Review & Giveaway of New York Sweets: A Sugarhound’s Guide to the Best Bakeries, Ice Cream Parlors, Candy Shops, and Other Emporia of Delicious Delights

New York Sweets: A Sugarhound’s Guide to the Best Bakeries, Ice Cream Parlors, Candy Shops, and Other Emporia of Delicious Delights by Susan Meisel, published by Rizzoli on April 2, 2013, is a comprehensive listing of all the places to get your sugar fix in NYC.  Whether you are an ice cream person, a bakery person or a candy person, there is something in this book for you.  Personally, I tend to lean toward ice cream and bakeries.  The book includes some of my faves:  Doughnut Plant, Jacques Torres, Payard, Villabate, L’arte Del Gelato, Sockerbit, Tea & Sympathy, Vosges, Ferrara and Van Leeuwen. This is one of those books I wish I had written!  The book is divided into neighborhoods, so you can do a sweets tour in each NYC ‘hood!  I want to try Puddin’ on St. Mark’s Place–a shop with puddings and toppings.  There’s plenty of eye candy in the hardcover book with color photos of goodies from all the shops listed and recipes for you to try at home.

If you are in New York and have never been, the Rizzoli Bookstore on 57th Street is worth a trip.  I love this store.  Rizzoli has wonderful art and photography books and a great international magazine section.

You can win a copy of this fun book by entering the giveaway.  If you win, Rizzoli will ship you a free copy of New York Sweets: A Sugarhound’s Guide to the Best Bakeries, Ice Cream Parlors, Candy Shops, and Other Emporia of Delicious Delights by Susan Meisel.

To enter the giveaway:

Leave a comment below, answering this question:

What is your favorite sweet shop or bakery?  (It doesn’t have to be in New York).

For additional entries, become a fan on Facebook or sign up for my Tweets on Twitter and let me know you signed up in a separate comment.  One winner will be chosen at random and announced on Friday, April 12.  Contest closes on Thursday, April 11 at 12 PM EST.  (Rizzoli will ship the book to the winner.  U.S. residents only.)  Winner will be contacted via email, so please be sure to include your email address in the field when you leave your comment (it will not be visible to the public).  Good luck!

Contest is closed.

Two for Tuesday: Ingrid Hoffman’s Latin D’Lite

Ingrid Hoffman stars in Food Network’s Simply Delicioso, also the title of her first cookbook.  Her latest cookbook, Latin D’Lite, Delicious Latin Recipes with a Healthy Twist, is available today, April 2, 2013 from Celebra, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

When it comes to Latin cuisine, I don’t know very much.  Luckily, I live in Manhattan where I have access to many different types of ethnic cuisine, and right in my neighborhood, there are Mexican, Cuban, Brazilian, Peruvian and Argentine restaurants.  Last year, I tried empanadas for the first time and found out what I had been missing! 

Like any unfamiliar cuisine, Latin American cooking is a little intimidating to me with ingredients I’m not used to using, like adobo seasoning or chiles.  What I like about Ingrid’s book is that she uses these ingredients to create recipes that are easy for the home chef.  I also like that she represents many of the diverse Latin cultures, lightening up traditional dishes like huevos ahogados, or drowned spicy Mexican eggs, and aguadito de mariscos, or Peruvian seafood soup. 

In addition to her healthy recipes, she has a feature she calls “Indulge!” where the recipes are fuller fat versions for the days you want to indulge.  Mexican corn soup with heavy cream sounds delicious.  I’d love to try the creamy chipotle mashed potatoes made with cream cheese and the plantain fritters with avocadolicious dip. 

This Two for Tuesday includes two recipes I made from Ingrid’s Latin D’Lite this Sunday for Easter.  Torrijas, or French toast, is a traditional Easter dish in Spain.  Last year, I had torrijas for dessert at the Spanish restaurant, Gastroarte, which was my first introduction to torrijas.  Ingrid says the classic version is fried in olive oil.  Her lightened version uses just cooking spray to fry.  The accompanying banana-yogurt mixture is a pleasant addition to the torrijas.  This healthy breakfast is quick and easy enough to make on a weekday.

I also made her mom’s creamy fruit salad for Easter.  This was very fun to make!  I have never toasted coconut flakes before and didn’t realize it was so easy to do.  The salad is like a healthy ambrosia salad with a bit of dark rum.  I used my favorite Kraken spiced rum.  It adds a sweet, spicy flavor that complements the fruit.  The mint adds a refreshing kick to this creamy and sweet salad.  (I didn’t use cantaloupe or honeydew because I’m not a big fan, but they weren’t missed.)  This salad is going to be my go-to summer salad for cookouts and potlucks.

