I haven’t posted since last weekend’s cholent episode.  I haven’t done much cooking – I’ve just been eating lots and lots of salads. 

I have tried a couple of recipes out of Dorie Greenspan’s new cookbook – well, baking book – Baking: from my home to yours. First let me say that I love her writing style.  The book is written in a casual way, but the recipes still mean business.  She gives options, shares stories and offers a wide array of delicious baking recipes to the reader.  I’ve tried a muffin recipe and simple chocolate chip cookies.  You can tell a lot by a person’s chocolate chip cookies.  From this recipe I can tell that I’m going to like many, many more of Dorie’s recipes.  Get this book and bake!

I have been remiss in reporting on Michael Ruhlman’s book, The Reach of a Chef.  I finished reading it weeks ago – and had every intention on posting my thoughts but never did.  Having the memory of a gnat, all the pithy comments I wanted to share with you are lost forever.  I can tell you that I loved it. This time Ruhlman takes us into the world of the ‘celebrity chef’ – on many levels.  For anybody interested in the characters involved  with FoodTV or at the head of some of the US’s top restaurants will enjoy this book.  Get this book and read!

And last but not least, I’ve just finished Ruth Riechl’s Tender at the Bone. If you don’t know, Reichl is the editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine. She has also spent years as a restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.  This book is the first in a trilogy of memoirs.  In it we learn that as a child her mother’s cooking was so … scary, that she often worried that dinner guests would be poisoned.  She had to find her own way to food and cooking, and find it she did!  Though things seem to skip about a little too quickly for me,  I enjoyed the insight she shares with us – enough to want to read the next installment to see what happened next.

Buy books.  They’re good.