April 12, 2009
Eater's Digest
By Tan Hsueh Yun
These three books each celebrate a single ingredient. But do they do it well?
Yun WINGS
By Debbie Moose
2008/John Wiley &
Sons/Hardcover/128 pages/
$29.91/Books Kinokuniya
For the longest time, I always called the middle part of a chicken wing the, er, middle part. Now I know it is called the flat. The mini drumstick part is called the drummette, of course, and the wing tip, the flapper.
Yes, Wings has deepened my knowledge of this most delectable chicken part. I had lots of fun with this book, which has more than 50 recipes for fried, grilled and roasted chicken wings.
Kudos to the photographer, Jason Wyche, for making the same main ingredient look interesting, different and appetising in all the photos.
But it was the easy and enticing recipes that got me in the kitchen. The ingredients are easy to source since they are mostly pantry staples plus fresh herbs, citrus zest and fruit juices to add zing. Moose also likes to dip into the liquor cabinet.
Her Margarita On The Wing uses half a cup of tequila and a rather large amount of lime juice - three quarters of a cup. But the result was fantastic: sticky, tangy and unashamedly boozy. Black Belt Wings relied on orange juice and fresh ginger for flavour. The result was more muted than the margarita wings but still, not bad at all.
One quibble I have is that the quantity of marinade differs quite wildly from recipe to recipe. The number of wings in each one is standard - 12. But I found myself with enough margarita marinade for double the amount of wings. In contrast, there was just about enough marinade for the Black Belt Wings.
Apart from this, I am probably going to cook my way through all the recipes in this book.
THE ASIAN TOFU COOKBOOK
By Betty Saw
2009/Marshall Cavendish Cuisine/
Paperback/198 pages/ $29.96
Major bookstores
If you are the sort to judge a book by its cover, then you might pass on this one.
The cover photo is a plate of shadowy brown stuff that does not look at all appetising.
But the book has some interesting and workable recipes by the Malaysia-based cooking doyenne Betty Saw.
I liked her Soy Custard With Minced Chicken, an easy-to-make dish where unsweetened soya bean milk and eggs steam up into a wobbly comfort dish.
Another dish, Mashed Otak-otak Tofu, tasted nothing like any otah I have eaten but the chilli-spiked mashed tofu made a delicious sandwich filling.
The minced chicken in it provided textural contrast to the smooth tofu and the mixture held together very well.
But this book is let down by the packaging. Aside from the strange cover photo, the book also has very reader-unfriendly page layouts.
The 100-plus recipes are printed in a light font in a tiny point size that is difficult to read. This does not appear to be a space-saving tactic either, since there are huge swathes of empty space on each page.
The glossary of tofu products is useful. However, these ingredients are packaged differently in Singapore, so calling for three pieces of semi-soft tofu is not as useful as giving an approximate weight of the ingredient. Yields for each dish would have been helpful too.
Several recipes in the book list salam leaves as an ingredient. But there is no explanation for these Indonesian bay leaves in the glossary of ingredients. Yet, for some bizarre reason, there is an entry for sunflower oil.
Some recipes - Mee Rebus, Saffron Rice With Mushrooms And Tomatoes and Waxed Duck Rice - are not so much tofu dishes as dishes garnished with tofu.
I am looking at them as a bonus. They seem like solid, do-able recipes that are good to have in the arsenal.
APPLES
By Louise Mackaness
2004/Conran Octopus/ Hardcover/
96 pages/ $8.90/Popular
I picked up this book for the pretty pictures and did not really expect much by way of content. But it turned out to be better put together than the more expensive cookbooks.
The recipes are interesting and sound and each one lists preparation time and yield. The two recipes I tried out worked very well too. Apple Clafoutis was easy to put together and baked up golden and appetising.
I also made a tangy and fresh apple chilli salsa verde that was used to top grilled haloumi cheese slices. Lovely.
The salsa is a real keeper. I am going to use it on grilled fish and meats and as a dip for tortilla chips too.
The book's 70-plus recipes are divided into starters, main courses, vegetables, puddings and tea-time treats, all showing how versatile apples are in the kitchen.
Aside from fresh apples, the recipes also call for dried apple rings, apple cider and juice. I do wish more of the apples listed in the recipes, such as Bramleys, Cox's and Red Pippin, were available here.
As with other single-ingredient cookbooks, I felt the author stretching it a little when it came to gathering recipes for the book.
While I do not expect the fruit to take centrestage in every recipe, I do think it should at least make a significant contribution.
So recipes such as Lemon Poppyseed Cake With Apple Icing, which calls for all of five tablespoons of apple juice in the icing just do not cut it.
Like the tofu cookbook above, this one also features text in a tiny point size. The difference is that the font here is bolder and easier to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment