wine adventure



mexican recipes

 


moroccan food


Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A wine-soaked journey from grape to glass, Natalie MacLean. Bloomsbury 2006. Although Natalie MacLean is an accredited sommelier and has won numerous foodie-related awards, she’s a down-to-earth woman with a real taste for the grapes. Sniff, swirl, and spit? That might be good enough for the wine snobs, but Natalie loves the entire sensuous experience of wonderful wine with equally wonderful food and friends. She’s adventurous—as when she goes undercover at a five-star French restaurant—and writes in an amusing and breezy style. If you’d like to know more about wine, or just have others think you know more about wine, this book will take you there. Natalie offers podcasts, recipes, wine and food pairings, and other vast resources on her website at http://www.nataliemaclean.com/.

 

Mexico: One Plate at a Time, Rick Bayless with JeanMarie Brownson and Deann Groen Bayless. Simon & Schuster 2000. Rick has won the James Beard Foundation’s National Chef of the Year award, among others. His famed Chicago restaurants, Frontera Grill and Topolobampo have both won many awards. The photos and recipes in this cookbook will make you mouth long for the bite of chilies, the zest of moles, the south-of-the-border richness of pozole. One of the best things about it is the way Bayless combines traditional methods and ingredients to help you create the complexity and savor of true Mexican cooking—then turns around and suggests contemporary ways of capturing their essence for cooks in the United States. Too often, those not familiar with the depth and breadth of Mexican dishes think that tacos, enchiladas, and burritos—with plenty of yellow cheese—are what the country’s cuisine has to offer. There is so much more! It’s like thinking Italy is just about pizza. http://www.fronterakitchens.com/

 

Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, & Lebanon, Claudia Roden. Knopf 2006. Not only is this cookbook beautiful to look at or display in your kitchen, with its turquoise and gold middle eastern design cover and the stunning photo layouts of foods and dishes inside, but it is filled with stories and bits of history from each of these three countries, plus recipes that are not “Greek” for the average cook to create. They are manageable, use ingredients that most can find (some have been reworked with contemporary ingredients), yet have retained the alluring touches of spices and complex flavor combinations that are new to many US palates. This is food for real people, not gourmands or food elitists. It gets my vote for the best of its kind!

Check out the zucchini fritter recipe from Arabesque below:
 

 

Zucchini Fritters

claudia rodenIngredients:

1 large onion, coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons vegetable or sunflower oil, plus more for frying
1 pound zucchini, finely chopped
3 eggs
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
black pepper
2 to 3 sprigs of mint, chopped
2 to 3 sprigs of dill, chopped
7 ounces feta cheese, mashed with a fork

 

Serves 4

Fried onions, feta cheese, and herbs lift what is otherwise a bland vegetable. These little fritters can be served hot or cold. They can be made in advance and reheated.

Fry the onion in 3 tablespoons oil over medium heat until it is soft and lightly colored. Add the zucchini and sauté, stirring, until it, too, is soft.

In a bowl, beat the eggs with the flour until well blended. Add pepper (there is no need for salt because the feta cheese is very salty) and the chopped herbs, and mix well. Fold the mashed feta into the eggs, together with the cooked onions and zucchini.

Film the bottom of a preferably nonstick frying pan with oil and pour in the mixture by the half ladle (or 2 tablespoons) to make a few fritters at a time. Turn each over once, and cook until both sides are browned a little. Drain on paper towels.

Excerpted from Arabesque by Claudia Roden Copyright © 2006 by Claudia Roden. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.