Cooking for Mr Latte or Sylvias Soul Food

Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship with Recipes

Author: Amanda Hesser

"Tender, wry, passionate, truthful. To read Hesser's prose is to hunger for more."—Nigella LawsonLife in the city, love, and unforgettable meals—can a food writer find happiness with a man who has an empty refrigerator? Amanda Hesser's irresistible book is the tale of a romance where food is the source of discovery, discord, and delight—a story of universal desires: good food, great company, and a mate. At each stage of her courtship—from her first date with "Mr. Latte" (a near-disaster) to her first uneasy dinner at his parents' home, from intimate suppers in her Upper West Side apartment to his first attempt at cooking for her—Amanda supplies menus for the meals they share: more than one hundred well-balanced and well-seasoned recipes that will leave you satisfied yet wanting more. With warmth and honesty, Amanda shares her feasts and foibles, triumphs and near-misses, tense encounters and good times in the kitchen and beyond. Her humorous, sensuous tale leads us date by date, recipe by recipe, to a jubilant conclusion. 42 b/w illustrations.

Author Biography: A food reporter and columnist for the New York Times since 1997, Amanda Hesser wrote the award-winning cookbook The Cook and the Gardener. She lives in New York City.

Interesting book:

Sylvia's Soul Food, Vol. 1

Author: Sylvia Woods

Sylvia Woods has been barbecuing, baking, frying, and smothering New York City's best soul food for nearly thirty years. According to the Zagat New York City Restaurant Survey, "For down-home delicious Soul Food, this funky Harlemite is the real thing; go for great ribs, incredible fried chicken, fiery greens, and other artery-clogging Southern staples. Don't tell your doctor what you ate."

Now, for the first time, the "Queen of Soul Food" reveals her recipe secrets for more than one hundred of the authentic, stick-to-your-ribs soul food and classic Southern dishes she serves at her world-famous Harlem restaurant.

Start off with a breakfast of homemade pork sausage with eggs and the tenderest, flakiest biscuits you've ever eaten. Move on to tried-and-true soul food favorites that include Smothered Chicken, Fried Catfish with Hushpuppies, Sweet and Spicy Chicken Wings, Blackeyed Peas and Rice, and, of course, "Sylvia's World-Famous Talked-About Barbecued Ribs."

Of course, no meal at Sylvia's would be complete without a couple of "sides": Fried Green Tomatoes, Collard Greens with Cornmeal Dumplings, Candied Sweet Potatoes, and more. Sylvia's desserts are enough to satisfy any sweet tooth: Peach Cobbler, Lemon Pie, and Three-Layer Caramel Cake.

So, "if you're craving great barbecue, down-home soul food, and something uniquely New York, catch a cab up to Sylvia's, a marvelous restaurant serving up batches of great ribs, pork chops, candied sweet potatoes, and pecan pies that will satisfy the biggest eater in the family" (Passport to New York Restaurants). If you can't make it to New York, Sylvia's Soul Food will make you feel like you're there.

Publishers Weekly

While not all gourmands know soul food as well as they should, these authentic, stick-to-the-ribs recipes from the famous Harlem establishment will send many readers on a journey to this culinary genre. Collected by restaurateur Woods, with assistance from chef Styler ( Primi Piatti ), the recipes include both classics and innovations: fried chitlins, hash venison, smothered chicken, barbecued short ribs of beef and sweet potato pie. While the recipes and methods are well delivered--and, happily, recorded for posterity--the volume may disappoint those who hunger for more information than bare-bones recipes. A little shared research about this important American tradition would have broadened the book's appeal and answered readers' inevitable questions about the origins of foods like collard greens, okra and ham hocks--and might have helped the book to make the leap from recipe catalogue to gastronomic history. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Sylvia's Restaurant is a casual family-run place that serves great barbecue and other down-home fare. A Harlem institution since the 1960s, it has gained fans far away from New York City since it was discovered by the media in the late 1970s. In this cookbook, Woods gathers more than 100 recipes for her World-Famous Talked-About Spareribs, Smothered Chicken, Fried Catfish, and other soul food classics. In short, these are simple, delicious, and unpretentious recipes. Recommended for most collections.

BookList

In almost every American metropolis there's sure to be at least one restaurateur who claims the moniker of "queen/king of soul food." So watch for some grumblings and raised eyebrows on publication date of this book. Woods, proprietor of the Sylvia's Soul Food in Harlem, and co-author Styler have pulled together more than 100 recipes from the restaurant's kitchen, all very representative of the cuisine. From the familiar hotcakes and grits to smothered steaks and fried chicken, the recipes' directions are easy and require little in the way of exotic ingredients. A few of the inclusions are reminiscent of newer gastronomic trends: fried green tomatoes, banana pudding, red beans and rice, for example. Plus, soul food is one of the most cost-conscious, since it capitalizes on bringing out the flavor of little-used foodstuffs such as collard greens, turkey wings, and oxtails.