I’d like to try salt and vinegar kale chips and baked plantain chips.  I think both of these would be great snacks to bring to work.  The hibiscus flower and ginger agua fresca sounds like the perfect refresher for summer parties.  I’ve been looking for recipes to cook calamari without frying them, and the Catalan noodle paella (fideua) cooks them unbreaded in a saffron-based broth.  Her shrimp and mango adobado salad has a grapefruit-lime-sweet paprika marinade, yum!  It’s served with her creative salsa, roasted corn-red onion-avocado-pepper.  Roasted corn salsa is definitely getting me in the mood for summer!  I look forward to making these recipes from Latin D’Lite.

Food Photography for Your Blog

Food photography is a topic of interest to any food blogger who wants to make the photos on her blog look professional and stunning.

photo property of Bill Brady used with permission

Bill Brady, professional food photographer, addresses everything food bloggers and those who aspire to a professional career in food photography need to know to take great food photos in his new book More Digital Food Photography from Course Technology PTR, a part of Cengage Learning.

used with permission

I met with Bill over lunch at Madison & Vine in Manhattan to discuss his book and career in food photography as well as his hints and tips for taking professional-quality food photography for food bloggers.  Bill says he doesn’t mind giving away the tricks of the trade.  Each photographer has his or her own eye, called the point-of-view, and would all have a different perspective when photographing the same scene.

photo property of Bill Brady used with permission

Bill says the top two important areas in photography are light and composition.  When photographing food in a restaurant, he says, the best seat in the house is one near the window where you can get access to natural light.  “Food likes to be lit from behind,” he says.  Direct sunlight is not the best though.  “On an overcast day, the light is perfect,” he says. “Food likes diffused light not harsh light.  If you’re sitting outside or by a window, you have a better chance of getting a good picture.”  Bill’s biggest no-no is a flash.  “Artificial light makes the food look off color,” he says. He recommends purchasing a small diffusion panel–easy enough to fold up and carry in your purse–to use to reflect light off of.  Either that, or a white plate held in front of the subject as you photograph.

photo property of Bill Brady used with permission

Composition is the second area to focus on when photographing food.  Bill says to move the dish around to find what part of the food looks best.  He says if you’re photographing a roll, which he proceeds to do as an example, tear it to show its texture inside, put a pat of butter on a butter knife and lay it across the front of the bread plate to create more interest.  “What you’re doing is manipulating the surroundings,” he says.  Then decide what angle you will shoot from.  “If you want more drama, you shoot from below, looking up at the food.  If you shoot from overhead, it’s more graphic,” he says.  “You could focus on a particular area and something else becomes a background element.”  Bill adds, “Compositionally, the closer you get to the food, the better.”

I take a picture of my dish as I normally would, with a camera phone and flash.

Then I take one with natural light and a close up.  (We were seated in the middle of the restaurant, so the lighting was not the best.)

Bill recommends a point and shoot camera over a camera phone.  “A good digital SLR is not that expensive,” he says and will last you at least five years.

Bill shoots with a medium format camera.  It’s more expensive, he notes, but more professional in terms of the results you get.  He also likes shooting manually so he can control every aspect.  Starting his career in photography in 1994, he worked with a food photographer and learned the food photography business, which he began doing in 1999.  A trip to Italy solidified his interest in food photography.  “The food was amazing–the way they presented it,” Bill says.  So he shot food on his own and found his niche.  His first assignment was to photograph every category of food for Food Emporium.  In the last 13 years he has been photographing food, photography has seen many changes–most importantly, the transition from film to digital, and the ways in which that made taking photographs easier.

photo property of Bill Brady used with permission

I recommend checking out Bill’s very cool blog where he pairs his food photography with reader recipes.  Also, stay tuned for my review of his book as I start my adventure into food photography for my blog.

Cookbook Ghostwriters

The New York Times’ Diner’s Journal article, “I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter,” written by Julia Moskin, has created controversy, as it claims that some chefs were not solo authors of their cookbooks.  Rachael Ray and Gwyneth Paltrow are on the defensive.

First, do I believe that many chefs have ghostwriters?  Yes, I do.  They are chefs, not writers.  Writing is a skill just as much as cooking is.  In today’s world, people do not want to acknowledge nor pay writers for the work they do.  And writing is work.

