Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I made my first recipe from Bobby Flay's Throw-down. I've enjoyed the book for a while now, but its taken me a while to get around to actually cooking from it. I made Bobby's 12 chile chili. At first I thought that it was weirdly sweet for Texas-style chili (it is finished with honey, maple syrup and bittersweet chocolate), but when properly seasoned with salt, served over rice (which may be strange, but it's how I like my chili) and topped with the toasted cumin crema that he puts with it, it was really good. I still think I might prefer the Serious Eats version, but DH said we'd have to do a side-by-side comparison for him to be sure. He thought he might fall on the side of preferring Bobby's version. What we agree on is that we greatly prefer chili made with whole dried chiles rather than chili powder. That said, CI's weeknight chili is still a staple in our house...so good over rice and topped with a sprinkle of grated sharp cheddar.

I probably won't make a ton of the throw-down recipes as they are not the healthiest, but I still love the book. I love that you get the original recipes as well as Bobby's. It makes it fun.

I've just gotten from the library 2 Molly Stevens books - "Braising" and "Roasting". I looked thru both and braising seems to have a lot of potential for pork and poultry, and the roasting one has ALOT of interesting recipes for vegetables. I'll report back if there are any good finds.
Nance

Carey,

Are any of the competing recipes better than Bobby's?

Nancy,

Please do!

Fuzzy,

About half of the recipes in the book won their showdowns on the show. From just looking at them, I suspect I'd probably prefer many of the competing versions to Bobby Flay's, as the competitor's versions tend to be traditional offerings of a dish, and Bobby Flay's versions tend to be fancified interpretations of the dish (like the chili with honey, maple syrup and chocolate). Bobby's recipes all tend to be elaborate, with multiple sauces and recipes in recipes. Very restaurant style.

I haven't done enough cooking from it though to be able to say for sure which actual recipes I'd like best. Most if the dishes are pretty caloric since they are either regional foods (Philly cheese steak, country captain chicken, fried chicken, soul food Mac and cheese, lobster rolls, BBQ pulled pork) or restaurant/bakery offerings (red velvet cupcakes, German chocolate cake, sticky buns, crepes, Junior's cheesecake, diner breakfast food, diner sandwiches, diner style meatloaf, pies, lasagna, ravioli), with the occassional militaty cook's steak recipe thrown in. So not things that I would make often just for the sake of my health. It's still a fun book though.

Nance,

Becca and I both have cooked from All About Braising. The ones I've particularly enjoyed are:

Fennel braised with thyme and black olives
Chicken Do-Piaza
Short ribs braised in porter ale with maple-rosemary glaze
Braised pork chops & creamy cabbage
Sausage & plums braised in red wine

In looking through the book to compile the above list, I realize how many more recipes I want to try, and we are coming into braising season.

Becca has tried more recipes than I, and there was a post on TOBB about her favorites. Perhaps she'll chime in here.

Amy

I've done the braised cabbage from All About Braising and the Zinfandel pot roast. Both were pretty good. I'll have to take a look again at the book now that older weather is here too.

I haven't made much from the roasting book yet either, but the one steak recipe was one that I did a lot over the spring. My issue is more one of time than not liking the books....I have been leaning towards big batch cooking for the freezer and quick cooking lately (which means same old, same old most of the time).

Thanks so much Amy!
Nance

Three from the San Francisco Public Library:

New Orleans By The Bowl is a decent slim cookbook, covering a couple dozen gumbo, jambalaya, soup and stew recipes from The Big Easy. The recipes are straightforwards and easy to read, although I didn't end up making anything from this cookbook so I'm not sure how they are in practice. They also include several unusual but interesting recipes, like alligator soup and nutria gumbo, that I haven't seen elsewhere. The book has additional chapters on other dishes, such as salads, meats, and desserts to round it out which are less good and clearly added as filler. Still, worth a look from your library or as a used book purchase.

I picked up The Food Of Bali to see if Balinese food was in any way different from Indonesian and Malaysian food. Answer: no. Otherwise, this is a workmanlike, slim ethnic cookbook, lacking glossaries or technique pages which are helpful in similar cookbooks.

Yummy by Caroline Brewester lives up to its subtitle: "desserts you can make in 5 to 30 minutes". As you can imagine, the desserts focus heavily on fruit. The book is sectioned by cooking time (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 minutes). If you're someone who really likes to make dessert on weeknights, this might be the book for you.

Diane Kennedy's latest opus, Oxaca al Gusto, has an immediate, obvious advantage over other Mexican cookbooks: at 10" by 12" and 8lbs, you don't need to buy a tortilla press.

Aside from that, it's classic Kennedy; very traditional recipes, organized by region within Oxaca. I don't know that I'm likely to ever make anything from it, but it's a fun read, and it's choc-a-bloc full of color pictures by Kennedy herself. Would make a good gift book for a foodie friend who likes to do the coffee table thing.

Fuzzy,

I posted a review of this book a couple years ago it seems, though I don't see it anywhere. What I remember saying about it was that it was a very good book, as expected, but it had its drawbacks. One, it was very poorly indexed, one of the worst I have seen. The other was that it would call for peppers in some recipes that even I haven't heard of, but nowhere would it give a suggestion for substitution. As you put it, nice coffee table book, but not a good book for most cooks, IMO.

I do like the tortilla press idea, however.