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 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
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.
The comic and television personality turns serious—semi-serious, anyway—in a combination memoir and self-help book.
Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: “Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is.” The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled cross-country trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: “I don’t know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does.” Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the latter has been of tremendous use, if “exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination.” As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners (“I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite”). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, “You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more”—and have grown and flourished.
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593596579
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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