from Gary Allen, author of forthcoming "Herbs"

[Apologies for this late posting from the moderator]

 

It's Thanksgiving here in the US... and I'm celebrating the fact that I sent in the index for this book last night. 

Now all I have to do is wait to see the printed book on April 15th! 

(I may have a celebratory toast with Beck Sue Epstein's book)

Then it's back to work on my next book in the series, on sausage.

While you're waiting for all these little treats to appear, you can read samples of my work at the website, On the Table, or blog, Just Served.  

 

 

Happy Holidays,

Gary

Re-Aging Whiskey

Kevin R. Kosar, author of Whiskey: A Global History (Reaktion 2010), has conducted an experiment: re-aging whiskey.  As reader no doubt know, many of the flavors of a fine whiskey come from barrel-aging.  Water-clear, highly alcoholic spirit comes off the still and goes into the barrel, and after some years, out comes an amber to deep brown nuanced spirit that is delicious to sip.

In the name of science and the pursuit of knowledge, Kosar decided to see if he could take a bottle of cheap, low-quality whiskey and imrpove its quality by putting it back in a barrel for a time.  To see how his experiment in booze-ology went, surf to  http://alcoholreviews.com/wp/?p=2059.

[See attached image.]

from Nawal Nasrallah, author of "Dates"

To learn more about the date-filled cookies/biscuits – kleicha and ma’moul -- for which I give a recipe in the book (pp. 119-20), read my article “The Iraqi Cookie, Kleicha, and the Search for Identity”, in Repast, vol. xxiv, no. 4, Fall 2008.

http://cooks.aadl.org/files/cooks/repast/2008_Fall.pdf

Article: Making the date all it has long been, sweet to savory in Boston Globe (August 17, 2011) by Omar Sacirbey

In this small volume, Nasrallah explores the historical, cultural, religious, industrial, nutritional, and culinary aspects of the date and date palm, and offers quirky facts and food lore. One is the legend about North Africa’s popular Deglet Noor dates (“dates of light’’), named after a pious woman, Lalla Noora, who was too poor to buy a rosary to say the 99 names of Allah, so she made one out of date seeds. When she died, she was buried with the rosary, whose seeds sprung the now coveted date.

 http://articles.boston.com/2011-08-17/lifestyle/29897357_1_deglet-noor-cookbooks-dates

Review of Dates by Magazine of Etihad Airways

Source: etihadinflight (magazine of Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi, UAE), June 2011

As part of the tasty “edible series,” food writer Nawal Nasrallah delves into the culture surrounding one of the Middle East’s most precious commodities: a wrinkled round fruit called the date. From its intriguing beginnings in ancient Mesopotamia, the date has proved an integral part of the Middle Eastern life for many centuries, and Nasrallah’s epic food memoir offers a smorgasbord of date history and fascinating facts topped with a dash of culture and a sprinkling of Arabic myth. Spicy and exotic, Dates: A Global History is also jam-packed with scrumptious date recipes for every occasion. After one read of the book, you’ll feel like an honorary member of Nasrallah’s huge family: armed and ready to prepare your own Middle Eastern date banquet.