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The New Doubleday Cookbook
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The Food of Portugal Cookbook
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Process This Cookbook
One-Dish Dinners Cookbook
Quick Loaves Cookbook
Cookbooks by Jean Anderson | Food Finds | Cookbooks | Food News | Recipes | Food related photo album | Jean Anderson is The Recipe Doctor

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“The rude country wagons laden to the rim with . . . the heavy red ripeness of huge tomatoes . . . the juicy corn stacked up in shocks of living green, and the heavy blacked rinds of home-cured hams and bacons.”

-- Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock

        

A Love Affair with Southern Cooking - Click Here to order online
Click here to order
In Brief:

A miracle berry? There’s no end of buzz about açaí (ah-SAH-ee), the crimson berry Brazilians have scarfed and juiced for ages believing it some sort of fountain of youth. Now Oprah’s a fan. So which açaí claims are fact? Which fiction? According to the June U. of California, Berkeley WELLNESS LETTER, açaí, like other fruits, do contain antioxidants that “quell cell-damaging free radicals.” But, it adds, “antioxidant” has become a major marketing tool. In truth, açaí lab studies, no matter how promising, may not relate to human beings at all. “There is no magic berry for weight loss or good health,” the newsletter concludes. “Açaí berries are no doubt a good food, like other berries, but why pay a fortune for them or supplements containing them?” There are açaí scams out there, the WELLNESS LETTER warns, websites hungry for your credit card number. Is it any wonder this respected publication has nicknamed açaí “the Ponzi berry?”

Someone once told me that if a cookbook gives you only one new recipe, it’s worth the price you paid. Chef’s cookbooks provide the lion’s share but not far behind are the community fund-raisers whose contributors often dish up heirloom family recipes. One such book landed on my desk recently: Cooking with New Hope published by the New Hope Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill, NC. I won’t pretend that there aren’t scores of familiar recipes here – there are – but also more than a few new to me: Martha Elrod Washington’s Homemade Cottage Cheese . . . Quaker’s Crackers . . . Presbyterian Hospital Plantation Soup . . . Annie’s White Chili . . . Granny Kate’s Mississippi Cornbread . . . Cloutie Dumplings . . . Grannie Black’s Steak Pie . . . Venison Summer Sausage . . . Cranachan . . . Modest Chafin’s Oat Cake. I especially like the book’s vintage black and white photographs of church suppers, community pickling and preserving sessions, grillin’ and barbecuin’. Particularly valuable: the Health Resources chapter and its long list of nutrition and health-related websites. For details on Cooking with New Hope (price, how to order, etc.), click on newhopepres@mindspring.com

Another just-off-the-press fund-raiser I like: My Mama Made That: Virginia Favorites from the Junior League of Hampton Roads, Inc. A more sophisticated cookbook than Cooking with New Hope above, this one is also more slickly published (no shortage of four-color photographs). Thumbing through, I hungered for local specialties as well as old Virginia classics. And among the quiches, pastas, and margaritas, I did spot Perfect Southern Iced Tea . . . Chesapeake Pumpkin and Crab Soup . . . Cheesy Ham and Grits Soufflé . . . Hampton Yacht Club Collard Greens . . . Crab and Corn Tart . . . Oyster Stew and Mashers. Still, I would have welcomed more of the down-home and could have done with fewer of the trendy international dishes that seem to crop up time and again in community cookbooks. For details, click on www.JLHR.org.

Just got a press release from Crook’s Corner, one of Chapel Hill, NC’s most beloved restaurants, and was delighted to learn that its summer dessert menu, in addition to featuring Chef Bill Smith’s brilliant Honeysuckle Sorbet, will also offer my Brown Sugar Pie (the recipe appears in my Love Affair with Southern Cooking). Here’s what Crook’s has to say: “For dessert, Bill Smith is continuing his exploration in pies. His latest attempt at old-fashioned pie nirvana succeeded: Jean Anderson's Brown Sugar Pie and can be served with whipped cream (Bill Smith's choice) or vanilla ice cream (so good it makes it hard to decide).” To view Crook’s summer menu, log onto www.crookscorner.com

Fire!! Or rather fire ants. On a recent trek to my street-side mailbox, I noticed a big mound the color of sandstone with swarms of little red ants dashing about. Though I’d never seen fire ants in NC, I had on visits to Mississippi and remembered the advice good friends there had offered: “Never squash or kick a fire-ant mound. They’ll be all over you in seconds and the only solution is to strip.” I also remembered their recipe for annihilating fire ants: “Smother the mound with uncooked grits or cornmeal. The ants’ll eat it till they explode.” Sure enough. Within 24 hours, the mound had shrunk to a wet brown splotch and only a few stragglers tottered about. Hearing of my recent fire-ant scare, two other friends suggested equally effective, non-toxic, biodegradable methods: (1) Cover the mound with diatomaceous earth (available at many garden centers) and (2) Pile on cayenne pepper or hot pepper sauce. In short, fight fire with fire. If you know of other ways to combat fire ants, I’d love to hear them.


