There was never any real question that The Kitchen Diaries would be another brilliant book from Nigel Slater.
And, true to form, it's a collection of scrumptious recipes, somehow written in such a way as to make your mouth genuinely water. However, it is also a thoughtful meditation on how we eat and when: following a year in the Slater kitchen, the book raises questions about seasonality and provenance, but also addresses simpler matters -- such as what exactly is the best thing for supper on a damp Tuesday and what you might be able to create from a leftover risotto.
For food with the wow factor, Shane Osborn's latest offering, Starters, is a very good bet. The dishes in his restaurant are beautifully presented, and so if you want (or need) to impress the mother-in-law this Christmas, then serving up his truffle and white bean soup or duck breast, prune and walnut salad will go some way to doing so. All the recipes are for starters, and come with helpful advice on how to enlarge them into main courses, and include detailed instructions on how to serve them, so you too can put tasty, attractive food on your table.
Italy's most popular cookbook, The Silver Spoon -- actually, more or less the only cookbook in Italy -- is a compilation of recipes more than 50 years old. It is now in its eighth edition, and is often given to Italian brides.
This is more an encyclopedia of Italian food than a cookbook. There's nothing but densely packed recipes (more than 2,000 of them), so if you need to cook brains, there are more than 10 methods to choose from. You'll probably be more interested in the delicious range of pizzas, though, or main courses such as mackerel with sage butter or roast aubergines with ricotta.
I genuinely thought I knew how to poach an egg until I had a look at Eggs by Michel Roux. Did you know, for instance, that you can cook them in up to two days in advance and keep them in cold water in the fridge, reheating them in boiling water when you need them? Michel Roux may be a Michelin-starred chef, but in this book he goes back to basics with simple, straightforward, highly edible recipes. I can now say, with some pride, that I can make proper hollandaise sauce and rather good omelettes. Yum.
Soup is simple, highly nutritious and potentially very tasty. However, Soup Kitchen by Annabel Buckingham and Thomasina Miers is not just a book designed to help you invent something from the vegetables in the fridge on grey January days; it is a collection of excellent recipes donated by leading chefs, introduced by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Try spicy sweet potato soup, or even chocolate soup, and rest safe in the knowledge that 70 percent of the cover price goes to charities for the homeless such as Centrepoint and the Salvation Army.
If you have any plans to diet in the new year, then stay well away from La Dolce Vita by Ursula Ferrigno. If, however, you dismiss all such faddishness and are well-prepared to dip your hand back in the biscuit tin after the festivities, then this is the book for you. Ferrigno has collated her favorite sweet recipes from Italy to great effect -- so if you need an extravagant cake for a party, or you simply want to know quite how you might go about bottling fruit, then look no further. A good book to give as a present -- the recipient will simply have to invite you round for tea and cakes.
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
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