Weekend Cooking: Around the World

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Meliz's Kitchen by Meliz Berg and I mentioned I really like books that talk about specific places and cultures. I love reading the introductions where they talk about going fishing with their grandfather, or cooking with their favourite auntie or whatever the story is. So today I thought I would talk a little about some of those books that I have in my cookbook collection.

Now, not all of them are written by people who come from the country or region, but the ones that aren't are written by people who have grown to love that particular culture.

The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden - I have had this book on my shelves for years, and I am not sure I have ever cooked anything from it, but I do distinctly remember looking through this and loving it! Time to take a stroll through the pages and the regions of Spain!

Norteña by Karla Zazueta - This is my latest addition, and features the cuisine of Northern Mexico. I find it interesting that this is so specifically about just the north, but I guess that Mexico is a big country with lots of different specialities across the country.

Trullo by Tim Siadatan - This is an Italian cookbook, and I must confess that I haven't spent a lot of time in the pages of this one!

Yiayia: Time Perfected Recipes from Greek Grandmothers by Anastasia Miari - So many delicious sounding dishes in this one. I was surprised though that there are not recipes for Moussaka or Pasticcio in this book! I will keep on the search for the perfect recipe.

Rice Table: Korean Recipes and Stories to Feed the Soul by Su Scott - Moving away from Europe temporarily, this is obviously Korean food. We have made a few things out of this including Kimchi fried rice, and some really delicious roasted baby potatoes. I must make them again!

The Italian Pantry by Theo Randall - This  book contains one of our favourite meatball recipes. We made it again this week and it is so good.

Meliz's Kitchen by Meliz Berg - Somehow I managed to not include this book in the photo even though this is where my pondering started today. Never mind. This book is all Turkish-Cypriot recipes and we have cooked quite a few things from this book.

Do you have a favourite cookbook about other parts of the world?

Weekly meals

Saturday - Chorizo and Potato Soup Stew
Sunday -
Monday -
Tuesday - Out for dinner
Wednesday - Butter chicken
Thursday - Baked Ratatouille and Beans
Friday - Out for dinner

You might notice that I have a new button for Weekend Cooking. I actually have a couple of different versions which is nice! I really like them. I did however want to give Melynda from Scratch Made Food who made the button that I was using for a few years. Thanks again!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

Weekend Cooking: The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden

A few months ago I reviewed a cookbook by Spanish Australian author Frank Camorra. In the comments to that post, Fay from Read, Ramble mentioned that a Spanish cookbook had just won the International Association of Culinary Professionals award in the International category. A quick check of the library catalogue and it was mine. Well....not mine mine, but temporarily mine!  It should give you a good indication of how much I liked this book when I tell you that this book is actually on it's way to me as we speak because I ended up buying it!

First off, this is a huge book! At more than 600 pages long there is bound to be something for everyone in terms of the recipes. Really though, the thing that makes this book stand out from others I have read is that it is much, much more than a cookbook! In fact, in the first 120 pages there is not a single recipe included. Rather there is a fascinating breakdown of the food history of Spain, the way that the Jews and the Muslims influenced the cuisine of the different regions, the influence of classical French chefs and more. In addition, each region within Spain is examined with details on the kind of food that you might expect to find.

Really though, the most important measure of a cookbook is how often are you going to cook from it. I was talking to someone the other day and they said that on average most people only cook 2 to 3 recipes out of any one cookbook. While I haven't cooked anything from this one yet, I did bookmark lots of recipes that I might consder making at some point or another.

I was reading this in bed at night and took a couple of Instagram photos. Hopefully you can see from this photo just how many little bits of paper I had used to bookmark a recipe, and this was only when I was about half way through so there ended up being lots more. It was a bit of shame to have to pull them all out just so I could return this one to the library.

Once you get past the food history part, Roden takes us through a variety of different types of food, but even within the recipe pages there are feature pages that might talk about a particular type of ingredient or a place, and sometimes even features pages on the people that she has come to know through the process of researching this book, people she ate memorable meals with, chefs, ordinary people and more. There is so much information in this book. I can totally imagine myself pulling this book off the shelf and browsing for just a few pages and finding something I had either forgotten about or that jumps out and catches my attention this time around.


If there was one minor niggle with this book it is in the fact that none of the photos that were included in the book included any details of what it was that we were looking at and some of the photos were a bit boring really. If it wasn't for that very minor criticism, this really would have been a perfect cookbook!

When my copy comes, which should have this gorgeous cover, I already know that there are a couple of recipes that I will share for a future Weekend Cooking post. I didn't realise until I was ordering that Claudia Roden is also one of the authors who has been given the Penguin Great Food treatment, so I ordered that book as well. I can also definitely see myself exploring more of Claudia Roden's cookbooks in the future.

In the meantime, if you want to see a few examples of the kinds of recipes that you will find in this book, there are some recipes that can be found on the Guardian website at the following link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/18/spanish-recipes-exclusive-claudia-roden

If you have any interest at all in Spanish food, I would highly recommend that you take a look at this exceptional cookbook.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.