Cookbook Hoarding Part 2

I've been following Signe Johansen's blog http://www.signejohansen.com/ as well as her Tweets for a few months. Norwegian-born and London-residing Johansen recently released the beautiful and delicious Secret's of Scandinavian Cooking... Scandilicious. She breaks Nordic cuisine into mealtime chapters, such as Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Dinner, and Dessert. Best, the importance of fika, or afternoon coffee break, is expemplified in the Afternoon Cake chapter. Seasonal, local, foraged, simple, healthy ingredients are emphasized and celebrated, with just enough gorgeous photos to give the book a fancy feel and plenty of text to make this a bed-side read.

An outtake from one of my favorite pages: "As far as I'm concerned, Norwegian gravlaks - known in Swedish as gravadlax - is quite possibly the best gourmet fast-food fish on the planet," Johansen says. She goes on to describe the delicate, rich (and healthy) dish and provides a quick recipe for Gravlaks and beetroot on crispbread.

Though I've not cooked much from this book yet, the recipes are completely uncluttered and the directions clear, usually including ingredients most home cooks keep at the ready. Americans will need to convert grams into ounces, but the Internet makes this an easy task.

While Scandilicious accommodates cooks at all levels, NOMA Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine will please art lovers, food lovers, Scandinavian enthusiasts, historians, coffee table book collectors, and chefs. Author and Chef Rene Redzepi's unique homage to his Copenhagen restaurant is more hope chest than practical pantry item. I've never owned a cookbook quite like this.  I've never seen a cookbook quite like this! Rather than indexing recipes within chapters, NOMA separates a bulk of information by category.

First, a foldout Nordic region map affirms the importance and scope of local ingredients. A forward describes the philosophy Nordic cuisine, and we get Chef Rene's insight in the Diary section. The exquisite photos that make up better than the first half of the book are so splendid, so lovely, so breathtaking, that I am excited to leap into the nearly 100 "Weather Recipes" that follow the art, written menu style. Finally, there are full page descriptions of the people who produce the ingredients used at NOMA, yearbook style photos of the staff, and a much needed glossary of gastronomic terms.

You won't find some of the ingredients from NOMA on my pantry shelf (yet). I've not yet had a need to purchase matodextrine, dulse (edible seaweed), or sea lettuce. There is an emphasis on techniques I've not yet tried, let alone mastered. But most of the components are made of fresh vegetables, fruit, and protein, and the instructions are broken down in such a way that I am confident of success, especially with the lesser complicated foods such as Wild Blackberries and Sweetcorn Ice Cream, Glazed Beetroot and Apples, Potato Crisps with Anise and Chocolate. Until the recipe pages are baptized with splatters of cooking fall-out, I'll just keep drooling on the photos.