Rice cookers are perfect for how we cook today: Versatile and convenient, they have one-button technology, don’t take up too much counter space, and are a breeze to clean. And they can do so much more than produce foolproof rice, beans, and grains. This new edition takes note of the whole-grain revolution in U.S. kitchens and offers recipes for a host of new (and rediscovered) grains, like quinoa, millet, couscous, kamut, and spelt, whose popularity is rising fast. It focuses on a wider variety of rices, too, with lots of ideas for red, black, basmati, jasmine, and Arborio rices, as well as partially milled white rice, which looks and cooks like white rice but has the nutritional value of brown rice. The authors have also added a complete guide to the newer rice cookers that have come to the market since the original edition, including induction-cooking and pressure-cooking rice cookers and models that replace the old buttons-and-dials approach with more complex digital displays. Alongside many favorites from the first edition, from Carrot Basmati Pilaf and Italian Sausage Risotto to French Polenta and Maple-Cinnamon Rice Pudding, the 10th anniversary edition serves up more than 50 tempting new recipes, from a rich and soothing Sweet Brown Rice with Curry, Carrots, and Raisins to a warm and satisfying Millet, Winter Squash, and Sweet Pea Pilaf.
Beth Hensperger, a New Jersey-born who now considers herself a California native, has been educating, writing, and demo-lecturing about the art of baking bread and cooking for thirty years. In the last few years, she has shifted focus from baking bread to countertop appliance-driven cookbooks that embrace the use of seasonal ingredients, merge convenience with cooking from scratch, and modernizing the home kitchen: the bread machine, the rice cooker, the microwave oven, and now a four-volume compilation specifically for use with the electric slow cooker, stressing care in preparation and personal creativity.
Hensperger's writing career began when she was chosen as the guest cooking instructor for the March 1985 issue of Bon Appétit. Now she is the author of over twenty cookbooks, including the best-selling Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook series, which includes Not Your Mother's Recipes for Entertaining, Not Your Mother's Family Favorites, Not Your Mother's Weeknight Suppers, and NYMSC Recipes for Two along with the blockbuster first volume, Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. Also from The Harvard Common Press are The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook, The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, and The Best Quick Breads. She is also the author of The Bread Bible, winner of the 2000 James Beard Book Award in Baking, and nominated twice for an IACP Cookbook Award.
Hensperger wrote a food column, "Baking with the Seasons," for the San Jose Mercury News (which was nominated for a James Beard Award in newspaper journalism) for over 12 years until the newspaper downsized.
She is a contributor to dozens of national and online cooking & lifestyle magazines, such as Food and Wine, Rachel Ray Magazine, Prevention, Veggie Life, Working Woman, Family Circle, and Cooking.com, as well as being a sought after radio interviewee speaking on cooking, baking, and entertaining. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Visit Beth's website at BethHensperger.com and her weekly blog at notyourmotherscookbooks.com.
