Tag Archives: books

Modernist Cuisine

John | 16 November, 2011 - 11:53 pm

Today was my birthday.  I spent it quietly doing the mid-week wash, and answering phone calls from early in the morning to late evening. It was most enjoyable, and great to hear from and chat to so many dear friends. I also had several very welcome emails. One of the things many friends asked me was whether I had treated or indulged myself in any way, and the answer was no.  To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted.  Although I did reply to one friend that if I go to Chadstone shopping centre tomorrow I’ll buy a tin of Ortiz tuna ($29.95) as a treat.

So it’s rather strange that tonight I got an email from Amazon advertising several cooking books. I’ve always been a huge fan of cooking books, to read and drool over rather than cook recipes. I always swear that I’ll never buy another cooking book, until I see the next one I can’t resist.

The first book I looked at tonight in the Amazon email was The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook: 2,000 Recipes from 20 Years of America’s Most Trusted Cooking Magazine [Hardcover]. You can look inside it here.

It’s quite a big book at 928 pages, and weighs 4.6 lbs. I like the look of this book as Cook’s Illustrated recipes work well, and in this book it explains why the recipes work.  I like that type of explanation.  In a quick browse tonight I was interested to read that I cut onions the wrong way for caramelizing. I cut them around the equator, so to speak, but they should be cut from pole to pole.  However, it is an American book with many recipes for foods we just don’t eat here.

The second cookbook I looked at is the reason for this post.  I was gobsmacked when I read about it.  Whereas the Cook’s Illustrated book weighs 4.6 lbs, the ink alone in the second book weighs about 4 lbs.  The whole book (in 6 volumes) weighs 40 lbs.  For me, that’s a nightmare.  I dislike handling big heavy books.  Perhaps it’s an age thing, as I have a bit of arthritis in my hands.

The book is called Modernist Cuisine.   I’m not sure it’s a book I’d really like, or find useful.  It seems to have many sections devoted to cooking with professional equipment and techniques, such as sous vide equipment, not available to home cooks.  As mentioned above, I’m not a fan of big and heavy books,  and with this book, the price alone is enough to eliminate any interest – $625 full price or $451,59 on Amazon.com.   However, it is a book with spectacular photography or art work, like the image above, and I thought it worth making a post about it, to bring the book to your attention.

The book has a website at http://modernistcuisine.com/ where you can read more about the book, download a PDF file and a 4Mb brochure.   The website also has a blog and lots of links, including to video, etc.  The Reviews page is full of rave reviews.

The following is a Vimeo video promoting the book.

Warning:  In basic terms, sous vide cooking involves cooking slowly at temperatures below the boiling point of water and at the temperature at which you plan to eat the food.  One needs to be aware of the health risks when cooking at temperatures which might not kill all the bacteria.

 

 

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Book shops and Music stores

John | 25 July, 2011 - 12:41 am

It will be two years this coming Thursday since I posted my first blog using WordPress and a theme, and a MySQL database to this blog part of my main website.  My first post was about my need to study up on using WordPress.  Borders at Chadstone didn’t have the two books I wanted, so I planned to go into the Melbourne CBD next day to buy them at McGills technical bookshop (their website confirmed they had the books in stock).  My second post next evening registered my shock at finding that McGills was a gutted shell.  They had ceased business in Melbourne.  But at least I still had Borders, Angus & Robertson and Reader’s Feast.

Two years later:  Borders in Australia has been in liquidation since earlier this year, and the last remaining stores closed last weekend.  That’s sad.  I used to visit their store at Chadstone shopping centre every few weeks, and I also shopped from time to time at the Prahran/SouthYarra, Camberwell and Melbourne Central (pictured above and in the feature post) stores.  Angus & Robertson bookshops were part of the same group, and their stores have closed or are closing.  Sadly, the same for goes for Reader’s Feast in Melbourne, which always seemed to have something personal about the service and feel of the store.

I find it sad, as I enjoyed browsing these stores, and often made purchases on the spot when I saw a book I liked.  Impulse purchases.  I also made all my planned purchases from them, if they had the books I wanted in stock.  But there’s the rub.  If they didn’t have the book I wanted in stock, it would take too long for delivery if I ordered from a local store.  It was much faster (and often cheaper) to order the book from Amazon.com.

