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Heat & Zest

by

Lauren Roberts

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Four days ago I was wearing leggings and a sweater. Today, I am in shorts and a tank top. I’m also feeling a bit cranky because of the heat. Though I am a southern California native, I have always been drawn to rain and cold. My ability to concentrate and to stay focused when it’s too warm for my taste is not lost but it is affected, especially in these first days.

I blame the weather for the fact that the review I had planned to write for this week has fallen by the wayside, while I have found myself repeatedly drifting toward the kitchen and my collection of cookbooks I keep there. There’s something rather satisfying about browsing through them when the weather changes. I sit with an iced tea, lazily turning the pages, savoring the individual ingredients and the delectable end result that I can sense. I imagine chopping the herbs or vegetables, feeling the chef’s knife in my hand, inhaling the scent of basil or tasting a slice of tomato as I go. It’s a most satisfying hobby-of-sorts because it requires no more of me than a sensual concentration.

Zest by Michelle Cranston has been the book with which I have been spending the most time. It is absolutely delicious with its gorgeous front and back covers of plump, glistening orange slices. This is a book designed for foodies who appreciate the beauty of ingredients as well as dishes. It is loaded with some of the best food photography I have ever seen. It is, in short, a book I want to gobble up.

There is nothing bland in here including its table of contents. Instead of appetizers, salads, main dishes and desserts, you find mouth-watering chapter names: savour; tang, seasoned, piquant, zesty, aromatic, fragrant, ambrosial. Each name refers to the a category of spices and herbs it uses in its recipes. Under Piquant. for example, is “chili and ginger.” Savour is based on “rosemary, basil, sage, parsley, mint and thyme,” and Fragrant uses “cinnamon and saffron.”

“Zest can mean many things,” says Cranston in the Introduction. “A zest for wonderful flavors and foods, an enthusiasm for crossing culinary boundaries and a desire to savour all things new.” And that’s precisely what you’ll find in this book, which does something many cookbooks don’t or can’t do—treat food in a genuinely new way.

Generously sized at 9” x 12” and filled with exquisite photography not just of dishes but of individual ingredients, this book would be worth owning just for its art. The beginning of each chapter has a brief commentary, which is complimented by a full-page photograph of the spices or herbs that are used in its recipes. Who knew a halved lime, a few fresh green beans or a single sprig of coriander could be so sexy?

“Coriander, with its lush frilly leaves and fresh aromatic flavor,” Cranston notes in the essay opening the Aromatic chapter, “brings the taste of the East to the table . . . Similar in appearance to parsley, coriander is a herb of an entirely different nature. Its flavor is often viewed as a little strange on first tasting, but once acquired it becomes as necessary as basil and parsley.”

Her use of language is as much a draw into the heart of the book, the recipes, as are the photographs. Like much high end food photography the photographs of the dishes in this book are made with to seduce the eye rather than the palate, but the truth is they do both in here. An image of “Spiced Tomato and Prawns” shows the “lead” prawn carefully arranged between leaves of Thai basil leaves and a quartered cherry tomato. But what is not done—thankfully—is to distract the eye from the food with exotic dishes, glasses and artfully arranged napkins against a Monet-style garden backdrop. Attention is kept on the single dish, which is most often displayed on a simple white plate or bowl.

Why is this important? Because the food is the star. When you know you have good recipes, different and unusual recipes that can nevertheless be made by most readers, recipes that do not demand difficult-to-find ingredients or enormous amounts of time, then you don’t need to distract your readers. You’ve already got them with recipes like these:

Chili Beef on Endive Leaves

6 tablespoons peanut oil
2 1/2” piece fresh ginger, peeled and julienned
1 pound, 2 ounces lean beef mince
3 large red chilis, seeded and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons soy sauce
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
10 basil leaves, finely sliced
4 whole witlof (chicory/Belgian endive), washed and leaves separated

Put the peanut oil into a frying pan and heat over a medium to high heat. Add the ginger to the oil and once it begins to turn crisp and golden, remove and allow to drain on paper towels. Drain most of the oil, leaving just a little to coat the pan, and reduce the heat to medium. Add the mince, chili, garlic and sesame oil to the hot pan, and stir-fry until the meat is cooked and beginning to turn brown. Add the vinegar, soy sauce and oyster sauce and cook for a further 1 or 2 minutes before adding the basil leaves. Spoon the warm beef mixture into the endive leaves and top with the fried ginger. Serves 4 to 6 as a canapé.

Chili and Vanilla Syrup with Fresh Mango
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1 large red chili, seeded and finely chopped
1 lime, juiced
3 mangoes, peeled and flesh cut into thick strips
Lime sorbet*

Put the sugar, vanilla bean and chili into a small saucepan with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 15 minutes. Allow to cool, the stir in the lime juice.

Divide the mango between four chilled bowls and top with scoops of lime sorbet. Drizzle with chili syrup and serve immediately. Serves 4.

*Lime sorbet
1 cup sugar
4-5 limes

Dissolve 4 cups of water and sugar together in a saucepan over a low heat. Once dissolved, boil for 2 to 3 minutes before removing from the heat and allowing to cool. Finely grate the rind of 1 lime and add it to the sugar syrup with the juice of 4 limes. Taste and then add a little more lime juice if you think it necessary. When the syrup has cooled, put it in an ice cream machine and churn following the manufacturer’s directions.

The back of the book has an unusually helpful “Basics” section that details how to make some of the ingredients the recipes call for such as lemon mayonnaise, tapenade, buttered couscous, tahini sauce, quince paste and so on. A clear, well-written glossary can help with unfamiliar items be they foods or specialty instruments.

The design of Zest, with its fresh, vibrant colors and clean layout, is a beauty. Whether you use it for cooking or looking, this book is worth having. I have many times been tempted to break it up for the pictures—I think they would be lovely as framed kitchen images—but I cannot bring myself to do it. To me, destroying a book is sacrilege, but to destroy something this beautiful in its original state would be worse. So this book continues to hold a place of honor in my kitchen, though it can often be found in my lap late at night, after dinner, while I feast on its pages. 

It would make a wonderful gift for spring. Fortunately, despite its 2003 publication date, Zest is still available as a new item for $24.95. Used copies can also be found. As of this writing, Powell’s has one for $16.95, while Bookfinder has seven new copies ranging in price from $20.02 to $36.75 and 81 used copies from priced from $5.41 to $69.01.


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines have reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 750 bookmarks and nearly 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

 
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