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Canal House Cooking #1
Canal House Cooking, No. 1: Summer
Canal House Cooking is a collection of our favorite summer recipes-home cooking by home cooks for home cooks. The recipes in this book are what we make for ourselves all summer long. We are crazy for melons in late summer, we love to cook big paellas outdoors over a fire for a crowd of friends, we make jarfuls of teriyaki sauce for slathering on chickens and tubs of ice cream for our families. All 70 recipes are easy to prepare, and completely doable for the novice and experienced cook alike. There are over 60 beautiful photos and illustrations. We want to share with you our love of food and all its rituals. The everyday practice of cooking and enjoyment of eating are two of the greatest pleasures of life-Christopher Hirsheimer & Melissa Hamilton
122 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 12, 2009
FOR 2 RECIPES: http://www.headbutler.com/books/food-...
If you were assembling a cookbook of your favorite seasonal recipes --- recipes for meals you’ve actually served, and served often ---- it would be the size of Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s Canal House Cooking, Volume 1. That is, about 60 recipes. These recipes would offer the unique tastes of your “signature” dishes. They would be easy to make --- this is a summer cookbook. And you’d have very few choices in each category.
That’s the key idea: choicelessness. As consumers, we are awash in choices. Most are false choices, so your mind goes blank. You don’t so much choose as surrender. And this is as true of cookbooks as it is of the hundreds of cereals that are basically just delivery systems for high-fructose corn syrup.
What we want, whether we know it or not, is an editor. Or, better, a curator --- someone who knows our values and tastes and can reduce the world to the very few things we might like. HeadButler.com is built on this principle. So is Hirsheimer and Hamilton’s book.
These women describe themselves as “home cooks”. That’s testimony to the enormous effort they have undertaken to liberate themselves from decades of professionalism. Christopher Hirsheimer was one of the founders of Saveur Magazine. She has co-authored four cookbooks and taken the photographs for thirty more. She knows from “high end”. Melissa Hamilton co-founded a restaurant, did a stint at Cook’s Illustrated and ran the test kitchen at Saveur before becoming its food editor. Her bio does not mention a love for sliders.
Something happened to Hirsheimer and Hamilton when they moved to little towns across the river from one another in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Fresh produce, of course. But also a gentler pace. They found a loft overlooking a canal and opened a studio: Canal House. It has a dishwasher they don’t use and a wood stove they do. And in late summer they roll up their sleeves and preserve their bounty.
Volume 1 is their summer cookbook. It starts with seven kinds of drinks --- did I say this is a summer cookbook? They teach you how to hard-boil an egg. [For easiest peeling, use eggs you’ve refrigerated for a week.:] A few nibbles. Tomato and crab aspic. Four soups. A sprinkling of salads. Enough ideas for tomatoes to make you less guilty about that big-eyed purchase at the farm stand. Three kinds of fish. Ditto for chicken. Just six vegetables. And modest desserts.
In short: the basics, the meals they love. Presented casually, just as you would. With gorgeous pictures and watercolors, just because. Hard to believe that something this useful could be this lovable. But the evidence that this is true is on each and every page.
If you were assembling a cookbook of your favorite seasonal recipes --- recipes for meals you’ve actually served, and served often ---- it would be the size of Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s Canal House Cooking, Volume 1. That is, about 60 recipes. These recipes would offer the unique tastes of your “signature” dishes. They would be easy to make --- this is a summer cookbook. And you’d have very few choices in each category.
That’s the key idea: choicelessness. As consumers, we are awash in choices. Most are false choices, so your mind goes blank. You don’t so much choose as surrender. And this is as true of cookbooks as it is of the hundreds of cereals that are basically just delivery systems for high-fructose corn syrup.
What we want, whether we know it or not, is an editor. Or, better, a curator --- someone who knows our values and tastes and can reduce the world to the very few things we might like. HeadButler.com is built on this principle. So is Hirsheimer and Hamilton’s book.
