Lunch in Paris

Food Porn: ** Educational: * Entertain: **** Overall: *** Style: Romantic Biography This book by American journalist Elizabeth Bard recounts the story of her love affair with Paris set in parallel with her budding love for Gwendal a quirky Frenchman. Elizabeth is a student of art and a writer who has spent most of her…

Kitchen Confidential

Food Porn: * Educational: * Entertain: **** Overall: **** Style: Biography This book has been reviewed countless times since it came out in 2008. It is one of the books if not THE book that started the trend of biographies related to food, chefs and professional kitchens.  Amazon shows, as of this writing, 3445 reviews…

Delancey

Food Porn: ** Educational: ** Entertaining: *** Overall: *** I was brought to this book via a well known blog that was popular a few years ago. Orangette was written by Molly one of the pioneers of food blogging. I won’t review the blog here but will say that it was entertaining enough to make…

The story of sushi…

Food Porn: ***Educational: ****Entertain: ****Overall:****   I am struggling with describing this book. It is on the one hand an easy read. The book follows Kate and her class mates attending the sushi academy’s intensive 12 weeks class serving to help divide the book into 8 chapters. On the other hand, with many descriptions of…

BWJ – Best Ever Brownies

  Are these the best ever brownie? Well they’re really good brownies, a bit fussy but not difficult to make. However, maybe they are the best for some but not for me.  According to the boys, these are in the top 5 best brownies I’ve ever made so there is a chance they’ll be made…

BWJ – Buttermilk Crumb Muffins

  This makes a large batch of muffins and for some reason no one at home has been eating any baked goods unless it’s chocolate cake or apple crumble. I was therefore really glad for the excuse to bake the entire batch of these and also do a nice thing for someone at work. During the…

BWJ – Bagels

Squishy, slightly mishapen but bagels all the same. I wasn’t really sure about this bagel recipe since I really like Peter Reinharts version but with a few modifications they came out really good. What modifications you say? Well I changed the sugar to Malt Syrup in both the dough and the water bath. I also…

BWJ – Cranberry Walnut Pumpkin Loaf

Let me get this out-of-the-way now, I’m disappointed with this one. I haven’t loved every recipe from the book but generally have been successful technically at making the recipes. Not so for this loaf. I’m not sure where I went wrong exactly, maybe I shouldn’t have used the proofing feature of my oven to warm…

BWJ – Whole wheat bread

So yummy, this was one of the best whole wheat loaves I’ve made. It was good and easy to make as long as you followed the instructions. Only one note, somehow it looked like there was too much flour. I had to add a bit of water to get the correct consistency. OK maybe another,…

BWJ – Nectarine upside-down chiffon cake

  Best cake in a while, this was so good I am sure to repeat it if only just for the cake itself. I think I’d like to try banane next time with some coconut instead of almonds. Only oddity was the fact that the cake took quite a bit of time longer to cook…