Roast Figs Sugar Snow: Winter Food to Warm the Soul [Paperback]

Diana Henry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2009

Recipes that will bring warmth to your heart as well as your home.
Diana Henry invites you to join her at the stove and cook for family and friends with this irresistible collection of recipes gathered from places where the cold winds blow. Based on five years of travel to such chilly climates as New England, Quebec, Russian, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, Henry offers up nearly 100 recipes for soul-warming, cold-weather cooking.
There are potato and cheese dishes from Italy's skiing slopes, pastries from the coffee houses of Vienna and Budapest, and maple everything from the sugar houses of Vermont. Illustrated with stunning photography by Jason Lowe that captures the dishes, ingredients and spectacular beauty of the cold seasons, Henry's recipes are the antidote to the winter blues.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. British author Henry (The Gastropub Cookbook) presents a soul-stirring collection of winter comfort food as warm and welcoming as a cup of hot cocoa on a snowy day. Henry warms readers with mulled wine, rich Onion and Cider Soup and a Camembert-topped slice of toasted bread, a pumpkin tart with spinach and gorgonzola and Stuffed Quail with Marmalade and Whiskey. Henry's Eurocentric lineup includes regional favorites like Romanian Bean, Smoked Bacon and Sour Cream Soup, Sorbronade (essentially a simpler cassoulet) and a Tagliatelle with roast pumpkin, sage, ricotta and smoked cheese from northern Italy. She also offers dishes from this side of the pond, such as a Quebecois Mussel Chowder with Cod and Cider as well as classic baked beans. A tendency to ramble, waxing poetic about the wonders of pears or cranberries, but is all a part of Henry's charm. Peppered with snow-filled snapshots, the work as a whole makes a kind of greatest wintertime hits.

Review

British author Henry (The Gastropub Cookbook) presents a soul-stirring collection of winter comfort food as warm and welcoming as a cup of hot cocoa on a snowy day. Henry warms readers with mulled wine, rich Onion and Cider Soup and a Camembert-topped slice of toasted bread, a pumpkin tart with spinach and gorgonzola and Stuffed Quail with Marmalade and Whiskey. Henry's Eurocentric lineup includes regional favorites like Romanian Bean, Smoked Bacon and Sour Cream Soup, Sorbronade (essentially a simpler cassoulet) and a Tagliatelle with roast pumpkin, sage, ricotta and smoked cheese from northern Italy. She also offers dishes from this side of the pond, such as a Quebecois Mussel Chowder with Cod and Cider as well as classic baked beans. A tendency to ramble, waxing poetic about the wonders of pears or cranberries, but is all a part of Henry's charm. Peppered with snow-filled snapshots, the work as a whole makes a kind of greatest wintertime hits.

(Publishers Weekly 2009)

Henry is the food columnist for the Sunday Telegraph Magazine and was twice awarded the Cookery Journalist of the Year by Britain's Guild of Food Writers. Her fourth cookbook (after Pure Simple Cooking) is an appealing collection of winter dishes from the Northern Hemisphere (including northern Italy, France, Russia, Switzerland, and Vermont), certain to make cooks yearn for a long winter. Instead of the usual New England clam chowder, Henry presents Quebecois Mussel Chowder with Cod and Cider. Sure to appeal to cooks in chilly climes; highly recommended. (Library Journal 2009)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Mitchell Beazley (November 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845335244
• ISBN-13: 978-1845335243
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #711,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Pecan and Pear Upside-Down Cake (recipe review) December 25, 2009

By Thousand Praises

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am enjoying this cookbook after hearing a review about it on NPR, Nov 2009. For Christmas Eve I made the pecan and pear upside-down cake (p. 30). It was a great cake, perfect recipe proportions and not too sweet. For this particular recipe, I would advise that you add a dough hook when mixing the cake batter as it's very sticky and thick. Also, I generously buttered a large, round cake pan and placed it in the fridge while I made the recipe (the author suggests using the same pan you cook in on stovetop as the baking pan). Then I transferred the fruit mixture into the buttered pan and spread the batter over the top. This assured a non-sticky upside-down cake. It turned out perfect and was the hit of our Christmas Eve party. Thank you, Diana. I'm looking forward to trying more of these.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful book! February 14, 2012

By renee

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

this is a beautiful book! if you like to read about your food, the stories and notes are delightful. wonderful recipes. breath-taking photos. measurements are metric, so have a scale handy

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great but not good January 5, 2011

By Margery C. Collins

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The ideas and flavor combinations in the book are great - some flat-out fabulous but the recipe testing, editing and index leave plenty to be desired. There is a wonderful Kringle recipe - but there is so much butter in both the dough and filling that it doesn't rise well and there was a good two tablespoons of melted butter in the pan when it came out of the oven! I tried it again using half the butter in both dough and filling and an additional teaspoon of yeast and it was excellent.
In the editing department she uses terms that may be familiar in the UK but are incomprehensible in the US. WHAT is"pudding rice"? It is not regular Uncle Ben"s!
The index is not cross referenced. You have to know her name for the recipe to find it in the index.
To sum it up -she has some great ideas and flavor combinations but the technical side has been neglected. NOT a book for and inexperienced cook!