Food Substitutions Bible: More Than 5,000 Substitutions for Ingredients, Equipment and Techniques
Author: David Joachim
The best and most complete substitutions guide, by the author of A Man, A Can, A Plan.
Some of the greatest cooking discoveries are the result of creatively substituting one ingredient, one piece of equipment, or one cooking technique for another.
The Food Substitutions Bible compiles all types of substitutions into one comprehensive, easy-to-use handbook. Simply organized from A to Z, its 1,500 entries have more than 5,000 substitutions. This reference covers:
- Common cooking measure equivalents
- Metric conversion tables
- International equivalency tables for temperature, weight and volume
- Emergency substitutions
- Time-saving substitutions
- Healthy substitutions
- Alternatives for hard-to-find and ethnic ingredients
- Alternatives for vegetarians
- Innovative ideas for varying the flavor of a dish in countless ways
Every substitution includes instructions with exact proportions for accurate, reliable replacements. When multiple substitutions are given within an entry, they are organized into categories for quick reference. Some of these include: If You Don't Have It, To Vary the Flavor, To Save Time, and For Better Health. The book also has an appendix with handy reference charts.
The Food Substitutions Bible is the most authoritative, comprehensive and easy-to-use book on substitutions ever published.
Library Journal
Veteran cookbook author Joachim (Tailgater's Cookbook) has written a solid, useful work on using substitute ingredients and tools in the home kitchen. This is not just an emergency guide on what to do when you're baking biscuits and are fresh out of buttermilk, or a recipe calls for fresh mint and you only have dried. Although you will find familiar substitutions, there are also interesting alternatives (particularly for herbs and cheeses) that yield different but equally satisfying taste results. Particularly useful entries describe how to improvise when you don't have specialized cooking utensils and gadgets. For example, Joachim explains how to use your bare hand when you don't have an egg separator. Some of the substitutions are a bit esoteric-after all, if you don't have quail on hand, are you really likely to have squab? Nevertheless, most readers will find this to be a clearly written and well-organized book. Recommended for public libraries.-Andrea Dietze, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Interesting textbook: Raw Food Life Force Energy or Womens Strength Training Anatomy
Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food
Author: Felipe Fernandez Armesto
In Near a Thousand Tables, acclaimed food historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto tells the fascinating story of food as cultural as well as culinary history -- a window on the history of mankind.
In this "appetizingly provocative" (Los Angeles Times) book, he guides readers through the eight great revolutions in the world history of food: the origins of cooking, which set humankind on a course apart from other species; the ritualization of eating, which brought magic and meaning into people's relationship with what they ate; the inception of herding and the invention of agriculture, perhaps the two greatest revolutions of all; the rise of inequality, which led to the development of haute cuisine; the long-range trade in food which, practically alone, broke down cultural barriers; the ecological exchanges, which revolutionized the global distribution of plants and livestock; and, finally, the industrialization and globalization of mass-produced food.
From prehistoric snail "herding" to Roman banquets to Big Macs to genetically modified tomatoes, Near a Thousand Tables is a full-course meal of extraordinary narrative, brilliant insight, and fascinating explorations that will satisfy the hungriest of readers.
Publishers Weekly
For sheer volume of fascinating facts, this survey of gastronomic lore can't be beat. Fernyndez-Armesto (Millennium), a Professional Fellow at the University of London and member of the modern history faculty at Oxford, debunks popular myths, such as the idea that spices were needed in medieval times to disguise tainted meat and fish (in fact, fresh foods in the middle ages were fresher than today and healthier as well). He shows why the cultivation of rye, barley and wheat is one of the most spectacular achievements of humankind and informs readers that the whole grain cracker invented by Sylvester Graham was intended to impede sexual desire and promote abstinence. But the book is more then a litany of quirky tidbits; Fernyndez-Armesto charts how the evolution of human culture is directly connected to the way food is obtained. The logistics of agriculture and hunting have shaped notions of gender and community; food is often integral to concepts of the sacred in a society; and the loneliness of the fast food eater aided by such inventions as the microwave has become emblematic of contemporary society's fragmentation. Fernyndez-Armesto writes lucidly and conveys his enormous enthusiasm for his subject. While he draws upon the work of many historians and theorists including Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Claude LEvi-Strauss and Ferdinand Braudel his erudite analysis always engaging and accessible. (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Noted historian Fern ndez-Armesto (Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years) has undertaken to provide us with a brief alternative to volumes like Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food and The Cambridge World History of Food. He proposes to "treat food history as a theme of world history to trace connections, at every stage, between the food of the past and the way we eat today." To cover this vast topic in a brief volume, the author has divided the subject into eight revolutions that range from the invention of cooking to industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries. This approach works well within each chapter but makes it difficult for the reader to put the events from different "revolutions" in order. Throughout the book, Fern ndez-Armesto makes no secret of his opinions and presents several surprising but well-supported arguments, such as microwave ovens are returning us to a presocial phase of evolution and "cannibals turn out to have a lot in common with vegans." His well-written, thought-provoking overview of food history is recommended for academic or special libraries where there is interest in food history. Mary Russell, New Hampshire State Lib., Concord Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Historian Fernandez-Armesto sinks his teeth into the role of food in human history. Countless books have been written on this subject, and it must be noted that the author doesn't have much new to say about it. Still, Fernandez-Armesto (History/Oxford Univ.; Civilizations, 2000, etc.) brings storytelling flair and encyclopedic learning to the task and turns in a highly readable if fact-dense survey. In his pages, for instance, the reader will learn that Captain James Cook, among his many other accomplishments, stole a page from the Dutch and introduced sauerkraut ("the only vegetable food which retains reasonable quantities of ascorbic acid in a pickled state") into the British naval diet, thereby nearly eliminating the risk of death by scurvy; that the general awfulness of Dutch cooking made Netherlanders "exceptionally responsive to the food of other cultures" (whence the good rijstafel and vindaloos of Amsterdam today); that Neolithic settlements in Greece made a robust business of snail farming, providing some of the first archaeological evidence of humans' herding and breeding animals for food rather than chasing them down in the wild; and that oysters, once considered food fit only for the lower classes, became prized only after they were scarce, while chickens, once eaten only by the well-to-do, lost their cachet when factory farming made chicken meat cheap and accessible. Dotted with anecdotes and trivia, the text also resounds with big themes that lend it substance. Cooking food, Fernandez-Armesto observes, is one of the few things people do that other animals do not, making it "at least as good as all the other candidates in an index of the humanity of humankind." And the questfor new foods is a powerful motor of history, leading to such signal episodes as the Colombian Exchange (by which coffee was introduced to the Americas, tomatoes to Italy, and peppers to India) and the current hubbub over genetic modification. All in all, a pleasure for foodies, and a satisfying read for students of world history as well.
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