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  • Written by Madelaine Bullwinkel

MY BOOKSALE HAUL

 

My favorite place to shop for cookbooks is at my local library's biannual book sale.  This collection of secondhand books is so large, a cook is bound to find an unexpected treasure.  Just the process of browsing opens one's mind to new flavor possibilities.  It sure beats searching the internet for the perfect mac and cheese recipe. 


I recently donned a red ‘Friends of the Library’ apron for my shift at the Lemont Library’s sale and headed straight for the cookbook section.  In the official capacity of a volunteer, I carefully rearranged books for easier browsing, all the while shopping for myselfThis year’s finds included two self-proclaimed bibles!  

The spice and herb bible caught my eye because this massive 600-page paperback came with an IACP* Award emblem stamped in one cornerThe fact that the book is a father and daughter collaboration made it an even more attractive. Ian Hemphill is a second-generation owner of an herb and spice business in Australia. His inclusion of the origin, history, processing methods and use for 100 spices and herbs is all a nerd could hope forKate, his daughter, is a chef and complements each entry with a recipe. I’m looking forward to reading about seasonings I’ve never heard of like candlenut and wattleseed 


Jim Lahey's updated no-knead boule

The other hefty tome was, the bread bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum whose popularity rests on her first book, the cake bible, published 25 years agoWhat makes this one a bible?   First is its exhaustive variety of subjects from quick breads and muffins to flatbreads and brioche. It also lists ingredients by weight as well as volume, a practice that Beranbaum initiated in the cake bible. Each recipe is crafted to give the cook a feeling the author is at their elbow guiding their progress.   

The book on Vinegar by Margaret Briggs is so slender that a speed shopper might overlook itThat is their loss.  With the head-spinning promise of 1001 Practical Uses, this volume delivers recipes for cleaning your house, your car even your pet, all in short, concise paragraphsIt’s reassuring to know that after 10,000 years a simple bacterial process continues to provide a cheap, viable solution for cleaning almost everything and healing common ailments  A third of the book is devoted to recipes for making and cooking with vinegarFinally, a hack for YouTube videos.   My favorite find of the day was a like-new copy of Jim Lahey’s my bread.  I’ve been teaching Lahey’s no-knead boule recipe since 2006 when it was first published in The New York TimesThis book that appeared in 2009 fleshes out Lahey’s technique with recipes for other breads, sandwiches, focaccia and the pizzas sold in his Sullivan Street Bakery. There is even a chapter with recipes that turn stale bread into a heartwarming treatThat's not all. Tucked inside this book were carefully folded pages with an updated recipe boule recipe from a 2022 New York Times Magazine.  To whoever donated this book to the sale, “Thank you!”  

tomato bread soup from my bread 

Yes, there are times when a sale book doesn’t deliver as expectedI picked up the slim volume entitled Your Brain on Food by Gary L. Wenk that had a head of broccoli in the shape of a brain on the coverI should have paid more attention to the subtitle: “How chemicals control your thoughts and feelings”. This book is actually a fascinating and detailed exploration of the neurochemical effect on the brain of drugs not Sunday’s roast chicken dinner. I trust someone will find it more useful when they pick it up at the next book sale this fallAt the price of $1 a book, it’s worth a try.  
 

*IACP: International Association of Cooking Professionals 

  

 

  • Written by Madelaine Bullwinkel

A TALE OF TWO AMSTERDAMS

The week I spent with my daughter in Amsterdam was unlike our previous travel adventures. Celia took the lead in planning and guiding, having visited the city on two other occasions. This year her short animated film, Baby Bros, was in competition at the city's annual Kaboom Animation Festival. Roughly 200 young people from 58 countries gathered to view as many of the 165 animated and VF films as possible. The films were grouped in 9 categories, all of them focused on the this year’s theme: provocation. Screenings bore titles like “Your Yuck is My Yumm” and “Punk it Louder. Baby Bros was among 13 short films titled “Bonkers Shorts”. You get the idea. 

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The festival was held in the stunning, white Eye Filmmuseum located on the northern shore of the IJ River directly across from Amsterdam’s Centraal Station and easily accessible on a free ferry. The museum and the adjacent 22-story Shell tower represent the new face of the city. After Shell moved its headquarters to the United Kingdom in 1999, this 19 square mile borough consisting of open land and waterways known as Amsterdam-Noord has seen the growth of high-rise developments that accommodate Amsterdam’s growing population. What was formerly the Shell tower has become a focus of the city’s music culture. It houses the audio-themed hotel where we stayed, a music school, the offices of Sony, a revolving restaurant, rooftop bar and an observation deck fitted with swings that offer a commanding view of the Dutch landscape. 

