Buy The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa here, one of many top quality African Cooking
books at Chef2Chef. We greatly appreciate your patronage at Chef2Chef and look forward to offering you great products and prices in the future.
Current Page: Cookbook Store : African Cooking : Item 136 of 148
|
|
![]()
|
|
The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa
by Marcus Samuelsson, Heidi Sacko Walters, Gediyon Kifle, and Desmond Tutu
Available from Amazon
$26.40
|
Features
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Wiley September 19, 2006
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0764569112
ISBN-13: 978-0764569111
Product Dimensions:
10.1 x 9.4 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
Product Review
New York City Cookbooks from Wiley
New York is one of the world's great food cities; it is also one of the most culinarily diverse. Check out these great cookbooks from some of the stars of the New York food scene, as they make their great recipes accessible to the home cook.
Fiamma: The Essence of Contemporary Italian Cooking
A contemporary spin on classic Italian cuisine for home cooks from New York’s acclaimed Fiamma restaurant. | At Home with Magnolia: Classic American Recipes from the Owner of Magnolia Bakery
Known for recipes evoking a homemade, uncomplicated era, Allysa Torey, the owner of New York’s renowned Magnolia Bakery, expands her repertoire with 93 great recipes for appetizers, soups, casseroles, main courses, vegetables, and, of course, desserts. | Artisanal Cooking: A Chef Shares His Passion for Handcrafting Great Meals at Home
Terrance Brennan, the chef/owner of two acclaimed restaurants, Picholine and Artisanal, brings to life his passion for simple yet flavorful cuisine in this wonderful cookbook. | Go Fish: Fresh Ideas for American Seafood
Celebrated chef Laurent Tourondel of New York's BLT Fish and BLT Steak, reveals how creating elegant, mouthwatering seafood at home can be marvelously easy–and faster than you might think. | In the Heat of the Kitchen
Gordon Ramsay Makes It Easy
International superstar chef Gordon Ramsey, owner of the forthcoming New York hot spot "The London," reveals all, from techniques and short cuts to clever cooking tips. |
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Born Ethiopian, raised Swedish, and now one of New York City's top chefs, Samuelsson (Aquavit: And the New Scandinavian Cuisine) has written an exotic yet accessible book that will hasten the coming of the African fusion cookery he envisions. His 204 recipes and 258 color photos are enriched with personal and political history; as in his many condiments and sauces, the balance is right. While he stresses the diversity and bounty of the second-largest continent, he repeatedly describes African cuisine as poor people's cooking, crafted with simple tools and necessarily emphasizing starches, vegetables and big flavors. Whether it's rosemary for Honey Bread or turmeric, ginger and cinnamon in his Vegetable Samosas, herbs and spices are always sauteed in oil or tossed in a hot dry pan, to intensify and mellow. He even proposes toasting the cinnamon for the whipped cream accompanying his Ethiopian Chocolate Rum Cake. The recipe for the cake is typical: the batter is prepared in a single bowl, mixed with a spoon, and bakes up moist and gingerbread-like, with great keeping properties. Toasting the cinnamon takes seconds and is impressive in the complexity it delivers. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Reader Reviews
`The Soul of a New Cuisine' by noted New York chef / restauranteur, Marcus Samuelsson, author of the earlier restaurant book, `Aquavit', is a culinary travelogue book, aspiring to the success of similar volumes by writer Naomi Duguid and photographer Jeffrey Alford, `Hot Sour Salty Sweet' on southeast Asia and `Mangoes and Curry Leaves' on the Indian subcontinent. I think Samuelsson gets extra credit for being earnest in his culinary investigation of his homeland and for covering a subject not commonly touched by the great gaggle of culinary scribes; however, the book is a bit weak when compared to Duguid and Alford and to the recent Claudia Roden work, `Arabesque', which covers some of the same territory assayed by Samuelsson. Part of my trouble with the book begins with the title, and this is never a good sign. Either by accident or by misguided intent, the title echos `The Soul of a New Machine', the classic of technological journalism from the 1970s by Tracy Kidder. Not a good echo to be