Product Description

Hand-cured olives, home-baked bread, fresh goat cheese: Before Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, the only way to enjoy these pure and simple flavors was to make them the old-fashioned way-by hand. This charming little guide will teach you how to blend your own mustards, crush grapes for wine, bottle vinegar at home, and more. Sure, you can buy these things at the neighborhood farmers market, but Alley's instructions are so easy, you'll be inspired to add her age-old techniques to your culinary repertoire. The sumptuous recipes at the end of each chapter enable you to put the fruits of your labor to good use.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #681484 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Released on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
LYNN ALLEY is a freelance food and wine journalist interested in traditional foods and techniques from around the world. The author of LOST ARTS, she has contributed articles to Fine Cooking, Cook’s Illustrated, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Appellation magazine. She frequently writes for Wine Spectator and its website. Alley has also taught classes at cooking schools around the United States. She resides in San Diego, California.

Customer Reviews

Interesting book, but the bread chapter is very weak
This book is layed out as a series of chapters on particular topics such as making wine, vinegar, goat cheese, curing olives, making bread, etc. These chapters are then arranged as a description, with narrative, of how to make the food followed by recipes that *use the food*. So, for example, there is a chapter on making vinegar that can be summed up by: take old wine, get a mother of vinegar, let it hang out until done, (which is described) and bottle it. (with a little explanation of why you bottle). The recipes for the vinegar section then have various dressings that use vinegar.

This highlights a couple of things. First, that these foods are *simple* to make. There's nothing deep or complex about them. The foods will make themselves, if you just give a little support.

However, when I turn to the bread chapter, I am startled. The bread described uses commercial yeast, except for a very misleading section on sourdough. First, I would have thought that *this* book would emphasize sourdough bread which is easier, more fun, more tasty and, indeed, an increasingly "lost art".

I also would have thought that there would be a section on traditional preserving techniques, along the lines of the book "Keeping Foods Fresh" by Claude Aubert. The fact that it isn't highlights, I suspect, another underlying issue with the book. The imagined "good food" is western Mediterranean in origin. And the closer the better. It would have been interesting to consider some of the wonderful techniques used in Greece or Yugoslavia. That would get a range of fascinating things like pickled capers, cabbage and grape leaves, which would be very compatible with the spirit of the book and would have made a much more fascinating range.

A Pleasant Read
I bought this book for the goat cheese recipes, and I was very happy with the rest of the content. I doubt that I will cure my own olives any time soon, or make vinegar, but the information is useful and the author's enthusiasm is pleasant. If you enjoy Greek cooking, you will enjoy this book. If you enjoy the homey delights of doing for yourself, you will enjoy this book.

Dangerous misinformation but some good stuff, too
This book contains some dangerous misinformation, the worst being the author's recommendation to make wine in a plastic trash barrel. Non-food-grade plastic such as a trash can contains many toxic substances that can (and will) leach into food. I would imagine wine would be especially susceptible to picking up toxic heavy metals from the plastic. You MUST use ONLY FOOD GRADE PLASTIC CONTAINERS from a source such as a winemaking supply house to make wine...glass or ceramic would work as well (also assuming the glaze in the ceramic contained no lead and that the glass were unleaded!!!) I believe there was another significant error in the book but I cannot recall it now to report it to buyers.
The upside of this book is that the author takes a very casual approach to arts that are sometimes daunting to the novice, making the reader feel that s/he, too, can perform the craft. The downside is that the author takes a very casual approach to these arts and does not perhaps research them fully, as witness above. Also, the chapter on bread is a loss to anyone who owns a cookbook, as are many of the recipes throughout. Take this author with a grain of salt and double-check her methods before pursuing if you are unsure.