The Universal Kitchen: A 250-Recipe Tour Of World Cooking

The Universal Kitchen: A 250-Recipe Tour of World Cooking

From Booklist Food historian Rozin has contributed a new cookbook that illustrates through a thoughtful juxtaposition of recipes from around the world that every cuisine, no matter how different it seems, has something in common with another cooking style from the other side of the planet. For example, a veal and mushroom sauce for noodles or potatoes has the same basic bits of meat and vegetable as a Cantonese crab and leek sauce for rice. By bringing together such disparate items, Rozin helps the cook see both the diversity and the unity of world cuisine. The really imaginative cook can use this book as inspiration for creation of cross-cultural dishes that combine spices from one continent with meats and vegetables from another. Although the recipes in themselves are not remarkable to the sophisticated cook, Rosin's unique synthesis makes the book a very different and worthwhile culinary world tour. Mark Knoblauch A food historian describes how the same basic types of dishes can appear with slight variations in any number of cultures around the world, with chapters based on technique, presentation, or type of dish that include recipes for each meal discussed. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo. From Library Journal Food historian and cookbook author Rozin (Blue Corn and Chocolate, LJ 2/15/92) has written a fascinating account of how closely related our different culinary traditions actually are. She draws interesting connections between dishes from all over the world to prove her point, showing, for example, that many cuisines use a saute of onions and other aromatic vegetables as a flavoring base (from Spain's sofrito to France's mirepoix to the Malaysian rempeh) or how similar the knish, the samosa, and the spring roll are. In chapters that include "Meat on a Stick," "Broken Eggs," and "The Condimental Extra," she provides both traditional and cross-cultural recipes from cuisines as diverse as those of Burma, Greece, and Afghanistan, most of them not overly complicated and all of them mouthwatering. Highly recommended.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.