I regret the passing of these big bookshops, but at least there are still some great local bookshops which are worth exploring.  In my neck of the woods there is the Stonnington Book Shop, the only bookshop I’ve ever encountered which sells the Oxford English Dictionary and had it stock.   This dictionary once cost thousands of dollars, but now sells for $995.   I’d buy it in a flash, but unfortunately my unit is too small to cope with the 20 volume set with its 22,000 pages.  And my eyesight isn’t good enough to comfortably read with the small print needed to fit this work into only 20 volumes.

Benn’s Books in Bentleigh is a small bookshop compared to the big city stores, but I always visit it when I go to Bentleigh, and often enter with dread that it will have some new cooking book that I can’t resist.  Readings have a store in Malvern, not far from the Stonnington Book Shop.  Readings stores (in several suburbs) sell book, CDs and DVDs, with an emphasis on classical.  I have often bought from them over the years.

The collapse and subsequent closure of Borders and Angus & Robertson “bricks and mortar” book stores in Australia – both owned by REDgroup Retail – has been attributed to the rise of internet book sales and constrained consumer spending.

It seems to me that the explanation for the eventual failure of the bookstores ignores a simple question, which is:  Why would people in Australia order books from online stores based in the USA and the UK, pay overseas shipping costs, then wait weeks for delivery, instead of buying from a local store?

In my case, I far preferred to buy a book locally as I could browse it carefully and decide whether I really wanted it.  And quite often I’d see books that I had no intention of buying when I entered the store, and perhaps had never heard of, but as soon as I saw and browsed the book, I knew I had to have it and bought it straight away.

However, particular books I wanted (from browsing Amazon) were not always available in local bookshops.  In that case it was not only faster, but surer, to  order from Amazon in the USA, than to order from an Australian store.

And then it comes to pricing.  The book shown on the left is the Oxford Paravia Italian Dictionary, Third Edition.   It’s a big heavy book of some 2,800 pages.

Borders never did stock the Third edition, but the Second Edition was priced at A$158, which might seem a reasonable price for such a big and prestigious work.  The only problem is that at Amazon.com the current price of the Third Edition is $35.54.  In July a year ago, when the Third Edition was released in the UK, I bought it from Amazon UK for $54,91 including shipping costs.  No wonder I chose to buy online from overseas (and the product was not due for release in Australia until September.

However, apart from all the above, I’ve come to find that the prices of online purchases from overseas stores can vary widely.

The CD  shown on the left, the 1958 recording of The Barber of Seville with Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi, with the London Philharmonia Orchestra and chorus, is a classic.  The album costs $53.99 on iTunes, and $55.70 at Amazon.com.  One might expect it to be expensive because it’s a classic EMI recording from 1957, produced by Walter Legge, and re-mastered in 1986.

 

The remastered recording is available on EMI but has also been released by Brilliant Classics as part of their opera collection, and I ordered a copy from Presto Classical, in the UK, for A$9.00, on Friday 15 July.  It was despatched on Monday 18th and was delivered to my front porch in Melbourne on Friday 22 July.  The CD cover is shown on the right.

The opera is best known for non-opera fans for the Overture and the aria Funiculi funicula.

I’m now providing three tracks from the CD which show that there is more to love about this opera than the well known songs.

Note that there is a volume control on the left of the audio links below.

The first is an exquisite duet starring Maria Callas and Titto Gobbi:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The second is a brilliant comic duet:

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I’ve covered books and CDs, now to DVDs. I’ve chosen The Berlin Concert – a video recording of the concert in Berlin on 7 July 2006 with Rolando Villazón, Plácido Domingo, and Anna Netrebko. (By the way, the comma after Domingo and before “and” is probably not what you were taught at school.  It’s known as the Oxford comma.)

Readings currently don’t have it in stock in any of their six stores in Melbourne.  Their price is $29.99 but who knows how long it would take to get in stock if I ordered it. Discurio in the city have the DVD in stock.  Their price is $40.  Presto Classical sell it for A21.25 plus airmail postage (A$4.05 for the first item and A$2.00 for each additional item).  Guess where I’ll buy my copy?

The next song is sung in German.  I find it interesting to follow the subtitles to hear how the words are pronounced.

Totally unrelated is another video from Presto Classical:

By the way, when I embed a YouTube video in my website, I have a choice as to what you will see when the video ends.  I choose to give you various options – to replay the video, got to YouTube, or view several related videos.

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Grand Pianos – 2

John | 23 January, 2011 - 12:29 am

Life’s synchronicities have long amazed, delighted or bemused me, depending on the circumstances.  Take this week for example.  On Wednesday night, by chance I decided to have a look at the NPR website which I haven’t visited for a while, to see if it featured any interesting classical recordings to listen to (the site is a very good source of interesting videos and recordings of all types of music, stage plays etc).  What grabbed my attention on the NPR classical music page was an article titled Musical Innovation: A Grander Grand Piano.  I was totally fascinated and it lead to the post I wrote Wednesday night, and published in the early hours of  Thursday 20th, about the wonderful Stuart & Sons pianos.

