The World Is a Kitchen

Bookshelf Books for Holiday Giving

Bookshelf recently released it’s Books for Holiday Giving featuring only 14 titles. In the category of Flavorful, The World Is a Kitchen proudly stands alongside Climbing the Mango Tree by Madhur Jaffrey and The Lady in the Palazzo by Marlena de Biasi.

The author, Karen Kullgren, had this to say about TWIAK:

“This book has pushed itself to near the top of my favorite food books. Food savvy authors take us from Brazil to France to Kenya to Siberia to Bali with stories of food at the core of culture. There is also a fantastic expanded resources section at the end of the book including region-by-region contacts for food travel tours, cooking schools, and classes (and tips on how to choose them), food publications, and food websites.”

The Kansas City Star reviews The World Is a Kitchen

Nice to see that reviews are beginning to roll in. There is always a lag time from when you send out press releases and books and when reviews actually appear. It’s like sitting on pins and needles, just waiting. Kind of like a director holding his breath after the big movie premiere. But so far, we have been very lucky, and today is no exception.

On October 25th, Lauren Chapin of The Kansas City Star reviewed the book, and also posted the review online here. I love the fact that she mentions Judy Ware, who has been a staunch supporter of our book tour, traveling from Boise to Seattle for 3 events and setting up 2 more events in her hometown of Boise for us to do (as well as an event in Ketchum/Sun Valley). She also mentions Celeste Brash, who made me want to hop a plane for the South Pacific after reading her story, “Mama Rose’s Coconut Bread.” And she also spotlights the recipe from Sarah Pascarella’s story for Gumbo. While the recipe isn’t actually from the author, it is from The New Orleans Cooking Experience, a cooking school I went to in New Orleans, just one year prior to Hurricane Katrina. If you have never been to NOLA, or haven’t been recently, I recommend you get out there pronto, to eat, to celebrate life, and maybe even to learn a thing or two at a cooking class.

Now for the review:

“The World is a Kitchen—Really It Is” courtesy of Cooking with Ideas

Cooking with Ideas, a food blog dedicated to the bibliochef in all of us, reviewed the book yesterday. Titled “The World is a Kitchen—Really It Is!”, the review is a positive one, albeit with her pointing out we have a typo in the Table of Contents (ouch!). Guess we need to hurry and sell this whole print run, so that I can make corrections.

Before I post the review, just want to say that you might want to head over to the Cooking with Ideas blog to catch up on some of her reviews on cookbooks and other tempting reads. Christmas isn’t that far away, and I know that TWIAK will make a great gift, but if you want to spread the wealth, you might get some great recommendations here.

Now for the review:

The World Is a Kitchen is a blog in a book really. Each entry is written in a fairly casual style and many are followed by recipes (though not all). A few pages each. A little pause in the day to travel in your imagination -- and cook -- and eat. All in your imagination. Yes, imagination is a good thing. And laptops cannot go everywhere. So, if you are in search of a more traditional form of reading and arm chair travel, this is one option. It's not challenging but it might inspire you to further explorations (literal or figurative) of the various cuisines examined here only very briefly. The book's subtitle is "cooking your way through culture, stories, recipes and resources" and that is just what you get for your $16.95: 37 first person essays, 30 recipes, and a resource section with research tips, culinary tours and related materials. Part 1 looks at North/Central and South America. Part 2 offers tastes of Europe. Africa and the Middle East appear in Part 3. Parts 4 and 5 focus respectively on Asia and then Southeast Asia/Oceana (is that right? It is how the book spells it. Hmmmm).

Latkes
Coconut Bread Pelmeni
Gumbo
Hor Mak Pla

Beaches and European capitals. Restaurants and friend's kitchens. College students on terms abroad, roaming intellectuals and restless foodies. Most of the pieces are previously published, alas. But, if you yearn to get out of town and cannot, read a few pages. Better yet: offer your own first person narrative here. Or a recipe. Or a resource -- web link, book, idea. Change the world by blogging your way through culture, stories, recipes and resources.

