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Wednesday, November 15, 2017

FOOD BOOK OF THE MONTH! Cooking with the Wolfman (Douglas & McIntyre)

 
COOKING WITH THE WOLFMAN; INDIGENOUS FUSION (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017, 274 pages, ISBN 978-1-77162-163-2 $29.95 CAD paperbound) is by David Wolfman and Marlene Finn. He's a member of Xaxli'p First Nation and a culinary arts prof at George Brown College in Toronto since 1994. He's also host of the TV show "Cooking with the Wolfman". Finn is Metis, and with the Wolfman she does cooking demos and workshops on Indigenous food and family nutrition, as well as consulting for First Nations restaurants. Over the years Wolfman has been asked by First Nation members (and others) for recipes dealing with any of their occasional surplus of game, fish, and wild edibles. He's now an internationally recognized expert in wild game and traditional Indigenous cuisine. Many preps have been worked out and/or demonstrated via his TV show and workshops. And the reader gets the benefit of this. The book is an interesting weave of storytelling behind the recipes, classical cooking techniques, traditional ingredients, cultural history, and relationships with food. He's got some step-by-step photos for techniques. Preparations have their ingredients listed in both metric and avoirdupois measurements.
Audience and level of use: the adventuresome, those wishing to learn more about Indigenous cooking from a master teacher.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: campfire bear onion balls with mole sauce; curried caribou in pastry with blackberry dip; elk carpaccio on salad greens; chestnut and prune turkey roulade with Saskatoon berry compote; breaded cod tongues; dandelion and pepper stuffed salmon; sea asparagus crab cakes; fried coconut breaded smelts.
The downside to this book: while the index has pages noted in bold-face, the words are in tiny typeface.
The upside to this book: a unique cookbook, great gift book.
Quality/Price Rating: 94.
 
Chimo! www.deantudor.com

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