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Bedside salivating | page 1, 2
At the same time, I like to know I could make all those hot dogs (or mozzarella, or 20 servings of eggplant terrine) if I wanted to, and it's nice to get a behind- Sweet Celebrations: The Art of Decorating Beautiful Cakes By Sylvia Weinstock
The Making of a Pastry Chef By Andrew MacLauchlan
Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen Produced by the Culinary Institute of America
The French Laundry Cookbook By Thomas Keller
After-Dinner Drinks By Jon Beckmann
The Hemp Cookbook By Ralf Hiener
You'll also need a staff to help with what has to be -- I don't care, I'm just going to go ahead and say it -- the most beautiful cookbook of the millennium: Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook. As everyone in America but me seems to know already, Keller is the chef and owner of the French Laundry, a restaurant in Yountville, Calif., that has to be -- I don't care, I'm just going to go ahead and quote the press release -- "the most exciting dining experience in the United States." To judge by the book, it's true. I've never seen a restaurant cookbook that has made me so eager to visit the restaurant. I suspect this is because these recipes make no concessions to the home cook; short of making a reservation at the French Laundry, you'll never have a chance to taste whether they're as good as they sound. Say you'd like to try Keller's braised short ribs, for instance, which look so delicious you want to lick the photo. To start with, you'll need to soak some marrow bones in ice water for a day, changing the water every six to eight hours. Then you forget about the bones for awhile and, "leaving the silverskin attached," cut a bunch of short ribs against the grain into two pieces; marinate them for a day; clarify the marinade; sauté the meat with some vegetables; add veal and chicken stock and simmer the meat; strain the braising liquid "several times" through a chinois until it leaves no trace of residue; blanch some root vegetables, baby leeks and red and white pearl onions (red pearl onions! I've never even seen them!) and give them individual ice-water baths; wrap each rib in caul fat and brown them; put them in a single layer; bake them in the braising liquid; add the vegetables and some chopped parsley and "meanwhile, cook the bone marrow: This step should be done at the last minute before cooking … If the oil is too hot, the flour will burn before the marrow has a chance to crisp; if the oil is too cold, the marrow will melt before the outside is crisp -- and you'll be left with a ring of flour and no marrow." Home cooks will, of course, have shot themselves somewhere back when they were cutting the tomato diamonds I forgot to mention. But I can't imagine a book that's more delectable to imagine using. If I ever get to Yountville, I'll let you know how it all turns out. "The moment of truth. The tasting. As with wine and cognac, three senses are brought into play: sight, smell, and taste. Ports come in many colors, even those of a single style; whatever the hue, the wine should be bright and uncloudy. The wine is swirled and smelled. Its nose should be rich and full, fruity for reds and nutty for tawnies ... Some of the flavors tasters detect in red ports are blackberry, black cherry, black fruits in general, chocolate, tobacco, and raisins; and in tawnies, coffee, toffee, cashews, almonds, and tropical fruit." Yes! Yes! After-Dinner Drinks, by Jon Beckmann, doesn't even have any recipes -- just page after luxurious page of description, along with photographs so burnished and impressionistic that sometimes you can hardly tell what they are. There's plenty of useful information, too -- useful if you need to know about after-dinner drinks, I mean -- but it manages to slip down as easily as a toffee-flavored almond-raisin blackberry. I don't even like after-dinner drinks, but now I plan to read "After-Dinner Drinks" aloud at my next dinner party. My guests will like it a lot better than that sticky bottle of Kahlúa I keep behind the salad spinner. If classy reading is making you too sleepy, you can always switch to some comic relief in the form of The Hemp Cookbook, by Ralf Hiener. I realize that hemp is the world's new wonder plant. I think it's great that "insulation, wall coatings, and floor coverings" can all be made out of it without unduly scarring the earth. But why do we have to cook with hemp just because it grows from seeds? Why can't we just let it be useful without eating it? Even the book's preface sounds lukewarm about the prospect: "Although spaghetti al dente with plenty of garlic remains an all-time favorite, some of the hemp dishes here will quickly grow on you. A hemp cookbook, then, becomes essential, especially one that, in addition to many other dishes, includes a recipe for Raisin Noodles in Hemp-honey Sauce." Or hemp and chocolate dumplings? I don't like to be uncharitable at Christmastime, but I don't eat acorns and I'm not going to start eating hemp. Luckily Hiener and his three co-authors are German, so they'll never find out how ill-conceived I think their book is unless you tell them.
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