These women describe themselves as “home cooks”. That’s testimony to the enormous effort they have undertaken to liberate themselves from decades of professionalism. Christopher Hirsheimer was one of the founders of Saveur Magazine. She has co-authored four cookbooks and taken the photographs for thirty more. She knows from “high end”. Melissa Hamilton co-founded a restaurant, did a stint at Cook’s Illustrated and ran the test kitchen at Saveur before becoming its food editor. Her bio does not mention a love for sliders.
Something happened to Hirsheimer and Hamilton when they moved to little towns across the river from one another in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Fresh produce, of course. But also a gentler pace. They found a loft overlooking a canal and opened a studio: Canal House. It has a dishwasher they don’t use and a wood stove they do. And in late summer they roll up their sleeves and preserve their bounty.
Volume 1 is their summer cookbook. It starts with seven kinds of drinks --- did I say this is a summer cookbook? They teach you how to hard-boil an egg. [For easiest peeling, use eggs you’ve refrigerated for a week.:] A few nibbles. Tomato and crab aspic. Four soups. A sprinkling of salads. Enough ideas for tomatoes to make you less guilty about that big-eyed purchase at the farm stand. Three kinds of fish. Ditto for chicken. Just six vegetables. And modest desserts.
In short: the basics, the meals they love. Presented casually, just as you would. With gorgeous pictures and watercolors, just because. Hard to believe that something this useful could be this lovable. But the evidence that this is true is on each and every page.
October 18, 2013
Canal House Cooking is a curated, seasonal summer recipe collection which has become firm favourites of the authors and now they wish to share this with a wider audience. It is also a rather slim, quirky collection that you will either like immensely or be very, very disinterested in.
Despite many interesting recipes this book might be just a bit too much like hard work. Internal navigation is a rather undiscovered concept for the publisher with the only aid to navigation being a list of recipes at the start, split into chapters with rather tired, clichéd titles such as "Working Up An Appetite" or "It's Always Five O'Clock Somewhere."
When you get to the recipes, they might be prefaced by a little bit of a homespun thought, a tale of inspiration or something else. Maybe this reviewer got off to a bad start with this book, yet this text just feels like rather insincere filler that you have to read due to how the recipes are presented. A lot could be learned about the presentation of the recipes too - use of sole U.S. measures, lack of any estimated preparation and cooking time, poor formatting and display of instructions. The list can and does go on. At the end it just felt a hassle to look at this book and when you consider its price there are better, more accessible, more interesting books out there. This is a shame as some of the recipes look quite good but they are on the whole hardly unique or so ultra-desirable that you must absolutely buy this book for them.
This could be a great example of how not to produce a cookbook. That is a real shame. One feels so frustrated, so disappointed at its entirety. The content needs a boost, its presentation needs a polish and one really needs to start from scratch.
Canal House Cooking Volume No 1: Summer, written by Melissa Hamilton & Christopher Hirsheimer and published by Canal House/Open Road. ISBN 9781453219379, 122 pages. Typical price: USD20. YY.
Despite many interesting recipes this book might be just a bit too much like hard work. Internal navigation is a rather undiscovered concept for the publisher with the only aid to navigation being a list of recipes at the start, split into chapters with rather tired, clichéd titles such as "Working Up An Appetite" or "It's Always Five O'Clock Somewhere."
When you get to the recipes, they might be prefaced by a little bit of a homespun thought, a tale of inspiration or something else. Maybe this reviewer got off to a bad start with this book, yet this text just feels like rather insincere filler that you have to read due to how the recipes are presented. A lot could be learned about the presentation of the recipes too - use of sole U.S. measures, lack of any estimated preparation and cooking time, poor formatting and display of instructions. The list can and does go on. At the end it just felt a hassle to look at this book and when you consider its price there are better, more accessible, more interesting books out there. This is a shame as some of the recipes look quite good but they are on the whole hardly unique or so ultra-desirable that you must absolutely buy this book for them.
