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Review of "At the Japanese Table: New and Traditional Recipes" by Lesley Downer

At the Japanese Table: New and Traditional Recipes image
At the Japanese Table: New and Traditional Recipes
by Lesley Downer

Chronicle Books

$16.95 Suggested Retail Price

This is an attractive cookbook that you will immediately want to investigate. Inside the book there are more than 90 recipes along with about 16 pages of color pictures that show the presentations. In the first section of this book there is a lot of information about the flavor and favorites of a Japanese family. I went immediately to the recipe for Tempura. I am a nut for this dish. What I found was a history of this wonderful food. Tempura is a mixture of vegetable and seafood that are dipped into a lacy batter and deep-fried. The book then shows you what you do to make a few of the ingredients so attractive that you will want to get a really sharp knife and go right to work with your wok.

I watched the television program called "The Iron Chef" for the first time just this week. It features two chefs going head-to-head in a contest to prepare the best meal based on a theme or key ingredient. Not only is the show wild because everything has to be translated, but the quality of the artistic preparation of various foods is simply fascinating. Every dish is served to the judges and looks and taste are very important. If you want to try some of this type of culinary art this is the book for you.


Rainbo Electronic Reviews published this review in our October, 2001 issue.



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