Summary
Summary
Revel in the fun of cooking with live fire. This hot collection from food historian and archaeologist Paula Marcoux includes more than 100 fire-cooked recipes that range from cheese on a stick to roasted rabbit and naan bread. Marcoux's straightforward instructions and inspired musings on cooking with fire are paired with mouthwatering photographs that will have you building primitive bread ovens and turning pork on a homemade spit. Gather all your friends around a fire and start the feast.
Author Notes
Paula Marcoux is a food historian who lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts; she has worked professionally as an archaeologist, cook, and bread-oven builder. She is the food editor of Edible South Shore magazine, writes on food history topics for popular and academic audiences, and consults with museums, film producers, and publishers. She also gives regular workshops on natural leavening, historic baking, and wood-fired cooking. Her web site is www.themagnificentleaven.com.
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Marcoux, the food editor of Edible South Shore magazine, is an expert in the fields of food history and archaeology. Her dual interests meld nicely in this collection, which is as much about creating sources of heat as it is concocting recipes. For those who revel in primitive forms of cookery, there are plenty of adventures to explore, from the simple to the complex. The first chapter, "A Fire and a Stick," includes instructions on toasting cheese ("impale a cube of cheese upon an implement"), while a section on spit roasting examines how to roast a leg of lamb by dangling it over a fire on a string. And there are well-photographed instructions on not only how to bake naan bread, but also on how to create a Neolithic-era oven that does the baking. Some recipes are irresistibly dangerous. For example, a cocktail called a flip calls for a red-hot poker to be immersed in a glass of rum, beer, and molasses. It's a drink that would probably come in handy while trying the more time consuming projects such as bean-hole beans, which requires digging a hole, tending a fire within the hole for six hours to create a suitable layer of coals, then burying a pot of beans in the hole to cook for at least half a day. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.