"Kat Kinsman" news and stories

Photo: Gibbs Smith

'Putting Up: A Seasonal Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition'
by Stephen Palmer Dowdney
Gibbs Smith -- 2008
Buy it on Amazon

You know how your friend's cousin's boyfriend's grandma, like, totally killed a neighbor by innocently giving her a batch of her home-canned beans that oops, turned out to have a touch of the botulism? That's never going to happen to you. Not on Steve Dowdney's watch.

This can-vangelist has culled years of his own know-how, as well as the collective wisdom of generations of Southern cooks, into a rigorous, nigh-on religious canning primer. The recipes are solid -- almost a shade clinical -- but the opening chapter, packed with equipment tips, altitude and pH charts, preparation terms and step-by-step best practices, could be a stand-alone manual, not to mention the only one you'd ever need to buy.

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

There are seasoned restaurateurs and there are talented cookbook auteurs. The twain aren't always possessed of the same skill set -- no one was expecting James Beard to jump on the line when the saucier called in sick at Chart House, nor was Julia going to be summoned to expedite at her favored Santa Barbara haunt, La Super Rica Taqueria -- but food fetishists can dare to dream. Think of it as culinary fantasy football, mulling over the cookbooks we'd like to see writ real and sit-down-in-able.

I posed the notion of a pop-up restaurant to Matt Lee and Ted Lee., co-authors of my all-time most beloved (and stained) cookbook, the James Beard Award winning "The Lee Bros. Southern Cooking," and the upcoming "Simple Fresh Southern" and they shared their menu wish list and locale in the video above. (By the way, the first guy is Ted. People get that mixed up all the time.)

Which non-restaurant chef's cookbook would you like to see turned into an eatery, even for just a single meal? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo: Kylecathie.com

'Preserved'
by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton
Kyle Books -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

As much as the recent glut of home-canning articles, blogs, hardware and bookstore kiosks would have us believe it, man cannot actually live on darling little jams and preciously put-up pickles alone. S'OK -- Messrs Sandler and Acton are here to help you halt the march of time under blankets of aspic, tubs of salt, lashings of booze, heady wood smoke and plain old air.

But if you're like me, you go straight for the pressure-canned tongue.

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

Frank Bruni (left) and interviewer John Berman. Photo: ABC News "Nightline."

Restaurant devotees tuning into Wednesday night's edition of ABC News "Nightline," slavering for juicy tidbits from the upcoming tell-all penned by departing New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni were treated to an intimate portrait of ... uh, the poignant tale of ... OK, the dude wants to sell some books. This was his infomercial.

It's hard to blame the guy. For the past five years, the admitted former bulimic who once sported a 42-inch waistband was the most fear-inducing eater in all of New York's five boroughs, his deft, often hilarious and scathing reviews packing the power to loft or condemn restaurants' fates -- around 270 of them during his tenure at the Times -- despite his intensely conflicted relationship with food and the constant pressure to maintain anonymity by means of unflattering wigs, stick-on facial hair and fake reservation names he'd sometimes forget upon arrival at the host's stand.

In his first network interview since taking on this trencherman's task in 2004, Bruni -- publicly revealing his face on video for the first time to a national audience -- talked about his lifelong battle with overeating and the extreme, often unsuccessful measures he took to combat his epic binges.

"First let me introduce myself. I'm Craig Claiborne, and this is Julia Child." Photo: Scanned from A Feast Made for Laughter

"And to tell the truth, I was bored with restaurant criticism. At times I didn't give a damn if all the restaurants in Manhattan were shoved into the East River and perished. Had they all served nightingale tongues on toast and heavenly manna and mead, there is just so much that the tongue can savor, so much that the human body (and spirit) can accept, and then it resists. Toward the end of my days as restaurant critic, I found myself increasingly indulging in drink, the better to endure another evening of dining out. I had become a desperate man with a frustrating job to perform." -- from 'A Feast Made for Laughter' by Craig Claiborne, New York Times Dining editor and restaurant critic, 1982

While there have thus far been no reports of departing New York Times restaurant critic and newly-minted memoirist Frank Bruni tipsily pressing ham against the windows of the Second Avenue Deli, rolling members of the Cipriani family for spare change and Bellini drippings, or skulking through the catacombs at Ninja New York, randomly alarming the goofily hooded servers, it's not as if he's going silently into that last bite.

They rarely do.