So it bemused me that in the very beginning of my interest in Stuart pianos, that on Friday morning the parcel I’d ordered weeks ago from Amazon in the US should arrive –  1 DVD and 2 books about the making of Steinway pianos, and 1 book about the history of Steinway & Sons (the business and the family).

The history of the business might not seem that it could be all that interesting, but the story covers the difficulties encountered trying to run a business located in New York City during the American Civil War, and a business located in the USA and Germany during World War I and the USA and Nazi Germany in World War II.  During WWII, the business found itself making bed cots and rifle butts for the army in Germany, and wooden glider aircraft for the US.   But perhaps what most aroused my interest in reading the book is the following sample I read on Amazon with its Look Inside feature.  It was talking about the 1860′s and the decision to move from New York City to Queens, because of strikers:

That struck me because it was so utterly different to the impression I got of the happy and devoted Steinway employees of today, who are recognised as craftsmen, from watching the Note By Note video back in 2009.  You can see a 2 minute preview of Note By Note on my main website here.  There is also more to see on that page, including an 8 minute silent movie filmed in 1929 about making a Steinway grand piano.

My main website Pianos page was created on 30 June 2009, and I haven’t added to it since.  So what re-awakened my interest and caused me to order those books and the DVD from Amazon?

It was an email that my friend Greg, in Brisbane, sent to me at the beginning of the year with a link to a video that he had recorded, edited and published to YouTube.

The video was recorded in deference to the late Nancy Weir (Australian pianist with her Wikipedia bio here), and concerns the restoration of her Steinway.

At the end of the restoration of the late Nancy Weir’s piano, Dr. Robert Keane, an ex student and friend, had the opportunity to say goodbye before it moved to its new home.  That is what this video is about.

Please take the time to relax for 14 minutes to watch and listen very attentively to the video. It’s a truly beautiful experience.

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The Flavor Bible

John | 18 December, 2010 - 8:14 pm

One of the books I bought Amazon this year was The Flavor Bible (yes, American spelling of flavour).  The best way I could describe this book in my own words is that it is a very comprehensive reference of foods, herbs, spices, oils, nuts, with each entry having a list of what goes well with them.

The photo above (taken with a NEX-5 and kit lens) is the salad I made to today, to use up one of two witlofs I bought this week.  Witlof is also known as chicory, endive and Belgian endive.  The most used name in Australia is witlof, and it’s related to radicchio.  Witlof can be eaten raw, and is apparently a treat when braised correctly (says Stephanie Alexander in her epic 1,100 page book The Cook’s Companion).

In the past, I’ve always used witlof in a salad, in place of lettuce or other salad greens, and I’ve done nothing special for it.  But today I decided to look up The Flavor Bible to find what goes well with er, … ENDIVE (the name for witlof used in the book).  There was a long list of items, and from it I chose capers, horseradish, olive oil and walnuts (well, I used walnut oil).  For the horseradish (difficult to find the real thing) I used Heinz Epicure Horseradish.  It comes in a small 150gm glass jar.  For the olive oil, I chose Woolworths Select Australian Extra Virgin Olive Oil – which is one of the best olive oils at the supermarket.  Also, I added balsamic vinegar. The rest of the lunch was Primo BBQ ham, vine ripened tomato and red onion.

The result was a delightful lunch with superb favours that worked wonderfully together.  Once again The Flavor Bible got it right.

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New iPhone Apps

John | 7 June, 2010 - 11:47 pm

Today is a great day to write about some iPhone apps, because Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, announced the iPhone 4 today.  It’s a sensational update, and the good news is that the new iOS 4 software will be a free update for 3G and 3GS iPhones.

It might seem a little odd, or at least conflicting, that I’m writing about the new iPhone apps I bought last Saturday night, on my blog pages, when I have a page dedicated to iPhone apps on my home website.  The difference is that in my blog posts I mostly write about current or recent happenings and thoughts, such as the purchase of two new iPhone apps a few days ago.  By contrast, in the iPhone Apps page on my home website, I’ve mostly written about apps after I’ve used them for many months and find them invaluable, or especially interesting (such as the Remote control for iTunes on the computer).

The thumbnail image for this post is a scan of the front cover of the Mark Bittman book “How to Cook Everything” which I’ve had since it was first published in 1998.  It’s a big book – 944 pages.

