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Good food Good Living
What are the best foods to try in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur? How do you judge wines and pair them with Indian foods? What would you order in Paris if you were a vegetarian? And which cheeses would you shop for abroad if you were carrying home a hamper? These are among the many foodie questions answered by Karen Anand in her collection of food writings published over the years and compiled in this informative book.
Savour the flavours from around the world and catch up on global food trends. Also enjoy the special collection of recipes from different parts of the world woven into the articles.
Savour the flavours from around the world and catch up on global food trends. Also enjoy the special collection of recipes from different parts of the world woven into the articles.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 20, 2024
I realized very early on that I was not the intended audience for the book. There are chapters about Wine FAQs, recommendations for expensive extra virgin oil brands, and anecdotes where she treated her European friends to some premium Russian caviar. Yeah, this book is bound to make you feel poor if you're not rich. That's not to say that it's too pretentious or highbrow though. In fact, it tries to make these things accessible; so it's only about as pretentious as you have to be when talking about wine or caviar.
That wasn't a problem. I love to try and enjoy things where I'm not the intended audience. Get a lens into a different world. That's the reason I bought this book, obviously, and I was enjoying it too, including all the chapters I mentioned above. There are bits, from the get-go about Paris, that paint a wonderful picture of places I've never been to and cuisines I've never tried - and those bits are equally informing and enchanting.
For example, I knew about Switzerland and its cows, but I got to see it in more detail - with how much care is put into the entire process. How the farmer and cheesemaker's proximity results in some of the best cheese on the planet. How a master cheesemaker has to go through eight years of apprenticeship before getting a license. How milk production accounts for a third of Swiss agricultural income, prices almost double that of the rest of Europe!
It's always fascinating to get a ground-level, zoomed-in look at places I've never been to, or lives I'll never have - and see what it's like. And food is one of the best ways to understand a place and its people, isn't it? So, what's the problem? Why the 2 stars? Ironically enough - it is that this book wanders away a lot.
The recipes separated into neat little boxes are fine, actually, albeit seeming inaccessible in the same way she acknowledges cookbooks can feel. It was often the tangents or details that took away from the main story, actually, instead of adding more character and texture to them as you'd want. The amount of description I gave about the Swiss dairy industry is about the same as the book does, so you feel you just dipped your toe into it and came out. The language and imagery has the promise of taking you on a journey, but it never quite achieves that.
Good storytelling that takes you on a journey of that kind often has the appearance of a disjointed series of adventures, which later turn out to be a cohesive whole. Here, we never get to that second thing. I kept going from one chapter to another looking for a common thread that connects everything until I realized there wasn't any. I learned a little too late into the book that it's actually a 'list of articles' sort of book, and while that can be made to work as well - in my opinion, it fluctuated way too much to pull that off.
So yeah, sure, I might've tasted a little bit of everything, but I was still left walking home hungry.
Rating: 2/5
That wasn't a problem. I love to try and enjoy things where I'm not the intended audience. Get a lens into a different world. That's the reason I bought this book, obviously, and I was enjoying it too, including all the chapters I mentioned above. There are bits, from the get-go about Paris, that paint a wonderful picture of places I've never been to and cuisines I've never tried - and those bits are equally informing and enchanting.
For example, I knew about Switzerland and its cows, but I got to see it in more detail - with how much care is put into the entire process. How the farmer and cheesemaker's proximity results in some of the best cheese on the planet. How a master cheesemaker has to go through eight years of apprenticeship before getting a license. How milk production accounts for a third of Swiss agricultural income, prices almost double that of the rest of Europe!
It's always fascinating to get a ground-level, zoomed-in look at places I've never been to, or lives I'll never have - and see what it's like. And food is one of the best ways to understand a place and its people, isn't it? So, what's the problem? Why the 2 stars? Ironically enough - it is that this book wanders away a lot.
The recipes separated into neat little boxes are fine, actually, albeit seeming inaccessible in the same way she acknowledges cookbooks can feel. It was often the tangents or details that took away from the main story, actually, instead of adding more character and texture to them as you'd want. The amount of description I gave about the Swiss dairy industry is about the same as the book does, so you feel you just dipped your toe into it and came out. The language and imagery has the promise of taking you on a journey, but it never quite achieves that.
Good storytelling that takes you on a journey of that kind often has the appearance of a disjointed series of adventures, which later turn out to be a cohesive whole. Here, we never get to that second thing. I kept going from one chapter to another looking for a common thread that connects everything until I realized there wasn't any. I learned a little too late into the book that it's actually a 'list of articles' sort of book, and while that can be made to work as well - in my opinion, it fluctuated way too much to pull that off.
So yeah, sure, I might've tasted a little bit of everything, but I was still left walking home hungry.
Rating: 2/5
May 24, 2020
Informative, humorous and light read about world cuisines with some recipes.
January 20, 2015
quite entertaining but not very deep
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews