Consider these two recently released books for summer reading and cooking.
Modern Asian Kitchen—Essential and Easy Recipes for Ramen, Dumplings, Dim Sum, Stir-Fries, Rice Bowls, Pho, Bibimbaps, and More by Kat Lieu
Published by The Harvard Common Press.
Cover of Modern Asian Kitchen
A lay reader unfamiliar with Asian cuisine may think they have entered the racy fictional section of a bookstore when they peruse selected recipe titles from this book: Basic Onigiri Adventure, Sexy Sizzling Sisig, Bibimbap Your Way, DIY Halo-Halo Adventure. Other recipe titles can instead tap into anyone’s multifaceted personal imagination of hunger: Mouthwatering Tonkatsu, Blistered Yuzu Shoyu Shishito Peppers, Hong Kong Bubble Waffles, Ah Ma’s Green Papaya salad.
Modern Asian Kitchen is a linguistically engaging book as well as a mouth-watering collection of diversely assembled dishes with influences from several regions/countries. The book is part of the Modern Asian series and appeals viscerally—via personal stories, as well as technically—via specific and practical cooking instructions, as well as visually—via photographs that show ‘how it’s done,’ such as managing a wok, setting up a steamer or assembling dishes such as siu mai.
Author Kat Lieu learned cooking from sources that include her Cantonese grandparents, and was influenced by her father—who grew up in Hanoi and took her to Vietnamese restaurants in Brooklyn, as well as by her mother—who cherishes Korean cuisine.
Three column page layouts are consistent and attractive and include photographs, ingredients, recipe steps. Each recipe is headed by a a colored heading category such as vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free. Measurements are provided in both American/Imperial units (e.g. cups, tablespoons, ounces) as well as Metric/International (milliliters, grams). Chapter lead pages begin with a quotation—including from well-known chefs and entertainers in the U.S. (Anthony Bourdain, Julia Child, Mitch Hedberg) as well as American/Asian personalities (Deng Ming-Dao) and historical figures (Geoffrey Chaucer).
The book embraces multiple Asian cultures and is colorful, engaging, instructional and inspiring.
Author Kat Lieu
Italy In A Wineglass—The Story of Italy Through its Wines, by Marc Millon.
Published by Melville House.
Marc Millon, residing in Devon in the UK, has written over a dozen books on food, wine and travel and specializes in Italian wines. He also leads gastronomic tours inside of Italy and France.
His latest book includes twenty-five chapters that span millennia of Italian history—including the eras of Etruscans, Romans, Dark Ages, Renaissance and World Wars—and is a joy to those who enjoy history as well as wine.
The first sentence lays out the basic but fundamental premise regarding this peninsula: “The story of Italy has been entwined, since its earliest days, with the story of wine.”
Consider the Etruscans, a mysterious people whose culture and civilization thrived between the eighth and fifth century BCE before it was eclipsed by that of the Romans. Some of their kiln fired and specialized bucchero pottery today shows images of decadent and ribald social gatherings, including scenes that display several type of containers used for storing and drinking wine. Millon tells of the attractive hilltop city of Orvieto, known as Velzna by Etruscans (it was adjacent to the site of the annual ‘fanum voltumnae’ gathering where leaders from the core league of twelve Etruscan cities gathered for sport, trade and festivals). The author describes how Etruscan residents of Orvieto carved through volcanic tufa stone to create cooled and multi storied locations where they made wine—passing juice via gravity from level to level for fermentation and then storage.
Cover of Italy in a Wineglass by Marc Millon
The book weaves compelling history with relevant wine associations. For example, Pellegrino Artusi, a cloth merchant who traveled throughout Italy and dined often at simple family run restaurants, was so enthralled by the quality of foods he ate that he asked women in these kitchens to provide him with recipes, which he later assembled into a collection and self-published as a cookbook. Eventually, sales took off and Artusi’s work became not only a renowned cookbook but also helped unify the language of the still disparate regions within what is now the Italian peninsula. The title of his book, translated as Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, is still on sale and renowned not only for its recipes, but for Artusi’s colorful stories.
Millon’s book covers regions throughout Italy, including its islands.
In 1869 the island of Gorgona off the coast of Tuscany in the Ligurian Sea became a penal colony. It is still so today. However, inmates here also work outdoors on a prison farm, growing grapes and producing an actually stellar wine made from a blend of Vermentino and Ansonica grapes. I visited the island some years ago with Lamberto Frescobaldi from the renowned winemaking family that now produces Gorgona’s wine, and that also pays inmates the same wage as non-inmates would receive on the mainland working in similar positions. The result? Many of the incarcerated, once freed, are able to purchase vehicles and rent decent apartments—reducing the rate of recidivism dramatically. Millon provides engaging factual context about Gorgona island in this chapter, and ends it—as he does all other chapters—by discussing specific wines.
Italy in A Wineglass includes an index of wines by region, a bibliography and a directory of wine producers. The book educates and entertains as it takes readers touring throughout the peninsula. Like the history and wine culture of Italy, the book is diverse, multilayered and attractive. Recommended for those who love Italian wines, history and travel.