When we were not asleep or watching animated films, Celia and I explored the intact and carefully updated Amsterdam of the 17th century on the south side of the river.  Here were the picturesque rows of narrow buildings with large curtain-less windows overlooking canals strung like concentric rows of beads from the IJ River, all of them with boats moored along the banks. There may be more cars than boats in Amsterdam, but there are almost four times as many bicycles as cars. A highly integrated system of trains, buses and a metro make the museums and markets scattered around the city very accessible. The reduced noise and air pollution gives gives the city a calm, museum quality except for the times when it becomes a playground for European students on holiday. Amsterdam is renown for its red light district and coffee houses where cannabis and other soft drugs are sold. Celia and I were careful to limit our experimentation to rijsttafel meals from Tibet, Nepal, the Punjab and Indonesia, Dutch beer and stroopwaffles.

 

 On our last day in Amsterdam we walked north from the hotel through high-rise neighborhoods and an eco-friendly community of houses on an inland waterway to an enormous former shipbuilding shed. In 2000 a group of artists, artisans and skaters offered a plan to turn this 20,000 meter square space into a cultural yard today known today at NDSM LOODS, a multi-leveled space with studios for 200 artists including an artisan sourdough bread baking operation,  The giant crane that reigns over the center of the yard has been reborn as the hip Faralda Hotel that boasts a swimming pool at the top level. The nearby Straat Museum, dedicated to street art and graffiti is filled with paintings so massive they have to be painted on the site.
 
 

Visitors that walk through Amsterdam-Noord are rewarded with a sense of creative energy in the mix of new construction with repurposed industrial icons. The city is committed to constructing 52,500 homes by the end of this year with the focus on social housing and medium-priced rentals. It's present population is over 108,000. slightly less than 10% of city's total. The goal of Amsterdam's Comprehensive Vision is to integrate greenery, housing, employment, sustainability in support of a comfortable quality of life by 2050.

 

 

  • Written by Madelaine Bullwinkel

TIME TRAVELING IN THE KITCHEN

 

The kitchen is an inspiring place for a cook to time travel.  There are more discoveries than those leftovers in the back of the refrigerator. One good example is in the saltshaker on the counter.  

Recovering salt crystals from briny salt flats and chiseling it from veins in rock was one of man’s first occupations. The oldest salt operation on record in Añana Spain is still active after 7000 years, but who’s counting?  Far from being a relic, Añana’s artisanal salt attracts Michelin chefs from San Sebastian who own their own salt ‘era’ there. (Our Basque Tour will visit for a tasting in September.) 

Massive amounts of salt were once needed to preserve perishable foods by coating them to dry or ferment.  When dried food was later soaked to remove salt, the salt that remained was more than we would consider healthful today.  It is thought the daily diet in the Middle Ages contained as much as 40 grams of salt. Today’s recommended consumption is 2.5 grams.  

This dependance on salt lives on in the form of the condiments found in most kitchen.  The Chinese were producing soy sauce 2000 years ago.  About that time the Romans were making garum by allowing salted anchovies to rot in the sun and straining off the juices. Vietnamese nuoc mam, a fermented fish sauce, is a modern version of garum and a staple in southeast Asia. 

Why do we continue to be dependant on salt?  A Japanese chemist, Kikunae Ikedi, found the answer in 1908 when he searched for the reason why his daily bowl of dashi was so satisfying.  He discovered a flavor that he named, umami, in the seaweed used to make dashi. Umami translates asdeliciousness’ and is now considered the ‘fifth flavor’ after salty, sour, bitter and sweet. Umami contains the amino acid, glutamate, for which we have receptors on our tongue and that rapidly registers as pleasure in our brain 

It then comes as a surprise glutamate salt is absent from American kitchens, including my own. This salt, MSG (Monosodium glutamate), entered the marketplace the year following the discovery of umami, and rapidly became a staple ingredient in Asian cuisines, but western countries have been slow to accept it during the last century. It is still regarded with suspicion in the States and must be listed as an ingredient on all processed food labels no matter the amount involved. Rest assured, there are also many foods that contain glutamate as part of their natural chemistry. They include mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, broccoli, peas, aged cheese and eggs. 

I recently prepared Vietnamese Chicken and Ginger following a recipe that appeared in Le Monde. It is ready in 30 minutes and deliverers a delightful umami experience.