The text in this debut memoir/cookbook is nothing short of charming and recalls Zarela Martinez's Food From My Heart. O'Higgins paints her pre-Castro Cuban childhood in idyllic colors and calls a lost world to life. Family photographs add to the sweet, personal feel. However, while the essays and notes benefit from intimate detail, the recipes do not: Many feel like a-pinch- of-this-a-pinch-of-that attempts to nail down techniques that are second nature to the author. For example, directions for fried plantains instruct, ``Fry the plantain slices until they are almost black but not burned'' without giving any idea of how much time that will take—a problem for novice plantain cookers. Variety apparently has never been the spice of life in Cuba: Many of these are more or less similar recipes for the same dish. There are three different black-bean recipes and four for cooking rice, and that's only in the chapter on rice and beans. Another section gives 14 rice entrÇes, most with similar seasonings. O'Higgins warns that Cuban desserts are achingly sweet (because sugar production was the backbone of the Cuban economy, consuming it came to be considered a patriotic act), and she is not kidding. A light eight-by-eight- inch sponge cake is drowned in a cup of port and more than two cups of a supersweet lime-cinnamon syrup. Good reading, bad eating.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-016964-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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