Meet The Team / Rebecca Flint Marx

'Brunch!: 100 Fantastic Recipes for the Weekend's Best Meal'
Recipes by Gale Gand with Christie Matheson
Photographs by Ben Fink
Clarkson Potter -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

Ah, brunch, that most indecisive and superfluous of meals: it's certainly not necessary, and probably wouldn't even exist if people weren't inclined to sleep in on the weekends.

But where French toast and eggs Benedict are concerned, necessity has never been the point. So it follows that of course brunch should have its own cookbook: any meal that can gouge so much time and effort out of an otherwise unremarkable weekend naturally requires a repertoire of recipes.

Gale Gand, a James Beard Award-winning pastry chef and the owner of Chicago's renowned Tru, has stepped up to the plate, and then some, with 'Brunch!' If the title's exclamation point tells you all you need to know about Gand's enthusiasm for the subejct, then her recipes -- from beverages like White Hot Chocolate and Gale's 3-Alarm Bloody Mary, to caloric delights like Corn and Parmesan Fritters and Chocolate Waffles -- should give you a generous hint of her serious dedication to the cause. Whether you prefer to drink your brunch or be put into a sugar coma by it, there's pretty much something for everyone here.

See what we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Photo: Kitty LaRoux, Flickr

Sometimes, you really just want to eat whatever's placed in front of you. Other times, you just want to look at it, amused and delighted by nature's more whimsical side.

Such is the case with this bowl of carambolas, commonly -- and aptly -- known as starfruit. Immortalized by Kitty LaRoux in the Slashfood Flickr pool, they could be used as a centerpiece or placed strategically on a mantelpiece or coffee table. Taste, obviously, is important, but if you caught a bowl of shooting stars, wouldn't you want to just sit back and admire them for a little while, too?

[Via Flickr]

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Photo: Nicole, Cucina Nicolina

Cold, briny, clean and salty: is there any food that offers a more refreshing counterpoint to the heavy summer heat than the oyster? These beauties, from Pt. Reyes, Calif., were snapped by Nicole at Cucina Nicolina. Their pearlescent, craggy appearance captures the soothing yet bracing pleasure that lies within the act of swallowing one whole. It's an almost otherworldly experience, tasting the essence of the sea and mysteries of the earth's history on your tongue, but there's nothing alien about the feeling of suddenly wanting to follow it with another oyster. And another. And another.

[Via Cucina Nicolina]

'Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine'
Recipes by Bryant Terry
Da Capo Press -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

It's almost impossible to think of soul food without thinking of pork, butter and drippings, and equally improbable to imagine a vegan who would voluntarily consume any of these things -- or anything else containing animal products, for that matter.

So Bryant Terry's "Vegan Soul Kitchen" would appear to be both a novelty and oxymoron, something Terry himself admits when he writes "I do realize that veganism ... .is antithetical to the way that African-American and Southern cooking has been constructed in the popular imagination over the past four decades."

A deeper look, however, reveals that prior to the industrialization of the food industry, the traditional African-American diet included plenty of fresh produce, and as Terry demonstrates with his book's 150 recipes, those fruits and vegetables can still play a central and innovative role in dishes ranging from Creole Hoppin'-Jean (a bacon-free twist on Hoppin' John, the traditional black-eyed pea and rice dish) to Savory Triple-Corn Grits, which substitutes creamed cashews for butter. In other words, as Bryant writes, think "Alice Waters meets Melvin Van Peebles," a farm-fresh update on a rich and soulful tradition.

See what we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.

Beer and belly. Photo: Paul Keleher, Flickr

From the UK comes excellent news for beer drinkers -- and their bellies: According to the results of a new study, beer bellies are caused by genetics, not beer.

After tracking 7,876 men and 12,749 women over the course of eight and a half years, a group of German and Swedish researchers discovered that while regular drinkers -- especially those who consumed the equivalent of two pints a day -- were more likely to gain weight overall, that weight did not necessarily accumulate in the abdominal region. The scientists concluded that while "beer consumption seems to be rather associated with an increase in overall body fatness," evidence of more "site-specific" weight gain was limited. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given its pivotal role in most weighty matters, genetics was the real culprit.

The news couldn't have come at a better time, i.e summer, when hot days call out for cold brews and beer aficionados seek sweet relief in air-conditioned bars across the country. It's possibly the best news since, oh, last week, when New York City declared July Good Beer Month, and will doubtless inspire countless toasts made over frosty mugs held high.