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To greet the new year, I have a gift for you today! I received a grill pan from Lagostina that I used for grilling shitake mushrooms, and you could win one just like it. Leave a comment on this post before noon CST on Friday January 6th with your email address so I can contact you, and you’ll be entered to win a Lagostina 11-inch Grill Pan . The winner will need to give a mailing address in the US to receive the pan. Like all the Lagostina cookware pieces, this grill pan is beautiful. It’s a good size for fitting on one burner and still having a lot of surface area for stovetop grilling. And, even though I got the pan a bit messy while grilling teriyaki marinated mushrooms, it was easy to clean and return to its sparkling appearance. For this dish, I turned to A Spoonful of Ginger: Irresistible, Health-Giving Recipes from Asian Kitchens by Nina Simonds. This isn’t the only grilling recipe in that book either. I also made the Spicy Grilled Squid with Warm Greens. Both are quick-cooking...

At first glance, you might not think that the American South has much in common with southern India. But, Asha Gomez finds several intersections in food traditions, hospitality, and more from both regions in her new book My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen , and I received a review copy. She grew up in Kerala where the climate was also hot and humid, where rice is also a local crop, where there’s also an active coast line, and where “a talent for creating bounty out of an often modest pantry” is also common. She then spent fourteen years living in New York before getting married and moving to Georgia. Hosting supper clubs serving Keralan cuisine out her home in Georgia evolved into a restaurant business. Today, she operates a culinary event venue and an Indian patisserie. She continues to bring together the “resourcefulness and soulfulness” of both home regions in her cooking. The book includes dishes for breakfast, lunch, tea time, dinner, and desserts...

I always enjoy reading about Naomi Duguid’s fearless travels all around the world. Her latest book is Taste of Persia: A Cook's Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan , and I received a review copy. She ventures into areas the casual tourist might not consider and brings back insights about the people, the culture, and the food. Her interactions with people and descriptions of places bring new understanding about areas that aren’t well-traveled by Westerners. For this book, her goal was to highlight the connections of the Persian culinary region that extends across current borders. The similar elements of this cuisine include “richly flavored bean dishes, flatbreads of many kinds, generous use of herbs and greens, plenty of cheese and yogurt, walnuts, inventive soups and stews, savory dishes flavored with pomegranates and/or other fruits, and rice as a beloved staple.” Each chapter presents a type of dish such as salads, soups, stuffed vegetables, fish, m...

Let’s take a quick trip to Sicily today. It’s the largest island in the Mediterranean, has been influenced by many cultures passing through and spending time over the centuries, and offers an immense variety of fresh produce and seafood. I was recently transported there while reading my review copy of Sicily: Recipes from an Italian island by Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi. The two of them operate two Italian restaurants and a cooking school in England. As they tasted their way around Sicily in hopes of finding some great, secret recipes, they repeatedly learned the “secret” for the best dishes was an obsession with the absolute freshness of the ingredients. The book’s chapters introduce you to Palermo and Its Street Food, Antipasti, Soups, Contorni, Pasta Rice and Couscous, Meat and Poultry, Fish, and Dolci and Cocktails. I had a hard time deciding what to make first. I was immediately curious about the Cauliflower in Red Wine in which parboiled cauliflower is sauteed with anchovies and...

I thought I was fairly familiar with the styles of cuisine from different regions in the United States. I’ve read about Low Country and Southern foods and their differences and similarities. But, it wasn’t until I read my review copy of Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes by Ronni Lundy that I was introduced to the foods of the Appalachian Mountain South. There was something familiar about the family recipes here. The use of home-grown vegetables, the mentions of the distinct flavors of fresh beans and just-dug potatoes, and the simplicity of the preparations reminded me of my grandparents’ cooking. I should mention, this is more than a cookbook. Ronnie Lundy grew up in eastern Kentucky and weaves the stories of this region with true understanding. The picturesque writing details the landscape along with the history of the towns and the people who have lived there. She writes: “I try to imagine what this journey was like on foot, as native people made it, and as many of the...