After I read the article, I had respect for Bobby Flay for admitting he used a collaborator and for respecting writers as having a craft, or skill, that he doesn’t have.  I also think many chefs do not have time to write their own book.  I don’t see anything wrong with admitting, like Flay, that you hired a professional writer to do the writing.  How is that different from hiring a professional food stylist to style the food, or professional editor to edit the book, or professional photographer to photograph the pictures in the book?  I fail to see the difference.  I, for one, would respect a chef more for collaborating with and giving writing credit to an author who helps him write his book.  A ghostwriter, however, is different from a collaborator.  A collaborator implies acknowledgement.  The very name “ghostwriter” means that the writer is a “ghost” or unseen.

Now, it’s one thing to hire a writer to write your book, and another thing altogether to hire one to create your recipes.  A chef shouldn’t need someone to do that.  I can see someone in Rachael Ray’s or Martha Stewart’s position having staff who create recipes in her style.  They have TV shows, magazines and books, and there is no way they can do all that work alone.  In my opinion, it doesn’t detract from their credibility nor my interest in them.  Now, I would be disappointed to find out that a chef with his own restaurants would have a book with recipes created by someone else.  A chef is someone who perfects his craft, much like a professional writer does, and his craft is creating in the kitchen.  I want his authenticity. 

I’m not sure how Gwyneth Paltrow gets into the conversation.  She’s neither a professional writer nor chef.  Do I believe Gwyneth Paltrow wrote her own book, My Father’s Daughter?  I believe she thinks she is a professional writer and chef.  Therefore, I believe she wrote her book, or at the very least, the title, because she is her father’s daughter.

The Geometry of Pasta

I read an interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times by my friend, science columnist Kenneth Chang.  The article is about using software to generate a pasta’s shape.  Two architects, Marco Guarnieri and George L. Legendre, published a book called Pasta by Design where they show the mathematical equations for popular pasta shapes.  The article has a cool interactive feature where you can see the equations and shapes rendered.

Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival

Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival by June Feiss Hersh is a collection of recipes from those who experienced the Holocaust.  The recipes span the globe from survivors in Greece to Cuba.  Dr. Ruth Westheimer is featured in the book.  The book, which was published by Ruder Finn Press in association with the Museum of Jewish Heritage, goes on sale this Sunday.

I Made Sushi

I made sushi at a New York City Bar Association function tonight.  It was a fun event and a good way to meet people.  It was also a good cause as the event also raised money to help Japan.  The hard part was done for us, as there was a big bowl of sushi rice on the table already and the fish and veggies were precut for us as well. 

All we had to do was put the nori down, pat down the rice after dipping our fingers in water,

lay the fish and veggies down evenly,

and make the roll.  Up, over and under.  Far from perfect, the rolls were fun to make.  It’s definitely made me want to experiment more with sushi.  Luckily, a woman from Japan happened to be at our table, and she told us that the Japanese do not make sushi at home–that they go out to eat sushi and they do not eat rolls.  In addition to sushi, there was a representative from Suntory there with some Hibiki and Yamazaki whiskeys for us to try.  My favorite was the Yamazaki aged 18 years as it had smoky notes to me. 

In keeping with the Japanese theme, currently I’m reading the book Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat:  Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen by Naomi Moriyama.  So far, sushi isn’t mentioned, but eating lots of vegetables is.  I’m learning a lot from the book, but I don’t think I could ever eat the Japanese way because I love carbs and dairy too much.  I do, however, think incorporating more fish and vegetables into one’s diet can only be a good thing.

When I visited Iceland, I toured a gravesite and the markers showed people living well into their 90s.  In Japan and Italy, people are known to live long.  Interestingly, these three countries are islands and peninsulas, isolated places, but they all have a high fish diet.  Vegetables are a large part of a Japanese and Italian diet, but not an Icelandic diet.  (I also thought Iceland was one of the least stressful places I’ve ever been, which may account for a lot.)

Anyway, pictures to follow of my great sushi soon.

NYU Has the Largest Collection of Food Books in America

With 55,000 books in its library, NYU, my alma mater, has the largest collection of food books in the United States.  Fales Library on the third floor of the Bobst Library houses special collections and recently amassed 21,000 food books from the private collection of restaurateur George Lang.  In 2003, the director of the food studies program at NYU started the collection of food books.  The first donation, consisting of 7,000 books, was that of Associated Press food editor Cecily Brownstone.  Since then, they have received many donations, including the complete set of Gourmet magazines, all 3,500 of them.  This collection definitely puts NYU’s food studies program on the map, and helps to show the importance of the topic that had, in the past, endured a negative stigma as “women’s work.”

Modernist Cuisine Pics

The New York Times printed some pics from the Modernist Cuisine set.

A World of Cake by Krystina Castella

OK, I definitely have to get A World of Cake by Krystina Castella because I love cake and I love trying foods from different cultures.  I love the pictures on the front cover and can’t wait to take a cake trip around the world!