The Gallery of Regrettable Food
Author: James Lileks
WARNING:
This is not a cookbook. You'll find no tongue-tempting treats within -- unless, of course, you consider Boiled Cow Elbow with Plaid Sauce to be your idea of a tasty meal. No, The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a public service. Learn to identify these dishes. Learn to regard shivering liver molds with suspicion. Learn why curries are a Communist plot to undermine decent, honest American spices. Learn to heed the advice of stern, fictional nutritionists. If you see any of these dishes, please alert the authorities.
Now, the good news: laboratory tests prove that The Gallery of Regrettable Food AMUSES as well as informs. Four out of five doctors recommend this book for its GENEROUS PORTIONS OF HILARITY and ghastly pictures from RETRO COOKBOOKS. You too will look at these products of post-war cuisine and ask: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" It's an affectionate look at the days when starch ruled, pepper was a dangerous spice, and Stuffed Meat with Meat Sauce was considered health food.
Bon appetit!
The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes from the Golden Age of Salt and Starch. It's a wonder anyone in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s gained any weight. It isn't that the food was inedible; it was merely dull. Everything was geared toward a timid palate fearful of spice. It wasn't nonnutritious -- no, between the limp boiled vegetables, fat-choked meat cylinders, and pink whipped Jell-O desserts, you were bound to find a few calories that would drag you into the next day. It's just that the pictures are so hideously unappealing.
Author James Lileks hasmade it his life's work to unearth the worst recipes and food photography from that bygone era and assemble them with hilarious, acerbic commentary: "This is not meat. This is something they scraped out of the air filter from the engines of the Exxon Valdez." It all started when he went home to Fargo and found an ancient recipe book in his mom's cupboard: Specialties of the House, from the North Dakota State Wheat Commission. He never looked back. Now, they're not really recipe books. They're ads for food companies, with every recipe using the company's products, often in unexpected and horrifying ways. There's not a single appetizing dish in the entire collection.
The pictures in the book are ghastly -- the Italian dishes look like a surgeon had a sneezing fit during an operation, and the queasy casseroles look like something on which the janitor dumps sawdust. But you have to enjoy the spirit behind the books -- cheerful postwar perfect housewifery, and folks with the guts to undertake such culinary experiments as stuffing cabbage with hamburger, creating the perfect tongue mousse when you have the fellas over for a pregame nosh, or, best of all, baking peppers with a creamy marshmallow sauce. Alas, too many of these dishes bring back scary childhood memories.
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Ketchup Pistachio Cake. Meat Pie with Meat Crust. Baked Peppers with Creamy Marshmallow Sauce. Daring readers will come face to face with these and worse in this excellent book that's bursting with photographs, recipes, and bits of text and "tips" taken from mainstream American cookbooks of the 1940s-70s, when "the only spice permitted in excess [was] fat." Fascinating and valuable in their own right as cultural artifacts of the era, the entries are irresistible when accompanied by Lileks's hilarious running commentary. Jell-O gets its own chapter, and deservedly so; other sections include "Horrors from the Briny Deep" and "Cooking for a MAN: Tested Recipes to Please HIM!" YAs already familiar with the author's popular Web site "The Institute of Official Cheer" will be thrilled to see that the book is just as wonderfully designed as the site. Those encountering Lileks for the first time are in for an even bigger treat than the "foamy prune whip with cherry gel" found within.-Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Book about: Event Marketing or The Art and Science of Negotiation
Joy of Mixology: The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft
Author: Gary Regan
An original book on the craft of mixology is a rare gem. Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology is such a gem, one whose genius lies in Regan’s breakthrough system for categorizing drinks that helps bartenders—both professionals and amateurs alike—not only to remember drink recipes but also to invent their own.
For example, once you understand that the Margarita is a member of the New Orleans Sour Family, you’ll instantly see that a Kamikaze is just a vodka-based Margarita; a Cosmopolitan follows the same formula, with some cranberry juice thrown in for color. Similarly, the Manhattan and the Rob Roy, both members of the French-Italian family, are variations on the whiskey-vermouth-bitters formula.
In this way Regan brings a whole new understanding to the world of cocktails and how to make them. Not only will you learn how to make standard cocktails, you’ll actually learn to feel your way through making a drink, thereby attaining the skills needed to create concoctions of your own. And as Regan explains methods for mixing drinks, how to choose bartenders’ wares and select spirits and liqueurs, and the origins of many cocktails, you’ll feel as though you’re behind the bar with him, learning from a master. Plus, his charming and detailed history of mixed drinks raises this far above the standard cocktail guide fare.
With more than 350 drink recipes, The Joy of Mixology is the ultimate bar guide. Ground-breaking and authoritative, it’s a must-have for anyone interested in the craft of the cocktail.
Publishers Weekly
As the author of The Bartender's Bible, The Book of Bourbon and New Classic Cocktails, Regan is no stranger to spirits, and in his newest work he sets out to explain "the histories behind various cocktails and perhaps come up with some new theories, if not conclusions, along the way." He accomplishes it all, offering a definitive and entertaining guide to the bartender' trade. Beginning with a solid history of mixed cocktails, Regan then provides an instruction manual for bartenders, asking, "do you have what it takes?" He instructs on everything from bartender etiquette (how to treat a customer who doesn't tip, how to tell someone he's had enough) to the brass tacks of tending bar (how to arrange liquor bottles, how to rim a glass and how to pour out precise measurements). Regan misses nothing, and everything he covers is simply explained; clear illustrations identify the "families" of cocktail glasses, while charts show the "families" of alcohol. It isn't until three-quarters through the book that Regan begins his cocktail recipes. And by that time, readers will finally have the knowledge to prepare each one. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Regan knows booze. He writes a column on the subject for the San Francisco Chronicle, and with his wife, Mardee Haidin Regan, has authored several books on liquors and bartending, including The Bartender's Bible. The duo also maintain the web site ardenspirits.com and publish a newsletter, The Cocktalian Gazette. Regan distinguishes cocktalian bartenders as those "who thoroughly understand the theory behind mixing ingredients to achieve balance in their drinks and marry flavors successfully." His book is a course of study toward this goal, covering history and theory and offering more practical chapters with lessons on professional behavior and ethics, tools and techniques, and, of course, lots of recipes. The charts for drink families are a particularly useful way to learn the ingredients of popular drinks, for instance, how a Mudslide relates to a White Russian. A glossary and bibliography are included. Recommended primarily for those studying the craft, secondarily for home use. For casual home bartenders and the public libraries that serve them, a better choice would be The Bartender's Bible.-Julie James, Forsyth Cty. P.L., Winston-Salem, NC Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
No comments:
Post a Comment