quinoa-Crusted Chicken").
Learn to achieve crispiness without bread-
ing and flour, silkiness and richness without
dairy and luxurious sauces without flour or
butter, plus a handy pantry list and guide to
the best gluten-free pastas.

Back Pocket (Workman
Publishing; paperback)
Workman, the
mother of two boys and
founding editor-in-chief
of Cookstr.com , helps
family cooks figure out
how to make a real meal (bye-bye, chicken
nuggets) that everyone in the family —
including picky eaters — will eat, without
"dumbing down" the food. Workman
includes recipes for Jewish families, too:
"Monday Night Brisket" (you cook it on
Sunday), "Halfway Homemade Chicken
Noodle Matzah Ball Soup" and "Potato
Pancakes:'

""—

Rachel Harkham
and Doni Zasloff
Thomas: Get
A Jewish 03:452ED Family Cookbook
Cooking! A Jewish
American Family
Cookbook (Behrman
House)
Harkham, a food
writer, cooking teacher and chocolatier,
and Thomas (aka Mama Doni), an edu-
cator, songwriter and lead singer in the
Mama Doni Band, have put together a
spiral-bound cook-with-your-kids cook-
book filled with holiday activities, jokes
and even music (a CD, A Rockin' Mama
Doni Celebration, is included). The cook-
book is appropriate for Jewish families of
all levels of religious observance, say the
authors. The chapter "Chanukah: Latices ...
and Beyond" includes recipes for "Souper
Traditional Latkes" (made with dry onion
soup mix), "Judah Mac-n-Cheese Squares"
and "Chocomallow Dreidels," among others.

eor
COOKING!

Katie Workman: The Mom 100 Cookbook:
100 Recipes Every Mom Needs in Her

Stephanie Pierson: The Brisket Book:
A Love Story with Recipes (Andrews
McMeel)
Pierson, a New
York-based author-
journalist who writes
about food, design and
life-style
issues, claims
BRISKET
that "some foods will
improve your meal,
your mood, your day,
your buttered noodles. Brisket will improve
your life:' Her cookbook — the first and
only volume solely devoted to brisket —
offers everything from cooking advice to
chef interviews to butcher wisdom to the
history of brisket; she spent a year "bris-
keteering" to compile her information and
a variety of recipes, including the author's
"My Mother's Brisket" and "My Former Best
Friend's Ex-Mother-In-Law's Brisket:' Of a
food beloved by all, she writes, "Brisket is
a cross-cultural wonder — a Jewish dish
cooked in a Dutch oven with a Sicilian
sauce served in North Dakota:'

THE

Esther Deutsch: Chic Made Simple: Fresh,
Fast, Fabulous Kosher
Cuisine (Manna 11)
Deutsch, the food edi-
tor of Ami magazine,
features more than 185 of
her most well-regarded
kosher recipes in this new
coffee-table-sized book
filled with stunning full-
page color photographs. Designed to look
and taste like gourmet cuisine, her recipes,
says Deutsch, "are simple enough for the
novice cook, fast enough for the busy cook
and impressive enough for the most accom-
plished:' The index suggests recipes for a
multitude of ingredients, including dishes for
everyday family dinners ("Cashew Chicken

Stir-Fry with Sweet Chili Glaze") to that
special dinner party ("Rack of Lamb with
Orange-Mustard Rosemary Sauce").

ROOTS

Diane Morgan:
Roots: The Definitive
Compendium
(Chronicle Books)
Morgan, the
Portland, Ore.-based
author of 17 cook-
books, has written
a comprehensive guide for anyone who
has picked up a strangely shaped, gnarly-
looking vegetable at the farmers market
and wondered what to do with it. Revealing
the underworld of roots from the familiar
(beets, carrots, potatoes) to the practically
unheard of (malanga, galangal, crosne) in
separate chapters, she discusses their his-
tory and lore, their nutritional content,
how to buy and store them and offers more
than 225 recipes that bring out their best
flavors, including a traditional Chanukah
recipe from her maternal grandmother —
"Grandma Rose's Latkes:'

Ina Garten: Barefoot
Contessa Foolproof
Recipes You Can Trust
(Clarkson Potter)
Garten, star of the
v()()1,1 , 110()F
Food Network show
beloved by millions,
adds another recipe vol-
ume to her very successful cookbook series.
A fan of recipes that make home cooks
look great and with ingredients that can be
found in any grocery store, in Foolproof, she
takes it a step further, not only sharing her
secrets for pulling off meals that have that
"wow" factor but suggestions for planning a
menu, including coordinating everything so
it all gets to the table at the same time. She
also details where a recipe can go wrong,
plus tips for making recipes in advance.
The more than 150 recipes with gorgeous
full-page color photographs include such
goodies as "Easy Tomato Soup and Grilled
Cheese Croutons" and "Sticky Toffee Date
Cake with Bourbon Glaze:'

THE

Iti

Ozti

COOKBOOK

Noah and Rae
Bernamoff: The
Mile End Cookbook:
Redefining Jewish
Comfort Food
from Hash to
Hamantaschen
(Clarkson Potter)

Glorious Food on page 76