A thoroughly sumptuous guide to some of the world’s most nutritious cuisines.
Keuneke celebrates good food and good health in this cookbook and love letter to the flavors of the Iberian Peninsula.
Ever since Ancel Keys published the findings of his Seven Countries Study in 1978, nutritionists have promoted the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Our understanding of how diet affects our overall well-being has changed over time, but the idea that minimally processed foods—plants, whole grains, and unsaturated fats—are good for us is well established. While on a trip to Spain, the author, a health writer and natural foods cook, discovered variations on this way of eating that would change her life. The first recipe in the book is for a vinagreta, but the author introduces this simple dressing in the context of a whole chapter on olive oil in which she explains why it’s a superfood; she suggests several ways for enhancing the oil’s health benefits while enjoying its delicious versatility. This section is followed by a lengthy and informative discussion about the gastronomic and nutritional powers of sofrito. Keuneke supports her health claims with relevant research—the bibliography and suggestions for further reading take up more than 50 pages—and she shares stories from her travels. The book includes interviews with world-renowned chefs (including Carme Ruscalleda, the only woman in the world with seven Michelin stars) and recipes for some of their signature dishes. Throughout, Keuneke offers readers a wealth of details about the cultures—Basque, Castilian, Galician, Navarrese, and Catalan—that have produced these incredible foods. Home cooks may have difficulty following some of the recipes, such as one for caldo de pescado that begins with this instruction: “Call ahead and ask the fishmonger to set aside 4 pounds of fish heads and carcasses.” That said, the author does provide an annotated list of retailers that can provide some of the ingredients readers might not find easily, and Keuneke enthusiastically and convincingly argues that it’s worth venturing beyond the supermarket to make these dishes.
A thoroughly sumptuous guide to some of the world’s most nutritious cuisines.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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