FWPL - Cookbook - Good Eats: The Early Years

If you're a fan of GOOD EATS and, like me, are blown away by the sheer volume of information that is packed into each individual show, you'll dig hard Alton Brown's GOOD EATS: The Early Years. The book is formatted in a pulp-era style and hugely entertaining - a sample of Brown's preface on poultry:

Producing a properly roasted Gallus Domesticus is not easy. In fact, it's one of the toughest culinary tasks there is. I blame the bird, because it posses an awkward shape, two different types of meat, and an unhelpful surface-to-mass ratio...


It will be at the FWPL as soon as I return it...

• http://www.altonbrown.com/
• http://www.foodnetwork.com/good-eats/index.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Eats
  

FWPL - Cookbook - Molto Gusto

I've been hitting the recent crop of Cookbooks at The Fort Worth Public Library, and I'm enamored with Mario Batali's Molto Gusto - Easy Italian Cooking. Great summer-ready easy recipes with mouth-watering pics. I've got a fresh batch GRANITE in the freezer - He's got an entire chapter on Gelato & Sorbetto!!!






BLURB:

Chef Mario Batali’s zest for life infuses the casual Italian fare that has made his restaurant Otto Enoteca Pizzeria in New York City a perennially popular destination. Take the taste of Otto home with Molto Gusto, a collection of recipes for everyone’s favorites: pizza, pasta, antipasti, and gelati.

Mario writes the definitive book on great pizza making for the amateur, the novice, the foodie, and the gourmet cook, teaching them how to make really great pizza at home without any fancy equipment. Here too are recipes for “stuffed pizza,” including calzone, Stromboli, and pizza rustica from Puglia.

Looking for something a little lighter? Try the antipasti. Based on simple seasonal vegetables with a few showcasing seafood and meat, these dishes can make up an entire, healthy meal. Also included are some of Mario’s favorite simple pasta dishes, and to finish it all off, five base recipes for gelato, plus dessert variations from Sicily, Naples, and Emilia Romagna.

Filled with Mario’s infectious personality and robust flavor, Molto Gusto makes it easy to spend a night on the town without leaving home.

FWPL - Cookbook - MOMOFUKU

The FWPL pulls it out for me again - MOMOFUKU will make you dig out your WOK and get cracking...

From Momofuku: Ginger Scallion Noodles and Ginger Scallion Sauce

Our ginger scallion noodles are an homage to/out-and-out rip-off of one of the greatest dishes in New York City: the $4.95 plate of ginger scallion noodles at Great New York Noodletown down on the Bowery in Chinatown.

Ginger scallion sauce is one of the greatest sauces or condiments ever. Ever. It’s definitely a mother sauce at Momofuku, something that we use over and over and over again. If you have ginger scallion sauce in the fridge, you will never go hungry: stir 6 tablespoons into a bowl of hot noodles--lo mein, rice noodles, Shanghai thick noodles--and you’re in business. Or serve over a bowl of rice topped with a fried egg. Or with grilled meat or any kind of seafood. Or almost anything.

At Noodle Bar, we add a few vegetables to the Noodletown dish to appease the vegetarians, add a little sherry vinegar to the sauce to cut the fat, and leave off the squirt of hoisin sauce that Noodletown finishes the noodles with. (Not because it’s a bad idea or anything, just that we’ve got hoisin in our pork buns, and too much hoisin in a meal can be too much of a good thing. Feel free to add it back.)

The dish goes something like this: boil 6 ounces of ramen noodles, drain, toss with 6 tablespoons Ginger Scallion Sauce (below); top the bowl with 1/4 cup each of Bamboo Shoots (page 54 of Momofuku); Quick-Pickled Cucumbers (page 65 of Momofuku); pan-roasted cauliflower (a little oil in a hot wide pan, 8 or so minutes over high heat, stirring occasionally, until the florets are dotted with brown and tender all the way through; season with salt); a pile of sliced scallions; and a sheet of toasted nori. But that’s because we’ve always got all that stuff on hand. Improvise to your needs, but know that you need ginger scallion sauce on your noodles, in your fridge, and in your life. For real.-- David Chang

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups thinly sliced scallions (greens and whites; from 1 to 2 large bunches)
• 1/2 cup finely minced peeled fresh ginger
• 1/4 cup grapeseed or other neutral oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons usukuchi (light soy sauce)
• 3/4 teaspoon sherry vinegar
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, or more to taste

(Makes about three cups)

Directions

Mix together the scallions, ginger, oil, soy, vinegar, and salt in a bowl. Taste and check for salt, adding more if needed. Though it’s best after 15 or 20 minutes of sitting, ginger scallion sauce is good from the minute it’s stirred together up to a day or two in the fridge. Use as directed, or apply as needed.

