Italian Easy or Adventures on the Wine Route

Italian Easy: Recipes from the River Cafe London

Author: Rose Gray

"Easy food doesn't have to mean unsophisticated food."

Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, founders of London's renowned River Cafe, are famous for their innovative approach to traditional Italian fare. In Italian Easy, their fifth cookbook, they reinvent the Italian kitchen for today's busy home cook, refuting the notion that elegant food requires hours of preparation. These are visually spectacular, remarkably simple recipes for those who love good food but have little time to prepare it.

Displaying the imagination and panache that are Rose and Ruth's hallmarks, the nearly 200 recipes in Italian Easy are streamlined for efficiency in the kitchen without compromising either quality or taste. Relying on a well-stocked pantry, just a handful of fresh, seasonal ingredients, and even fewer steps, these sublime recipes summon both familiar and surprising Italian flavors. Bruschetta with tender asparagus and shaved Parmesan, tagliatelle with ripe figs and spicy chiles, slow-roasted chicken with fresh nutmeg and prosciutto, and the restaurant's popular Chocolate Nemesis cake are all as enticing as they are effortless.

This is not Italian food that's impossible to pronounce or prepare. At once straightforward and sexy, this is Italian Easy--the cookbook that makes it possible for busy people to eat well every night of the week.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

Gray and Rogers deliver innovative, stripped-down Italian home cooking, and they're fond of dishes that a home cook can shop for and get to the table within an hour or two.

Book about: Cooking 1 2 3 or Cheese Board

Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France

Author: Kermit Lynch

Kermit Lynch’s recounting of his experiences on the wine route and in the wine cellars of France takes the reader through the Loire, Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Provence, Northern and Southern Rhone, and the Cote d’Or.

Publishers Weekly

``Wine is, above all, pleasure. Those who would make it ponderous make it dull,'' declares wine importer Lynch in this robustly irreverent account of his quest through France in search of wine. Lynch's winefoolery is serious; drollery never compromises his knowledge of his subject or his high standards. Even when mocking the misdeeds of viniculturalists, he remains an arbiter who merely wishes ``wine could be a constitutionally protected form of expression.'' Hating wine hype, Lynch criticizes modern agricultural and manufacturing methods with equal fervor. He laughs at trends in wine consumption, and singles out modern greed as a corrupter. Effortlessly eloquent, Lynch is a master of the brief barb: ``Loving Chablis is like falling in love with a frigid floozy.'' The author prefers a wine that offers ``a subtle seduction; it keeps you coming back for more.'' So too with this unusual guide: it makes you thirst for a sequel. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)

Roald Dahl

Nearly all wine books are written by experts whose intention is primarily to inform or to educate. They give little aesthetic pleasure. Kermit Lynch is certainly an expert, but his book, Adventures on the Wine Route, is also a great pleasure to read. I enjoyed it more than any other wine book I have read.

Hugh Johnson

I am simply thrilled by it. I am bowled over by his blend of poetry and candour. What heaven-sent common sense.

Clive Coates

Quirky, opinionated, maddening, hilarious... riveting, illuminating, totally original... Strongly recommended.

Victor Hazan

In Kermit Lynch's small, true, delightful book there is more understanding about what wine really is than in everything else I have read.

M.F.K. Fisher

One of the pleasantest and truest books about wine I've ever read.

The Wine Advocate - Robert M. Parker,Jr.

A riveting account of one man's pursuit of authenticity as well as excellence in wine... Kermit Lynch's colorful portraits of some idiosyncratic vintners, and his commentaries on their wines, make for some of the finest reading since Joseph Wechsberg ate and drank his way through France in his book Blue Trout and Black Truffles.

