Cookbook Watch: ‘Simply Truffles’
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What with $100 truffle burgers and 18-course truffle dinners on the horizon, small wonder that some people are obsessing over the aromatic fungi. If you have that truffle craving and are not the recipient of a fat trust fund, you’re better off buying a truffle and cooking it yourself.
This is where France-based cookbook author, restaurant critic and cooking teacher Patricia Wells comes to the rescue with her new book “Simply Truffles: Recipes and Stories That Capture the Essence of the Black Diamond.” As restaurant critic for the International Herald Tribune, Wells has eaten more than her fair share of truffes. She’s also been cooking with truffles for 25 years in Paris and Provence, and should be an expert guide to the subject.
I haven’t had a chance to cook from this book yet, but I’ve certainly worked my way through many of her others. She’s a meticulous recipe writer and her recipes are reliable as can be. That’s why she’s been such a powerhouse as a cooking teacher and cookbook author, with over a dozen cookbooks -- ‘Food Lover’s Guide to Paris,’ ‘The Provence Cookbook,’ ‘The Paris Cookbook,’ ‘Simply French’ (to name a few) -- under her belt.
Ever practical, she’s also made sure that most of the recipes in the book “can stand deliciously on their own, with or without truffles.” The 224-page book, published by William Morrow Cookbooks, goes on sale Nov. 9.
Psst: she still has space in her “Black Truffle Cooking Extravaganza Class” Jan. 21 to 25 at her home in Provence. The class includes a truffle hunt, visits to truffle brokers, wine tastings, truffle dinner and classes.
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-- S. Irene Virbila
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