Omnivore Atlanta

Rabid foodies will know that The River Cottage Cookbook has been available since 2001. But this year it’s been released by Ten Speed Press ($35) in a slightly Americanized version (for instance, in the introduction, the word “nappies” has been changed to “diapers,” despite the fact that nappies is a far better word).

Much like the elBulli book I wrote about last week, River Cottage is a book that inspires fantasy, although Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (shown on the cover happily holding two adorable piggies and presumably thinking “delicious!”) is selling a much different fantasy than Ferran Adria. Fearnley-Whittingstall lives in the English countryside in an idyllic cottage where he raises his own meat, grows his own veggies, and tries to live as self-sufficiently as possible. In the book’s introduction, he assures us that he knows complete self-sufficiency is practically impossible in today’s world, but that he hopes to inspire us to move in that direction. One look at the book and my husband was planning a small farm in our backyard, inspired by passages such as:

Contented pigs are quiet, happy animals and shouldn’t give you much trouble. Your neighbors may be more skeptical, but provided they are forewarned, they may come to enjoy the presence of your pigs as much as you do. A little bit of noisy squealing at feeding time is the worst they will have to put up with.

There’s plenty of information about growing veggies and cleaning wild game as well. (more…)

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It’s actually quite hard to characterize A Day at elBulli: An insight into the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adria (Phaidon, $49.95) as a cookbook. At least, I was not able to cook anything from this huge, fawning book covering the self-declared “best restaurant in the world”. The book does contain 30 recipes in its 600 pages, from the kitchen of the famously cutting edge chef in Northern Spain. But if any of them look doable, invariably something will trip you up.

Usually it will be a matter of equipment (what, you don’t have a candy-floss machine in your kitchen?). If not that, it will be a matter of ingredients. The two recipes I thought I might be able to cook left me stranded at the store, hopelessly staring at my shopping list. The first, samphire tempura with saffron and oyster cream, didn’t call for any machines or chemicals I was unlikely to have. Of course, I had no idea what samphire is. I was saddened to find that it is a plant that grows on rocks near the coast of the United Kingdom. Drats. My brother suggested we substitute another green vegetable – asparagus perhaps? But I felt that would be contrary to the spirit of the book, which is basically that almost all of this stuff is totally unattainable.

The second, pine nut marshmallows, looked almost easy (see recipe below). My problem was finding extra virgin pine nut oil. I looked for it in a lot of stores. I didn’t find it. If anyone has any leads, let me know and I’ll give it a shot.

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My brother was in India last year for a month, and he came back smelling different and with a serious curry addiction. A year later, nothing has come close to curing his longing – that is until we came across 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer (Workman, $32.50). The book is so exhaustive, there are  25 eggplant-based curries, and 3 that have eggplant and potato as their primary ingredients.

The book also covers Indian breads, a few relishes and pickles, and many stories, tips and observations that make for a good read.

We decided on this cold and misty Atlanta afternoon to make Jairam’s Potatoes and Eggplant with a Garlic-Chile Sauce. Like many of the recipes in the book, the curry relies entirely on whole and fresh spices rather than blends. The resulting dish was spicy, hearty and incredibly comforting. The book said this recipe serves 6, but my brother and I ate up the whole pot for lunch. I see this is a bit of a trend this week, so the problem may not be the recipes but more that I’m a glutton.

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Day two of my cook-my-way-though-this-year’s-best-cookbooks challenge, and I’ve finally found a rabbit to satisfy my desire to cook Mustardy Rabbit Pot. How could I resist a recipe with a name like that? Rabbits are not easy to come by in Atlanta – Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market tantalizingly has a big sign over part of its meat section reading “Rabbit”, but they were out and said they’d be unlikely to have more until Saturday. The folks at Star Provisions said they could order one for me, but it wouldn’t be in until Friday. But I finally located one – a local Georgia rabbit at that – at Harry’s Farmer’s Market in Marietta. The butcher there assured me that they keep rabbit in stock all the time.

So I was able to proceed with a dinner of mustardy rabbit pot and leeks with lardons, both from the wonderful Complete Robuchon by Joel Robuchon and translated by Robin H. R. Bellinger (Knopf, $35). Joel Robuchon is best known as the chef who holds the most total Michelin stars for his restaurants in France and around the world. As such, you would think his cookbooks would be aspirational, trying to convey the culinary acrobatics of his restaurants. Nothing could be farther from the truth – Robuchon writes for the home cook, and these recipes are straightforward and an excellent all-round guide to French home cooking.  Looking through the recipes, there was nothing that looked too complex, and much that looked doable and delicious.

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For next week’s Holiday Guide, I’ll be writing a roundup of the best cookbooks of the year with the hope that it will help with all your foodie gift-giving needs. I thought it would be a fun project to preview that roundup with daily blog posts this week chronicling each book as I read and cook from it.

I was planning on starting out the week with The Complete Robuchon, but I picked a rabbit recipe to test and couldn’t find any rabbit yesterday. So hopefully I’ll come across a bunny today and have that report tomorrow. Instead, I turned to the drool-inducing pages of Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook by Mark Robinson (Kodansha International, $25). If you never cook a thing from this book, it’s still worth buying and reading, as long as you don’t mind the side effect of overwhelming travel lust. The book serves as a guide to Tokyo’s best izakayas (pubs), as well as a repository for those establishment’s recipes and a history of the izakaya. Author Mark Robinson says in his introduction, “I believe that the izakaya is overdue to become one of the biggest Japanese cuisine trends abroad since the sushi bar.” This book certainly makes me hope so. The recipes cover simple, snacky Japanese bar food, from a version of candied walnuts to shark fin aspic. Almost every page of the book inspired me to want to get my hungry butt to the Asian grocery store and start shopping – who wouldn’t want to eat fresh corn tempura, or simmered eggplant and pork loin, or sauteed small squid and celery? I settled on creamy crab croquettes, and greens in dashi and soy sauce.

If you’ve never made dashi before, it’s an incredibly satisfying and very simple thing to do. After making it last night I’ve pretty much decided that it’s worth doing every week or so just to have some on hand, much like I do with chicken stock. The crab croquettes were also easy – basically a mixture of crab, sauteed onion, hard boiled egg and a very light bechamel, breaded in panko and deep fried. They were crispy on the outside and melty in the middle – wonderful for soaking up beer. The greens recipe was for komatsuna greens, but I substituted spinach, as the book suggested (it said you could also use swiss chard or mustard greens). We boiled then shocked the spinach, and topped it with a 50/50 mixture of dashi and soy sauce – the perfect foil for the rich, crispy, slightly oily crab cakes. (more…)

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