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Good Reading : February 2015
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GOOD READING FEBRUARY 2015 61 FOOD WOM word of mouth International Night: A father and daughter cook their way around the world Mark Kurlansky and Talia Kurlansky Spinning a globe, your finger poised to land on any country, is a perfect way to choose the theme for a special dinner. Lucky New York teenager Talia Kurlansky did this 52 times – once each week – with her father Mark, a former cook and pastry chef and now an author. The result is a super book that is not just about food, although it does contain more than 250 recipes for one year of international nights at their table. Mark has written most of it, but his daughter has provided her own insights into cooking methods and sometimes even the featured countries, as she is a remarkably well-travelled teenager. What sets this book apart from so many recipe books is that it follows Mark and Talia as they cook their way around the world, mostly at regular Friday night feasts after Talia’s finger landed on a specific country earlier in the week. In one case – that of Morocco – when Mark heard that that country’s first cooking school had opened, he and Talia booked themselves into it, learning so many Moroccan dishes that they had two Moroccan nights. The introduction to each country is fascinating, including anecdotes and facts collected by Mark during more than 30 years of travelling the world, first as a journalist, then as a writer about food, culture and history. Many of the dishes featured can be prepared with the help of young family members, so he has provided a special chapter on cooking with children, as well as notes about spices, drinks, equipment, vegetables, desserts and some basic recipes for items such as mayonnaise, pastries, stocks, preserved lemons and tomato sauce. Then there’s the food, which comes from Kazakhstan to Cuba, and Tanzania to Ethiopia, as well as regions such as Brittany in France, Cornwall in England and Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Unfortunately Talia’s finger never landed on Australia; it would have been interesting to see what dishes Mark would have chosen as representative of this country. Mark and Talia live in New York, so the recipes feature US measurements such as pounds and ounces, and when he calls for a ‘stick of butter’, just remember that it’s 4 ounces or 110 grams in metric measurements. Most dishes usually serve three. The dishes are all graded for level of difficulty, but the recipes on the next page are some of the simplest. (Note that all measurements in the recipe extracts on the next page are metric.) ★★★★★ Bloomsbury $29.99 Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville special dinner. Lucky New York GOOD READING FEBRUARY 2015 61 RATINGS ★ ★ ★★ ★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★★★ ★★★★ ★★★★★ RG Hi Danielle, After the review there are 3 recipes from the book. There are apparently no photos or illustrations in the book, so the only thing right now we have to illus- trate the piece with is a photo of the two authors. I’ve put the word ‘From’ in front of each country for the recipe (for example, ‘From Egypt’, ‘From Sicily’ etc.), but you can delete the word ‘From’ if you want and just have ‘Egypt’ and ‘Sicily’ and ‘Andalusia’. We don’t have a copy of the book, so you can style it any way you want. Note that I’ve got only one page here (61), but it also spills over to page 62. I asked Rowena about making it a spread, but page constraints unfortunately mean we can’t do that here. Thanks. Tim
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