Mark Bittman is a columnist for The New York Times who writes under the heading of “The Minimalist.”  You can read about him on his blog at http://markbittman.com.

In the past year or so when I’ve seen his book on the shelves at Borders and other bookshops I’d noticed that the cover was now red instead of yellow, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.

Well, not until last Saturday night, when I discovered that the Mark Bittman book is available as an app on the iPhone.

It’s not the yellow cover book that I bought in 1998.  It’s the 2008 completely revised 10th Anniversary 2nd edition, with a red cover – and 1056 pages.  There are whole chapters of the 1998 book that are not in the 2008 book – such as the chapter about Beverages and other drinks.

You can read more about Mark Bittman at the New York Times website at

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/mark_bittman/index.html

* trying recipes

* app features such as search, filters and shopping list

The iPhone app is great and a delight to use, and it has features that the books can’t have, such as searches with filtering, and a built-in timer in the recipes.  When the recipe calls for you to heat the frypan for one minute, you click on the time in the recipe,  and up comes a timer set for 1 minute.  The timer alarm sound is worth the price of admission.  A very useful feature is that if you’d like to cook a recipe that sounds tempting, you can click on an icon to add its ingredients to a shopping list.

So far I’ve tried three recipes.  One was for fried eggs, which I’ve been cooking for 45 years, but Mark Bittman’s way of doing it was different to the way I’ve always fried eggs in the past.  It’s such a simple dish, and I’ve always loved bacon and eggs for breakfast since I was a child (when Mum did the cooking).  But in my retirement I’ve only cooked bacon and eggs a few times a year because it has always given me indigestion for a few hours and has tended to ruin my day.  I always vow never to have it again for breakfast, but months later I forget the discomfort and try it again.  Perhaps it’s the way I’ve fried the eggs, so I’ll try it again one day using the Mark Bittman method, as the result of my first trial was very pleasing and tasty.

The second iPhone app I bought last Saturday was Things.  It’s a task manager with a difference.  It’s also a project manager, in which your tasks can be broken down into all the steps needed to implement the project.  Things is the iPhone app of the week on the iTunes App Store this week.  However, it’s the type of app where I wouldn’t post a review until I’ve been using it for many months to see if I’ve found it genuinely useful – or whether I don’t bother looking at it and have, in effect, I’ve stopped using it.  For example, MS Outlook has a To Do list section which I entered all my task into last year – and this week was the first time this year that I looked at it.

Tonight I used my Kuhn Rikon  frypan pressure cooker to cook rice in 4 minutes, and then use it to cook stir fry beef and vegetables.  It’s so convenient and time saving.  It reminds me that one day I must write a blog post about pressure cooking.  Perhaps I should make a note about it in Things.  [superemotions file="icon_smile.gif" title="Smile"]

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Learning Italian 8

John | 17 May, 2010 - 12:13 am

The thumbnail picture for this post on my blog home page is a beautiful view of Florence at sunset.  I’ve never been to Italy, but I did fly over it on my way home from London in 1993.  And in my childhood, from age 5 to 8, I grew up in Mount Gambier, South Australia, with an Italian prisoner of war in our home.  His official job was as a labourer on our 5 acre block of land, of which about 3 acres were devoted to all kinds of vegetables, a glass house for tomatoes, a passionfruit trellis, a 100 foot long bean and pea trellis, sand bed for asparagus, a maize patch, fruit trees, a big walnut tree and fowls.  The other 2 acres were a paddock for a cow or two.  Tony was treated like a member of our family, and to me was a friend and company.  We all liked him, as did our family friends.

The following photo shows another admired Italian – the beautiful 2010 Maserati Quattroporte.  I find it more exciting than a Ferrari.

I have many reasons to want to see how much of the Italian language I can pick up this year.  But early last week it crossed my mind that as we grow closer to the half year mark, I haven’t made all that much progress.  I forget most of the words I learn about an hour after learning them (not just the Italian word, but even the English word that I’ve forgotten the Italian word for).  I can’t yet construct even a simple sentence in Italian.  And I’m still struggling with the basic pronunciation of Italian words because of the inconsistent explanations in all the sources at my disposal.

This week I went into the city CBD for the first time this year, and as fate would have it, twice.  I took this opportunity to visit the Foreign Language Bookshop in Collins Street where I became interested in two books on my first visit.  I ended up buying them on my second visit, after researching their reviews on Amazon.