The Dream of the Earth or Nancy Silvertons Breads from the la Brea Bakery

The Dream of the Earth

Author: Thomas Berry

This acclaimed inaugural volume of the Sierra Club Nature and Natural Philosophy Library considers our ecological fate from a species perspective, the way The Fate of the Earth viewed our prospects for nuclear annihilation. Thomas Berry's seminal thesis proposes a universal "biocratic" criterion to evaluate human history, development, and activity. He contends that the validity of any human enterprise is the degree to which it enhances the universal life force.
Berry builds his case on a comprehensive review of the history of ideas, and he points toward a transformation of consciousness that is needed if we and the planet are to survive. The Dream of the Earth provides the insights, inspiration, and ethical guidance we need to move beyond exploitation or disengagement toward a transcendent vision of a restorative, creative relationship with the natural world.
Drawing upon the wisdom of thinkers from Buddha and Plato to Teilhard de Chardin and E. F. Schumacher, from ancient Chinese philosophy and Native American shamanism to contemporary astrophysics, Berry forges a balanced, deeply felt declaration of planetary independence from the sociological, psychological, and intellectual conditioning that threatens the death of nature, offering a path that will avert ecological catastrophe and move our traumatized planet toward health.

Booknews

The inaugural volume of the Sierra Club Nature and Natural Philosophy Library considers our ecological fate from a species perspective. Berry's seminal thesis proposes a universal "biocratic" criterion to evaluate human history, development, and activity. He contends that the validity of any human enterprise is the degree to which it enhances the universal life force. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

New interesting textbook: The Making of National Money or Companion to Business Ethics

Nancy Silverton's Breads from the la Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur

Author: Nancy Silverton

People line up on the sidewalk outside the La Brea Bakery waiting to buy its extraordinary bread. Connected to Campanile, the successful Los Angeles restaurant, the bakery has grown by leaps and bounds since it opened in 1989. Now Nancy Silverton, onetime pastry chef at Michael's, the original pastry chef at the world-famous Spago, and today possibly the best bread baker in the country, shares her magical La Brea Bakery recipes, painstakingly crafted during years of trial and error, here perfected and adapted for home bakers. This beautifully illustrated cookbook is also user-friendly. Before the baking even begins, Silverton explains the wonder of bread alchemy; then come the recipes, which range from the whimsical (Raisin Brioche and Fig-Anise Bread) to the practical (Baguettes and Hamburger Buns) to the sublime (perhaps best of all, Chocolate-Sour Cherry Bread). Designed for the novice and expert baker alike, this back-to-basics approach that will inspire and satisfy bread lovers everywhere.

Publishers Weekly

Bread is beautiful when it is made with time, care and honest ingredients; the same is true of cookbooks, and this is a beautiful cookbook. Silverton, a world-class pastry chef and owner of L.A.'s Campanile restaurant and La Brea Bakery, offers breadmaking instructions so meticulous that one gets the feeling she's divulging valuable trade secrets. Her breads are sourdough breads that depend on sourdough starter, a simple combination of flour and water left out where it can catch wild yeasts. Silverton explains the 14-day, once-in-a-lifetime process of creating the starter and the ongoing process of maintaining it. She then describes the starter and its variations and shows how they can be incorporated into a variety breads. Specialties include Walnut Bread, Rustic Olive-herb Bread, Chocolate Sour Cherry Bread and Red Pepper Scallion Bread. Lists of equipment and sources of supplies are included. Her beautifully designed book will appeal to dedicated cooks and perfectionists who are patient and brave enough to make mistakes along the way to breads, rolls, focaccia, pretzels, bagels, waffles and even-woof-dog biscuits. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Silverton and her husband (Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton at Home, LJ 2/15/94) are the chef/owners of Campanile restaurant and La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. Silverton is a talented baker, both of sweets (Desserts by Nancy Silverton, HarperCollins, 1986) and savory baked goods. Here she offers the recipes for her popular breads and her extensive knowledge of bread baking. The subtitle might be "for the dedicated connoisseur" because every recipe but one relies on a basic starter that takes 14 days to get going (intended to be a one-time undertaking) and three "feedings" daily to maintain it, but ambitious bakers will certainly want to try Silverton's recipes. Others will find Amy Scherber and Toy Kim Dupree's Amy's Bread (LJ 4/15/96) a more accessible approach to the secrets of artisan baking, but the two books complement each other well, and Silverton's is another valuable addition to this growing genre. Highly recommended.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Acknowledgments
	Illustrations
	Introduction: The Baking Life
1	The Elements of Bread	3
2	Tools for Getting Started	17
3	A Lesson in Bread Making	29
4	Breads Made with White Starter	61
5	Breads Made with Whole-Wheat Starter	167
6	Breads Made with Rye Starter	185
7	Sourdough Specialties	213
	Appendix: Sources	253
	Index	255