Ungarnished Truth or From the Earth to the Table

Ungarnished Truth: A Memoir of the Pillsbury Bake-Off

Author: Ellie Mathews

A woman, a chicken, and a million-dollar adventure in the heartland of America's competitive cooking culture.

When Ellie Mathews entered her recipe for Salsa Couscous Chicken-eight chicken thighs cooked in Old El Paso salsa-in the grandma of all cooking contests, the Pillsbury Bake-Off, she never imagined she'd win the grand prize. Immediately after Alex Trebek announced that her dish had won a million dollars, this amateur cook was thrown into the limelight. She soon found herself booked on Oprah-and even photographed for the New York Times in a vest made of ostrich feathers-as the reigning queen of chickendom, the Pillsbury "It Girl" of the moment.

With a dash of self-deprecating humor and a pinch of biting social commentary, Ellie Mathews takes readers with her on her roller coaster ride to the top of the food chain as the Pillsbury prizewinner. As a cooking contest insider, she goes behind the counter and beyond the aprons and oven mitts to reveal a fascinating slice of Americana.

Publishers Weekly

In this blasé memoir, Seattle author Mathews (Ambassador to the Penguins) recounts her journey from kitchen amateur to winner of the million-dollar 1998 Pillsbury Bake-Off. Mathews, a married graphic designer, had been halfheartedly entering and winning recipe contests since 1980, such as one for REI recreational equipment, in which she had to combine packets of freeze-dried food into a semblance of a meal, or the state Beef Cook-Off, where she placed second for Siberian Beef. However, the Pillsbury Bake-Off is the mother of all recipe competitions, and Mathews cannily reworked a tried-and-true halibut recipe using the company's Old El Paso salsa and some chicken thighs and came up with the reliable Salsa Couscous Chicken. Summoned to Orlando, Fla., where the finalists are royally and publicly pampered, Mathews dutifully re-created her "30-Minute Main Dish" and was stunned to be singled out by host Alex Trebek as the winner of $1 million. Her memoir has a curiously unimpassioned quality, padded with details about visiting Disney World with the other contestants, choosing presentable outfits and becoming a grandmother. (Mar.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

How a few pounds of chicken and a jar of Old El Paso salsa changed one family's life. Writer/software designer Mathews (The Linden Tree, 2007) and husband Carl work together, travel together and, most importantly, eat together. When Mathews was bitten by the cooking bug, rather than go off half-cocked and open a restaurant, she entered a cooking contest. One competition led to another, and she soon was in the thick of the Pillsbury Bake-Off, at which she took first prize with her recipe for Salsa Couscous Chicken. Not only did the victory earn Mathews a million-dollar prize, but she briefly became a minor celebrity, appearing on Oprah, The Rosie O'Donnell Show and in the New York Times. Thanks to this small, unprepossessing book, her 15 minutes of fame isn't up quite yet. Enthusiastic and sharp but grounded in reality (unlike some competitive cookers), the author comes off here as a less-than-gourmet version of Julie Powell (Julie & Julia, 2005). Like Powell, Mathews is sweet and self-deprecating-at one point, she notes, "When I present something I've cooked, I tend to apologize"-but her demeanor masks true seriousness of purpose. Look past the casual attitude and the cutesy one-liners, and you realize that she was genuinely proud of her victory, so much so that she spends much of the book's first half explaining the history and extolling the virtues of the Bake-Off. Readers seeking useful recipes or food-industry dirt would be better served checking out something by Mario Batali or Anthony Bourdain, but those looking for a nice little story about how eight chicken thighs can earn you seven figures, look no further. The Rachael Ray set will eat up Mathews's pleasantly fluffy tale ofculinary triumph.

Books about: Against Us or Beyond the Body Farm

From the Earth to the Table: John Ash's Wine Country Cuisine

Author: John Ash

This beloved cookbook is now available in a handsome paperback edition. Completely revised and updated with 45 all-new recipes, each delicious dish reflects acclaimed chef John Ash's commitment to sustainable agriculture and his love of fresh fruits and vegetables. More than 300 recipes, inspired by the California Wine Country featuring soups, salads, pastas, pizza, risottos, poultry, fish, meats, vegetarian courses, desserts, breads, and more include wine recommendations and abundant tips on how to incorporate everything from chipotle chiles to persimmons into delectable meals. This is a time-honored classic, sure to continue enticing cooks for years to come.

Publishers Weekly

Ash, a noted Northern California restaurateur (his Santa Rosa restaurant bears his name) and author (he collaborated with Goldstein on American Game Cooking) is immersed in the wine-country gestalt, according to which dinner-and what we drink with it-is a way of life. A passionate advocate of cooks knowing where, when and how their food is grown and raised, he urges readers to eat ``seasonally and locally.'' Instead of using tasteless tomatoes in a salad in December, he suggests the likes of Warm Red Cabbage Salad with Pancetta and California Goat Cheese. Along with imaginative salads (Fresh Corn, Orzo, and Smoked Chicken Salad with Pine Nuts), Ash offers a bountiful array of soups (Roasted Eggplant Soup with Sweet Peppers), pastas (Fusilli with Collards, Bacon, and Garlic) and desserts (Peach-Mint Granita). Fish (Seared Ahi Tuna with a Lavender-Pepper Crust), poultry, meat (Pork and Pepper Stew with Oranges) and vegetable dishes are innovative and tempting. For each salad and main dish, he suggests a wine (``Gewrztraminer is a showstopper'' with Crab Wontons with Orange-Chipotle Sauce), and his cooking tips (e.g., ``never throw away shrimp shells,'' which can be frozen and counted on to save a fish stock or soup) are jewels. This is a cookbook for those who truly want to live with their food. Photos not seen by PW. (Dec.)

