Posts Tagged ‘recipe central’
Cracking Virginia’s Culinary Code
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, December 4th, 2008
Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley—the so-called “cookbook ladies”—are at it again.
By Warren Rojas
Best of the Best from Virginia Cookbook II
Having already worked their way through all 50 states, these preservationists of regional cuisine returned their attention to our fair Commonwealth and uncovered another 350 recipes for their “Best of the Best from Virginia Cookbook II” to commemorate Virginia’s 400th anniversary.
Their latest edition features signature plates from 75 homegrown cookbooks, including: Hot Virginia Dip (baked beef-and-cheese blend topped with chopped pecans), Smithfield Crab Fritters (savory ham-crab nuggets), Brunswick Stew (a meat-and-veggies standby rumored to have originated in Brunswick County), Out of this World Snicker Salad (candy bars, apples, Cool Whip—WOW!), Drunken Shrimp Overboard (beer-basted, grilled shrimp), Mountain Dew Cake and an 18th-century icing recipe (plumbed from one of Martha Washington’s cookbooks).
The colorful tome includes tidbits about Virginia’s geography (roughly half of all U.S. residents live within a 500-mile radius of Richmond), agriculture (peanuts were first grown commercially in the U.S. in Virginia) and history (Virginia has produced eight presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William H. Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson, more than any other state).
Trivia buffs and amateur cooks should eat it up.
“Best of the Best from Virginia Cookbook II.” Edited by Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley. Quail Ridge Press, 288 pgs., $16.95
(November 2007)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, December 4th, 2008
By Warren Rojas
The River Cottage Meat Book
According to animal rights groups, meat is murder. Renowned chef and author Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, however, seems to believe the real crime is our increasing disconnect from the meat we do eat.
Fearnley-Whittingstall opens the Americanized version of his “River Cottage Meat Book” with a deeply personal “meat manifesto” — a checklist designed to question the origin, handling and overall quality of the meat we consume. He describes the “contract of good husbandry” as the mutually beneficial arrangement that is supposed to be domestication, and skewers industrial farmers for failing to live up to their end of the bargain. (“In the end, cheap meat is a false economy. This is because meat is a food for which quantity is never a substitute for quality.”)
The tome includes graphic shots of proper slaughtering techniques, as well as illustrations indicating where traditional cuts of beef, lamb and pork come from on the animal. The author also shares more than 150 recipes that touch on worldwide influences, including steak and kidney pie, black pudding wontons, pork rillettes and spiced hot-smoked liver. Fearnley-Whittingstall also suggests that lamb is his favorite barbecue fare (“The powerful, slightly gamy taste of lamb collides beautifully with wood or charcoal smoke.”), and even walks you through proper spit roasting procedures.
“The River Cottage Meat Book.” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Ten Speed Press, 544 pages, $40.