FWPL Pulls Through For Foodies

Great New Books & Videos FOR FREE at the Fort Worth Public Library

Diary of a foodie. Season oneby Reichl, Ruth, WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.), WGBH Video (Firm), Zero Point Zero Production, Inc., Public Broadcasting Service (U.S.)


This disc whets the appetite for world travel and exotic eats. From a glimpse into the slow-food movement to salt and pepper, these 30-minute segments allow just enough time to begin a voyage, sample the topic, and return to Gourmet's kitchen for an "at-home" replication. The episode featuring chef Jose Andres is particularly exciting as he deconstructs a meal and creates amazingly delicious variations inside his kitchen-lab. A show on water takes the audience into the art and science of oyster farming, a fascinating and little-known industry. The most important element of the season is its focus on the local, slow, and organic food movements. Diary is an intelligent program on the most complex and also the simplest items that we put into our mouths. Highly recommended for foodists and ecologically minded chefs. Fans can also download full episodes and recipes at www.gourmet.com/diaryofafoodie/season1/season1.-Claire A. Moitra, Providence Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.






More diners, drive-ins, dives : a drop-top culinary cruise through America's finest and funkiest joints /by Fieri, Guy., Volkwein, Ann, Diners, drive-ins and dives (Television program)

Join New York Times bestselling author and Food Network star Guy Fieria for a second helping of the best diners, drive-ins, and dives across America! Guy Fieri strikes again with More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, giving you a road map to road food that's earned its culinary citizenship in "Flavortown." Join Guy on a cross-country noshing parade, mapping out the best places you've never heard of-more than fifty establishments off the beaten path. Compete in a (no hands) apple-pie-eating contest at Bobo Drive-In in Topeka, Kansas, dip your taste buds in Sweet Spicy Love sauce at Uncle Lou's Fried Chicken in Memphis, Tennessee, and get a load of the killer four-cheese mac-and-cheese at Gorilla Barbeque in Pacifica, California. Filled with Guy's hilarious voice and rampant enthusiasm for these hidden culinary gems, More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is the perfect book for lovers of the American food scene and fans of Triple D.


Great New Books & Videos FOR FREE at the Fort Worth Public Library

We Celebrate Feasts Around Here

Feast on Books

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested." -- Sir Francis Bacon

We enjoy a good celebratory feast around here, literal and figurative, so here is The Fort Worth Library's blog, where our librarians and other staff share stories and recommendations.

Feast on Books

The FWPL Makes My Brain Bigger Again - Jon Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine

Jon Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine

Jon Bonnell's new Texas Cookbook is truly a spectacle of art: delicious, captivating Texas recipes complimented by exquisite mouth-watering photographs by B.J. Lacasse. Some of the recipes sound daunting (Buffalo Style Frog Legs with Gorgonzola Dipping Sauce, Grilled Texas Quail with Jalapeno Cream Sauce), but the clear and concise instructions provide a sure-fire path to "bumping up" your culinary game. Another Fort Worthian lands a bulls-eye! Get your copy today!

The FWPL - Latest Funnies

In the autumn of 2005 I christened my FATTER, LOUDER, STUPIDER tour in an attempt to put my big butt into a RASCAL by the end of the year. I figured shutting off higher brain activity would somehow revert me to my primordial instinctual level and facilitate my acceptance into society at large. Well, my mimicry of Ricky from the TPB got me into some shenanigans and goings on, and now Denis Leary recounts his journey into The American Dream:

Why we suck : a feel good guide to staying fat, loud, lazy and stupid

In this hilarious blast of scathing irreverence from an award-winning actor and comedian, Leary uses his common sense, and his biting take on the world, to attack the politically correct, the hypocritical, the obese, the thin--basically everyone who takes himself too seriously. Available as an audiobook as well.





Me of little faith by Lewis Black

Black skewers all beliefs through his dark tinted glasses. The AUDIOBOOK will save you the trouble of shouting it internally.

I Drink For a Reason by David Cross

I dig me some David Cross.

David Cross Riffs Austin in New Book