| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
NON-Fiction Book Reviews From our Archives |
February 2006 |
DiscCookery
The Dictionary of Food
by
Charles Sinclair, Second Edition, A & C Black,
London, 632 pages, paperback, $35.95, ISBN 0-7136-7500-4 - Distributed in
Canada by Raincoast books
By Alidė Kohlhaas
Food! Good food! Those are delights that I find hard to resist. Not every recipe I read ends up being cooked, but reading recipes is a definite hobby of mine that some people find hard to understand. Why read recipes? Well, I can somehow imagine exactly ho a dish will taste, even if I don't end up reading it. Just savoring the tastes is enough for me. Besides, if I ate everything my waist line would be double of what it is now.
For the second time now I am writing a review about a cookbook put together by CBC Radio Two host, and food and wine columnist/connoisseur Jurgen Gothe. His DiscCookery cookbook, brought out to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his radio show. Its recipes are a delight to read, savor, and to put into actuality. Recently I created a whole dinner around the book and my guests loved every morsel that came onto their plates. So, I have to thank Jurgen for the kudos I got for my meal choices.
What did I serve? To start we had Japanese eggplant baked with apricots, this was followed by cinnamon roasted pork tenderloin with Pino Gris applesauce, and the dessert consisted of strawberries in pepper foam. Not your usual kind of dessert.
Some of the recipes in DiscCookery are Jurgen's favorites, others were sent in by listeners, or provided by friendly chefs. This is no ordinary cookbook, but then DiscDrive is no ordinary radio show either. Jurgen likes to surprise us. If you love good food, aren't afraid to try something different, then this is a cookbook that has to be on your must-have list.
What is so nice about DiscCookery is that Jurgen has not just given us the recipes and his frequently humorous comments, but he also recommends the right wine, and also the music that would suit the dish while cooking it. As one friend told me after seeing the book, "This is a good cookbook to give as a wedding or shower gift!"
DisCookery has a foreword by Tommy Hunter, an introduction by Jurgen that displays his off-beat sense of humor and an excellent biography in addition to all those good tastes he has proffered us in his book.
I, on purpose, do not list any recipes from the book here in this review even though I enjoyed several of them. It is up to you to find the book and take a stab at cooking these delightful dishes, so exceptionally well presented to us.. . .
For a review of DiscDrive 20th Anniversary CD click here
By Alidė Kohlhaas
Have you ever been puzzled by food terms in a cookbook, which you cannot find in your dictionary? Well, help is on the way. The Dictionary of Food by Charles Sinclair is filled with more than 24,000 international food terms, more than you ever possible need. There are even short recipes on how to cook or bake certain foods. I, for instance, am delighted to finally have the recipe for crumpets, which none of my many cookbooks contain. So, thank you to the producers of this dictionary.
I do, however, have some reservations about the completeness of dictionary, and worse still, of the correct explanation about some familiar terms — at least familiar to Canadians, or North Americans as a whole. The dictionary is very Eurocentric, or better still, very EU-centric. It also shows its British origins in that it is heavy on European, Asian, African and Australian terms, but fails to contain sufficient North American food terms, but especially Canadian food terms to make it truly international. Of course we would know those words, but if regional European words, some highly obscure, . . .
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