Fireside Feasts & Snow Day Treats: indulgent comfort food for winter eating and entertaining, by Valerie Aikman-Smith
In winter Canadians hibernate and look forward to spring. What better way to spend the dark days of winter than in the kitchen with friends over hearty meals made with seasonal ingredients? How about golden potato crisps with truffle salt? Or spiced pumpkin and coconut soup? What about slow-roasted pork loin with rosemary, madeira and orange? Might you be tempted by brown sugar pavlova with cinnamon cream and pomegranate? How about some sleep tight milk on a cold winter’s night?
These are just a smattering of the mouth-watering delights found in this sumptuous winter cookbook. The book has a global feel with recipes taken from cultures around the world, so it has something for every taste, from spicy and rich to mild and comforting. This cookbook has it all: recipes for vegetarians and omnivores, slow-cookers and stove-tops, lavishly illustrated with pictures of nearly every dish, and even the feel of the heavy paper is soothing like a warm quilt. Written in the UK, measurements are given in both metric and imperial for ease of use; there are sections for all kinds of eating, daytime or night, single-servings or for entertaining. It even has a section for winter salads which may seem like an oxymoron, until you see the selection: cheese, apple and hazelnut Autumn salad, or poached chicken and brown rice salad with ginger and lime. And as delicious as those both sound, this evening – despite the current lack of snow – I’ll personally cannot wait to whip up a White Christmas, a hot milky drink that should have the whole family dreaming of sugar plums before you know it.
Find Fireside Feasts and Snow Day Treats in the Library’s online catalogue under the tag “Shelf Life Reviewed”, and Happy Holidays from all of us at Stratford Public Library.
This review appeared in The Stratford Gazette on December 27, 2012. Written by Robyn Godfrey, Librarian.
