March 2024 Cookbook Reviews

 

The Art of Extract Making by Paul and Jill Fulton

This is a unique cookbook in that it is all about extract making. The author gives a great overview of vanilla beans and how they are grown, harvested, sorted, sold, etc. Then he gets into actually making the extract - what kind of spirits to use, jars/containers, and other details. The last section is a variety of extract recipes. I thought the book was very thorough and did a good job of walking you through making your own extract. I just made my first batch of homemade vanilla extract last year and I'm excited to continue making extracts and might try some of their recipes in the future. I was also lucky enough to be able to visit the Hawaiian Vanilla Company on the Big Island of Hawaii back in 2014 and actually see how vanilla is grown and harvested in person. I was also able to get very reasonably priced vanilla beans at the local farmers markets in Hawaii. If you're curious about making your own vanilla extract definitely check out this book.

Tacos & Tequila by Cider Mill Press

I was really excited to check out this cookbook but it was a little disappointing. There were 3 basic recipe categories - tacos, fixings, and cocktails. The taco recipes were basically just proteins or main fillings - I was hoping for more combinations of ingredients in one taco recipe. There were several recipes for things I didn't know what they were. I think a one or two sentence description especially for something not common would have gone a long way. If you want cocktail recipes there were A LOT so it lived up to the title that way. There were a couple recipes I wanted to try but I wasn't impressed overall.

The Farm Table by Julius Roberts

Julius Roberts was working in a London restaurant but was realizing that he didn't enjoy the restaurant hours/life. He had always been interested in the ingredients and the head chef's constant search for the best quality ingredients. So he quit his chef job and moved out to his family's home in Suffolk where there was more land and he could grow some vegetables and raise some animals. He started with 4 pigs then continued to add animals and gardens until he outgrew that space and needed to find a larger farm further out. What I liked the most about this book was his introductions to each section (the recipes are organized by season) where he talked about what was going on at the farm during that season. I also love how honest he was about how hard it is to raise animals and then slaughter them. There weren't tons of recipes I wanted to try personally, but I love that he organized them by season and there are lots of beautiful pictures of both the food and the farm.