Quando la temperatura sale, l’appetito vacilla. Stuzzicare il cliente svogliato non è facilissimo. Ecco qualche suggerimento per combattere l’inerzia estiva:
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Be cool
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Places everyone!
Place cards are usually employed for dinners involving eight or more. They’re actually quite useful for avoiding that embarrassing little pantomime that occurs when it’s time to be seated and no one wants to appear rude by being the first to choose a spot. The time spent on that awkward moment of hesitations and musical chairs can throw off the timing of the first course. Worse still, the DIY attitude can compromise the flow of the conversation as the extroverts will congregate leaving the wallflowers to fend for themselves.
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The Christmas countdown begins
Every year we do our best to communicate to our clients just how important it is to place orders early in order to reasonably expect delivery by Christmas. Inevitably, on December 22nd or 23rd we receive phone calls from people who are convinced that we can work miracles, perhaps with the aid of a sled and eight tiny reindeer.
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Finger food in festa wins Gourmand World Cookbook Award
On January 30 the winners of the prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for 2014 were announced.
Finger food in festa by Denis Buosi, published by Bibliotheca Culinaria, was awarded the prize in the category “Best Entertaining Cookbook” for Italy.
Many thanks to Denis and the photographer Francesca Moscheni. Their combined talents have allowed us to add a much-appreciated citation to the honor roll of prizes that has distinguished our publishing house over the last fifteen years.
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The Microwave Oven: Back to the Future
The genesis of the microwave oven can be traced to military research. It’s a classic story of “defense spending” that found a pacifistic, or in this case, a domestic application. Its evolution has as a rather singular “back to the future” story arc. Early models were conceived for the professional kitchen, research and development opened the way to domestic use and more recent models are being recognized as sophisticated cooking tools worthy of the appreciation of foodies and restaurant professionals.
Created nearly seventy years ago, the original microwave oven seems part of a distant technological past and it’s creation story has achieved a sort of mythic status. A young researcher named Percy Spencer was working on the realization of a magnetron, a generator of microwaves for use in radar equipment, when he realized that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted completely. This incident led him to explore how microwaves reacted with other foodstuffs. From there the path to the first patent was relatively brief: it was awarded to Spencer in 1947.
The first microwave oven, much like the first mainframe computer, was a behemoth weighing in at over 300 kg and at three thousand dollars it was certainly expensive. Given these characteristics it could hardly be thought of as a domestic cooking tool. The first chefs to make extensive use of the invention were those with the logistical problem of serving many diners simultaneously in a relatively short period of time. In the 1950s the first microwave ovens were used on cruise ships and in the first class restaurants of long-distance trains and in certain large hotels in the United States.It would take roughly another decade for the microwave oven to assume truly domestic proportions. In the mid sixties the first model destined for home use was exhibited at a Chicago trade fair. Though still quite large and priced for an elite market, it didn’t take long for a number of industrialists to realize the potential of the technology. In the space of a few years the design was streamlined becoming lighter, esthetically pleasing and more adapted to the space restrictions of the home kitchen.
“User friendly” from the start, the microwave oven soon became the faithful companion of students, singles and hassled housewives concerned with saving time. These categories of users treated it largely as a tool for avoiding cooking, employing it to regenerate pre-cooked frozen food or to reheat takeaway. The greater its inroads in the domestic market (95% of U.S. households contain a microwave oven; 75% in Europe) or the “convenience” market, the more professional cooks tended to keep their distance. For quite a long time the microwave oven was the sad denizen of Italian bars and tavole calde, where its domestic (mis)use as a regenerator of previously cooked food was replicated on countless portions of pasta, meat and fish.
The foresight of a select group of producers like Whirlpool has enabled the technology to come full circle, regaining relevance for professional chefs and passionate cooks interested in experimenting new cooking techniques and preparations. Recent models are fully able to substitute for other cooking tools and may be used with the full range of foodstuffs.
The microwave oven 2.0 is no longer the regenerator of poorly prepared meals. Rather, it’s an indispensable tool for preparing fine food quickly. One need no longer search for recipes ‘adaptable’ to microwave cooking since the device has embraced the whole range of preparations: sweet and savory, traditional and innovative. For those who demand proof we suggest trying the recipes from: Facile, pratico, veloce Microonde! by Stefano Masanti or Cioccolato facile e veloce con il microonde by Denis Buosi.
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Too many cook books?
Thousands of cookbooks are published in Italy each year. The numbers are staggering and one can’t help but wonder, “Too many?”
This question may seem odd coming from a publisher, particularly one that has made its name as a specialist in gastronomical books. The truth is that a supply exceeding demand is not good news for our sector. The situation wasn’t exactly rosy twenty-four years ago when Bibliotheca Culinaria was launched, a time when cookbooks were considered little more than instruction manuals. Confined to the “various and sundry” shelf, mixed with books on tourism, local history and folklore, they were the “homeless” denizens of the bookstore with no dedicated section, no fixed address. It took time to change this situation and a great deal of effort to gain respect for the cookbook as edifying reading or useful professional tool, but the inverted trend is now out of control. -
Let’s hear it for the book-book
I think the publisher’s association should send a thank-you message to IKEA. The recent television commercial promoting the paper catalogue of the Swedish furniture maker (now viral on the web) has reminded millions of people of the ease of use of the traditional book, that object without a power cord or a password that arrives with content already downloaded and may be shared at will.
Two and a half minutes of irony and the word “book” is once again on the map for millions of people. I am more than delighted that the debate rages as to whether the IKEA ad is really orginial, whether the parody of Apple product launces is effective or whether it is ethical to kill trees to produce catalogues. For those of us with tiny budgets and absolutely no chance of championing the extraordinary design of the good old book in front of such a large audience, this bit of help from Sweden was a nice surprise.
I don’t think IKEA is entirely disinterested regarding the fate of traditional books. In 2012 alone it sold 41 million Billy bookshelves worldwide. One imagines the company would like to keep this popular item in production and it hopes that someone out there will continue to produce those items for which it was designed. Let’s keep the conversation going about those book-books.
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Bibliotheca Culinaria -your new website
Yes. Bibliotheca Culinaria’s new website is finally up and running.
It was designed to provide you with services and information that we hope will prove useful. We did our best to work from the user’s point of view, whether a habitual purchaser or simply a curious browser trying to discover what’s new. We would be pleased if the site ended up on your list of bookmarks, becoming a place you return to in order to find answers, shop and exchange opinions with other readers (the comments function of the blog will be opening soon). -
We’re off!
Oh no, another blog. Another commercial enterprise trying to disguise its advertising as a conversation. Well, we hope not.
Being involved with cookery books on a daily basis provides us with an excuse to explore a range of topics, but much of the research and debate that animates our office life never makes it into our published work. In other words, sometimes the back stories are instructive and the process of arriving at a ‘No, we’re not going to do that’ is as stimulating as embracing a project. We talk about a lot of things around the office: sustainable agriculture, the hubris of chefs, why kids are obsessed with the color of food, why booksellers don’t seem to read, photography, type, paper, new technology in and out of the kitchen. It’s a cocktail, with no fixed recipe. Sometimes the mix gets a little too strong and we throw it out and start all over.