delicious:days » cookbooks

Cooking with the guys: Part Two - Homemade Coffee Liqueur

Nicky — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:56:05 +0000

OK, cooking might not be the perfect term for today’s recipe. There’s no stove involved, no oven, no tears from slicing onions; prep time will be less than 5 minutes. On the other hand, the results will last much longer (not too much longer though, if you love bringing friends little food presents, like I do).

Not only has my friend Claudio released his first book this fall, Stevan Paul, author of the blogs Dem Herrn Paulsen sein Kiosk (sadly now closed) and Nutriculinary has compiled the most charming anecdotes of his culinary life in restaurant kitchens and elsewhere (each garnished with the one or other recipe) and turned this into the a neat little book titled Monsieur, der Hummer and ich. Knowing Stevan, his precise power of observation and his amazing ability to captivate people with stories, both told and written, his book brings all that to the reader and more. What I like best? The chuckle effect, triggered by his wittily expressions and tone, when turning page after page…

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Cooking with the guys: Part One - Past'e lenticchie

Nicky — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:03:13 +0000

Show me a neat – doable – pasta shape and I’m sold. It doesn’t take much to twist my arm and that’s what happened when I first laid hands on a dear friend’s book. Anonyme Köche is the name of Claudio Del Principe’s food blog as well as his brand new book and besides the fact, that I think he is a super talented writer and has the most wonderful name (Del Principe – I’m sure others would kill pay for his name, myself included), his book is a perfect way to introduce this cool blog to those who prefer a real book over its digital alter ego.

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Out of order

Nicky — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:12:52 +0000

Lots of new recipes in the pipeline, but sadly my computer decided to bend inwards and die on short notice – no goodbye, no farewell, only the dreaded blue screen of death. Yes, I did backup, and no, I can’t access them with this lousy old notebook I’m typing on right now. No way to access Lightroom or Photoshop either…

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Is it Italian?

Nicky — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:05:30 +0000

If you had ever stood in front of my cookbook shelf – actually shelves would be more appropriate, but using the singular form makes me feel a little less cookbook fanatic – you couldn’t have helped but notice a large section dedicated to Italian cuisine. Beyond argument, the Italian cuisine was omnipresent over the last years and not surprisingly among the most popular cookbook themes. Old classics and new bestsellers have occupied the bookstores’ windows, every celebrity chef chipped in and gave his or her view on Italian cuisine, more or less compelling. You’ll find a plethora of books dedicated to pizza and pasta, traditional family cuisine or even vegetarian food. The influx of titles raised my doubts about whether new publications could possibly generate more than a shrug of my shoulders. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Italian cuisine and I am almost positive that I could live on Vitello tonnato, Minestrone, Lasagne and Tiramisu only, probably for the rest of my life. But how many different interpretations of Italian food does a cookbook aficionado really need?

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Cookbooks - fresh from the press

Nicky — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:14:39 +0000

Sometimes months go by and non of the cookbooks that pass through my hands make my heart jump for joy. This is not to say that those books are bad – they are not – there’s just nothing extraordinary about them, nothing that makes them stand out from the crowd. Then, out of the blue within a fortnight, four great new books found their way – more or less magically – into my hands. Enough material to celebrate a full fledged cookbook session on my favorite cozy reading spot – our sofa, next to a stack of pink and orange Post-Its, without which my regular reading routine just wouldn’t be same.

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Favorites of 2006 - cookbooks and music

Nicky — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:59:14 +0000

Just like you can be certain you’ll get to see Dinner for one on New Years Eve, well, on German TV anyway, it’d surprise me if you hadn’t stumbled over one of the many Top-Whatever-Lists of 2006. They’re everywhere, some funny, a few useful, most very superfluous or even fake/pointless: The other day I zapped over a TV show presenting a compilation of the most annoying people of last year – well, if they are so annoying, why would you want to see them in the spotlight AGAIN?

Food or music related lists I can not so easily pass by. A possible lucky find, something I may have overlooked the entire year, outweighs my usually skeptical tenor. So I double check those, to see if they reflect my own taste, get furious if they missed to include my favorites and am a happy girl if I can spot a new gem.

Anyway, to add to the twothousandsixlist wackiness, below you find some favorite cookbooks and tunes of mine – some of them may not have been published last year, but it was 2006 when I discovered and started cherishing them, all for their very own reasons. And quite positively, I’ll manage to miss the one or other…

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