by Jean B. MacLeod ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2018
A functional, authoritative reference book that home chefs should be glad to have on their shelves.
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A guide presents cooks with thrifty, effective substitutions for recipes.
MacLeod (Baking Substitutions, 2018, etc.) adds another volume to her collection of handy manuals for harried home chefs. In this comprehensive installment, she reviews “the time-tested art of substitution,” offering suggestions that will reduce frustration and waste while also making it easier to try new recipes without having to rely on long, specialized shopping lists. No more will people be confronted with a row of spices they’ve used only once “silently sulking, gathering dust, and taking up space” in their pantries. Hundreds of brief entries are arranged alphabetically, and the author’s extensive knowledge of ingredients both common and obscure is on display. There are listings for everything from cinnamon to süzme, a “Turkish extra-thick yogurt for dips and desserts.” Readers will learn that raisins can be substituted for dried mulberries and ground cayenne pepper will work instead of Hungarian hot paprika. While MacLeod occasionally provides additional insights about when certain swaps may (or may not) work, in many cases, readers will need to use their own judgment about whether a substitution is appropriate for their needs. Those who’ve eaten a fresh Wisconsin cheese curd may not be satisfied with swapping it out for “fresh salted mozzarella, cut into small pieces,” as the author suggests. But many substitutions are especially valuable for people with dietary restrictions. Vegans looking for an alternative to sour cream can try a blend of cashews, water, lemon, and salt while a puree of silken tofu and a little soymilk can be used in place of cream sauce. People avoiding alcohol can swap freeze-dried instant coffee dissolved in water for coffee liqueur or use frozen orange juice concentrate with equal parts water in place of Cointreau and Curaçao. As with the author’s other books, this isn’t a collection of recipes, though MacLeod does sometimes provide brief instructions for preparing certain foods, like vegan ganache, pickled ginger, and Old Bay seasoning.
A functional, authoritative reference book that home chefs should be glad to have on their shelves.Pub Date: June 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9974464-7-0
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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by David Hajdu ; illustrated by John Carey
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