It did cross my mind that I already had enough books and iPhone apps about learning Italian, and I didn’t need any more.   But these two books each had a different “teach yourself” approach that appealed to me.

As I mentioned above, my main concern has always been pronunciation, as I’ve noticed many variations in my different books when it comes to vowels.  And quite often the words spoken by supposedly native Italian speakers in my iPhone apps have confused me even more.

One of the new books explains where your tongue should be when pronouncing vowels and consonants.  That’s taken me back to primary school days when one of the subjects was English.

The other book talks about language similarities on page 1, and in doing so, it struck a chord with me for the first time, when I realised that there is often a pattern between English and Italian words that would help me understand the Italian words in print (but not in speech, as the pronunciation is greatly differently).

These patterns are helping me to remember many words, such as the Italian for “slowly” which I first learned in January.  I’ve tried to recall it many times over the past four months (to use in the phrase “please speak slowly”).  I’ve looked it up every time, but I’ve never been able to remember it afterwards, even at the beginning of last week.  But now I’ll remember it always, as I’ve known the Italian for “slow” since the age of eight in my pianoforte and music studies.  Lento.

The pattern to turn the adjective “slow” into the adverb “slowly” is to add “mente” to the end of the Italian word.  Lento becomes Lentamente.  The o changes to an a,  but that doesn’t matter as it reminds me of the actual word.

Correct pronunciation of Italian remains my greatest stumbling block, as I want to get this sorted out before I proceed further.  But in the past few days I’ve now begun to wonder if this is really as far as I want to go.  I get a great kick out of my new found ability to pronounce all Italian words reasonably well, even if I have no idea what they mean.

I’ll be very surprised if I’m ever able to speak or understand spoken Italian, but I’ve totally enjoyed my studies so far.  However, I’m currently thinking that my real interest is not in learning Italian to be able to converse in Italian, but to get an understanding of another language.  I’ve found that this fascinates me.

So, I’m now thinking of doing some basic German and French studies to get a bit of an inkling into those languages and their pronunciation.  I’d like to be able to pronounce German and French words better than I can now.

I’ve seen a book on Amazon about French pronunciation that I’ll keep a lookout for in local bookshops, as it goes very deeply into pronunciation, which I expect applies to all languages.  It explains the complexities of pronunciation whereby the mouth and tongue change shape and position for, say,  c or k, which have the same sound, in expectation of what follows in say, cool and keel.

I learned a new Italian word today – barista.  And I was surprised to discover that in Italian it means barman (in the case of a male) or barmaid (in the case of a female).  The plural has a different end vowel in the case of males and females  (mixed groups take the male plural ending).  Oh dear.  I know a qualified barista who would be horrified to be told that it only means barman in Italian.

This send me looking up barista in English dictionaries.  The big Shorter Oxford defines it as someone who serves coffee.   The big American Heritage does not list the word.  The Australian Oxford defines it as someone who makes coffee (especially espresso) professionally.

The 20 volume OED (Oxford English Dictionary) has the following entry:

barista, n.
Brit. /ba“ri;st@/, /b@“rIst@/, U.S. /bA“rist@/, /b@“rIst@/  Plural baristas, (rare) bariste, (irreg.) baristes.  [< Italian barìsta (plural barìste; 1939–40) < bar (see bar n.1 28a) + -ista -ist.]

A bartender in an Italian or Italian-style bar. Also spec. (orig. U.S.): a person who makes and serves coffee in a coffee bar (the more frequent sense in English).
In spec. sense, a proprietary name in the United Kingdom.

1982 P. Hofman Rome, Sweet Tempestuous Life 24 A good barista can simultaneously keep an eye on the coffee oozing from the espresso machine into a battery of cups, pour vermouth and bitters+and discuss the miserable showing of the Lazio soccer team. 1988 Boston Globe (Nexis) 13 Dec. 61 A feisty but cordial competitor to the larger caffeine chains the [Boston Coffee] Exchange has unfurled a help-wanted poster titled ‘Learn to be a coffee barista’. 1990 Atlantic Nov. 157/2 This ritual unites all the baristas in Italy. But not everyone accomplishes the layer of light-colored crema, or foam, that is the pride of an expert espresso-maker. 1999 Dominion (Wellington, N.Z.) (Nexis) 24 Feb. (Business section) 24 New bariste undertake an intensive training programme which covers the philosophy, history, and science of coffee, and the psychology of service. 2001 Times 7 Mar. ii. 5/1 The key to a good espresso lies in the barista+and whether he or she cares enough to do it right.
Posted in General, Italian, Learning | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments