Cucina Rustica or Healthy Hedonist Holidays

Cucina Rustica: Simple, Irresistible Recipes in the Rustic Italian Style

Author: Evan Kleiman

Cucina Rustica,"the rustic 'kitchen,"is Italian food at its simplest and freshest. With more than 250 recipes that use readily available ingredients in deliciously creative combinations, La Place and Kleiman offer a style of cooking and eating that's inviting, easy, and elegant.

Entertainment Weekly

In the overcrowed field of irresistible Italian cookbooks, La Place and Kleiman have carved out a niche with food that is fresh, fast, stylish,...

Chicago Tribune

Cucina Rustica proves that you can have style and taste without spending hours in the kitchen. It is a book for today.

New interesting textbook: The Anti Intellectual Presidency or Finding Grace

Healthy Hedonist Holidays: A Year of Multi-Cultural, Vegetarian-Friendly Holiday Feasts

Author: Myra Kornfeld

Holidays are a time for family and friends to gather for mouthwatering meals, but catering to every guest's dietary requirements can be a challenge. The menus in The Healthy Hedonist Holidays will entice every guest -- vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, carnivores, omnivores who can't eat dairy, and people who just love good food -- with delicious, satisfying "flexitarian" meals.

Featuring fresh seasonal ingredients, whole grains, natural sugars, and creative seasonings, these flavorful feasts will leave guests feeling satisfied -- without the guilt that usually accompanies holiday indulgence. Each menu offers both a vegetarian and fish or poultry main course, and a range of side dishes, appetizers, and desserts that can be used in any combination to accommodate individual tastes.

Myra Kornfeld's recipes honor America's diverse cultural and ethnic heritage. Even if you're not of Chinese descent, sit down to Sesame Noodles with Wilted Nappa Cabbage and Crispy Five-Spice Tofu with Black Bean Sauce. The traditional flavors of Thanksgiving take on a southwestern flair with a maple sugar-brined turkey accompanied by Mole Gravy with Dried Plums and Ancho Chiles. The Feast of Eid al Fitr explores the flavors of Turkey and Morocco with Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Onions, Cinnamon, Almonds, and Cherries, and Semolina Walnut Cake with Macerated Oranges. A Passover dinner offers herb-flecked matzo balls in a vibrant green spinach soup and a fish terrine studded with asparagus. Christmas dinner turns to the shores of Italy for inspiration with Flounder Roll-ups with Pistachio Pesto and Squash-Portobello Lasagna.

With sections on ingredients, techniques, and a cooking plan for each menu,The Healthy Hedonist Holidays is a book to use, to give, and to savor, over and over again.

Publishers Weekly

Kornfeld (The Voluptuous Vegan) focuses on holidays reflecting America's multicultural society. For each celebration Kornfeld offers a vegetarian entree, a fish or poultry dish, numerous sides and dessert, all designed "to leave us feeling energetic and nourished after the meal as well as delighted during the experience." The Hanukkah menu turns traditional potato pancakes into light, full-flavored Celery Root-Apple Latkes with Sage. For Kwanzaa, Ethiopian cuisine contributes the spicy warmth of Doro We't (Chicken Stew). Chinese New Year features Sesame Noodles with Wilted Napa Cabbage, with long noodles to bring long life. Dessert for a sumptuous Valentine's Day is Fallen Lemon Ricotta Soufflés, and for a Greek inspired Easter, Baklava Cups with Almond-Vanilla Tapioca Pudding and Strawberry Rhubarb Compote. Kornfeld's directions are easy to follow, and her multiday time lines for each holiday feast help to create a more relaxed experience in the kitchen. These unique and inspiring recipes make it easy to "infuse your food with intention and cook joyfully." (Nov.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Judith Sutton - Library Journal

Here are two different approaches to holidays throughout the year. In their second cookbook, Hometown Recipes for the Holidays, the editors of American Profilemagazine present 250 recipes from readers, chosen from 1500 entries submitted for a recent contest. Organized by course, each recipe is marked with an icon that indicates the appropriate holiday, from New Year's Eve to Flag Day to Christmas (oddly, there are some Passover recipes but none for Hanukkah). The recipes are homey and mostly traditional, with the resulting collection being something of a national community cookbook. American Profileis a weekly supplement distributed through newspapers with a combined circulation of around nine million; buy for demand.

Kornfeld, who teaches at the Natural Gourmet Cooking School in Manhattan, is also the author of The Voluptuous Veganand an earlier Healthy Hedonistcookbook. The holidays in her new book include Ramadan, Kwanzaa, and Chinese New Year, as well as the standards, and her recipes are drawn from a wide variety of cuisines. She provides an extensive menu for each holiday, giving readers a range of choices, and the menus are designed to be "flexitarian," including both a vegetarian main dish and one with fish or poultry. Adventurous cooks whose holiday guests include both vegetarians and meat eaters will find lots of new ideas here. For most collections.

Table of Contents:

Contents

INTRODUCTION 1 Stocks 4 Ingredients 7 Equipment9 Basic Techniques 10 RAMADAN13 THANKSGIVING 29 CHANUKAH53 CHRISTMASEVE 71 CHRISTMAS DAY 91 KWANZAA107 NEW YEAR'S EVE 121 NEW YEAR'S DAY 137 CHINESE NEW YEAR 151 VALENTINE'S DAY 165 ST. PATRICK'S DAY 179 PASSOVER191 EASTER 207 CINCO DE MAYO 223 FOURTH OF JULY 237 Resources251 Glossary of Ingredients 257 Equivalency Tables 259 Index 261Copyright © 2007 by Myra Kornfeld