Book Reviews
The omega 3 cookbook - Michael Van Straten
Do you feel good? Wah! You know that you should now! We’ve never been so obsessed with what we put into ourselves; juices, smoothies, macrobiotic yoghurts and fist-fulls of supplement pills are big business. We pillory the obese and the bad-eaters, holding them up as examples of prime stupidity. Rather less do we consider that social class and income may the reason for a poor diet.
And yet back in the day all classes ate, if not well, at least healthily and money wasn’t a deciding factor. One of the things we ate a lot more of back then were Omega 3 rich foods especially oily fish like sardines and mackerel. In fact Omega 3 acids are now regarded as something of a wonder food able to help improve overall health, reduce the risk of heart attacks and diabetes, maintain good vision and improve certain inflammatory conditions. The latter may be the reason why varying Omega 3 deficiencies can lead to mood and behavioural conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity ADHD (which every child seems to have these days) and dyslexia (another popular problem with kids).
So how do we get more into our diet and in what form? Michael Van Straten has the answer with 100 tasty recipes to make eating Omega3 rich foods a real pleasure and get us up to our full recommended daily intake. His book isn’t just a recipe storehouse, though, it’s also a very informed and easily digested guide to fats and oils and what they do. As he points out early on, a fat isn’t necessarily bad only certain fats do the damage.
And so to the recipes which aren’t, as you might assume, all about sardines. In fact they’re all pretty tasty, even breakfast sounds good with kippers (obviously) but also porridge with whisky and a good old Irish breakfast featuring plenty of potatoes.
Soups and starters are all equally easy to stomach the idea of – rustic cauliflower soup, cashew and bean salad plus mains that include big hearty pasta bakes, sweet potato stew, lamb and lentils and chicken with smoked tofu and a mango glaze. You’ll also find plenty of delicious desserts and juice and smoothie recipes too.
If you’re concerned about what you put into your body and have special reason to care – perhaps pregnant or breast feeding – this book is an invaluable, easy to read guide to doing yourself good. The best bit is that the recipes are so tempting, you can feel virtuous without suffering. In other words. no pain, but plenty of gain.
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Classic Cheese Cookery Peter Graham
Ah cheese. One of our oldest foods and one of the best. But, and this is an important but, only if you seek out the ones made with unpasteurised milk. You hear a lot of stuff about unpasteurised milk being a health risk but as author Peter Graham robustly says, this is mostly 'poppycock'. (You get the impression that he uses stronger language in person). As he points out in his winning introduction, badly made or badly looked after cheese will always be a hazard. So buy your cheese carefully and you'll be all right and always buy unpasteurised wherever possible.
And so to the book. The first thing to say is there are no pictures, just a pocket sized book packed with recipes. There are something like 700 to 2000 cheese varieties in the world, with traditions going back centuries. A true cheese maker is an artist as well as an artisan. So the first thing Peter gives is a checklist from A to Z. He doesn't claim it's perfect but it is pretty exhaustive. Just reading it is enough to make you hungry. Then follows a masterclass of buying and keeping cheese which makes the useful point that not all cheese should be refrigerated and some are positively ruined by it. Then come the recipes, loads and loads of them.
Soups, entrees, deep-fried dishes (oh yes please!), toasted cheese, melted cheese, cheese and egg, pasta, gnocchi, polenta, pies and tarts, cheese with meat and fish, salads and desserts - over three hundred recipes each incredibly tempting. This is a serious book for the serious cheese lover. You'll find the perfect Welsh Rarebit here along with the Yorkshire version (bacon between the toast and the cheese) plus sauces, nibbles and appetisers. Oh you know I simply can't write anymore, the recipes are making me so hungry.
This is a brilliant book; well-researched, well-written, infomative and indispensable and, at under a tenner, an absolute bargain.
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