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Daily Archive: 24/01/2016

Sunday

24

January 2016

0

COMMENTS

Southern Biscuits by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Three Stars

biscuits

This book helped me finally understand the difference between baking powder and baking soda. As someone who bakes regularly, this should be something I already get. But the thing is, I mostly just bake recipes other people share; I’m not good enough to be able to sort out my own. I don’t know the best ratios of liquid to dry ingredients, so I can’t just sub things in and out.

I really appreciated that the book has a generous introduction before diving into recipes. The authors talk about the history of biscuits and how different flours in different parts of the U.S. yield different feels to the biscuits. They offer advice for storing and measuring flour and, as mentioned above, the different purposes baking powder and baking soda fulfill in a recipe. They also dive into different types of fat to use (butter is yummy, but you’ll get a lighter biscuit if you use shortening or lard), and different options for liquid (I’m looking forward to using yogurt in one of the recipes).

Finally, and most importantly, the authors take you through the actual preparation of the dough, and include two types of kneading and eight (!) different ways to shape biscuits, depending on the consistency of the dough and the look you are going for. They also discuss some common ways the home baker can totally screw the pooch. It’s helpful.

They then dive into the recipes, broken out into easy biscuits, traditional biscuits, embellished biscuits (I’m so excited to try the black pepper ones), biscuit relatives (cheese straws!), tomorrow’s biscuits (i.e. what to do with leftovers), and desserts. They also include some recipes for things you want to eat WITH biscuits, like compound butter or chocolate gravy. And they include a recipe for refrigerator biscuits so you can make dough ahead of time and just add liquid and bake up as you have time. There are many I want to try out, which I think is a sign of a pretty good cookbook.

Sunday

24

January 2016

0

COMMENTS

My Life in France

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Three Stars

julia

More like 3.5, but since that isn’t an option, let’s go with three. This is a lovely little book; I just had a challenging time really getting into it. It has everything I love: food, France, humor, even liberal political leanings, Surprisingly though, I had to force myself to finish it, but I am definitely happy that I did.

I believe this book served as the basis for the “Julia” part of the film “Julie and Julia,” where a blogger takes on the recipes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking while we learn what life in France was like for Ms. Julia Child. I think it’s universally agreed that everyone liked the parts of the film that focused on Ms. Child (played by Meryl Streep) and would have preferred a film just focused on that. I agree, and think the book is so rich with description that there is plenty for multiple films.

The book isn’t just limited to Ms. Child’s life in France with her husband Paul Child (who was a cultural ambassador in the Foreign Service); it instead feels more like a memoir focused on the last fifty-plus years of her life (she died just a couple of days before her 92nd birthday). But much of that was spent living in France (also Germany, Norway and Boston). She shares about her time at Le Cordon Bleu, as well as the process behind creating Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume I and Volume II).

The language is vivid, although the book feels a bit slow. However, perhaps that is appropriate. Proper French cooking takes time, and isn’t something one can just dash off quickly; maybe Alex Prud’homme (who assisted his great Aunt in writing this book) recognized this and felt that there was no need to rush the story. If you like France, or food, or have fond memories of Ms. Child’s cooking show, I think this is a sweet book to check out.