Book Review: The Best Barbecue on Earth

The Best Barbecue on Earth By: Rick Browne

Overall, there are some good recipes and beautiful photos from 25 different countries in this book. Now let's cut to the punch and get to what urks me. I can't stand when there is a photo next to a recipe that has nothing to do with that recipe and there is no caption under the photo to even tell you what it is you're looking at. There is one recipe for Cedar-Plank Salmon and the picture shows salmon on a grill sans cedar plank. Another picture shows a marketplace with some kind of ground herb, a placard in a different language and no caption as to tell the reader the identity of that herb.
What a lucky guy who gets to go to 25 countries, take pictures, eat great food and get paid to write about it. My jealousy aside, he has come up with a somewhat professional looking cookbook. Glossy cover, perfectly shot colorful photos, insightful and interesting comments about regional cuisine all make for an upscale almost National Geographic quality navigation of the world's barbecue.
Now for a little more criticism- 25 countries, that is a lot of countries to visit, but to pay a proper homage to barbecue I believe he missed some really important epicenters producing flavorful grilled meats. It begs the question, "if something is not done right, is it worth doing at all?". What about India? Indonesia? Mongolia? West Africa? Instead of England,Ireland AND Scotland which don't bring to mind the essence of barbecue. A lot of the dishes presented in this book were not barbecue dishes per se. This is helpful if one wants to know the temperatures and cooking times for things traditionally not cooked on a grill like the German Baked Apples, Argentinian Alfajores and Irish Oatmeal Risotto. A novel idea to cook an entire meal on the grill, but this does not highlight the real soul of grilled foods. Some of my favorite recipes in this book are Moroccan Preserved Lemons. Not a grilled item, but I believe the grill sauce is just important as what you are grilling hence all the wonderful and unique grilled flavors in the world. As stated before I would have liked to see a Tandoori recipe adapted for the grill...I don't think this would be such a stretch. I'm looking forward to making the Taxi Stand Jerk Chicken with Pineapple-Mango Salsa, Barbecued Peking Duck with Hoisin Sauce and Turkish Beef Kebabs. There are also some interesting tidbits about Singapore "hawker" stands and South African braai (pronounced "bry") along with descriptions of regional spices and grilling terminolgy.

This book is a good reference point for a variety of barbecued dishes. I haven't tried any of these recipes as of yet (we'll see if they need a little tweeking). I would say that a revised edition would be necessary to be a truly comprehensive anthology of the best barbecue on earth.



If you would like to buy this book here it is on Amazon.
I checked it out from from the San Francisco Library

It's Been a While...Time to Change the Game

It' s been a while. See what working full-time and coming home to a second full-time job (raising a family) will do to ya. I'm not complaining...well maybe just a little, but I love my family so much that it's really unfortunate that they have to be on the other end of a grumpy mama coming home from a long day's work. The last time I wrote something here was a year ago. Is this going to be a yearly blog? I think not. I feel that there needs to be more dialogue on what is going on in the world and the bay area so that we can do something about it. People have been running around in such a stupor that no one stops to think about the big picture. Everyday it becomes more clear that people are suffering financially and people want to work, but Washington is controlling us. Think REAL hard about what needs to be done because we've got a lot of people power and a lot of folks with time on their hands.

Today the topics are:

• The Organic Divide
• Edible Candied Flowers?

The Organic Divide

So I work for an organic produce distributor. We are fortunate enough to be doing fairly well amidst the economic downturn. We are also fortunate enough to get training on important issues pertaining to our business and of course promoting organic agriculture. It strikes me that many of our customers are of the affluent white middle class type and (I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this) that kind of bugs me. I am white, but definitely not affluent and growing up in the city I see something innately wrong with a system that only caters to one group. Naturally organic produce is of the most wholesome kind & because we support many small farms (we rock for doing this, by the way) prices are higher than product from a large distributor who sells conventional produce and can get a higher yield due to all the pesticides they have knowingly infected our fruits and veggies with. Why should poor people have to put up with this? Why should companies prosper from poisoning the people? I'm not just talking about consumers, I'm talking about farm workers. Someone once asked me "why do you care about eating organic?" and I replied, "because I don't want crap in my food. Who wants crap in their food when they can have crap-free food?". Now I'm neurotic (well I was a tinsy bit neurotic before). I check labels religiously and turn my nose up at conventional offerings as if they were tainted...what a snob & I hate snobs. I've had to grapple with the preference of being a snob over excepting cut rate faire. I want to give my kid organic milk even though it is 4 times more expensive than conventional milk. She's my baby, she is still pure and she deserves it, but doesn't every kid deserve this? My kid isn't any better or more loved than anyone else's kid just because she's mine. I went to the local big Asian supermarket the other day and the only organic thing there was soy sauce. I found that amusing. I can't really say why, but it was. I bought some produce and it was damn cheap. I wanted to put my neurosis in check. I brought home a package of small pale green zucchini on a Styrofoam plate covered in plastic wrap for a buck fifty. Yuck....they tasted so horrible. Maybe because I have been blessed by the bounty my work has to offer I can now taste the pesticides. This did not taste right and I let my daughter hurl them at the compost bin one by one. Well the organic divide is not right and if I can find the time to write one more blog post, I can find the time to work a little harder at improving this issue. There will definitely be more posts on this matter in the future.

Some articles I've been reading about the organic divide, aka the vegetable divide, aka the green divide:

Walmart Saves the Day (hahahahah)
The Poor Get Diabetes, the Rich Get Local and Organic

Well this is a start anyway. I mean how much can you research at a time when you have some one screaming in your ear "what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?"...ahhh the lovely 2's.

Edible Candied Flowers?

I just want to pay a short tribute to edible candied flowers because I think it is a really cool idea. We sell edible flowers at my work, pansies and marigolds and some others I believe. I would really love to candy some and place them on top of cakes and pastries. How fanciful of me! Even a poor mama can think of pretty and elegant projects. I thought about it and then I thought about my daughter thinking that all flowers are edible and not knowing the difference. That would be bad. This goes on my list of things to try when the kid gets older. After doing a bit of research I found a pretty picture I would like to share here:



Here's a How To on Making Them

Well, I can't believe that I've gotten away for this long. I've gotta go cook some pork & truffles (from work again, see how spoiled I am) and plan an Easter egg hunt. Sionara (if that's how you spell it).

Expressing My Passions

I set up this blog to express my passions. The top 5 passions in my life are: My Family, Food, Art, Learning and Nature. At times these passions become one. Family: My daughter, Jasmine, is almost 1 and a half and she is a real gem. My husband is equally dear to me. Food: I love to cook & what brings me more joy than cooking is feeding my family. When I'm not cooking I love to try foods from around the world. Ethiopia, Cambodia, Japan, Senegal, Greece, Burma, Spain, France...to name a few every country has created a beautiful wealth of culinary delight and I want to experience them all! Art: Art has always been very close to my heart whether creating it or enjoying the art that is everywhere in life. I love to paint & it is sad to say that I have not painted anything in a long while. Photography is another creative outlet for me. I like to go to art shows, but often become jealous that other people are using their outlet and I can't seem to fin denough time in my busy life to make art a priority. I am practically a San Francisco Native. I was born in Santa Cruz and moved here when I was 4. It's been 24 years in this unique city and we've developed a bit of a love/hate relationship. It's not neccesarily the city's fault it's gone through a lot of changes in the past decade in a half. A cooky idea I have for an art project is to document my relationship with the city through photography. There are a lot of things in this city that "work" and a lot that don't. Learning: I am a hound for knowledge. I surf the internet religiously trying to learn new things. I check out non-fiction books from the library and I get crazy about some new idea everyweek. It's exhausting being so inquisitive. I can see this curiosity has passed down to my daughter. She is a handful, but wouldn't be half as smart if she wasn't. Nature: I feel that nature is my religion. I was not raised going to church, mosque or synagoge. I used to go to the arboretum every Sunday and call it my church. Sit next to my favorite tree, a very very tall Monterey Cypress, and reflect on my life and its place in the world. So what do I want to gain from this blog? An outlet, a place to gather my thoughts and really examine the important things in life. The Natives ARE Restless and that's a good thing, that is what makes the world turn. Without restlessness there is no momentum.