heard from a book on food. The second problem is that the title creates a dissonance with its major theme and subtitle which suggests a discovery of a very old cuisine. Samuelsson would probably rescue his concept by pointing out that many of his recipes are new takes on traditional themes. I'm perfectly OK with that, but he can't really have it both ways and come out with a strongly themed book. While I am not a great fan of Duguid and Alford's travelogue books (unlike their rice and baking books, which are absolutely first rate), they are superb at their crafts of writing and photography. If you are doing premium priced books, then one expects premium quality writing. While Samuelsson's snapshot man, Gediyon is a talented professional, I constantly felt let down by Samuelsson's prose. I could sense the hand of a Wiley copy editor throughout, so there were no major gaffs, but the quality of the writing did not come up to the depth and sincerity of Samuelsson's passion for his `home continent'. I really think Samuelsson would have done much better to limit himself to one part of Africa. His native Ethiopia would have been an excellent subject, as Egypt, the Middle East, and India influenced it over the millennia. Instead, he chooses to cover the entire continent, touching lightly on Western, Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa. Unfortunately, the Africa of the Mediterranean coast, the Madgreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) have been covered by some of the very best modern culinary journalists such as Roden, Paula Wolfert, and Joyce Goldstein. So why spend precious pages on something which has been done so well, when there is a whole sub-Saharan continent to cover? Next to the weak writing, I found the mix of native and `original' material just a bit distracting. My first notice of a dissonance was in the list of equipment. After preaching on the virtues over the humble mortar and pestle over the food processor, Samuelsson recommends using that very European tool, the mandoline to prepare a cuisine as old as the stone age! Other dissonances are when Samuelsson offers up dishes with clearly European or American origins such as corn bread or rouille, a very French Provincial soup garnish. Samuelsson can't seem to leave well enough alone. In place of a simple recipe for salt preserved lemons, a staple of Moroccan cuisine, he offers up an elaborate condiment recipe of limited usefulness. Throughout the book, I encounter small annoyances, as when there is a narrative on Morocco, followed on the next two pages with recipes from Ethiopia. Another irritation (also found in his `Aquavit' book) is illustrating a recipe with a picture that is plainly inconsistent with the recipe. On page 281, for example, there is a picture of standard encased, tubular shaped sausages gracing a recipe for a Boerewors sausage patty recipe based on bacon. This is not the kind of laxity we expect in a premium priced book. And yet, Samuelsson still gets stars for taking us to unfamiliar territory for much of the book. I especially liked the fact that since he says that flatbreads are such an important part of the cuisine, he takes the time to give us a chapter on how to make these flatbreads, especially the Ethiopian injera. I'm just a bit concerned at the brevity of the bread recipes, and you may wish to verify some of the techniques in Duguid and Alford's excellent book on flatbreads where you will find two different injera recipes, both at least twice as detailed as Samuelsson's one recipe. The book is also a great source of unfamiliar spice mixes, condiments, starters, and side dishes. I was particularly attracted to the recipe for `Fresh Cheese with Chives' as it involved actually making the cheese yourself from milk curdled by heat and lemon juice. Even the main dish recipes will offer interesting variations, especially if you are fond of lamb. This is a very personal travelogue and as such, it will resonate with anyone who has roots in Africa. It will also provide a major source of semi-authentic African recipes from all points of the compass. Samuelsson would have made the book far more valuable in this area if he would have included a good bibliography, especially for the sub-Saharan parts of the continent. For foodies in general, a worthy but not a great source of recipes.
Comments (2) |
(Report this)
|
|
|
The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa
by Marcus Samuelsson, Heidi Sacko Walters, Gediyon Kifle, and Desmond Tutu
Available from Amazon
$26.40
|
|
