I am always curious about cuisines from other countries, and we are mixing it up on the weekends and trying new dishes and flavor combinations to see what we like. Every time we travel we try new dishes, and so it is a struggle to manage our pantry with so many different ingredients.
This book puts together some of those ingredients and introduces them to an American audience. I think it is pretty easy to get these things (especially using the web) and there are plenty of recipes in the book to try these (perhaps) new ingredients out.
I like the idea behind the book and we already had most of these ingredients already, or else local substitutes that play the same role. The real value of this book to me was trying out some non-traditional ways to use them, and so I was happy to get some new ideas from the book.
I haven’t cooked any of these recipes yet but just having looked them over it seems like they are aiming to really hit the tastebuds hard with bold flavors, which seems to be popular in the USA these days (e.g. Flavortown). So if you’re considering this cookbook be prepared for it.
Over the next few months I’ll try to work in the recipes and see how they turn out. Next I am reading Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
