What Katie Ate by Katie Quinn Davies

Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9780007458592
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304
Genre: Non-Fiction, Cookery
Publication Date: February 28, 2013

SYNOPSIS

This extraordinary début cookbook from award-winning Irish photographer and home cook Katie Quinn Davies features over 100 simple, seasonal recipes. Katie offers much-loved classics and mouth-watering fresh dishes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, baking and desserts, drinks and gatherings. Featuring Katie's gorgeous photos throughout, this enchanting cookbook is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate.

REVIEW

Cookbooks have become a particular weakness for me over the last 6 years. I've seen my collection rapidly grow from a few basic student cookbooks to well over 3 shelves worth. And while admittedly they are mostly unused, they are much loved.

I think I just miss food. I was fortunate to grow up in Toronto, a fantastic multicultural city that provides an amazing diversity of world cuisines to sample. I'm also quite lucky to have my father who is a wonderful chef and whose food I could never hope to reproduce myself. So it's not a surprise that some of my earliest and fondest memories are sitting down and enjoying a tasty meal. To me cookbooks are not only just great reference tools for honing culinary skills, but can also serve as literary keys to unlock treasure troves of sensory associated memories.

This year I promised myself that instead of staring longingly at photos of foods I want to eat, I would make good use out of all my cookbooks and try to become more of an intuitive chef rather than a strict recipe-only amateur. It'll be a long time before I develop enough of a knowledge base to instinctively combine random things into tasty meals, but I think this cookbook is a good place to start.

What Katie Ate is a hard book to resist. Quite simply, it's one of the most beautiful cookbooks I've seen. The food photography found within its pages feels rustic, yet highly polished in its framing and lighting, but most importantly, every photograph makes you passionately want to cook the mirroring recipe.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've bought a plethora of recipe books purely on how well designed and attractive they are rather than asking myself the oh so practical question "Will I ever use this?".  With space becoming a new unwanted and incessant issue, Katie's book had to pass my first test to see if it would remain on my shelf. The first thing I do when I have to decide whether or not I should buy a cookbook is to mark the number of recipes that I would like to cook, that have realistic ingredients that I can find easily and don't involve kitchen contraptions I've never heard of and most likely will never buy. You'd be surprised how many cookbooks I had to grudgingly put back into stock because there were only a small handful of recipes I could mark within their hundreds of pages.

I set off with my trusty pack of post-its and bookmarked well over 40 recipes before running out.  I debated on buying another pack of sticker notes to finish off the rest of the book so I could quote a precise number for this review, but decided in the end that it might be a tad too obsessive. Even for me. We'll just say that What Katie Ate passed the first part of my criteria with flying colours.

The first recipe I tried was the Mushroom and Bacon Risotto with Poached Egg. A dangerous starting choice. I haven't poached an egg in over a decade and in the past I have gotten bored and frustrated with the constant stirring/pouring of liquid which has resulted in some spectacularly crunchy risottos.

Mushroom and Bacon Risotto with Poached Egg (page 168)

As a quick side note, this recipe calls for Cavolo Nero and my local grocers didn't seem to stock it. I'd never heard of it before so for other cooking novices like me, Cavolo Nero (also known as Black Cabbage, Tuscan Kale or Lacinato) is a dark green leafy Italian cabbage that can be substituted with regular kale, spinach or chard. I went with the safe choice of spinach since it’s the only vegetable I actually know how to prepare and cook properly out of the three.

It’s probably a good thing that this recipe doesn't mention a rough cooking time and sits next to an incredibly appetizing photograph of the finished product, or I would have chosen an easier and less time consuming recipe to make. Or maybe chosen to make this on a day off with plenty of preparation time rather than attempt to squeeze this meal into a workday evening. When I finally sat down for my very late dinner, with a grumbling stomach and a starving boyfriend by my side, I was starting to wonder if all that hand numbing stirring was worth it. Oh boy, was it worth it.

It was lovely and creamy; well balanced and the addition of the poached egg is a fantastic idea. I've always found risottos to be a bit too rich and repetitive. With every spoonful having the same creamy consistency and bold flavour it can become increasingly overpowering and overwhelming with each additional bite, but the poached egg on top provides another texture and taste to break up the monotony.

The next recipe I cooked was the Lemon Chicken with Herbed Rice. By contrast, it was probably one of the worst plates of food I've ever made. Any subtlety of flavours from the herbs and seasoning was drowned out by the overpowering taste of balsamic vinegar. It may have looked pretty on a place but after two bites, I had no choice but to throw it out and order a pizza.

Lemon Chicken with Herbed Rice (page 166)

The success (or in this case the failure) of the recipe came down to the creation of the sauce. The lemon sauce consists mainly of 125 ml of Italian salad dressing combined with 80 ml of soy sauce and 180 ml of lemon juice. Katie comments that by using a shop-bought salad dressing as the base for the sauce, it gives the dish a fresh tanginess and acts as an ingenious shortcut for a quick easy meal.

I think the fault lies in the recipe’s lack of explanation of what to look out for in the readymade dressing. I've discovered that there are many variations in the ingredients that go into the different brands and the vast sea of online recipe sites have many differing ideas of what can be added to the vinaigrettes.

Since the dressing accounts for 48% of the liquid going into the sauce, the delicate balancing act needed to create a proper sticky sauce to coat the chicken rests on the flavour coming out of that bottle. It’s a risky thing to rely on amateur cook selecting something perfect. The inclusion of a short author’s passage on what goes into a traditional Italian dressing or an optional list for nervous chefs who want to forgo the shortcut and create it from scratch would have been welcomed. It’s a shame that for me this recipe relies too heavily on blind luck rather than foolproof precision. I think it could have been a lovely twist on a classic dish.

I did manage to take away something positive from cooking this recipe. The inclusion of chopped spring onions and herbs to the cooked rice is a simple inspired idea to add an extra dimension to an otherwise bland accompaniment. It never even occurred to me to add salt and pepper to plain rice before and I've been eating it for most of my life! That revelation alone was worth the small chicken sacrifice made to the refuse gods.

Fettuccine with Prawns, Cream and Sun-Dried Tomatoes (Page 142)

The tie-breaking dish was a creamy fettuccine with prawns and sun-dried tomatoes. A great pasta dish that’s simple to make. I would recommend chopping the sun-dried tomatoes into finer pieces than the suggested strips if you don’t want to end up with a mouth full of strong chewy tomatoes, but other than that minor compliant it was a very tasty dinner.

And I couldn't review this cookbook without baking the raspberry friands displayed on the front cover. After all, it’s the image that first caught my eye and made me lust over the book obsessively for several weeks. This dessert piqued my interest not only because of the attention stealing photo, but because despite having a lot of baking books, I've never heard of them before. Friands are small French cakes that are quite popular in Australia and New Zealand. They’re usually baked in special oval shaped moulds to give them their distinctive shaped, but it’s difficult to find here in the UK. Online shops do carry them, but I found it works really well in a standard cupcake tin. Just reduce the baking time to about 20 minutes instead of 25-30 to account for the smaller size.

Raspberry Friands (page 240) 

They taste absolutely AMAZING. The one downside I found about the recipe is that these cakes should all be eaten on the day that they’re baked. The fresh raspberries lose their shape and texture the following day and spread into the sponge. The day old friands weren't unpleasant to eat, but just knowing how tasty they were previously made it a bit of a let-down. Ideally, they should be devoured straight out of the oven while still warm and inviting. The cake sponge is light and moist with a hint of sweetness and the sharp acidity of raspberries makes for a fantastic combination. The small batch I left in the staff room quickly disappeared and I have now promised to bake some more for everyone who missed out the first time. Rave reviews all round and a new addition to my favourite recipes collection.

I hope Katie won’t mind me posting the recipe for it here, since it’s available on her blog. It’s the one I would recommend everyone try since it’s surprisingly simple to make and incredibly moreish.

Raspberry Friands

http://www.whatkatieate.com/recipes/raspberry-friands/

Ingredients

• 10 free-range egg whites
• 300 g unsalted butter, melted
• 175 g ground almond
• 370 g icing sugar, sifted, plus extra for dusting
• 100 g plain flour, sifted
• 2 x 125 g punnets raspberries, plus extra for serving

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 ̊C (fan), 200 ̊C, gas mark 6.
2. Lightly grease 18 holes of 2 silicone friand moulds or non-stick friand tins.
3. Whisk the egg whites for a few seconds just to lightly combine; you don’t need to whip them into peaks or anything like that.
4. Add the butter, ground almonds, icing sugar and flour and beat lightly to combine well. Pour into the prepared moulds or pans, filling each hole to just two-thirds full.
5. Place two or three raspberries on top of each friand and bake for 25–30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean and tops are lightly golden brown.
6. Dust the friands with icing sugar and serve warm, with extra fresh raspberries if you like.

Makes 16-18 friands. (made 24 friands in the cupcake tins)

Despite making one disastrous recipe, I really loved the food featured in Katie's book. The stunning food photography and charming faux rustic page layouts are addictive to flip through and I can't help picking up the book every so often to just to admire it artistically. I'm really looking forward to cooking more dishes, especially the ridiculously cute mini egg benedicts. It's a wonderful cookbook and a much appreciated belated birthday gift. 

Cookbooks are meant to be used, not merely gawked at no matter how vivid the descriptions, elaborate the illustrations or scrumptious the photographs may be. As the old adage says, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and What Katie Ate is proof that you can have a tantalizing book that is as much a feast for the stomach as it is for the eye.

Short and Sweet: The Twitter Review

Elegant and thoroughly delicious, What Katie Ate is a mouthwatering temptation that's hard to resist. 

Beautiful Book of the Month: May

The Rime of the Modern Mariner By Nick Hayes

Published April 2011
ISBN:  9780224090254
Format: Hardback
Jonathan Cape
www.capegraphicnovels.co.uk


I know I'm late again writing my Beautiful Book of the Month article, about 4 months late to be precise, but I promise you I picked an absolute beauty for this long overdue post.

Over the years I have amassed an admirable assortment of enticing literary tomes, but even among the two bookcases designated to house my most beloved books there are a few titles that still manage to shine a little bit brighter than the rest in my eyes. My favourites among my favourites. While my shelves have seen many new additions and have undergone many bouts of shuffling, Nick Haye's The Rime of the Modern Mariner has always held its lofty position; clearly visible and easily accessible, and in my overflowing library that is the highest possible honour I can bestow upon any book.

It’s rare today to come across something so remarkably well crafted. The illustrated matte cover is combined with a luxurious wrap around cloth spine and polished off with elaborately etched silver lettering. The addition of the quirky “handwritten” typeface and whimsical wave patterned end pages add to the character of this charming illustrated novel.


Hayes uses a limited colour palette for his illustrations, sticking only to subtle hue variations of pastel blue and black. It is truly amazing to see how much detail and depth can be achieved using so few colours. I think also by restricting the range of shades, it gives the piece a sense of uniformity and forces the viewer to pay closer attention to how the images interact on the page with one another.

Each page is laid out with impeccable precision, creating a visual language all of its own that flows naturally and fluidly from page to page, mirroring the natural rhythm that emerges from the poem’s rhyme. No two pages are arranged in quite the same way.

But beneath this stunning visual feast, there lurks a compelling and haunting moral fable. This beautiful graphic novel reinvents Samuel Taylor Coleridge's longest and arguably his most famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. First published in 1798, the original tale relates the experiences of a weary sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. He stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to weave a harrowing story of sin and reparation spurred by the senseless killing of an albatross.

It’s a tremendous challenge to rework a classic, especially since the work will inevitably be compared to its reference material no matter how drastically altered or original it may be. Nick Hayes takes on the enormous task of constructing his own original verse for his narrative tale and has created something that is not only lyrically melodic, but visually striking.

The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a cautionary tale of environmental disaster created by humankind’s excessive consumption and our indifference to the consequences on the world around us. By updating the synopsis of the story, Hayes devises something that is more accessible than the original; more relevant to our time and in a way, conveys a stronger message that grows more necessary to impart with each passing year.  

There are several clever twists made to the initial tale. Hayes modernises Coleridge's wedding guest, a bright young man inexplicably transfixed by the sailor’s every word, into a jaded divorced office-worker who listens half-heartedly to the tale to pass time on his lunch break. Instead of imparting a sense of a hard lesson won, learned and imparted to a new generation, Hayes protagonist is left astonished and sitting alone as the city dweller declares the tale as an amusing “nursery rhyme” and goes back to his life with an untainted conscience. While it is a down hearted ending, it does ask the viewer the uncomfortable question of how much the novel has affected them. Will they too go back to their previous wasteful ways? Or perceive the world in a new light and make some amends for their past negligence?  

The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a provocative piece of work that proves that literary graphic novels can impress, inflame and inspire people just as well as their unillustrated counterparts.

I admire Random House and Jonathan Cape’s commendable attention to detail in the design of this visual novel. They’re one of my favourite publishers, not only because of their continued support for indie comic artists, but also for the exceptional quality and respectful care they put into creating suitable formats tailored for each unique art style and story.
Last year, I reviewed another graphic novel, Building Stories by Chris Ware (also published by Jonathan Cape) and I found myself continuously impressed with the production quality. I was surprised that such a gorgeous product was printed by a large publisher since it seemed like such an indulgent risk to produce. I honestly believe that there aren't many publishers willing to undertake such a tremendous task to create a book that not only does justice to the artwork found inside its pages, but can be considered a piece of art itself.

An Unexpected Interlude...

I want to apologize for my sudden and unexpected hiatus from this blog. I didn't mean to suddenly stop writing without any warning, but I have found myself struggling with some personal issues over the last few months that had momentarily caused me to lose enthusiasm for most things.

I find writing for this website puts me in the odd position of composing a blog that is not about my personal life or experiences, but about my opinions on books I've recently read, the book industry in general and the important role that books play in my day to day routine. The thing is, this is a personal project and my writing style has never been particularly objective. I've never been able to detach myself from my emotions when constructing reviews which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. If a book doesn't evoke enough of an emotional response then any commentary regarding it becomes bland. Without passion, whether it is positive or negative, words become monotonous.

But what to do when my real life bleeds into my entries? I have rambled on about my quirky obsession with books ahead of some of my book reviews before, but nothing that wasn't somewhat relevant to the topic and always light-hearted. I'm sorry, but I feel the need to explain my long absence, even if only as a record for myself and no one else. It just feels too jarring to suddenly come back with a random cheery "I'm back!" post or flood the blog with my growing folder of backlogged critiques. So bear with me, while I get this out of my system and I promise I won't do this often or hopefully ever again.          

Looking back at my first post, I mentioned that one of the reasons I decided to start this website was because I realized during my shop's refit that I needed to make some time for my own projects and that my life was being consumed by work.  What I failed to mention then is the reason I decided on a blog as my creative outlet was because I injured my dominant hand quite badly and couldn't indulge in my other major passion: drawing. That was about 10 months ago and it has never really healed. Over the past months, I was let go from my physiotherapist under the mutual knowledge that my wrist was still damaged and a few weeks after that I discovered a small tremor in my hand.  It's a hard concept to wrap your head around that something that is a constant source of pleasure and pride in your life may not be possible to do any more. At least, not with the same ease or skill. It's a hard fact to swallow. I could feel myself unravelling; become unmade. Those events left me in a dazed stupor and I'm only just starting to snap out of it. I'm hoping that my hand will improve in time or at the very least I get over the fear and let my trembling hand finally hold a pencil again.

What I found both surprising and alarming is that for the first time in my life, losing myself in a good book couldn't shake me out of my state of apathy. I've always found books to be a great form of escapism. They are the only foolproof method that I've found where I can forget for a moment that I am me and lose myself in another world, another character and just block out for a few blissful hours all my issues and worries. They are tiny pieces of sanity I keep within arms reach for emergencies and peace of mind. While I can't say that I've had a horrific childhood worthy of immortalization in the 'Painful Lives' section in biography (whose books are easily distinguished by the cover images of a sad child set against a blazing white background), I certainly didn't grow up with a normal family or under normal circumstances. I think the oddness of my childhood years is what drove me to read piles and piles of books.

I want to thank everyone who has commented about this little experiment of mine. I never thought it would have lasted this long and it hasn't been a complete disaster. I'm looking forward to writing my next few posts. I'm going to tackle reviewing my first cookbook with pictures of my hopefully triumphant attempts to create something that looks remotely like the images next to the recipes, a review of a book from someone I "sort of" know and one from someone I know very well and my first "bad" review.

I appreciate all the kind words and encouragement everyone has passed on to me, even though I don't think of myself as much of a writer. I apologize for the seriousness of this post and I hope I haven't made anyone feel awkward in its reading, but hopefully you'll stick around and everything will be all sunny again. *smiles*