King pig
Author James Villas takes the old meat-packing industry idea of using everything but the squeal and runs with it in "Pig: King of the Southern Table" (Wiley, $34.95).
Villas -- food and wine editor at Town & Country magazine for 27 years, author of 15 cookbooks and books on food, double James Beard Journalism Award winner -- offers nearly 300 recipes for all things pork. Not only are chops, roasts, ham and sausage featured, but so are pig ears, livers, tongues, feet and tails.
Villas goes deeper than "Southern" with recipes from specific locations -- a ham, corn and bourbon chowder from Memphis, Tenn., red bean and hambone soup from Birmingham, Ala., boudin sausage from Cajun country. Ingredients are commonly available. (OK, cooks in some parts might have trouble chasing down the components for Miss Edna's Pork and Jowl Pudding, but the search can be half the fun.) If we do have a complaint, it's about the number of photos. There are only 25 for all those recipes. We'd like to get a look at Miss Edna's pudding.
Cooks by nature are curious. This is a chance to explore interesting regional dishes -- a hobotee, a muddle, several stratas -- that may not be too common. Need another reason to like this book? There are 49 "bacon" entries in the index.
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Well-rounded
Sometimes, it really is the simple things that stick with us. In the case of Pure Dark's Rounds, it's a sweet-tart dusting of raspberry and acai powder on a rich dark-chocolate disc (about 1 inch in diameter).
A package containing three 3-ounce bags is $31.50 at puredark.com.
Behold the mayo!
The folks at Kraft (Nabisco's mother ship) have just brought forth four new kinds of mayonnaise.
The four new products, dubbed Sandwich Shop Mayo, are Chipotle, Garlic & Herb, Horseradish-Dijon and Hot & Spicy. They come in 12-ounce squeeze bottles.
The new products are reduced-fat. In this case, a 1-tablespoon serving of the flavored mayonnaises contains half the fat and calories of a tablespoon of regular mayo.
Sandwich Shop Mayo costs more per ounce than does a big jar of regular Kraft mayonnaise, but -- surprisingly -- no more than Kraft's other kinds of mayonnaise (regular, light, olive oil) when purchased in small squeeze bottles.
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They retail for $2.99 per bottle in supermarkets and grocery stores.
