An Introduction To World Cuisine

[KYHeirloomer]

I know many members want to explore ethnic and regional cuisines, but don't know where to start.

In today's mail comes a new book tailor made for them---and anyone else looking to expand their world-wide global horizens.

It's called International Cuisine, published by Wiley for the International Culinary Schools at the Art Institutes.

I've only just glanced through it, but I'm already impressed. What they've done is divide the world into 17 countries or related regions (i.e., Southeast Asia). For each of them there's a thumbnail introduction of the land, the people and the food. Essentially, this shows how the history, geography, religion, available ingredients and other factors influence the cuisine. This is followed by several menus, exploring the diversity of each country/region, which in turn are followed by the recipes for those menus.

Basically a pocket encyclopedia of world cuisine, they've crammed an awful lot into 855 pages. The only immediate downside is that, given the amount of ground they covered, there's a paucity of illustrations---a handful of b&w pix scattered through the book, and two small groups of color plates, which roughly divide the book in thirds.

Even so, given the choice of typeface and other graphic elements the book has a light, open feel. And the few recipes I've read so far sound really good.

True, at 45 bucks it ain't cheap. But, by the same token, it condenses a wide shelf of ethinic cookbooks into one comprehensive whole. So, on net, it might be a bargain.