All the World's a Kitchen for Cultural Cooks - Book Review

We are very fortunate that Lisa Messinger reviewed The World is a Kitchen, as she writes for Copley News Service, which means the review will be seen both in newspapers and online by Copley affiliates. Lisa is a well respected food writer and the author of 7 food books, including Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook and The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook.

All the World's a Kitchen for Cultural Cooks

Get ready to stamp your culinary passport. Then again, perhaps you already have. Culinary travel adventure has become one of the most popular parts of the travel industry. It's kind of like "Survivor" in the kitchen—can you outlast the demands of a four-star chef in a fast-paced Parisian hotel kitchen, the quick orders of a master chef in an Italian castle hanging over the exquisite Amalfi coast or the instructions of a Thai cooking teacher having you boat hop in Bangkok's famous floating markets?

If you want to check the waters before embarking on such trips, spend a cozy day engrossed in The World Is a Kitchen: Cooking Your Way Through Culture (Travelers' Tales, $16.95). Editors Michele Anna Jordan and Susan Brady have corralled the compelling stories of outstanding journalists who have braved the challenges and lived to replicate the recipes.

World Hum review

Jim Benning has spotlighted The World Is a Kitchen on the World Hum blog on September 26. 2006. This site provides “Travel Dispatches from a Shrinking Planet” and it is something they do very well. A popular site with travelers, we are honored that the book got a mention. Here is the review:

Travelers’ Tales’ The World Is a Kitchen

Food, cooking and travel are, thankfully, inextricably linked. They’re also great fodder for books. Bill Buford’s Heat is among the latest to explore the subjects in a book-length memoir. Now comes The World is a Kitchen, an intriguing book from Travelers’ Tales that combines stories about learning to cook in countries around the globe with recipes and related resources. Writes Michele Anna Jordan in the preface: “Cooking has become the universal language, an international tongue that allows us to communicate, to resolve every cultural challenge, be it language, custom or belief, and even overcome personal inhibitions like shyness and insecurity. We take a bite, smile, and raise our eyes to see the same response in our companions. May I have some more, please? And you know what comes next: How did you make it? We lick each other’s fingers and ask for the recipe.” The book is the latest in a series of Travelers’ Tales titles exploring travel and food.

Thanks Jim!

The World Is a Kitchen - Book Review

The first review of The World Is a Kitchen is available, thanks to Jaay Dunlop of Food Bound (part of the Well Fed Network, which covers all things food and wine). Food bound is a blog that is a “source for cookbook and food history: reviews, summaries and recommendations.” TWIAK is reviewed along with The 150 Best American Recipes and Digital Dish, a recipe collection from notable food bloggers. Here’s what Jaay had to say:

THE BEST OF THE BEST: RECIPES FIVE SEASONS, A DECADE, AND FOURTEEN YEARS IN THE MAKING

In her touching introduction to The World Is a Kitchen, Susan Brady (a food blogger herself) explains that when she was hired by Travelers' Tales fourteen years ago, she had hardly traveled at all. As an editor during those early days at the publishing company, she relied on exotic recipes to understand foreign cultures. Since then, Brady's culinary and editorial endeavors have taken her everywhere from New Orleans to Taipei, and her coeditor, Michele Anna Jordan, is a whirlwind who developed a love for rare prime rib on the California Zephyr, led her family to San Francisco to taste Dungeness crab as a small child, and learned very early on how to make authentic chapattis in India. Together, Brady, Jordan, and thirty-six other food writers (from first time authors to heavy-weights like Gourmet's Kemp Minifie) have created a culinary atlas that reveals the indigenous plants of Mexico, the all-powerful spices of India, and the other-worldly shellfish of Australia. The entries in The World Is a Kitchen are presented as essays (some with accompanying recipes, some without), making the book a wonderful literary supplement to The 150 Best American Recipes and Digital Dish. The final chapter, outlining cooking schools and culinary tours, sends readers to look for more world-class meals on their own.

Check out other “Best of the Best” here.