In her debut cookbook, the author offers recipes and tips on preparing international dishes for family meals. Resele serves up a variety of inviting recipes, attractively packaged, in a volume that draws on a wide range of flavors, including both common (rosemary, thyme and balsamic vinegar) and less well-known items (kaffir leaves, galangal root and flax seed powder). Her cookbook is also diverse in other ways: It draws on her multicultural Indochinese-Japanese-Chinese heritage; her experience as a chef; and her training in biochemistry and nutrition. After some opening material, the book moves on to recipes that focus first on breakfast, then lunch, dinner or supper, followed by main courses, and then switching organizational principles with chapters on carbs, vegetables and desserts. Each recipe has an introduction and a nutritional analysis, and the book includes references and a glossary. Unfortunately, however, it has no index, and readers should be prepared for weights in grams. Recipes include standards—like Gazpacho, Polenta, and Baked Apples—as well as some interesting variations, like Kimchi made with spinach or arugula leaves. The range of cuisines shows up in the inclusion of dishes as varied as Fresh Egg Spaetzle, Ayam Rica-Rica, Miso Udon Soup, Beef Bulgogi, Tortellini Filling and Tortilla Tempeh Crumble. As appealing as some of these foods may be, errors at times undermine the credibility of the material. Contrary to the text, Plato did not write Epigram VII to (the mythological) Helen of Troy and may not have written it at all. Not only is Marie Antoinette not responsible for causing the French Revolution, as the book asserts, but she did not say “Let them eat cake” at all, let alone in October 1793. The most questionable statement about nutrition is that “a low carbohydrate diet has a negative effect on muscle building and the proper burning of fat,” an assertion at odds with studies that have shown that—given sufficient calories—people on low-carb diets either maintained or increased lean body mass, losing only body fat. The book also reflects editing lapses in its references to “corned” pomegranates and “gloves” of garlic, which could easily have been avoided. Well-seasoned recipes served up with prose that readers need to take with a pinch of salt.
Pub Date: June 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490561882
Page Count: 204
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
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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