LITTLE ROCK — Mothers worry about feeding their families. The Mom 100 Cookbook: 100 Recipes Every Mom Needs in Her Back Pocket by Katie Workman (Workman, $16.95) can help ease that anxiety.
Workman’s answer: 100 recipes “that address a dilemma, a predicament, a headscratcher that we moms face day in and day out.” Editor in chief of Cookstr.
com, a recipe website, Workman poses a headscratcher in every chapter, like “I need something new for my ‘white food only’ kid” or “You signed me up to bake what?” Her solutions come with do-ahead notes, cooking tips and suggested tweaks.
But don’t let the title fool you, this book isn’t justtot-friendly food, adults will find plenty to enjoy too - such as Dijon, soy and brown sugar crusted-salmon, sauteed corn, spinach, bacon and scallions, and lamb chops with lemony white beans.
- Bill Daley, Chicago Tribune
If you’re a sausage aficionado, you’ll want to get your hands on Sausage: A Country-By-Country Photographic Guide With Recipes by Nichola Fletcher (DK Publishing,$22). If you don’t have an appetite for sausage, this book might give you one.
The highly visual Sausagetakes readers on a veritable world tour.
Fletcher’s sausage travels take the reader to Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, Spain, Asia and elsewhere - 330 sausages in all.
Germany, which produces more than 1,000 types of sausage, is represented by more than 40 varieties, from Kohlwurst (pork, pork fat, lungs, marjoram, thyme, mustard seeds and allspice) to Speckwurst (a blood sausage with onions and marjoram) and just about everything in between.
Each entry is described (flavor and other characteristics); a map shows where that particular sausage comes from; and each variety gets two color photos as well as a breakdown detailing the type of meat used, the type of sausage it is (cooked, cured, dried, etc.) and the typical size.
Sausage also features 48 recipes by chef Caroline Bretherton, ranging from the basic (pizza with sausage) to the more involved (char-grilled Sicilian sausages with lentil salad). Home cooks will appreciate that the recipes often offer two or three alternate sausages.
Should the book inspire you - and that’s a pretty safe bet - there is a section on making sausages that includes a summary of skins and instructions on preparing and filling them and step-by-step lessons in making fresh, cooked, blood or other types of sausage.
- William Hageman, Chicago Tribune
Food, Pages 37 on 05/23/2012