The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook

This journal of life in Big Sur is the dream of anyone who loves food. It's rough and rustic and absolutely full of kitchen powered adrenaline. Michelle, Phil, and Mike are constantly contending with the rainy season (almost entirely without customers), wildfires, and even mountain lions. Every year they accumulate "winter debt" after the tourist season ends. And yet they are living the dream of everyone who loves to cook.
The three owners do work that they love, making food they love for people that they love. They barter for fresh produce and fish. They even receive organic, homegrown, and wild vegetables and fruits as gifts. Each chapter they profile someone else who is involved in the restaurant, whether that's the beekeeper who provides their honey, the micro green farmer down the road, or friends who do little jobs to help the bakery run properly. This cookbook is like a personal conversation with half the inhabitants of Big Sur.
Like a journal, it's organized by month. Everything is seasonal by what is dumped on their doorsteps by friends. If they're getting a lot of blood oranges, it must be blood orange season! Within each month, they explain a type of meal they serve ranging from breakfast to thanksgiving to their wood fired pizzas. They also profile a friend who works for or with the restaurant, a special ingredient, and five or seven recipes. The recipes, like the people, are quirky and full of absolutely lovable personality. Many of them have stories about their history, also like the people.
The recipes are really pretty good, but do require a bit of searching for specific ingredients. They are really best when you have access to the farmers market for heirloom tomatoes and fresh greens. The food is all very bold and fresh. Most of it isn't too complicated to prepare because simplicity is part of their food philosophy, but the deserts have many components and sauces and things that have to be prepared separately. But to be fair they are well worth it!
By the end of the book, I had an irresistible craving to visit Big Sur and I promise that I will the next time I am in California! I'd love to see the wild land surrounding the restaurant and meet all those wonderfully independent people who support themselves, despite everything, doing what they love. Second best to that is to read the book again and again, lingering over my favorite chapters to admire lifestyles that most people only dream of and devour the accompanying food.

The Greek Vegetarian

A few years ago, I went through a Greek food thing. I read a book called The Greek Vegetarian. I was startled to find that Greek food wasn't always so meat-based as it seems today. The author said that meat "plays a subordinate role" in Greek cooking and that "The backbone of the cuisine has always been what is harvested, in either wild or cultivated form, from the earth." I loved this idea of how to eat and I couldn't believe that I'd been missing out on Greek Vegetarianism for this long. This wasn't one of those coffee table cookbooks with big photos on every page of artichokes and zucchini blossoms. It was a humble little cookbook with a few color pictures and a few maps of Greece. I absolutely fell in love with the sunshine, the olives, and the cheese which was the picture I got of the Grecian kitchen from the book. Someday I'll go to Greece and find a totally different, but still amazing, world of food than I imagined when I read this book, but I'll always cherish the recipes and romanticism of The Greek Vegetarian.

Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way

Like most people, I'm always trying to painlessly integrate whole grains into my diet. When I saw the cover of this book, I was so excited. The grains on the cover looked amazing. What I didn't realize is that the hardest thing about the recipes isn't finding the long hours to cook the grains, but rather finding them in the stores and being able to afford them on a regular basis. Of the grains mentioned, barley, quinoa, oats, and whole wheat flour are the easiest to find. Without ordering online, things like amaranth and triticale are impossible to find. Perhaps these things would be available in a more metropolitan area, with more healthfood stores, but they might not. I felt frustrated that 90% of the recipes in the book were completely inaccessible to me. After reading this book, I felt like the easiest way to add whole grains into my diet would be by eating more whole grain varieties of what I already eat. I purchased whole wheat varieties of pasta, couscous, and pita bread on my next shopping trips and through trial and error found brands that my family liked. The pasta and couscous were easy choices, but we had to work to find a whole wheat pita that we liked. We've also begun eating short grain brown rice at more meals rather than white basmati or jasmine, however, we look forward to trying brown varieties of those as well. In that we began trying new whole grain products, this book was helpful. It really raises awareness of how good whole grains are for you and how good they can taste. But if you actually want a book to cook from, this is not the one.

Urban Italian

I've never been so dissatisfied with an Italian cookbook. Not only are the recipes unappealing looking, but many of them don't work properly. There's just nothing to say for them at all. Bold flavors are great, but not competing bold flavors. So the recipes are just plain bad. And the little stories the author tells are even worse. It's all eating strange meats and drinking too much alcohol. I love hearing about authors' food experiences and how they feel in love with the food they did, but this is too much. I couldn't take the vulgarity of it all. A book called "Urban Italian" should contain good food and fun stories about food and life in Rome, Venice, and other suitably romantic sounding destinations. It conjures up images of candle lit dinners of fresh pasta and seafood, dinners that can be recreated at home, only without the gondolas. But apparently this is way too much to ask of this cookbook and I was quite disappointed.

Takashi's Noodles

When I picked up this book, I thought it would be all very traditional buckwheat noodles sauces derived from fish. I thought that while appetizing, I could never taste the recipes because it would take the next twenty years of my life to perfect the craftsmanship of making the dough and shaping it. I was very surprised to find that many of the recipes used dried pastas and fresh, packaged pastas that I could find at ordinary grocery stores. The recipes were a huge mix of traditional Japanese dishes with pastas from other cultures (Asian and otherwise) and original ideas of Yagihashi himself. Some ingredients are harder to find in Iowa, like quail eggs, bonito flakes, and zuccini flowers, however many of the recipes use very basic ingredients like chicken stock and ginger that can be found in any supermarket. The easily shopped for recipes were not limited to the nontraditional recipes, either. For soba, udon, and somen fans it's an invaluable read and an informative one for everyone else.