Amazon.com
What better way to learn about a culture than to spend a few days huddled over a stove with a local chef cooking the region's specialties? Cooking vacations--which become more popular with each travel season--are the perfect way to not just visit a country, but to really experience it, and even bring part of it home. If you've ever dreamed of sautéing in Sicily, mincing in Morocco, or stir-frying in China, Cooking in Paradise, Joel and Lee Naftali's practical guide to cooking vacations around the world, will show you how to get there.
The book covers a wide range of cooking programs--from budget to extravagant, from half-day classes to three-week programs--in Europe, Asia, the United States and Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and Morocco. The authors provide extensive information about each program, including its history, information about the region and its cuisine, the instructors, and a play-by-play of how you can expect to spend the time. You can choose whether you want the glamour of cooking with a famous chef (from Jacques Pepin to Marcella Hazan) or the informal fun of cooking like a native (many programs are taught by enthusiastic and knowledgeable home cooks). You might spend five days cooking with Patricia Wells in her Provencal home kitchen, which boasts a La Cornue range, rotisserie, and wood-fired bread oven. There you'll prepare traditional Provencal dishes like Saumon Entier Roti en Papillotte, Soupe au Pistou, and Tarte Tatin. Or you might prefer to spend a week cooking in the kitchens of Tutti a Tavola, a friendly Tuscan cooking school run by four women who open their homes to groups of students so they can experience four distinctly different Tuscan kitchens.
As authors Joel and Lee Naftali write, "If the heart of a home is the kitchen, then the soul of a region is the cuisine." --Robin Donovan
From Publishers Weekly
This handy guide lists and describes recreational cooking programs around the world, with useful information on accommodations, activities for spouses and/or children and prices. The Naftalis (Generation E: The Do-It-Yourself Business Guide for Twentysomething Entrepreneurs) list cooking schools in places as far-flung as Rio de Janeiro, as well as a slew of choices in the U.S. and Canada. The usual suspects weigh in heavily, with numerous programs in Tuscany (e.g., hands-on lessons with Judy Witts Francini of Cucina Divina in Florence). For those with more exotic tastes, there is a spice-oriented tour with cooking lessons in India, offered by Indus Tours, and despite England's drab culinary reputation, it's represented by the likes of the Ashburton Centre in South Devon, whose programs on vegetarian cooking feature Indian curries and "nut loaves." The prose here is generally weak the Naftalis appear to have printed the information provided by the programs with little editing. Recipes scattered here and there are for standards such as stuffed calamari, and introductory sections to each chapter are gushy and insubstantial. Still, this unique and serviceable guide will appeal to adventurous gastronomes. (Apr.) Forecast: In the current heydays of travel and gourmandise, this book provides a rare market-potent combination. Shelved near lifestyle travelogues by the likes of Frances Mayes, it could take off. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Cooking in Paradise is a rich, definitive guide to hands-on gourmet cooking vacations around the world.
Ever reams of sauteing in Sicily? Or having a master divulge the secrets of perfect patisserie in Paris? How about mincing in Morocco? Cooking in Paradise will show you how to get there, and scores of other places, with over 150 listings for cooking-vacation programs around the world (and a handful right here in the United States, too).
Joel and Lee Naftali give details about famous courses--like Particia Wells's "at home" in her eighteenth century Provencal farmhouse--but have also unearthed truly unusual fare, from a kosher-cooking course in Tuscany to an Australian country house gourmet retreat to a Mexican cuisine class held at a working hillside farm in Oaxaca.
Cooking in Paradise provides all the information you need to book a cooking vacation today, but with its evocation of far-flung locales and over 50 unusual recipes from the schools included, it's perfect for the stay-at-home chef as well.
About the Author
Joel and Lee Naftali live in Maine. Cooking in Paradise is their third book.
Home