This could be a great example of how not to produce a cookbook. That is a real shame. One feels so frustrated, so disappointed at its entirety. The content needs a boost, its presentation needs a polish and one really needs to start from scratch.
Canal House Cooking Volume No 1: Summer, written by Melissa Hamilton & Christopher Hirsheimer and published by Canal House/Open Road. ISBN 9781453219379, 122 pages. Typical price: USD20. YY.
December 17, 2011
Canal House Cooking: Summer is a great collection of beautifully simple summer recipes. Even now in the depths of winter, I was longing for every page to magically appear in my kitchen.
Right now my kitchen is full of beans and root vegetables, stews and breads and pot pies. But these recipes make you hope that summer was right now. I want to be sipping watermelon juice and have lovely fresh fruits and vegetables all over my table.
But for now, I can just sit and sigh over this collection of very accessible recipes, accompanied by little in the way of extra information. The recipes are presented just as they are and that's all the adornment they need.
I like the fact that the recipes are all made for the home, they aren't difficult or even made to impress really, they seem to be meant to be the recipes that you turn to time and time again over the summer and they will never fail you. I can see picnics being whipped up at the drop of a hat after a long day at work or on lovely weekend afternoons.
A nice little bunch of recipes. Nothing ground breaking, and I think that's the point.
*** = glad I read it
Copy provided by NetGalley
Right now my kitchen is full of beans and root vegetables, stews and breads and pot pies. But these recipes make you hope that summer was right now. I want to be sipping watermelon juice and have lovely fresh fruits and vegetables all over my table.
But for now, I can just sit and sigh over this collection of very accessible recipes, accompanied by little in the way of extra information. The recipes are presented just as they are and that's all the adornment they need.
I like the fact that the recipes are all made for the home, they aren't difficult or even made to impress really, they seem to be meant to be the recipes that you turn to time and time again over the summer and they will never fail you. I can see picnics being whipped up at the drop of a hat after a long day at work or on lovely weekend afternoons.
A nice little bunch of recipes. Nothing ground breaking, and I think that's the point.
*** = glad I read it
Copy provided by NetGalley
September 3, 2011
This is a good cookbook full of summer recipes. Chapter titles include: How Many Ways Can You Use Olive Oil and Lemon, If It Tastes Like Chicken, and Two Steaks Feed Four. I love the Too Many Tomatoes chapter. And the Pork Loin Cooked in Milk looks amazing. Great photos and illustrations. Easy recipes with fresh local ingredients.
For some reason on Amazon, Vol. 1 is listed at $19.95 while the remaining volumes are listed at $13.29 so perhaps they will drop the price on this volume as well.
For some reason on Amazon, Vol. 1 is listed at $19.95 while the remaining volumes are listed at $13.29 so perhaps they will drop the price on this volume as well.
August 15, 2011
Friendly and fun this conversational cookbook has great techniques and recipes. I mean really, Candied Bacon? Paella over fire? Chard Flan, breaded zucchini... Ice creams, fruit tarts, deep frying tips ... it goes on. Can't wait to try these. Starting tonight.
So far the Chard Flan and the breaded zucchini have thumbs up with the men at my house. I will wait for Paul to come home for the candied bacon.
So far the Chard Flan and the breaded zucchini have thumbs up with the men at my house. I will wait for Paul to come home for the candied bacon.
April 18, 2011
Plenty of pretty pictures, but a little bit formulaic. Also wary of two recipe inclusions: tomato crab aspic, tarragon chicken gelee. Authors are not shy about use of anchovies, which I found interesting.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Want to Read
September 9, 2011Does anyone local have any of the Canal House Cooking books I could borrow?
August 2, 2012
So far made three recipes out of this book. Super! I wanted the book to go on and on. I guess it does because there are three more seasons.
July 9, 2017
I will be making MANY of the recipes in this wonderful book. The pages contain dishes made from fresh, simple, and seasonal items....in this case, the fruits of summer! If you like eating fresh, garden or farm to table....you must get this book!!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews