Product Description
When most people think of French food, they anticipate “complicated to make,” “hard-to-find ingredients” or “too fancy.” In French Food at Home, Laura Calder shows that great French food doesn’t have to be any of that. The French cooking of everyday life is lighthearted, accessible, and suited to modern tastes. It’s about creating a meal using easy-to-find local ingredients. And, above all, it’s about slowing down and savoring the pleasures of good food, wherever yo… More >>
The Changing Image of the Nurse
Tags: Changing, changing image, everyday life, french cooking, french food at home, good food, Image, laura calder, nurse, pleasures, tastes
#1 by Julian Kerrell-Vaughan on January 28, 2010 - 11:50 am
If there were a Muse of Food, just as we have Terpsichore for the Dance and her sisters Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Melpomene, Thalia and Urania, then she would surely be known as Delectabilia, or possibly Pulchritudina to the gods but Laura Calder to the rest of us enchanted mortals!
I cannot confess to having read the book…yet – but I shall. It is ordered. I have experienced, however, something arguably even better than the book – the muse herself, first hand. She is presently enrapturing audiences in this corner of South-East Asia with ‘French Food at Home’ on BBC Lifestyle and it is about the only television I have to see apart from the odd documentary or drama (and neither of these are sufficiently common in Hong Kong).
Laura Calder is spectacularly beautiful but less obviously conscious of the fact – hmmm Nigella! – looks the fresh and faultless epitome of French elegance, and apparently can sample and eat her most deliciously calorific food without putting on a single gramme of avoirdupois despite a plentiful use of butter, cream and all those necessary ingredients to la bonne cuisine.
Her food is French – absolutely so – but it is as inspired and as modern and still as authentic as only the best French cuisine can be. It is light years away from the dreadful messes that Fanny Craddock used to pass off as haute cuisine, and is redolent of happiness, joy and conviviality. This is the cooking of a person who loves her family and friends, and who loves little better than cooking for them.
My maternal grandmother was French, and I learnt to cook from her. Laura Calder has inspired me as much – I used to think that that would be an impossible feat.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Mrs. G. C. Barlow on January 28, 2010 - 1:04 pm
I am disappointed that quite a few of the recipes from the “French Food at Home” television show are not in this book. The chapters are not structured as the television show is; instead I found this a modern take on the ‘Elizabeth David’ genre, though I am grateful that there is a recipe per page. As I particularly bought the book because of the show, it was not what I was expecting! In saying that, the recipes do not disappoint.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Virginia Cox on January 28, 2010 - 1:58 pm
I have not seen the book, since it arrived at a specified address, which is not my own. It is a gift to be received for Christmas.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Adrian D. L. Gzz on January 28, 2010 - 2:52 pm
Nice book BUT … with no pictures. When you are cooking you really want to see some pictures of the final product. So you can compare if it’s like that o not.
Rating: 3 / 5
#5 by D. M. Maze on January 28, 2010 - 5:15 pm
I must admit that whilst this book is what I ordered, it is quite different from what I anticipated! Having watched Laura Calder’s TV series which is called ‘French Food at Home’, I assumed that this book would have all the recipes from the series. Unfortunately it has not – it is still a reasonably good book but not what I had hoped for and is therefore a little disappointing! Also it is printed in a very cheap form, without any pictures of recipes and not even one of Laura Calder, and one feels that this book was very cheaply put together. I realise that the price wasn’t very expensive although when converted into our NZ $$$ plus postage etc. it became quite expensive. Maybe more information on the web page would have helped – a picture of the book and a sample of the recipes! I do like almost everything that Laura Calder does so I will use this book, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting!
Rating: 2 / 5