Library Journal

Here are lots of beautifully fresh recipes from the authors of American Game Cooking (LJ 10/15/91). Ash is the culinary director of Fetzer Vineyards' Wine Center, which happens to have a huge organic culinary garden. With that as well as the produce and other ingredients available in abundance in California's wine country, he creates dishes like Orecchiette with Red Wine-Braised Chicken, Fresh Cherry Flan, and other delicious combinations. There are lots of sidebars on ingredients, and Ash suggests substitutions for seasonal or hard-to-find ingredients. Most recipes are accompanied by informative wine notes that explain the particular food-wine match. Highly recommended.

Brew Ware or Arthur Schwartzs New York City Food

Brew Ware: How to Find, Adapt and Build Homebrewing Equipment

Author: Karl F Lutzen

Using this handbook, homebrewers, tinkerers, and putterers can create their own microbrewery that is safe and makes brewing easier.

Table of Contents:

Foreword

Introduction

1 The Home Brewery

2 Building a Home Brewery

3 Tools

4 Grain Mills

5 Mashing, Lautering, and Sparging

6 Brewpots and the Boil

7 Chilling the Wort

8 Fermenters

9 Bottling

10 Kegging

11 Growing and Drying Hops

12 Yeast Culturing

Afterword

Appendix A: Building a Motorized Mill

Appendix B: Metric Conversion

Appendix C: Suppliers

Glossary

Further Reading

IndeX

Book about: Conflict and Cooperation or A Concise History of the World Since 1945

Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food: An Opinionated History and More Than 100 Legendary Recipes

Author: Arthur Schwartz

Arthur Schwartz is the Big Apple's official foodie-about-town, a fellow who has fork-and-knived his way through the five boroughs. He knows his knish from his kasha, his bok choy from his bruschetta, his falafel from his frittata. And in Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food, which won the IACP Award for Cookbook of the Year in 2005, he shared his gastronomic expertise, chronicling the city's culinary history from its Dutch colonial start to its current status as the multicultural food capital of the world. The affordable new paperback edition is chock-full of the same fascinating lore, along with 160 recipes for American classics that either originated or were perfected in New York: Manhattan Clam Chowder, Eggs Benedict, Lindy's cheesecake.

Throughout the book, Schwartz's text is transporting, taking readers back to Delmonico's, the Colony, and the Horn & Hardart Automats. Whether revealing how an obscure dish known as Omelet Surprise was transformed into the decidedly chichi dessert Baked Alaska; investigating why some Jewish restaurants came to be known as Roumanian steakhouses; or instructing readers on the way to bake a molten chocolate minicake worthy of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food is the ideal dining companion.

Oriental Vegetables or California Artichoke Cookbook

Oriental Vegetables: The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook

Author: Joy Larkcom

Increasingly, chefs today both professional and amateur are emphasizing fresh, seasonal ingredients, locally and organically grown. Now, in the revised edition of the book Alice Waters of Chez Panisse called indispensable, Joy Larcom presents abundant information about crops that are full of flavor, highly nutritious and easy to grow. She describes over seventy exotic vegetables that can be cultivated regardless of climate, soil type or garden size. Here are hardy leafy mustards, komatsuna, Chinese yams and cabbage, lablab beans, pak choi, the climbing spinach basella, gourds, luffas and many more. For this edition, Larkcom has added new varieties and taken out those which are no longer available. She's updated information on such topics as pest and disease control; and added to the section that offers over 50 recipes for making delicious salads (Chinese Hot Salad), salad dressings (Lemon and Green Onion Dressing), soups (Basic Western Style Greens Soup), pickles (Pickled Mushroom Stems), and other dishes using the vegetables featured in the first section (Azuki Bean Risotto with Watercress and Grilled Tofu, Creamy Artichoke Soup, Duck with Mustard Leaves and Pasta, etc.). The helpful appendices include a glossary of gardening terms, a season/month conversion chart, a growing information chart, plant names, gardening organizations and seed suppliers in the U.S.

Library Journal

Larkcom, a British-based gardener and author of The Salad Garden ( LJ 5/1/84), presents a comprehensive volume on Chinese and Japanese vegetables. Over 100 varieties are listed with information on scientific and Oriental names, general background, cultivation requirements, and use in the kitchen. An additional section focuses on gardening techniques, such as ``cut and come again'' methods and protected cropping. The book concludes with a short collection of simple recipes. The information-dense text is occasionally lightened by high-quality line drawings and several pages of color photographs. The thorough index will be helpful for individuals interested in determining the identity of vegetables found in Oriental markets. As a whole, Oriental Vegetables focuses more on information for the ``garden'' than the ``kitchen,'' and it should be a fine addition for most gardening collections, especially in such areas where interest in Oriental food is high.-- Virginia A. Hen richs, Chicago Botanic Garden Lib., Glencoe, Ill.

New interesting textbook: Leadership Agility or Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder

California Artichoke Cookbook: From the California Artichoke Advisory Board

Author: California Artichoke Advisory Board

The folks at the California Artichoke Board have developed 40 mouth-watering recipes for this versatile, fat-free, low-sodium, 25-calorie culinary star. From an Artichoke Lasagna to Baby Artichoke Saute to Focaccia-Stuffed Artichokes, Monterey County's finest never disappoints. Die-cut. Size A. 96 pp.