"SummerCooking" news and stories

Photo: Amazon.com

'Summer Cooking'
Elizabeth David
Foreword by Molly O'Neill
New York Review of Books -- 1995, reprinted in 2002
Buy it on Amazon

Sometimes you want a cookbook author to give it to you straight.

None of this "You can whip this up in 10 minutes!" when you are certain, as you possess merely mortal chopping skills, it will take you 20 with that pile of onions.

The well-traveled cookbook author Elizabeth David, who many think brought "real food" to the English in the 1950s, is of this no-nonsense school. She saw it among her duties to bring picnic food and something called "seasonal shopping" to her countrymen and women, as they were stuck in an out-of-season loop. On one page she gripes about the mortification of seeing ratatouille on a February menu comprised of tomatoes and (ugh) cabbage.

On another she writes of the English approach to the "dread" salad season that is summertime: "What makes a cook think that the beetroot spreading its hideous purple dye over a sardine and a spoonful of tinned baked beans constitutes an hors d'oeuvre?"

Tell us how you really feel, Elizabeth.

What we tested and whether the book's worth buying, after the jump.

'The Beach House Cookbook'
Recipes by Barbara Scott-Goodman
Photos by Rita Maas
Chronicle Books -- 2005
Buy it on Amazon

Summer is a time for relaxing. It's also -- for those lucky enough to live on the beach or near enough one to be within arm's reach of it -- an opportunity to cook up some fresh seafood. But what to do with it once you have it?

Barbara Scott-Goodman has made a substantial mark in the flooded market of seafood cookbooks with her show-stopping "Beach House Cookbook," packed with delectable sounding recipes like Tomato-Basil Soup with Mussels, Lobster Rolls and Cornmeal-Crusted Soft-Shell Crabs. Using fruits and vegetables at peak freshness, Scott-Goodman offers up simple yet flavor-packed meals well-suited to the seaside.

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

Summer's nearly here, and you know what that means: Potlucks.

Everyone needs at least one dish they can nail at a moment's notice. A dish everyone will love, from vegans to carnivores. Something that's cheap, easy, quick, yet delicious. Something that dresses to impress. Something that even bad home cooks can manage.

I got your sure thing right here. Vegetable couscous. It's a simple recipe, but one that's certain to please. I pulled it out of Jeanne Lemlin's mighty Quick Vegetarian Pleasures.

Source

Source

I have not been on what anyone would call a "picnic" in approximately 22 years. No joke. But it's June and that means many people will be heading out to parks and lawns and other places where they can spread out a blanket and eat various foods, so I'll start doing some posts on picnic-friendly recipes.

Today is Picnic Oven-Fried Chicken, over at AOL Food. It's from EatingWell, so you know it's not really fried, it's baked. The hot sauce, sesame seeds, and Dijon mustard in the recipe guarantee lots of flavor and kick.