Q & A

Crisco, cont.

Q   I read about problems with Crisco on your website. I haven't used it since I stopped testing recipes for NYC Food, in which it was necessary to get the right old-fashioned texture of certain things -- off the top of my head, Child's pancakes and Horn & Hardart's Butterscotch cookies, which I have to look, may not have even made it into the book. (I still make the pancakes, but a combo of melted butter and oil is satisfactory, although not the same.) I have good leaf lard from a local farmer in the refrigerator. I use it here and there in my Southern Italian cooking and baking. I was going to use lard for the biscuits. But, tell me, doesn't Crisco make a product WITH transfats? I haven't looked, to tell the truth. But you will know this. Don't we get a choice?

-- ARTHUR SCHWARTZ, NEW YORK, NY

A  To my knowledge, Arthur, we still don’t get a choice. I’ll do a little research and get back to you.

And now a Q & A with LINDA BUBEL of GRANBURY, TEXAS:

LB  My biscuits are too dense and tough. Not fluffy. I have changed to lighter flour, tried not overworking them, used more buttermilk, more Crisco. I've tried room temp Crisco and ice cold Crisco. I use fresh all-purpose flour with fresh Clabber Girl baking powder, fresh baking soda. The only thing I haven't done is use regular table salt instead of the kosher salt I always use. Could this be the problem?

JA I think it's the "new" Crisco, Linda. Everybody’s having trouble with it – ruined pound cakes, leaden biscuits, cardboard-tough pie crusts. The manufacturer was incredibly short-sighted not to keep the old Crisco when introducing the new. The best substitute would be lard (hog lard) and failing that, butter (not margarine), just plain stick butter. Substitute measure for measure for the Crisco and see if that works for you. Do let me know how the biscuits turn out.

LB  LARD RULES!!!!!!! After a few dirty looks from fitness fiends in Kroger, and a slight language barrier problem (the lard bucket was labeled manteca - Spanish for lard), I made better biscuits than my momma ever did! I now need to go figure out how to make homemade orange marmalade (and buy bigger clothes).

JA Fabulous, Linda. I'm so glad your biscuits were a big success. Lard is best for pie crust, too. If you should have any other cooking probs, shoot them my way.

LB  My husband says that a couple of issues back, Saveur praised the use of lard and said it was making a comeback.

JA Let’s hope so. It’ll be more widely available.


Autographed Book Plates:

If you’d like an autographed book plate for any of my books, just let me know. Please specify which book and to whom it should be inscribed.

 

 
 
  • Biscuits tough?
  • Cakes lopsided?
  • Jellies won't gel?
  • Gravies lumpy?

If so, contact me and I’ll attempt to solve your thorniest culinary nightmares. I love nothing more than playing "recipe doctor" and have occasionally been "on call" for the Food Network, Gourmet, and other national magazines.

Click here to contact Jean


Site-Seeing

A favorite website:

www.polsteins.com
With farmer’s markets proliferating, with cucumbers and sun-blushed peaches soon beckoning, we’re tempted to try our hands at pickling and preserving. Unfortunately, canning jars, hot water bath kettles and racks, even wide-mouth funnels and jar lifters may not be available at the nearest housewares store. No problem. Polsteins stocks everything you’ll need to get the job done. Simply click on this website, then enter “canning supplies” in the search window. Polsteins also sells one-gallon glass storage jars with snug lids – for me the ideal way to store sugar, flour, cereal, and other grains because they are critter-proof. Moreover, a glance tells you what’s inside.


Food friends' websites:

Georgia Downard
www.reelcookingproductions.com/gdownard.html

Nancy Harmon Jenkins
nancyharmonjenkins.typepad.com

Barbara Kafka
www.bkafka.com

Sally Belk King
www.sbkproductions.com

Deborah Madison
www.deborahmadison.com

Nick Malgieri
www.nickmalgieri.com

Sara Moulton
www.saramoulton.com

Arthur Schwartz
www.thefoodmaven.com

Kim Sunée
kimsunee.com/blog

Paula Wolfert
www.paula-wolfert.com

 

 

 
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