New cookbooks provide tasty recipes New cookbooks provide tasty recipes (December 07, 2005)

by Anne Sturmthal Bergman

There are a number of new cookbooks available this season. This year, my friends and I chose a book about Spanish cuisine, which is new to us, the latest from Mark Bittman and a cookbook from one of our local restaurants.

"La Cocina De Mama, The Great Homecooking of Spain" by Penelope Casas, Broadway Books, 308 pp., $29.95

This lovely book opened up a whole new range of flavors. The introductory sections cover the great wines from Spain, the Spanish pantry and Spanish cooking equipment. My friends and I made Candido's Castilian garlic soup, which turned out to be cooked partly on the stovetop, and then briefly baked in the oven.

It was a hearty soup with a mild flavor, but the spices (paprika, cumin and saffron) added color and some complexity. We had hoped for a somewhat deeper flavor, but would recommend it (maybe with some extra garlic) for a cold winter's night.

The Moorish-style green salad with cumin and paprika was an unexpected burst of flavor. The chicken with white wine, grape juice and cilantro was easy to put together and extraordinarily good. Mari Carmen's orange cake was mild, beautiful to look at, and again, very easy to make.

We really liked this book, which presented a lot of new flavor combinations; it would be a unique contribution to anyone's selection of cookbooks. It is highly recommended for the unusual combination of ingredients and striking flavors.

"The Best Recipes in the World" by Mark Bittman, Broadway Books, 757 pp., $29.95

We are big fans of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and therefore were eager to try out the recipes in his new hefty tome. Bittman's cookbooks are always well-organized, with clear instructions. This one was no exception.

We made Chestnut Soup, which was rich and creamy but lacked depth. I used canned chestnuts, which were a true timesaver, and added only half the amount of cream the recipe called for.

Braised lamb with garlic and lemon had a very strong lemon flavor. At the end it says to adjust the seasoning, and I did so by adding a bit of sugar to tone down the taste of the lemon.

Although the recipe does not require the chef to peel the lemon and remove the rind, I think that had I done that, the flavor would have been less overpowering and less bitter. I was somewhat disappointed in these two recipes, which were very good, but not as extraordinary as those in his earlier books.

"Boulevard, the Cookbook" by Nancy Oakes and Pamela Mazzola with Lisa Weiss, Ten Speed Press, 244 pp., $50

So, is it possible for the home chef to actually use this cookbook, or is it made to weigh down the coffee table like so many other expensive restaurants cookbooks?

I cheated, and asked Bruce Fielding of B and B Catering to give a recipe a try.

Bruce chose Pan Roasted Wild King Salmon in Cider Sauce with potato, bacon and watercress cake and shaved apple and fennel salad with mustard vinaigrette.

Bruce reports: " Like most of the recipes in this book, this dish has five major elements, but some can be made in advance so that the home cook is not too harried when it is time for final preparation and plating, and the authors give some guidance about this.

"Just a little more explanation about how to prepare this dish would be helpful. For example, the cider butter sauce calls for one stick of butter to be incorporated into less than 1/2 cup of liquid. A few additional words on how to do this by taking it on and off the heat, not allowing it to boil, and a warning that it will break if you don't follow the instructions carefully would have been useful.

"Another example would have been the suggestion of putting the apples in acidated water to prevent discoloration. It is difficult to translate a recipe that a restaurant may make 50-100 times a night into one that can be prepared once for four people, but a little more time by the recipe testers may have caught a couple of problems with the recipe.

"The ingredient list calls for 16 slices of bacon, when the directions, if followed correctly, and the accompanying picture clearly show a need for just four pieces. Similarly, if one added a whole stick of butter into the lovely cider reduction, the sauce would be more like having salmon in drawn butter, as opposed to the piquant, rich, interesting sauce that my tiny two tablespoons turned it into."

In the end, Bruce thought that this recipe had a "wonderful combination of flavors that don't overpower the fresh fish, with great range of texture from the crunchiness of the fennel and apple to the smoothness of the fish, perfectly set off by the cider sauce and mustardy vinaigrette. The big, rich salmon is perfectly paired with the slightly acidic butter sauce and vinaigrette. The potato-bacon combination is a great anchor of comfortable starch and bacon flavor."

For this year, we recommend the "Cochina De Mama" for those who want to experiment with new flavors presented in easy-to-follow directions. For those a little more brave, "Boulevard" offers a challenge in making complex recipes with direction that leave a bit of room for error, but end with spectacular results.

Anne Sturmthal Bergman is a local freelance writer who reviews cookbooks for the Weekly.

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