With just under 70 recipes from thirteen regions of the world, Homemade Food: World Flavors is a gastronomical tour of our planet. More so, it’s a gastronomical cultural and world history tour.
This loving presented cookbook, beautifully narrated by Denise Kahn, puts every recipe into a cultural or historical context when describing its origins and its place in society before moving on to explain how it’s prepared. More than most other recipe books that endeavour to do something similar, Homemade Food: World Flavors, provides enough depth of information that you find yourself respecting the dish you’re about to prepare.
A great number of societies are based around their food, yet the cultural significance of our cuisine is usually overlooked. Terrapetti Publishing has sought to correct this with three authors from three different cultures who have compiled the recipes and details.
Not all information can be taken as gospel – examining the section on Australia, for example, the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) is referred to as The G; Australia’s meat pie is named as Dog’s Eye & Dead Horse – old rhyming slang that hasn’t been in common use for a couple of generations at least; and the description of Australian cuisine is one that this Australian food lover barely recognised.
That said, the book conjures up images of culture and place that, while not perhaps entirely accurate or modern, still gives the food context. It’s the recipes themselves that most readers will no doubt be interested in and there’s around 68 dishes that live up to the title – meals that you would and could cook at home from the Americas, Caribbean, Europe, Asian, Middle East, and Australasia
Like the traditions of the regions, some recipes are precise while others just give you the ingredients and method without specific measurements.
Narrator Denise Kahn makes each dish sound mouth-watering. She reads very slowly, allowing time to make notes or for the words to sink in. Her voice is soft and articulate, unlike the recording itself which lacks the sharpness obtained from a professional studio. Kahn’s pronunciation of the various food names is a difficult and commendable feat that she makes sound effortless. Bravo! I’d love to hear the outakes!
This and my other audiobook reviews can be found on my site at SaidNotRead dot wordpress dot com. The challenge of an audiobook reading of a recipe book is the need to regularly hit the pause button or to jot down the details before cooking – unless you have an exceptional memory for what you’ve just heard. For the visually impaired however, or those who struggle with English literacy, this could be a great gift.