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Cooking what moves the world: With the right recipes, this will be a tasty trip
Photo: Yiu Yu Hoi/Getty Images
Experience the cinnamon taste of stink bugs as a taco filling in Mexico?
Breaking an oven-warm broa de milho in Portugal?
Slurping up a lamb muluchiya in Bethlehem?
Well, that would require flying to Central America, Lisbon or Jerusalem.
In times of flight shame and fossil energy price shocks, this is not a good idea for many connoisseurs.
The solution: three beautifully illustrated cookbooks that take us with us on these journeys and at the same time enable us to cook the foods we long for.
Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras: »Gastro Obscura - Journeys of Discovery to the Culinary Wonders of the World«
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Photo: An Atlas Obscura book
Traveling with your index finger over maps or the globe has always had a major advantage over real trips: you can lie on the sofa.
In the case of this global culinary discovery tome, even for days.
It can take that long for the eyes and brain to process the incredible amount of detail.
The 464-page guide to the world of food was compiled by Oregon and New York co-founders of the legendary AtlasObscura project, Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras.
In their book they answer a multitude of questions.
Like why some stink bugs in Mexico taste like cinnamon and mint.
Why the Mongolians bake Tsagaan Sar, a shoe sole cake, for their New Year celebrations.
And why the Brazilians mixed the mortar for their church Capela Nossa Senhora das Neves with wine instead of water.
Wong and Thuras have scraped together all sorts of obscure stories from every continent, all the way down to Antarctica (hint: the three-dollar whiskey at the Ukrainian "Vernadsky Station").
About things that you would consider inedible elsewhere in the world, but which are considered highly valued specialties in the region.
As wonderfully creepy fun as that is - the authors didn't think of or notice much that was interesting about the Obscura from Germany.
Not a trace of Bauer Vossbuhr's roast badger, Unterammergau chamois liver pâté or at least Franconian sour croissants.
Instead, rather unobscure boring entries about ice wine, hand cheese with music, Franzbrötchen, Bamberg smoked beer and Filderkraut.
The only ray of hope: details on the in-house currywurst that has been rolling off the assembly line at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg since 1973 under item no. 199398500A.
Overall, however, this book is a must on the side table of every gourmet and gourmande couch.
But be careful - don't put everything in your mouth right away, but first read the warning on page 4: »An important note to our readers - not everything in ›Gastro Obscura‹ should be eaten.
Some of the dishes in this book will amaze you when you read them, but can be harmful when you eat them.
The following applies to the rest: try it out!«
who needs this
Anyone who wants to know everything about the culinary oddities of this world.
Typical recipe?
Akutaq - Eskimo ice cream with ground caribou meat
What does this cost?
36 euros
Laurel Kratochvila: »New baking – 99 recipes from all over Europe«
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Photo: PRESTEL
Because the baked goods repertoire of even ambitious amateur bakers can get a bit monotonous over time, it's a blessing that there are books like this one: Laurel Kratochvila, who runs the Fine Bagels café in Berlin-Friedrichshain, has dozens of them Colleagues all over Europe pull their very personal favorite baking recipes out of the ribs – enough material for 272 exciting book pages worth discovering.
This approach brings real variety to the everyday life of hobby bakers.
For example, with recipes for elderberry Maritozzi, Bialys, Baklava Danish pastry, Powidl Kolatschen, Pain café caramélisé and Portuguese cornbread Broa de milho.
With the instructions, which are consistently guaranteed to succeed, and the appetizing photos, you can gradually bake your way through the whole of Europe.
In addition, Kratochvila portrayed almost a dozen colleagues, such as Roberta Pezella from Frosinone, Xavier Netry from Paris, Ben McKinnon from London, and Zara Boréas and Mia Boland from Lille Bakery in Copenhagen.
Nice that some of the somewhat tricky recipes are richly illustrated.
Just the production of a Sablage cake base with the short pastry variant of the French pâte sablée is explained with 21 photos, the fat brick puff pastry with 22 pictures.
So there's a lot to do - let's bake it!
who needs this
Blinders-free friends of cultivated baking madness.
Typical recipe?
Tropézienne with mascarpone and figs
What does this cost?
32 euros
Daniel Speck: »Terra Mediterranea – A culinary journey around the Mediterranean«
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Photo: FISHER
The Munich film historian and screenwriter Daniel Speck, who was awarded the Grimme Prize, is known for building bridges between cultures with deeply felt stories - as in his three-part novel »Bella Germania« or the travel bestseller »Piccola Sicilia«.
In his current book "Terra Mediterranea" he now invites you on a culinary journey around the Mediterranean, during which we are repeatedly led to the herd of three star chefs who represent the respective region.
Although Martina Caruso (Salina), Jacob Lellouche (Tunis) and Fadi Kattan (Bethlehem) contributed a total of 58 easy-to-cook recipes, the cooking instructions are not the focus of the stories.
But they offer the unique opportunity to get the visual associations conveyed in Speck's sensitive texts on the tongue.
The stories, opulently and artfully accompanied by photos by the Sicilian Giò Martorana, lead us to three stations of this culinary trip on 272 pages.
For example, on the island of Salina off the north coast of Sicily.
And in the markets, backyards and dining rooms of Tunis.
But finally also to the Levant, where in Bethlehem the intersections of the Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli cuisines materialize into a people-understanding pan-Arabic pleasure formula.
And again and again the tempting recipes drive you from the reading couch to the stove: aubergine bottoni in mountain mint broth, muluchiya with lamb and clipfish a ghiotta - the warm sun of the Mare Nostrum suddenly shines from our pans and pots everywhere.
Sometimes cooking is a wondrous time.
who needs this
Anyone who wants the Mediterranean sun to shine in their kitchen.
Typical recipe?
Onion and caper salad with cumin
What does this cost?
29.90 euros
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